Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare by David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks

What can we do to craft strategy for irregular warfare? Scholars like David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks provide answers. There are multiple frameworks for crafting strategy for irregular warfare, but we like this one a lot.

The work is groundbreaking because it addresses a critical gap in strategic thinking about modern conflicts. The framework, which is succinctly summarized in less than 100 pages, is extensively utilized in international security and has been adopted and studied by military officers and security professionals globally.

We are providing a brief overview of each part of the strategic estimate, but we HIGHLY ENCOURAGE you to read the whole document. FIND THE DOCUMENT HERE.

1. Initial Problem Frame

• Purpose:
  • Intent is to capture, concisely and precisely, the essence and particular logic of the problem at hand: 
    • Political issue underlying the confrontation
    • Nature of the actor and strategy faced
    • Main reason why they have proved difficult to address
    • Key is to identify the direction of the conflict based on current events:
      • Who is benefitting?
      • Who is hurting?
      • Why does it matter?

This crystallization of analysis into a precise problem statement is also a strategic exercise in that it forces careful reflection on what is truly important.

• Key Characteristics:

• • Profound yet brief
  • Identifies political issue underlying confrontation
  • Reveals who benefits, who hurts, and why does it matter
  • Justifies need for a new approach

2. Roots of the conflict

• Purpose:
  • This analytical component identifies the political, social, and economic contradictions that the threat benefits from or exploits to erode or build legitimacy. 
    • Questions of identity, inequality, corruption, or state predation might be generating support for a challenger promising reform or might deprive the state of legitimacy, and any of these require some form of redress as part of a comprehensive response.
    •  To inform such action, the roots section asks the analyst to identify the drivers that fuel the threat and whose mitigation would help repair past harm and build resilience against future rupture.

The framework presented here eschews an either/or resolution to this question in favor of analytical integration. Such integration draws on the insights of social movement theory and its three lenses of analysis to assess collective contention.

• Key characteristics:

  • Uses social movement theory’s three lenses:
    1. the Macro level (the structure or context)
    2. the Micro level (the agent or individual)
    3. the Meso level (the group or collective actor as an intermediary between the self and the system).
       • many meso options present themselves: legal versus illegal, direct versus indirect, violent versus nonviolent.
         • In this instance, most chose legal avenues of contestation—protest movements, demonstrations, and other forms of dissent.
           • As much as insurgents exploit grievances among specific communities to win support and assert themselves, states weaponize these same types of issues to divide targeted societies and establish power
           • Much as affected societies should defend against the exogenous threat, they must also consider the endogenous causes that the threat is exploiting. What macro-level grievances, if any, are driving microlevel citizens to succumb to the narrative or ploy pushed by outsiders? 

Identifying the motives and strategic choices made can help inform a constructive strategy, though deciding what to do with this information remains a difficult matter of policy and politics.

3. Frame and Narrative

•  Purpose:
  • Framing and narratives are central to irregular warfare—contests, it should be recalled, in which perceptions of legitimacy aggregate into political power. The purpose is to construct meaning by framing struggles in a way that resonates with the relevant population; framing is defined broadly as the process of attributing meaning to events. 
    •  Two facets of the issue are at hand:
      • First, the way those alienated from the existing order assess it and present their way forward must be discerned. The fatal flaw of “mirror imaging” is to see our assessment or thought as theirs.
      • Second, as in all politics, the armed political challenge must present its understanding in such manner that it convinces and hence serves as the basis for mobilization.

The importance of messaging is generally recognized; it can build and erode legitimacy, constrain government options, and change fundamentally the balance of strategic power. 

• • Still, few methodologies exist for the analysis of these activities, and this deficiency hinders the construction of a response.
  •  How exactly to respond is of course a question of strategy, requiring analysis of specifics, but an important starting point is having a method of assessment that can generate options.
    •  As messages stem from understandings, how does evaluation of Roots as engaged in by the challenger differ from the same analysis carried out by the analyst?

Social movement theory proposes three frames: the diagnostic, the prognostic, and the motivational. Each plays a key role in building a worldview and in changing perception and, ultimately, behavior. 

• • • By analyzing adversarial narratives across these three frames, we can see the world from their viewpoints, how they link cause and effect, and how they justify the worst of transgressions. 
    • We can then assess which component, or components, appear to resonate most, or “sell,” among contested audiences.

Three Critical Frames:

1. 1. Diagnostic Frame:
      • Explains what’s wrong from the other’s perspective by interpreting the current situation
      • Most critically, it identifies who is to blame
        • 2nd function: to prime the audience for the proposed solution
   2. Prognostic Frame:
      • Holds the answer, the way out of the misery, through actions presented not merely as just and correct but as necessary and urgent right now. 
        • The trick lies in linking the litany of grievances of the diagnostic frame to the salvation promised in the prognostic one—to explain the dark past and present the project to glory as the one and only.

