Normalizing unconventional warfare

During the 2004 US presidential campaign, Democratic Party nominee John Kerry accused President George W Bush of missing an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden when he "outsourced" the battle of Tora Bora to local Afghan warlords. The accusation set off a debate over whether bin Laden was actually present at Tora Bora at that particular time but skipped the issue over the outsourcing of US military operations.

The US military has partnered with surrogates in the past, but the history of this practice is a limited one. That may change, however, if the ideas of a Washington think tank expert hold sway.

Robert Martinage, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), advocated in a Washington briefing last month an expanded role for US special forces, including, as in the battle of Tora Bora, the "use of non-state actors against other non-state actors."

The field manual for US Army special operations defines partnering with irregular forces as "unconventional warfare" during one of the missions of US special operations forces. Martinage's proposal is in sync with army thinking: The special ops field manual, which was published in September 2008, emphasizes unconventional warfare over other special operations missions such as civil affairs, foreign internal defense (which involves direct aid to local government forces), information operations and psychological operations.

The historical examples of unconventional warfare given in the field manual - support of Nicaragua's Contras and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s - represented conflicts with government, or regular, forces. Therefore, Martinage's notion of partnering up with regular forces against other irregular forces is something relatively new, and is born of a global environment characterized by a persistent conflict against Islamist radicalism.

The same environment informs the approach taken by CSBA in other aspects of its recent briefing, which was designed to publicize the organization's 15-volume series, "Strategy for the Long Haul," through which it hopes to influence Pentagon and Obama administration thinking.

Besides Islamist radicalism, CSBA's analysts believe the primary strategic challenges the US faces include hedging against the rise of a more openly confrontational China and preparing for more state and non-state entities possessing weapons of mass destruction.

If CSBA's analysis is accepted, special operations forces - elite, highly trained military units that conduct operations that exceed the capabilities of conventional forces - will become increasingly mainstream in responding to all of these emerging threats. One reason is that the US does not have a good track record of predicting where military intervention will be required, according to Andrew Krepinevich, CSBA's president and a retired army officer.

"If we can't predict future conflicts," he told ISN Security Watch, "we've got to adapt quickly to emerging threats."

The flexibility and maneuverability of special operations forces, so the argument goes, provides one answer to that challenge.

Krepinevich posited an approaching era of "persistent irregular conflict" with an emphasis on manpower-intensive operations. He criticized the US Army for attempting to handle a full spectrum of military conflicts from high-intensity conventional combat to low-intensity irregular warfare. By trying to make the army equally effective in all conflict types, "it risks becoming marginally competent in many tasks, and highly effective at none," Krepinevich said.

The answer, for Krepinevich, is that as warfare becomes increasingly complex, the army should produce specialized soldiers. That specialization should be weighted toward irregular warfare, he added, to improve the army's ability to rapidly build partnerships with allied and indigenous forces.

"The army must maintain a significant standing training and advisory capability that can be deployed on short notice when necessary," he said.

Along the same lines, Martinage recommended refocusing the deployment of special forces from an episodic basis to a persistent one.

He also explained how beefing up special forces would help the US meet the emerging threats identified by CSBA.

Defeating terrorist groups "will require a multifaceted approach," Martinage said, "one in which the military instrument will often be far less important than effective foreign assistance, public and private diplomacy, strategic communications and covert action."

Special operations forces can be postured, according to Martinage, to conduct sustained manhunting and disruption operations; to build ground, air and maritime capabilities among US partners around the world; to generate air and maritime surveillance in areas not under central government control; and to conduct unconventional warfare against terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism.

In the event of a future US-China relationship characterized by competition and conflict, the US would need to dissuade China from investing in capabilities that threaten US and allied interests in East Asia and to deter Chinese aggression. Special operations forces could be called upon, Martinage said, to conduct unconventional warfare operations on China's periphery; clandestine reconnaissance missions to locate hidden or mobile targets; and information operations focused on penetrating communications and information systems.

In the effort to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction, globally distributed special ops units could provide an intelligence collection infrastructure and act as a response force to interdict the movement of WMDs.

Special operations forces "could potentially conduct unconventional warfare to bring about regime change in states aspiring to develop WMDs," Martinage said. "They will also need to be prepared to conduct counterproliferation operations against critical WMD-related infrastructure."

Special operations, special implications

This kind of strategic thinking embodies some important implications for the future of the US military and will be the subject of some key decisions the Obama administration will have to take in its first year or two in office.

During his campaign for the presidency, Obama endorsed a plan to increase the army's ground strength by 65,000 troops - a program that would cost US taxpayers US$100 billion over the next four years.

Krepinevich said Obama should forget about beefing up the army's troop strength. The army depends on manpower more than on military equipment, Krepinevich said, and reports of the decline in the quality of recruits means that increasing the number of troops would be illusory.

Instead, the army should focus on quality over quantity, according to Krepinevich, and that means enhancing the kinds of specialized capabilities offered by special operations forces.

"There are risks in reducing the army's projected force structure," Krepinevich acknowledged. But the greater risk lies in "the flawed assumption that an army heavily weighted toward conventional warfare can easily shift to conduct irregular operations."

An emphasis on the personnel capabilities of special operations forces also leads to a de-emphasis on technology, in Krepinevich's thinking. The Obama administration, he said, should reconsider Future Combat Systems - the army modernization program which seeks to marry light and maneuverable vehicles with a next-generation communications and information network.

"So much of the success of Future Combat Systems depends on technology that has never been demonstrated," he said. "As FCS is optimized for conventional warfare, it is not clear it represents the best use of resources in this era of protracted irregular warfare."

Of course, shifting the US military's orientation from conventional warfare to special operations will easier said than done. As Martinage pointed out, over 80 percent of special operations capabilities are now tied down in the US Central Command - in other words, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to array these capabilities against the future threats CSBA foresees, US special forces will require a major overhaul.