Journal

Iranian maritime actions in the Persian Gulf have gained renewed attention after a mid-August statement by the U.S. military that Iranian forces had boarded a civilian vessel operating in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz. The ship in question was reportedly linked to a company that had been previously sanctioned by the United States for supporting the shipment of restricted Iranian oil, and was no longer cooperating with the Iranian regime as a result of those sanctions. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Government seized Iranian petroleum being transported in violation of U.S. sanctions by four foreign-flagged vessels operating on the high seas.  The petroleum in question was en route to Venezuela, which is an Iranian ally.

Turkey’s use of bellicose rhetoric, zero-sum diplomacy, and ham-fisted military actions have isolated it from its historical NATO partners, pushing it into the welcoming embrace of America’s primary adversaries, Russia and China. Yet, while U.S. diplomats view this troublesome NATO partner with frustration, they should apply all of the economic, technological, and diplomatic leverage they have to resuscitate this relationship due as much to the harm Turkey could cause as to the benefits it could deliver.

The U.S. Army Special Forces, the “Green Berets”, are the premier special operations unit of the United States Army. Born out of a need for a covert force dealing with Cold War-era operations, the Green Berets were trained as both a military and diplomatic force. The forces are trained in a variety of military tactics, ranging from intelligence gathering to direct action to counterinsurgency (COIN). However, the most important core activity that the Green Berets undertake is that of foreign internal defense (FID), defined as being “the participation by civilian agencies and military forces of a government or international organization in any of the programs or activities taken by a host nation government to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, violent extremism, terrorism, and other threats to its security ”

Book review of Steven Dudley, "MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang." Dudley chronicles the many lives of MS-13 gang members to tell the story of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) in the United States and El Salvador.

In contemporary military interventions, Training, Advising and Assistance-missions (TAA) have become a mainstay. In most Western states, this is defined as ‘Military Assistance’, a Special Operations Force (SOF) prerogative. Recent interventions have necessitated conventional forces to partake in TAA-type operations, as SOF forces became operationally stretched. To conventional forces, this has become known as ‘Security Force Assistance (SFA). However, by utilizing conventional forces for TAA-type operations, a doctrinal ambiguity between ‘Military Assistance’ and ‘Security Force Assistance’ has arisen.

The United States’ experience with irregular warfare is not exclusive to our more than fifteen-year engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. The tactics, strategies, or lack thereof, and foundations of irregular warfare have been employed by the United States dating back to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and combatted in the Philippines and Vietnam. The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have made irregular warfare more ‘regular’ than conventional warfare in my lifetime. As United States security and defense policy shifts its focus away from these irregular conflicts to great power conflict with China and Russia, the United States will undoubtedly still face irregular warfare for the rest of the 21st century and U.S. ability to combat irregular warfare will not be without challenges.

This article attempts an audacious undertaking: to lay the foundations for a theoretical construct for all forms of indirect statecraft. It approaches this task from an unconventional warfare perspective, but the model used is intended to be flexible enough to apply to the full breadth of what George Kennan called Political Warfare. Such an overarching theory has not yet been developed, despite having been a near constant of concern of states throughout history. This lack of intellectual foundation stems in part from a continuing misapprehension of U.S. military and civilian strategists of a war/peace dichotomy, as identified nearly 60 years ago in Kennan’s Policy Planning Memorandum, as well as a fixation on linear phase constructs.

This article conducts a three-country case study analysis with a focus and emphasis on the elements of national power as the analytic framework.  Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, Law Enforcement (DIMEFIL) are the elements of national power.  By showcasing examples across the DIMEFIL in the three countries, we provide examples of how the military effort alone does not lead to success.  Therefore, while important, the military aspect of national power must be leveraged in synch with the other elements of national power requiring fundamental interactions and cooperation through a whole of government approach to security cooperation success. 

For many years, Turkey was a model country in the Middle East for its potential to combine Islam and democracy. Recent publications in the Western world has been labeling Turkey as an “uncertain ally” or mafia state, and international reports have been emphasizing how opponents of the Turkish government are targeted with scant evidence citing ongoing torture practices by antiterror and organized crime units of the police.

This paper aims to investigate to what extent the rival projects of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union on one hand and the Eastern Partnership promoted by the European Union on the other have been successful tools in integrating the countries of the South Caucasus region. It argues that, due to security issues and economic dependence, the Eurasian integration has been successful in the case of Armenia, but unsuccessful in relation to Georgia and Azerbaijan: in the case of Georgia, its Euro-Atlantic inclination and its territorial parcellation after the 2008 war averted the country’s likelihood to join Russian-led organizations, although the breakaway of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has likewise impeded or slowed down Euro-Atlantic integration

As the United States military shifts its focus from low-intensity conflict to large scale combat operations against near-peer competitors, the time and resources necessary to train for the latter detract from those needed to train for the former. Unfortunately, history and current events alike show us that low-intensity conflict will continue to be the norm. In looking toward the future of U.S. security force assistance, it may be useful to revisit a familiar scenario: a strategically important Middle Eastern country, poorly governed, threatened from within by insurgents backed by external global powers. While this narrative could be pulled from any number of recent headlines, the case in question takes place fifty years ago in the Sultanate of Oman.

