An IW “Bottle of Scotch” Challenge

[William F. Owen]

Gentlemen,

Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept, Version 1.0, 11 September 2007 has a section that I found worth ripping off and incorporating into my personal definition… IW is the use of any means available to attrite, influence, and or exhaust an opponent in order to have him succumb to your will.

Ok, where is that scotch?

Regular Warfare is the use of any means available to attrite, influence, and or exhaust an opponent in order to have him succumb to your will.

Will that do for the Regular Warfare definition?

[Bill Moore]

Regular Warfare is the use of any means available to attrite, influence, and or exhaust an opponent in order to have him succumb to your will.

Will that do for the Regular Warfare definition?

Excellent response, since war and warfare are about the threat of, or the use of, coercion to make your opponent bend to your will, this proposed definition doesn't add much to the debate.

Conflict is defined as "an armed struggle or clash between organized political parties within a nation or between nations in order to achieve limited political or military objectives."

I thought about using conflict also, but how can we define Al Qaeda's and numerous other irregular groups has having limited objectives? AQ is waging total war in an attempt to re-establish the Caliphate. If that is a limited objective, then what objective isn't limited?

"IW consists of actions conducted by the whole of government, typically in times of peace, to shape the struggle for legitimacy and influence with relevant populations. Military activities favor indirect and asymmetric approaches in a supporting role, though at times may require the full range of options."

First, we do not conduct warfare during peace, we participate in warfare to bring about a desirable peace. Peacetime engagement conducted for numerous reasons falls short of warfare. IW is not restricted to other than war environments, in fact I can't think of any conflict where there was no element of IW being conducted in parallel or pre or post conventional conflict. When we say military activities favor indirecct and asymmetric approaches, we are presented with two problems. First the terms mean nothing and everything depending upon the audience. The indirect approach is over hyped and misleading. If you are in war, you still have to defeat the enemy, which probably means killing him. If we're helping someone else do it, then they still have to conduct direct approaches to defeat the enemy. The strategy for getting to the point where we direct power can be applied first depends upon controlling/influencing the relevant population, so they will identify the enemy (drain the swamp). However, that doesn't necessarily mean indirect.

The second problem is you are presenting a so called preferred solution, by stating "ususally favors". Every problem is unique, I think any definition should stay far away from proposed solutions. The goal is to understand the problem and then to develop an appropriate strategy to counter it.

IW consists of actions conducted by the whole of government to shape the struggle for legitimacy and influence with relevant populations.

[Surferbeetle]

Regular Warfare is the use of any means available to attrite, influence, and or exhaust an opponent in order to have him succumb to your will.

Will that do for the Regular Warfare definition?

William,

It seems from your previous comments that you are MCO centric and that you discount the effects which diplomacy, information/intelligence, and economics have on the success/failure of warfare. As a result the inclusive definition that you offer above does not follow what you have previously, narrowly and incorrectly IMHO, ruled out:

OK, so which wars in history have resulted in NO casualties? War is killing. Read Clausewitz. Changing someone's ideas without killing is marketing or diplomacy, and nothing to do with the military. Killing is what makes war a distinct and discrete human activity. It's what defines war

Information and Psychological means are adjuncts to violence. The are violence enhancers. If they are employed without violence, then they are marketing or diplomacy, and nothing to do with war.

How does a fight for territory and and fight for ideology differ? Last I checked, only human beings have "ideas" and all humans live on land, or territory. I can't see how you can ever have a "war of ideas."

All true, but that's not war. It's something else. Diplomacy? Soft power cannot kill and cannot break will, therefore it is not part of warfare.

Sun Tzu says it more eloquently than I:

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it.

Regards,

Steve

[Bob's World]

When I read the first "official" definition of IW, my thoughts were much the same as the point I believe William is making for some of our efforts here: A defiinition that is too general describes EVERY form of warfare. This is certainly true of the ones offered by Surfer Beetle and Bill Moore as well.

Also, as Bill has pointed out on my proposals, the tact that I am taking in carving out IW as a period of activity ranging from full peace to a niche of operations that also take place in full warfare, I propose the solution that those operations require in the defintion. A fair criticism.

So we find ourselves the same place that senior leaders find themselves: We know we need to consider new types of engagement and develop capabilities for conducting that engagement, we just don't know exactly what to call it or how to classify it.


