SWJ and the book

[John T. Fishel]

Hi Sam--

To expand on Steve's response a bit (even though you didn't really want to know), we - the USG and US military - have always had a hard time coming up with a descriptive and acceptable term. In 1973, the Army was using Stability Operations. This was after it had used COIN throughout the Vietnam War. In 1981, following from the writing of Frank Kitson - a Brit - the term Low Intensity Conflict (Kitson's term was low intensity operations) came into currency. It survived through FM 100-20 of 1990. FM 100-5 of 1993 introduced the term Operations Other Than War (OOTW) which the Joint community modified in Joint Pub 3.0 to Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW). By 1997 the Army was trying to move away from OOTW/MOOTW and came up with Stabilty & Support Operations (SASO) - haven't we been there before? This year the Army and MC published FM 3-24 the COIN manual, deja vu all over again.

As to Small Wars. I first found the term in COL C. E. Callwell's 1896 publication Small Wars. In 1940 the USMC published the Small Wars Manual. Both volumes address nearly all the types of conflict that are found in LIC, SASO, OOTW, MOOTW, and COIN.

I don't think there really is much difference then, between (among) these terms. My personal bias (perhaps due to serving in the Southcom Small Wars Operations Research Directorate (which began life as the Southcom Low Intensity Conflict Cell [SLICC]) is Small Wars. But I will be glad to discuss substantive issues under any terminology

Cheers

JohnT

PS The only term that has legal currency is LIC. It is found in the Cohen-Nunn Amendment to the 1986 Defense Appropriations Act and creates the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD-SO/LIC), the only ASD that is created by law.