Revisiting DR Kilcullen's piece on New Paradigms and the OSS
We’ve had allot of discussion about roles and missions and where capabilities should reside. I dug this out of the SWJ Blog archive – Dave Kilcullen discussed New Paradigms for the 21st Century Warfare. One of the things he talked about was “the new Strategic Services” – later on he responded to a query I made and he referenced Tom Barnett’s SyS-Admin concept and USA LTC John Nagl’s case for an Advisory Corps (its one of the responses to the original blog). He also referenced the WWII era Office of Strategic Services as a possible way of thinking of the types of skill sets, personality traits, focus of scope of operations. What he was conceptualizing was different then SOF and different then GPF – and he was quick to point out that he was not putting forward some new radical idea, but adapting a concept that worked for what we needed at the time.
This was back in June, and six months later I’m still thinking about it. With all our discussion about how we get capabilities for PRTs, how we get the right folks for Advisory missions, how we do Inter-Agency, how we do business, how do we attract and retain the very types of talented folks we need – as such, the discussion that DR Kilcullen started I think is very relevant. SWC member Troufion and a couple of others started raising the issues about new a new service; some like myself thought it sounded like a risky idea because it would require new doctrine, new structure, new monies, and would compete with ground services that with some adaptation might be able to fill the need.
I’m not so sure anymore. For various reasons it may be a good idea to start a new service along the lines of the OSS – but on a scale proportional to the requirement and the capabilities they’d present. It might do to let such a group develop their own organization and doctrine, and requirements (one reason is that if an existing group develops these things it tends to build requirements and capabilities which reflect its own values as opposed to those which may be needed. We’re not talking about SOF doing DA, and we’re not talking about GPF doing FID, we’re not talking about CIA doing collection and analysis, we’re not talking about DoS doing diplomacy – we are talking about something different.
Quote from David Killen at the blog: (his own citations are in the end notes of the blog)
Quote:
“4. Identify the new "strategic services": A leading role in the war on terrorism has fallen to Special Operations Forces (SOF) because of their direct action capabilities against targets in remote or denied areas. Meanwhile, Max Boot(12) has argued that we again need something like the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which included analysis, intelligence, anthropology, special operations, information, psychological operations, and technology capabilities.
Adjectives matter: Special Forces versus Strategic Services. SOF are special. They are defined by internal comparison to the rest of the military—SOF undertake tasks "beyond the capabilities" of general-purpose forces. By contrast, OSS was strategic. It was defined against an external environment and undertook tasks of strategic importance, rapidly acquiring and divesting capabilities as needed. SOF are almost entirely military; OSS was an interagency body with a sizeable civilian component, and almost all its military personnel were emergency war enlistees (talented civilians with strategically relevant skills, enlisted for the duration of the war).(13) SOF trace their origin to OSS; yet whereas today's SOF are elite military forces with highly specialized capabilities optimized for seven standard missions,(14) OSS was a mixed civil-military organization that took whatever mission the environment demanded, building capabilities as needed.
Identifying which capabilities are strategic services today would be a key step in prioritizing interagency efforts. Capabilities for dealing with nonelite, grassroots threats include cultural and ethnographic intelligence, social systems analysis, information operations (see below), early-entry or high-threat humanitarian and governance teams, field negotiation and mediation teams, biometric reconnaissance, and a variety of other strategically relevant capabilities. The relevance of these capabilities changes over time—some that are strategically relevant now would cease to be, while others would emerge. The key is the creation of an interagency capability to rapidly acquire and apply techniques and technologies in a fast-changing situation.”
We have some good models for this – the NCTC (National Counter Terrorism Center) is one, the JIATF (Joint Inter-Agency Task Force) is another. These organizations have unique capabilities and constraints – a center for example is not an agency or bureau, and does not have the types of authorities associated with those types of organizations, JIATFs are durational (although some of the counter drug JTF types are long standing). These organizations draw their personnel from the supporting agencies. Maybe what is needed is something that allows its own recruiting with its own budget to operate along the lines of the OSS.
I think we continue to have better understanding of how the threat operates within the world as they perceive it, and how they see us.
As DR. Kilcullen closes:
Quote:
“The new threats, which invalidate received wisdom on so many issues, may indicate that we are on the brink of a new era of conflict. Finding new, breakthrough ideas to understand and defeat these threats may prove to be the most important challenge we face.”
I wonder if our current tool set is adaptable and flexible enough to do what is required? I wonder if we should or even if we can create capabilities within existing organizations with strong rational for remaining as they are, and strong culture that resists change – often for good intuitive reasons. Consider that possibly the best way to meet these challenges might be to create something new (in relative terms) to work with our other existing tools in accomplishing our strategic ends. If so, maybe its not as hard as we think it is – maybe a key quality of this organization is that it is people & grey matter focused – other then its human requirements (recruiting & retention), and the $$$ required to travel – its budget should remain small. This is tough, because the more I learn about the Inter Agency, the more I believe budget = power and authority – but maybe that is the point here. The people we would want in such an organization would have to be clever enough to get by on little, they’d need to be natural communicators, intuitive and audacious among other traits. They might not desire to be in some of our traditional agencies and services, but they might “fit” is a different kind of organization – and as such be attracted to it. They don’t need to be able to do the Darby Queen, or even run 2 miles in 18 minutes - however, would need to be willing and able to live without McDonalds and Wal-Mart. They could be men or women, ages 18 to however old they can be and still function at an alert level. They could (and perhaps should) contain a wide array of interests, and experiences (both professional and personal).