As I think about this, I find insightful a recent statement by ADM Olson: "What we are calling GWOT or The Long War is actually the new normal, and it will endure." I tend to agree. I believe what we are calling war is actually peace. Messy and dangerous as it is.
For if something is "normal", then it is not also "irregular"; and similarly if it is "enduring" it cannot be warfare, but must in fact be peace, as I believe (in this Christmas season) that peace is the enduring human condition, and it is the periods of "irregular" violence that accent that peace that are in fact "war."

So I go back to focusing on what the purpose for the crazy concept is in the first place:
1. Get DoD to realize that not every dangerous thing we do requires fire and maneuver to defeat an enemy force; and
2. To get the rest of our Government to realize that they don't get to sit back and wait for DoD to make everything nice and safe before they get out and do the things in their respective lanes.

We've dumped a dozen similar concepts in recent years as all failing to fully scratch the itch that is nagging at us. Somewhere along the track the Department of Defense started drifting back to thinking of itself as the "War Department" again. We changed the name for a reason. National Security is far more than waging war, it is preventing war and creating an environment that supports not only our overall security, but "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as well.

One answer is to simply say that there is Peace and there is War, and that DoD participates in both. Peace is longer and not DoD led; War is shorter and is DoD led. The problem is getting the services to recognize their peace duties, and to organize, man, train, and equip for them as well as they do for their war duties. That is why I think we are chasing this elusive concept of IW.

Off soapbox, end of sermon.

[Bill Moore]

you discount the effects which diplomacy, information/intelligence, and economics have on the success/failure of warfare.

Surferbeetle, I can't speak for William, but we have always used diplomacy, information and economic power in addition to our military power in any conflict. Our diplomats first strive to build a consensus, then a coalition, push items through the UN, that is supported with information/intelligence, and economic power has been used in numerous ways both for irregular and regular warfare.

Ginspace made an interesting argument earlier about war, or acts of war, that fall short of violence, and I think his example was the blockade. I think a blockade that is enforced by another person's warships definitely falls under the threat of force to those who decide to violate it, but it is not necessarily violence or the threat of violence against the country we're trying to get to bend to our will. If the UN considers that an act of war, then are we at war?

I also wondered what an attack on another nation's internet, banking system, other economic infrastructure, etc. would be considered? There are lots of means to influence another's nation's will using coercion without violence, so maybe Clausewitz's definition of war is not adequate for our Defense Department? What else should the military be prepared to defend against? We have to be careful with this one, as it can quickly get out of hand.

[Surferbeetle]

Surferbeetle, I can't speak for William, but we have always used diplomacy, information and economic power in addition to our military power in any conflict. Our diplomats first strive to build a consensus, then a coalition, push items through the UN, that is supported with information/intelligence, and economic power has been used in numerous ways both for irregular and regular warfare.

Bill,

Appreciate your thoughtful responses; I will shoot a quick response from the hip and then give this a little more thought and see if I can add some references in order to reinforce my feelings on this in a subsequent post.

BLUF we do not resource or train for DIME operations sufficiently. I don't discount that we use diMe, but it is my opinion that we do not consistently use DIME.

As a CTC/BCTP-bum it is only in the last few years that I have observed DOD make the attempt to pull in other agencies at the tactical level. IMHO if we are not doing DIME at the tactical level then we are not fully committed to the fight.

(D) The DOS team's that I have interacted with are consistently bright, culturally oriented, and understaffed. IMHO they are also very wary of DOD intentions.

(I) As a kid I used to listen to the reassuring VOA broadcasts. IMHO what we presently say is not synchronized to what we do and thus it is consistently discounted and discredited on 'the street' and in other countries.

(E) The embargo on Iraq bears more examination as a recent example of this aspect of the effectiveness of our E part of warfare. Perhaps JMM99 can bring some of his excellent clarity to the underpinnings of the execution, however my dirty boots view was that it degraded my ability to rapidly stabilize the populace in my small part of the AO in Iraq and it appeared that from a day to day living standpoint the GOI elite were minimally impacted. I would add that USAID seems to overwhelmed and understaffed.

Best,

Steve

[max161]

As we discuss what IW is I think we should pay attention to what has been written in the past.

Sam Sarkesian, a professor of political science at Loyola University, writing in 1993 put forth a set of characteristics that summarize the variety of future conflicts in which the US might become involved. He believes that it is in this environment that US SOF will be called upon to operate.

