Irregular Warfare Practitioners Ask: Where Is Our JFK?

The Kennedy Standard

In 1962 at West Point, John F. Kennedy looked at a corps of future officers and told them their wars would not look like their fathers’ wars. He spoke of infiltration instead of invasion, subversion instead of elections, guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. Then he did something more important than give a speech. He acted on his words.

He elevated Special Forces and gave them the Green Beret. He signaled that the quiet, unconventional work of building resistance, strengthening partners, fighting for legitimacy, and contesting narratives was central to American strategy, not a sideshow. He respected the men who lived in the villages, spoke the languages, and worked in the shadows.

For those of us who have spent our lives in irregular, unconventional, and political warfare, that moment still matters. Kennedy understood what many still resist – that the decisive ground in long-term competition is political, psychological, and human.

Today we ask a simple question. In the face of new forms of political warfare, where is our JFK?

It is all the more timely now with the release of the Department of Defense Instruction 3000.7 Irregular Warfare and the draft Congressional legislation  Defending International Security by Restricting Unlawful Partnerships and Tactics (DISRUPT) Act.  While the Department of War focuses on irregular warfare, Congress has recognized that the United States and its allies face a new political war against the “Dark Quad” or “CRInK”.

Who is the 21at Century champion of this form of war?

A New Political War

The strategic battlefield has changed again. In some ways it looks familiar to those who spent their careers in Asia, in counterinsurgency campaigns, and in political warfare against communist systems. But the scale, speed, and integration of today’s threats are far greater.

China wages cognitive war, information control, economic coercion, lawfare, and gray zone maritime pressure. Russia runs cyber-attacks, election interference, energy blackmail, and disinformation targeted at every fissure and fracture in democratic societies. Iran directs proxy networks from the Levant to the Gulf. North Korea blends cyber theft, criminal activity, nuclear coercion, and propaganda into a single strategy of regime survival seeking peninsula domination.

These are not separate fires. They are coordinated lines of effort in a global political war. They target our alliances, our institutions, and our will. They seek to weaken America and its partners without triggering the kind of conflict that would call forth our full conventional strength.

Yet Washington still behaves as if the real world is the war plan on the shelf. We maintain a system built for large unit maneuver and industrial mobilization which is absolutely necessary for deterrence and winning our nation’s wars. Yet our adversaries erode us through daily pressure in the gray zone. We talk about great power competition. They practice it, every day, below the waterline.

The View From the Irregular Foxhole

Irregular warfare practitioners see this clearly. They have watched insurgencies weaponize grievance and narrative. They have seen political warfare used to divide allies and paralyze governments. They have learned, often the hard way, that legitimacy and information move faster and cut deeper than armor and artillery.

They know that:

• Influence beats firepower when firepower cannot be used.
• Narrative shapes the space where deterrence either holds or collapses.
• Partners trust the country that shows up in their villages, not only in their summits.
• Authoritarian states exploit every seam in our structure, from legal gaps to bureaucratic turf.

From Korea to the Philippines, from Europe to the Middle East, the lesson repeats itself. The side that understands the human terrain, builds resilient networks, and fights in the information space has the advantage before the first shot is fired. Irregular practitioners live in this reality. They just do not see it reflected in our national organization.

What a Modern JFK Would Do

A modern JFK would begin by telling the truth. He would speak openly to the American people and to our allies. He would say that we are already in a long struggle with authoritarian powers who prefer political warfare to open conflict. He would say that they attack our democracies every day in ways that stop just short of war. He would say that we cannot win this contest with conventional tools alone. In short, he would recognize our adversaries’ strategies, understand them, and expose them.

Then he would act, attacking them with a superior political warfare strategy.

He would move irregular and political warfare from the margins of our defense and foreign policy to the center. He would insist that strategies for China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea begin with information, alliances, legitimacy, support to resistance, and covert political action, not end with them.

He would reorder the bureaucracy to match the fight. That means a modern version of the Office of Strategic Services, scaled for the digital age. Diplomats, intelligence officers, special operators, cyber professionals, development experts, financial warriors, and information warfare specialists would operate under a coherent political warfare concept, not as separate tribes.

He would invest in human beings. Green Berets, Psychological Operations, Civil Affairs, information operators, cyber teams, and interagency partners who understand local realities would not be treated as niche capabilities. They would be regarded as essential instruments of national power in daily competition.

Most of all, he would champion the practitioners. Kennedy did not just authorize missions. He put his political capital behind the people who carried them out. He championed the Green Beret. He made it clear that unconventional warfare was not only legitimate but indispensable.

The Cost of Silence

In the absence of such leadership, we drift. Authorities remain fragmented. Responsibilities overlap or fall between the cracks. Agencies build their own small political warfare efforts that are brave, creative, and under-resourced. Our adversaries exploit the gaps.

They move faster in the information environment. They shape perceptions before we even decide who is in charge of the response. They buy influence while we debate policies. They fund proxies while we argue over program lines in the budget.

Legislative initiatives such as emerging efforts to disrupt hostile coordination are important (the DISRUPT Act). They help expose the scale of the threat and push the bureaucracy to respond. But laws cannot substitute for strategy. Strategy cannot substitute for leadership.

Irregular warfare practitioners know that if you do not organize for the fight you are in, you eventually lose it.

The Question That Will Not Go Away

We are in a struggle over the character of the international system. The key terrain is not only in the air and at sea. It is in minds, networks, information systems, and fragile states caught between models of governance. It is in places like the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where political warfare never stops.

Tanks and ships remain necessary. No serious practitioner would argue otherwise. But they are no longer sufficient. Influence, legitimacy, narrative, resistance and resilience will decide whether free societies endure.

Kennedy understood that in his time. He recognized that unconventional conflict would define the long twilight struggle he described. He chose to back the people and ideas that could win that fight.

Those of us who have spent our lives in irregular warfare are still waiting for a leader who will do that for this century. We do not ask for ceremony. We ask for clarity, structure, and purpose.

The question remains, and it is not going away.

Where is our JFK?