A Work in Progress (Draft)
by Colonel Daniel Kelly, Small Wars Journal
A View of Irregular Warfare (Full PDF Article)
SWJ Editors Note: We present this draft (work in progress) essay to encourage feedback by Small Wars Journal readership. The author welcomes comments and suggestions that add to our understanding of the complex operational environments of today -- and -- tomorrow.
In June 2007, I reported aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico to establish the USMC Center for Irregular Warfare. A Director with no staff, I jumped right into the maelstrom of the challenging environment called Irregular Warfare (IW). Armed with the new tools of my trade, the Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare, a draft version of the Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept, the Small Wars Manual and several articles by Frank Hoffman I was ready to do my duty for the Marine Corps.
It did not take long to see that this thing called Irregular Warfare had taken on a life of its own as an untamable monster. My initial journey through Pentagon hallways to countless seminars, workshops and war games was marked by acquaintances with "duty experts" whose views on IW were as numerous as they were varied.
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Comments
I think your article needs to start with a definition, or at least a general idea of what irregular warfare means to you. I find the following working definition useful:
Irregular Warfare (IW) is a form of warfare that has as its objective the credibility and/or legitimacy of the relevant political authority with the goal of undermining or supporting that authority.
While far from perfect, it is a start for harmonizing the "Whole of Government" WOG approach to achieving the overall objective. What I find lacking in this definition (with the exception of the word warfare) is the lack of a reference to war. This is basically political warfare, which means there is some degree of armed resistance, without the armed resistance it would simply be politics as usual. Combatants can be regular or irregular, indigenious or foreign, etc. The other issue is the objective is legitimacy, which in itself seems lacking. There are many illegitimate governments such as North Korea, Zimbawe, etc., that are still in power and may still pose a threat to our national interests. So I think we're in agreement that IW is a tough concept to define in useful manner. However, I agree with your proposal to remove conventional (and traditional) warfare from our lexicon, because it is a false concept. War is much more complex than defeating our opponent's fielded forces.
In regards to IW, conceptually very little is new, and I suspect our predecessors circa 19th century through WWII would have a good laugh at us for attempting to describe the obvious as look at what we discovered. It really gets backs to the basics, and what we ulimately need to do is describe our objective. We need to understand what type of conflict we're entering, why we're entering it, what our objectives are, then develop the appropriate strategy using all elements of national (and global) power. I imagine that if I explained that to a High School history class they would all get it. Where we (the military) went wrong is drawing the wrong lessons from Vietnam. We prescribed doctrine for the world we wanted to live in, not the real world. We spoke of overwhelming force, clear and achievable military objectives, and a plan for getting out shortly after getting in. All these are laudable goals, but they are not reality in many cases, thus we now find ourselves trying to develop a doctrine for protracted conflicts with irregulars.
You made another excellent observation that we tend to focus on this or that instead of this and that. However, the military demonstrated considerable weakness in that (fighting irregulars) and considerable strength in this (assault against regular forces), so we're where we're at because of our own foolishness. While contractors and academia will milk the government dry with irregular warfare concepts and good ideas, the fact remains we need to improve in this area. We're sort of like a mixed martial artist who only knows how to kick, but not how to punch and grapple. If our opponent is dumb enough to stand exposed in our kicking range, we'll dominate, but if he avoids the kick, then we better learn some new tricks.
I found your attempt to frame the problem based on a "country approach" too simple for most of the situations we're involved in today. Several are regional and some are global. What happens in Iran and Pakistan impacts Afghanistan. As for percentage of effort on the enemy and population, that can vary block by block, city by city, province by province over time, so it really doesn't mean much. We simply need to do what we need to do to achieve our objectives, and that be beholden to a percentage of effort toward any one actor. Security forces must protect the population (the best offense is a good defense), gather intelligence, and neutralize the insurgent, all while enhancing government legitimacy with the populace. This is population and resource control 101.
Our focus shouldn't be on Afghanistan and Iraq scenarios, but rather what we're doing throughout Africa and parts of the Asia- Pacific where we're working with local governments and regional organizations to help them maintain their legitimacy.
As you accurately stated, IW has increased our awareness of IW related issues, so we can no longer naively pretend that the populace doesn't matter, or that we can simply conduct military tasks and let some other mystical government organization sort out the other problems that are intricately tied into the overall problem set.