As always this seems the best place to discuss this – the SWC in itself could be a virtual model of such people and such an organization - and potentially a recruiting pool:cool:.
Best, Rob
The way we think about problems matters
I'm just not sure those ( I guess the OSS model) are the capabilities we're after (I'm not saying their not either) - that was one of the reasons its stuck with me for 6 months - it bothers me - like I'm missing something. I've known a few CIA folks, I always thought highly of them - as an organization it seems to fulfill its role (and probably then some) - I would not tamper with it. SOCOM is an organization that also seems to have come into its own and offered policy makers a suite of capabilities under one roof that we've not really been able to put our fingers before - my gut tells me that SOCOM is a good thing.
Since I read DR K's piece, I've thought he was alluding to something different. To be sure he had/has allot going on, and may not have had the opportunity to think more about it - but I think its something that would fill a niche that is absent, or one that something else is covering poorly because its a square peg in a round hole. Partly why I decided to put it up - so we could think about it some more - burn up some brain cells.
If interested, folks might peruse the Barnett Sys-Admin piece (just Google it). Kilcullen mentioned it, and at first I thought he was referencing it as a model - but after looking at it a couple of times - I think he just meant we required something that reflected the challenges we see now and believe are ahead. While I don't think Sys-Admin is what we need - I do think it has attempted to frame the challenges (in this case Barnett's "Gap" theory) and develop a solution. Same with LTC Nagl's Advisory Corps -in this case a way of looking at the problem of future security challenges differently within an existing organization (the Army). I think what is important is the way we think about the problem - using the analysis of the problem and its conditions to shape the solution vs. trying to use existing solutions against a problem for which they were not designed to anticipate. It sounds subtle - but I think its significant, and I think that was the value of the examples - not necessarily that the proposed solution(s) were the ones to go with - just the process in which the solutions were derived should be used here.
Best, Rob
Good post. With respect to your final
parenthetical comment, I'm not at all comfortable we have much of a clue as to future challenges and our impatience to reorganize today to meet yesterdays challenge sort of concerns me...
That is probably where we should start
by considering the so what. That is what got me thinking about Killcullen's blog post - how do we see (collectively) the 21st Century unfolding - how do you get it more right then wrong?
From Ken:
Quote:
I'm not at all comfortable we have much of a clue as to future challenges and our impatience to reorganize today to meet yesterdays challenge sort of concerns me...
From Rex:
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All of which leads me to want to look at this very much from the bottom up: what is being done now, or is needed now, that current doctrine, capabilities, or structures don't address? (Related to that--do we really agree what what's lacking now, against current or foreseeable future challenges?)
I agree - I'm not sure we've had our feet under us very well when it comes to understanding how/if the world is different, how our friends see us/if that matters/what could we do to make it better/why should we do it. I'm not sure we understand the enemy -even from the point of agreeing on who the real enemy is from a global perspective that allows some focused thinking - what is that enemy (insert menu depending on your view) trying to accomplish with regards to himself and with regard to us and with regard to others?
My sense is we're having a hard time deciding who we want or need to be - did we change, or are we the same, but just forgot for awhile? Until we decide that one - our friends are going to look at us a little funny, and our enemies might misinterpret our actions/inactions on matters or slide one past us.
I think we are starting to come out of though. That we're asking questions about ourselves, and are tired of using the words - gray, ambiguous, nebulous, unclear and other words that followed 9/11 when the emphasis swung to passion's corner seems to me that we might be getting a sense of self and the world.
Until we get some consensus built on how know yourself (our government,the domestic population, the Inter-Agency,etc.), know the enemy (from state to non-state; pandemics to the effects of global warming), know the terrain (friends, trading partners, allies, neutrals, peers, everyone not currently the enemy) it will be hard.
I'll be off the net most of the day - got to play catch up on all the things I'm supposed to be doing, but didn't yesterday:D Best, Rob
A Real Bump On the Bell Curve
I tossed the bones and it shows alotta' small wars and petty dictatorships - scarce resources fueling the former and lots of take-offs on established religions jusifying the latter - a real bump on the bell curve - extra smart missles and fast-moving, very autonomous, almost independent small units are seen in the bone pattern - they show an External Affairs Cabinet aka the Dirty Works Dept. with State pretty much muzzled from trying to foist notions of democracy on primitive people
I suspect you and the bones are correct...
Where's Matt Helm when we need him... :D
Now, to train and unleash the Rambos.