Lawrence Cline
Those of a certain age will remember the issues that the Defense Department and the U.S. Government overall have had with labeling operations short of full-scale conventional war. The plethora of terms used in the past for seemingly similar missions was virtually guaranteed to preclude an intellectual underpinning for analysis and strategic planning. With the adoption of the term irregular warfare (IW) and the ongoing efforts to develop a more sophisticated doctrine, the level of consistency on how to approach these most difficult of operations may show both coherence and further doctrinal progress.
A key issue to be resolved, however, is the ‘boundaries’ of IW. The right boundary is clear: operations short of full-scale war. It is the left boundary that remains problematic. Exactly what constitutes IW as opposed to ‘normal’ diplomatic, information, and military operations? At least in theory, if not in practice, the old chestnut of the acronym MIDLIFE – Military, Information/Intelligence, Diplomatic, Legal, Infrastructure, Finance, Economic – should drive national policy on a routine basis. In practice, of course, actually melding these disparate functions into a coherent whole has very much proven to be the exception rather than the rule. This is why having a conceptualization of multiple strands of effort is so important. Irregular warfare can provide the framework for this.
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