• Asymmetrical Conflicts. For the US these conflicts are limited and not considered a threat to its survival or a matter of vital national interests; however, for the indigenous adversaries they are a matter of survival.

• Protracted Conflicts. Require a long term commitment by the US, thus testing the national will, political resolve, and staying power of the US.

• Ambiguous and Ambivalent Conflicts. Difficult to identify the adversary, or assess the progress of the conflict; i.e., it is rarely obvious who is winning and losing.

• Conflicts with Political-Social Milieu Center of Gravity. The center of gravity will not be the armed forces of the adversaries as Clausewitz would argue, but more in the political and social realms as Sun Tzu espouses.

Sam C. Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 15.

As an aside this book was an excellent analysis of Vietnam and Malaya. But as we wrestle with the meaning of IW (and especially those among us who think they are coming up with something new) we should consider that everything we are talking and writing about has been discussed in past writings.

[Bill Moore]

As an aside this book was an excellent analysis of Vietnam and Malaya. But as we wrestle with the meaning of IW (and especially those among us who think they are coming up with something new) we should consider that everything we are talking and writing about has been discussed in past writings.

Agreed, but what was written in the past is insufficient for what DoD is looking for today. Still there was much written that was very relevant to today's challenges, but for whatever reason it didn't seem to help us too much with our current challenges. Reminds me of what my old boss used to say, we have lessons, we don't have lessons learned.

However, before we fix anything, we first need to address IW as a policy, or policy enabler. What do we really want to be capable of doing? Why? Then it shouldn't be so hard to identify the gaps and where we need to go. I hope we don't envision Iraq and Afghanistan as models for future war, but that is exactly what it sounds like. Perhaps we simply need to learn how to develop more feasible strategies, employ our forces correctly, and then maybe we'll find the gap isn't as large as we may think.

[Surferbeetle]

CSM Analysis; Promoting Peace in Afghanistan

Born out of the mantra that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won by military means alone, the mission of these small units – 26 in total – is to coordinate with local leaders and do development work – thus winning Afghan hearts and minds.

It was not always like this. As the war here began in October 2001, there was much talk about the need for reconstruction. But a RAND Corp. study found that, even as President Bush was promising a "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan, the country received less assistance per capita than postconflict Bosnia, Kosovo, or Haiti, and less than half of what later would be spent in Iraq.

Last year, though, the budget for reconstruction projects here tripled, USAID development experts were shipped out by the dozens, and the PRTs were given new status. The US has now spent more than $32 billion on assistance to Afghanistan – 32 percent of which was allocated to development and humanitarian assistance. That number, according to the US State Department, will continue to climb in 2009.

With the understanding that quantity does not necessarily equate to quality (a SOF truth if I recall correctly, and assuming that my research gathered accurate data - the UK numbers seem pretty low) I built a quick set of Diplomatic Ratios for comparison purposes among some of the coalition forces. The Diplomatic Personnel to Inhabitants ratios work out to be: US = 1:213,000 UK = 1:29,850 France = 1:3,687 and Germany = 1:12,692; and the Diplomatic Personnel to USD/Euro/Pounds ratios work out to be US = 1:818,571 UK = 1:42,500 France = 1:273,340 and Germany = 1:200,000

Diplomatic Snapshot of the United States

The DOS has 14,000 personnel, a budget of 11.46 billion dollars, and diplomatic and consular activities in 180 plus countries. The US has 298.2 million inhabitants. (1), (2)

Diplomatic Snapshot of the UK

Over 2,000 personnel deliver counselor service, with a budget of 85 million pounds, and 261 embassies, high commissions and other diplomatic posts worldwide. The country has 59.7 million inhabitants. (3), (4)

Diplomatic Snapshot of France

French Foreign and European Affairs Ministry has 16,463 personnel, a 4.5 billion euro budget, and 158 embassies. The country has 60.7 million people. (5)

Diplomatic Snapshot of Germany

Foreign Service has 6,500 Staff, a 1.3 billion euro budget and 226 missions abroad. The country has 82.5 million inhabitants. (6), (7), (8)

[William F. Owen]

William,
It seems from your previous comments that you are MCO centric and that you discount the effects which diplomacy, information/intelligence, and economics have on the success/failure of warfare.

