Security Force Assistance: Roles and Missions for SOF and Conventional Forces

[Boot]

At the risk of the stating the obvious, I think it's worth pointing out that the only reason why US SOF forces are associated with training and FID is a confluence of circumstances from the Cold War. - EG: SF used to train Guerillas, based on WW2 experience.

I cannot see anyone wanting to "train Guerillas" these days, but the need to train and sustain large numbers of security forces is a definite plus, but I cannot see any logical reason why this would be associated with SF/SOCOM, apart from the accidents of history.

Yes, I can see how one can make a very solid case (languages, skills etc) but the ability to train is inherent to a professional military. All officers and NCO's are, or should be trainers - in an ideal world, capable of training Indigenous forces for the equivalent role.

The reality is that culture and human needs, undermines this. But be aware the British Army went around the world, raising generally limited successful clones of themselves (India, Jordan, Pakistan etc) - and USSF themselves could be said to be descended from a British Army trained Unit!!

...however, if you just adopt the colour of the beret (Canadian Rifle Green) and not the mess silver, traditions and mess kit, it isn't quite going to be the same thing!

Great points; Really good analogy wrt to the British Army. I have to wonder if this those indigenous forces in the long run, had resentment for GB or supported them.
An ancient example of someone who was trained by a standing Army was that came back to bite them was The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest which took place in the year 9 A.D. when Arminius, ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus. Arminius had received a military education from Rome and had even been given the rank of Equestrian. How knew their culture and how the Romans operated. Just food for thought.

[Rob Thornton]

All good points - keep in mind that terms matter. Most of the discussion seems focused around FID, which in our mind we associate with an investment to bolster internal defense - and support a legitimate government against lawlessness, or subversion. This is absolutely an important mission.

However, if you are working with a state or a regional organization to build capacity for other reasons - it starts to look different. Much if it depends upon the end you are trying to accomplish.

Wayne:

We need to be sure that we are invited in for that SFA mission by someone that is an appropriate inviter.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this statement. It is absolutely best when the HN or the regional organization comes forward to the Country Team or the GCC and says "can you provide some assistance". Part of what country teams and GCCs do is coordinate with HN leadership and the regional organization's members for just such purposes. Part of what we are saying is lets do this better then we are right now. Part of this has to do with a lack of capacity and partly a lack of capabilities, but there is also the issue of authorities. These are the types of issues we are trying to address by providing a broad, holistic framework that allows the various parts, be they FID, SC, SA, FMS, etc. to be brought into an integrated strategy that does not just look at problems from a binary perspective, but with regard to building regional capacity and stability as well. SFA is not a competitor to FID, SA or SC, its the toolbox that houses them so to speak. It provides the shell for the GCCs and above to think of policy and long term consequences with regards to the policy objectives they've been told to pursue.

Much in the same vernacular as BPC - there is in large part the assumption that you have a partner to work with. If someone rejects assistance, its on them, however, if they are sinking into the muck of insurgency, transnational crime, or the aggression of a regional bully, their neighbors may recognize it and ask for help to avoid the same fate. Moreover, neighbors may come forward together, or be asked to participate together since neither may have sufficient ends unto itself, in order to benefit each other - the "Partnership for Peace" is one such effort.

Their efforts also serve our ends in various ways since instability has a nasty way of spreading to places that do matter. These days, a terrorist that earns his spurs in a backwater locale, may himself become an exportable commodity - they are human capital. Further, the location may become a nexus for the importation, storage, refinement etc. of some nasty things. An example, even after we eventually have stopped conducting FID in Iraq - however long that may be, we will still be conducting SFA through SC, SA and FMS - its just a transition to another activity in order to reach the policy end. This is another reason why the broader policy offices in OSD and the rest of the IA are all players in SFA - before you can move forward in other areas you must have security with regards to internal and some degree of external - however, you can't always get to the former without the other elements of power playing key roles.

Even when considering partners, you could quickly run out of resources - there are just that many who'd like us to assist them more from improving their ministerial level capacity to combined exercises, to educating their leaders at home or here, to purchasing better equipment and receiving training and support on it, to sharing intelligence, etc. We can't meet the demand when you consider it from a holistic perspective - we'd ever have enough force structure to do so and meet our own requirements. As such, we have to be somewhat pragmatic about who and what we commit to.

Even if we were not heavily involved in OIF and OEF, we'd still be hard pressed to meet the demand if we let it be known we were "open and the shelfs were full, just come on in." I'm pretty sure the leadership understands that. We must be careful not to see this as a one size fits all sort of approach, and we must ask ourselves, "how does a particular effort support our policy objectives?" Then it must be held against the other efforts that also deserve our attention and prioritized in terms of time, units, money, etc. They are either pursued, scaled back, or put on hold - although if we do this right, we might have some regional organization with the ability and rationale to put forward their assistance over time - so as OE says, they can take care of it themselves.

The basics of this we've been doing for a long time - what is perhaps new is that we are looking at it in a holistic manner (the tool box), that we see the requirement to reevaluate the risk of inaction differently, that the nature of this enemy under these conditions presents a different set of consequences, and that as such we will require more resources to carry this out. Those resources are different both in terms of some of the traditional roles and responsibilities within and outside the military, and in terms of what the broader inter-agency may need to accomplish in order to meet current and future security challenges. There just is not much low hanging fruit left.

I also might add that one day we will probably find ourselves conducting SFA in a post conflict environment again. It might be after we closed the conflict, or it might be we were asked to assist after the belligerents had closed the conflict - and it was clearly in our interest to take the lead, as such the authorities are different, and so are the conditions.

Again, think of SFA as a tool box vs. a tool. We have good doctrine and practices for some of the tools, but what we lack is the overarching framework that ties this all together so that it passes the CFAS test, and better helps us meet our long short and long term policy goals.

Best, Rob

[William F. Owen]

Great points; Really good analogy wrt to the British Army. I have to wonder if this those indigenous forces in the long run, had resentment for GB or supported them.

My personal experience is that the Pak and Indian armies secretly want to be British!! The Jordanians still use the UK 1944 tactics manual according to a friend of mine who has trained with them, but have mostly shed all UK influence, in favour of US.

The only complete failure was Israel, which was a British "trained" but not "created" Army, in that the predominance of experience and training was from British officers, as was the equipment - however, 60 years on, all this is long since buried, because of the complete absence of a class system!