1. 3. Motivational Frame:
      • • In the face of a collective struggle in which participation denotes risk, it is easy to give moral support, to nod in agreement, but to remain disengaged. As such “free riding” cripples movements, a narrative is necessary to justify personal sacrifice for the cause and despite the hazards involved. This is the purpose of the motivational frame. 
      • A common approach is to emphasize solidarity with something bigger than oneself. This framing can be achieved by subsuming the individual into the more meaningful longue durée of history, emphasizing the heroism of ancestors and the tyranny facing future generations lest action is taken now and without hesitation.
      •  Past injury, the hope of redemption, and treachery of passivity are all mobilized to emphasize collective imperatives rather than personal interest and thus to “offer no moral or political refuge” from active engagement.

The key is to give the struggle depth, through myths and constructed legacies, and to make victory seem within reach, almost inevitable, but only so long as we all help.

• • • Some appeal to national values, identity, and ideology—though the more common and effective method is to “scare the hell out of the country.”  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Just because framing and narratives are important, they are not automatically effective. Thus, having identified the other’s worldview and its logic, a final question within this component of the framework concerns its resonance.  

4. Threat Strategy

• Purpose:
  • Having elaborated the roots of the conflict and the narratives used to fuel support, it is time to consider what the threat does. 
  • More than a list of activities, what is sought is an understanding of the strategy at play: what it seeks to achieve and how it aims to get there.
  • The traditional approach to understanding strategy within Western war colleges (there simply is no civilian equivalent) is that of ends, ways, and means, a formula most prominently articulated by Arthur Lykke. 

• • Ends-Ways-Means Framework:
    • Ends: What is the threat seeking to achieve? What is the objective toward which one strives?
    • Ways: What is the strategic approach to objectives? What are the courses of action?
    • Means: What capacities and structures are deployed? What are the instruments by which some end can be achieved?
  • Mapping Strategy:
    • Use “Lines of Effort” (LOE)
    • Organize tactical expressions
    • Identify center of gravity
    • Reveal critical vulnerabilities

5. Present Response

• Purpose: Having dissected the nature of the problem—its roots, frames, and strategy, along with the center of gravity and its critical vulnerabilities—we now turn our attention to the present response, or what is being done to address the challenge. This line of inquiry is an essential prerequisite for proposing policy recommendations and strategies and, therefore, the focus of the last analytical “box” of the estimate framework. What is the current strategy of response, what actions are currently underway, are they working, and why is change needed?

Three-Step Analysis:

• • State Perception:
    • How does the state view the problem?
    • Understanding its own purpose in responding
  • Current Government Strategy:
    • Identify underlying “theory of success”
    • Examine hypothesis of current efforts
  • Critique of Response:
    • Is state perception accurate?
    • Addressing symptoms or root problem?
    • Affecting identified center of gravity?
    • Capability or will issue?

* The Marks and Ucko framework goes deeper than this. It also provides a strategic response framework which includes a concept of response, legal authority, assumptions, implementation, and risk assessment and mitigation. SWJ is solely surveying the strategic estimate part of the framework.

We invite all to dive deeper into the strategic response for crafting strategy for IW. Here is a quick overview of the strategic response framework:

Much like that for the estimate, the course of action framework comprises five boxes to help guide and sequence analysis. The first box, concept of response, lays out the broad outlines of the proposed strategy, demonstrating the break with the present government response with which the estimate framework concluded. The second concerns the legal authority underpinning or required for the response. The third box clarifies any assumptions that were necessary to allow planning into an uncertain future. The fourth demonstrates the detailed implementation of the strategy within an ends-ways-means construct, also accounting for phasing and metrics (how do we know that we are succeeding). The fifth box considers the risks inherent to the strategy and their possible mitigation. The remainder of this section unpacks each box in turn, emphasizing the key requirements and considerations. -Marks and Ucko

This framework is groundbreaking because it transforms strategic analysis from a military checklist to a nuanced, holistic understanding of conflict! This moves beyond traditional state-vs-state conflict models. It recognizes the complexity of irregular warfare in the 21st century. It also provides a systematic framework for understanding and responding to asymmetric threats. Ultimately, the framework offers a structured method to diagnose irregular threats, understand their strategic logic, develop nuanced, adaptive response strategies.

“The Estimate is applicable to a broad range of actors, to include armed groups and criminal syndicates, online movements and virtual networks, states and their proxies, or even nonviolent social movements, with each estimate used to generate unique analytical findings and recommendations for response. The point throughout is to grasp the full breadth of the strategy at play and to situate it within its crucial political, social, and economic context.” -Marks and Ucko