MCO = Major Contingency Operation? Not at all. I am definitely not BIG War centric. I am Warfare centric. Diplomacy, Info/Int and economics all have a role in the strategy behind conflict, and can exist when separated from conflict.

Strategy and War are not the same thing. Strategy should make use of all the instruments of power including culture. Military force should focus on the use or the threat of lethal force.

Sun Tzu says it more eloquently than I:

Sun Tzu wrote the "Art of Bing" Bing = Strategy, so yes, if you can get what you want without fighting, then "way cool," but that is usually dependant on being militarily superior, thus economically superior, thus overall better.

As Clausewtiz said "it is best to be strong everywhere."

[Bob's World]

Dave is spot on that this is ground that has been plowed hard, and often. And yet for all the working of soil, not much has grown of this concept. One reason, is that many hold positions similar to William, not saying it is right or wrong, but it is counter to what is being proposed with IW. IW is all about defining and shaping a military to do things other than war.

Another problem is that we have never landed on a name that sticks. Add to that the general perception in the military that this kind of work is something one does only when you can't find a good symetric enemy to train to fight in a nice conventional way. Hell, the only reason we have NORTHCOM is because in the early days following the Cold War, before that peace started getting messy, the military found itself under hard budgetary attack and without a mission to justify its existence at current levels, so they looked around, saw that the Guard had a mission still, and tried to steal that mission. Soon after, once OPTEMPO started to climb in places like Bosnia, I'm sure they regretted that boneheaded move, but it highlights how DoD thinks.

So the questions remain: What does DoD do in times of peace? What should those activities be called? How does DoD balance its primary warfighting mission with the need to man, train, organize, equip and execute supporting roles in these peacewaging missions?

Once we sort out the question, we have a better chance of coming to an answer. IW, sadly, is as unlikely to catch on as any of the other failed concepts that went before it. So, I think, to earn this bottle of Scotch, you need far more than a simple definition.

A good start would be to define the Task and the Purpose; Then perhaps a workable term and a definition for that term that links cleanly back to the task/purpose. Also important in this will be Command Relationships. Always touchy, and METT-T driven, in general terms though there should be a presumption of civilian lead for this.

A good answer will be simple, but it will require a rigor of analysis of a very complicated area of foreign policy to get to.

[Bob's World]

Ok, I just read the article "Irregular Warfare is Warfare" in the latest Joint Forces Quarterly. It is a very accurate statement of what the current rationale and thinking is within DoD.

I believe it is based upon unsubstantiated positions and flawed analysis, and take an opposite viewpoint. I believe that Irregular Warfare is not irregular, or warfare.

I said above that we needed to look at the task and the purpose for this concept we are wrestling with, and start fresh with naming and defining it. In the course of doing that I looked at various related missions, from Security Assistance, to that of US AID, to the Department of State. None of those really captured it. The closest I found is how DoD supports Civil Authorities here at home for emergencies. So my proposal is to simply expand the mission of "Military Support to Civil Authorities" laid out in DODD 3025.15, and expand it to include support for foreign policy as well. So, in that vein:

Current Term: Irregular Warfare

Current Definition: “A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will.”

Proposed:

Task: Coordinate US Government activities to implement foreign policy in peace

Purpose: To ensure efficient and effective implementation of all elements of national power under a lead appropriate to the mission at hand in order to support U.S. national interests abroad.

Term: Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA)

Definition: (Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA). Those activities and
measures taken by the DoD Components to foster mutual assistance and support between the Department of Defense and any civil government agency in planning or preparedness for, or in the application of resources for response to, the implementation of foreign policy, the consequences of civil emergencies or attacks, including national security emergencies.


Obviously what DoD did, and how it did it would be completely determined by the situation at hand and what the civil lead wanted to accomplish. One additional benefit of this approach is that there is already an extremely effective and well established protocal for when and how military support is incorporated, and more importantly, how it is concluded. Last in, first out. Civil lead, bottom up approach to crisis management.

[Bill Moore]

Warfare and peace are not the same, and our objective clearly is not to wage peace (which is a condition), but conduct operations to counter or support irregular WARFARE to obtain whatever our national interests may be.

