Monte Erfourth
Introduction
Great power competition aims to advance and protect national interests while avoiding costly wars. Unlike traditional warfare, competition does not focus solely on defined victories or end states. Instead, it emphasizes continuous, national-level campaigns designed to secure a lasting peace that ensures the U.S. economic, societal, and military advantage. This steady-state competition involves strategic maneuvering to advance national interests at the lowest cost possible, reflecting the move-and-counter-move dynamics of international relations.
Competitive campaigning emerged from the 2022 National Defense Strategy as a central framework for orchestrating and synchronizing simultaneous operations to achieve national objectives across the competition continuum. This article explores the principles, strategies, and challenges of competitive campaigning, emphasizing its role in maintaining global security and advancing U.S. interests and explaining the role that Special Operations Forces (SOF) can play in a successful campaign.
A SOF Competition Campaign Imagined
Imagine, if you will, special operations forces (SOF) conducting a globally coordinated irregular warfare campaign in the gray zone to deter, degrade, deny, and defeat threats posed by China, Russia, or Iran to United States national security interests. This campaign would not be conducted in the conventional battle spaces of war but within the subtle and ambiguous realm of the gray zone, foreign internal defense, influence, cyber operations, proxy conflicts, and covert actions. Such efforts would mirror current operations, leveraging SOF's unique capabilities to adapt and operate in austere and politically sensitive environments. Yet, as great power competition evolves, the question arises: how can SOCOM and the SOF enterprise adapt their training, education, and operational paradigms to confront these increasingly complex and multifaceted challenges?
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