Robert Burrell
In 2013, under the leadership of Admiral William McRaven, U.S. Special Operations Command made a herculean effort in advocating for joint doctrine on unconventional warfare. The final approval of Joint Publication 3-05.1 Unconventional Warfare (JP 3-05.1) required the combined endorsement of the Joint Staff, the Services, and the Combatant Commands. Published in 2015, this doctrine opportunistically hit the shelves during U.S. efforts to counter ISIS, a success in large part due to working through and with partners in the region. Prophetically, in 2016, General Joseph Votel, wrote about unconventional warfare in the “gray zone” – attempting to push the Defense Department even further past the joint doctrine milestone of JP 3-05.1 into developing real political warfare tools to combat China, Russia, and Iran. Unfortunately, the Joint Force is taking a giant step backward by terminating JP 3-05.1 instead of revising it – again relegating this irregular warfare activity to the sole realm of special operations.
Each of the five irregular warfare activities – foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, stabilization, and unconventional warfare – need institutionalization and operationalization in the Joint Force. On 2 October 2020, the Defense Department endorsed this vision by releasing the Irregular Warfare Annex to the 2018 National Defense Strategy. In an age of great power competition, this new Defense priority on irregular warfare portends to provide important methods in countering the malign activities of China and Russia, who are “undermining the international order,” as well as “rogue regimes,” like Iran, who undercut regional stability through sponsored proxies. If the Cold War is a predictor of a future operating environment, the internal struggle for regime change within nation states – combined with the overt or covert assistance of outside sponsors – will certainly escalate. Instead of direct confrontation with our adversaries, conflict will likely appear on the periphery and fall short of major war. Of all the irregular warfare activities, the Defense Department arguably needs to invest in unconventional warfare the most.
One of the primary means of “revisionist powers and rogue regimes” in undermining the legitimacy of the United States, its friends, and the international order is their use of unconventional warfare coordinated across the instruments of national power (diplomatic, informational, military and economic). This subversion is not a future threat, but is happening right now. Russia’s methods in the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 is but one example. Understanding unconventional warfare as well as how to resist it, is a Joint Force imperative. In fact, the Defense Department is required to develop a strategy for countering foreign unconventional warfare activities in accordance with Section 1097 of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act. Accordingly, resistance operations needs inclusion in a new revision to joint doctrine on unconventional warfare. The Defense Department should retain unconventional warfare doctrine while simultaneously exploring existing joint force capabilities to support its prosecution. U.S. decision makers should take a second read of Votel’s “Unconventional Warfare in the Gray Zone.”
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