This is where the so called "indirect approach" leads to terribly flawed, U.S. centric view of the world misperceptions of reality. This implies if we're providing support (training, financial, equipment, intelligence, etc.) to a nation that is battling insurgents, we're at Peace; therefore, the world must be at peace. We call it a success when U.S. Soldiers are not involved in combat (and in many ways it is, but), yet the war like scenario on the ground has changed little for the irregular and nation still conducting a bloody conflict. We're doing high fives, and the locals are still bleeding. If you want to call that Peace go ahead, I'm not on board.

IW implies (or clearly states) there is a violent conflict. When engage in war or warfare, hopefully after careful consideration, we are supporting or waging war or warfare to achieve stated objectives. Iraq and Afghanistan are two examples, but as you know we're engaged in numerous other locations.

In other locations we may not be conducting IW, instead we may be focused on building partner capacity or security force assistance as a pre-emptive measure (boarding up the windows before the storm hits). We may be teaching IW, but in that case we're not participating in it. When we conduct a JCS exercise to exercise regular war with our allies, are we waging war or simply training?

I think we're beginning to confuse two issues, one is preventing an IW conflict and one is executing IW. Both are critically important and they dovetail with each other, but the game changes when we commit to the fight.

War is waged to obtain a better peace, peace is normally the objective of war, it shouldn't be confused with warfare.

[selil]

I've always kind of thought of war and peace as being two transitions. The transition between peace and war being rapid whereas the transition between war and peace being a long tail. Whether in a real world aspect that occurs quickly (dropping nuclear bombs brings peace quickly even if back to to the stoneage) the cognitive efforts especially when whipping a population up has certain inertia.

[Surferbeetle]

David Maxwell provided a link to a RAND study (OP_200, Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence) on the influence of Military Structure on COIN Doctrine during 1960-1970 and 2003-2006 which provides an excellent critique of our blind spots with regards to IW/COIN.

I would recommend substituting 'personnel engaged in IW/COIN' for 'Officers' in order to account for the flattening of hierarchy that we see taking place as well as to account for some of the inter-agency efforts.

The essence of this argument is that a force that is structured to fight a high-intensity conflict against another nation-state’s military is ill-equipped to adapt to the challenge of COIN. It is not just physically ill equipped but, much more importantly, mentally ill equipped.

This is not an indictment of the intellectual capabilities of the military. Professional military officers are rarely stupid, particularly in the highly competitive ranks of the U.S. military. Rather, it is an argument that successful organizations such as the U.S. military develop structures, philosophy,and preferences together referred to as 'organizational culture' to help them carry out their tasks. By virtue of long years of training and education, officers are inculcated with patterns of thinking that reflect this culture. In the case of the U.S. military, these patterns are both incredibly useful in high-intensity conflict (the mission of most of the military) and incredibly inappropriate in COIN.

Today's Washington Post has a timely example of this disconnect between our words and our actions in Mark Ward's Opinion Article, An Afghan Aid Disconnect

Having spent nearly the past five years as the senior career officer responsible for US economic assistance to Afghanistan, I agree with those in the military who have said that 80 percent of the struggle for Afghanistan is about reconstruction and sustainable economic development and only 20 percent about military operations. In the face of a heightened Taliban insurgency, the US military has changed its tactics. But if civilian US agencies do not change the ways they deliver economic assistance, they jeopardize their chances for success and risk alienating the Afghan people.

[William F. Owen]

Term: Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA)

Definition: (Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA). Those activities and
measures taken by the DoD Components to foster mutual assistance and support between the Department of Defense and any civil government agency in planning or preparedness for, or in the application of resources for response to, the implementation of foreign policy, the consequences of civil emergencies or attacks, including national security emergencies.

Actually, "Aid to the Civil Power" used to be at the heart of UK COIN doctrine, before it became all new, wonderful, and re-learnt.

[Bob's World]

Concur that their is much for the US to learn from the British experience, not just in the realm of COIN, but also to recognize that the US is entering the same period of instability and transition that England faced 1776-1945. We focus so much on our rise during this period, that we fail to study England's decline over the same period, the challenges they faced, things they did that worked, and things they did that did not.

Which brings me to my number one issue with IW. We are struggling to come up with a concept to manage the results of failed foreign policy, instead of digging into the real issue of how to retune our foreign policy for the world we live in today. Such is always the soldier's lot I suppose. We don't start the wars, and we don't end them, we just get to fight them.

As Tennyson reminded us so well, "Ours in not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.."