Is it Time to Finally Put Someone in Charge of Waging America’s Irregular Wars?
The United States is now learning that terrorism – which defined America’s national security posture during the first two decades of the 21st century – was just the leading edge of a broader national security risk facing the nation.
Consolidating America’s approach to irregular warfare in a single high-level agency could help the U.S. address this larger and growing risk, and ultimately win.
The New National Security Challenge
By maintaining deterrence in nuclear and traditional war, the United States has forced adversaries to turn to a version of Kennan’s political warfare and its offensive component –irregular warfare – to achieve their objectives.
Through lawfare, economic means, foreign malign influence, material support to “fifth columns,” and sabotage, these adversaries are demonstrating the willingness, capacity, and capability to combat the United States and stay below the threshold of traditional war. Chinese merchant vessels dragging anchors in the Baltic Sea, Iranian drones in Ukraine, North Korean troops fighting in Europe, and expanding Chinese-Iranian-North Korean-Russian cooperation in the ongoing information war are indications beyond early warning that a global irregular war against America and her allies and friends is well underway.
U.S. Response: Decentralized and Inefficient
While these adversaries have professionalized their ability to leverage this phenomenon in pursuit of strategic objectives, the United States has not. This reflects, in significant part, a simple fact: America’s irregular warfare capabilities are distributed across an increasingly large array of U.S. civilian and military agencies and there is no single organization responsible for deploying this capability on behalf of the nation.
The consequence of this lack of centralized leadership for irregular warfare is that the current U.S. approach is as inefficient as it has been ineffective.
A Proposed Solution: A Cabinet-Level Secretary
One approach for addressing this gap would be for the United States to establish a Cabinet-level secretary equivalent to the World War II-era British Ministry of Economic Warfare.
Lessons from the British Ministry of Economic Warfare
The Ministry of Economic Warfare provided two capabilities during World War II that are of paramount importance in the current competition. The first was to provide the British a coordinated capability to attack “the industrial, financial, and economic structure of the enemy…to cripple and enfeeble his armed forces that they can no longer effectively carry on war.” The potential of such a capability vis-à-vis the current competition with China – perhaps in an updated version of the U.S. Office of Economic War – is clear.
However, equally and perhaps more importantly, this World War II-era ministry also became the home of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE provided the British government the capability to counter Nazi control and influence across Europe, including “industrial and military sabotage, labour agitation and strikes, continuous propaganda, terrorist acts against traitors and German leaders, boycotts and riots.” The SOE was the forbearer to the U.S. Office of Strategy Services which – at the end of the war – would lay the foundation for both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Army Special Forces.
The establishment of the SOE in 1940 under the British Ministry of Economic Warfare reflected two realities of the time. The first was the need for a standing organ of the state, that combined the spy, diplomat and soldier and was purpose-designed to professionally intervene in statecraft for the purpose of manipulating and harnessing indigenous capacities in pursuit of strategic objectives. The second was that this mission was “not something which [could] be handled by the ordinary departmental machinery of either the British Civil Service or the British military machine.”
The Case for a New Cabinet Secretary for Irregular Warfare
What was true in 1940 for the United Kingdom is equally true for the United States in 2025: There is both a need for the capability in which the SOE was imbued and there is not a U.S. Executive Branch agency that is capable of effectively wielding such broad and multidisciplined capability on behalf of the United States.
The President – ideally with congressional support – should take a proven civilian leader and put him or her in charge of creating this new agency. This leader would need to have both professional credibility within the national security community, but also a relationship with the President.
That leader should be paired with the right senior military deputy – one steeped in unconventional warfare. Together they should be empowered to take necessary assets from today’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), CIA, federal law enforcement agencies, and other civilian cabinet secretaries. Military assets would include the CIA’s paramilitary and influence capabilities and SOCOM’s indigenous focused special warfare capabilities, found mostly in its Army Special Forces and psychological operations units. Civilian assets would include the FBI’s intelligence and overseas networks, Drug Enforcement Administration’s assistance arm that works with foreign paramilitary police, the Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations and Global Engagement Center, elements of the Department of Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and elements of the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, among others.
Benefits: Increased Efficiency and Efficacy
Such an approach would be both more effective and also more efficient. It would allow for purpose-designed and synchronized irregular warfare campaigns while consolidating and eliminating the multitude of redundant capabilities that are artifacts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the war on terror, on drugs, on crime, and numerous counterinsurgency support campaigns, such as Colombia and the Philippines. And it would let the Department of Defense and CIA focus on their core purposes of nuclear war, traditional war, and intelligence.
Conclusion: Time to Professionalize America’s Approach to Irregular Warfare
The American approach to irregular warfare must turn to that which made it dominant in conventional and nuclear war. Namely, attack the challenge head on with energy, ingenuity, and purpose. If America is to win this war, the one chosen by our enemies on the field of battle we drove them to, it can no longer rely on the scattered actions of orphaned offices and units in departments built primarily for other purposes. So yes, it is time for the United States to professionalize its approach to irregular warfare. America needs a 21st Century version of Britain’s “Ministry of Economic Warfare.”