In classic anthropological fashion, this paper uses an unusual "puzzle:" why might Special Forces soldiers engage in shirtless weightlifting in the middle of a sandstorm during an annual exercise in the Sahel? Asking this question opens the door to re-thinking how SOF operator sensibilities have changed over time -- as well as how they might need to change some more given Great Power competition.

Today, we in the United States are confronted with a bewildering array of changes, occurring on multiple levels and unfolding at different rates.  The world order is clearly undergoing a set of transitions and with rising geotechnological competition and unraveling global integration, it is even more challenging to make confident statements about the future.  In fact, there is no single future “out there.”  We are always confronted by a range of possibilities for how the world could change and today, given the breadth and depth of changes underway, effectively dealing with those possibilities requires us to address the future in new ways.

A force that must contend with an aspect of the operational environment that it is not prepared for must adapt to achieve its objectives. Therefore, the reciprocal of readiness is adaptability. Military forces seek to man, train, and equip so that any adaptation required is not beyond the reach of its tactical formations. However, the accumulated manning, training, and equipping of a nation’s fleets, aircraft squadrons, and brigades does not equate to a qualitative assessment of overall military readiness. Incorporating the five distinct categories of force structure, modernization, institution, force projection, and sustainability, in addition to the tactical readiness metrics builds a comprehensive readiness framework.

What are the operations we need to select, train, organize and equip the force to conduct that are truly “Special” and also relevant to the challenges facing our nation in this evolving strategic environment? This is the most important question facing United States Special Operations Command today. But it’s not one we spend much time on.

Critical Points of Understanding for Guiding a Durable Peace in Afghanistan

This spring the Army had a real-world Mission Command challenge as COVID-19 forced continued operations and training while within Social Distancing guidelines. Units began operating remotely, using a variety of platforms and apps including Line, WhatsApp, and zoom. Some utilized Defense Collaboration Services while others relied on teleconference lines. A common theme, however, is that many tactical units did not deploy their Mission Command Systems (MCS) Command Post of the Future (CPOF) connected via JNN/CPN/STT - the systems designed for communication during combat and tested during every Combat Training Center (CTC) rotation. In other words, at a critical moment, systems either failed or simply fell by the wayside, unused because of broad agreement on a lack of utility.

ISIS and Antifa much alike. “Mass movements are interchangeable,” said Eric Hoffer in The True Believer. From Hezbollah to Al Qaeda, from Occupy Wall Street to the Revolution Abolition Movement, these groups share more than an anti-American philosophy. They use the same marketing techniques. We explain how ISIS retails its ideology in our book Weaponized Marketing: Defeating Islamic Jihad with Marketing that Built the World’s Top Brands. Antifa is going to market the same way.

France, once more, faces terrorism. The murder of French teacher Samuel Paty on October 16th, 2020 by a radical Muslim and the knife attack in Nice less than two weeks later on October 29th led to political and social-level talks in the country about France and radical Islamic terrorism. Among these discussions, people have mentioned that France was “at war” against “Islamist terrorism” or the ideology of “radical Islamism.”

There is no question that leadership is foundational to the “profession of arms”. Yet the Services treat leadership at senior ranks as a “given” based upon the results of an officer’s success at the tactical level. Certainly, as officers progress up through the ranks to senior leadership positions, some of the skills required to be successful are, in fact, transferrable from their tactical leadership experiences. Many of the leadership skills necessary to lead organizations successfully at the senior levels, however, are entirely new.

Book review of Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley, "Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico." Trejo and Ley conceptualize cartels and organized crime groups (OCGs) as political actors that read and react to the political environment in Mexico and demonstrate that there is a symbiotic type of relationship between the OCGs or cartels and an informal level of the state.

Western society’s connectivity is accompanied by a new national security risk: cyberattacks. To a degree almost unimaginable a decade earlier, disruptive and destructive cyberattacks have become central to multi-domain warfare in interstate conflict. Our critical infrastructure, banking, and military systems rely on connectivity in cyberspace. Paradoxically, those who are at the forefront of these emerging technologies are also the most susceptible to attack.

Turkey and Iran continue in their historically based power play in the Caucasus and the Levant.  They are squeezing territory from Armenia via their proxy war by the Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh and the presence of Azeri jihadists in neighboring Syria.  Posing as referees to these conflicts are the Russian Federation and the United States, both of whom have significant numbers of Armenians within their own borders.

   The United States (US) is in another Cold War with Russia.  The US military shares several operational spaces with the proxies of the Russian Federation and its troops in such places as the Levant, Northern Africa, South Asia, and Ukraine.  Despite or because they are not declared international armed conflicts, Russian close air support in Libya, firefights in Syria, or standoffs in Ukraine has confronted US-backed proxies that parallels the pattern of undeclared conflict during the Cold War.  

      The United States is the target of countless threats from around the world. In the age of ecommerce, instant communication, and the expansion of the internet cyber threats have become some of the most terrifying adversaries. Enemies of the United States have all weaponized this ever-growing form of communication and information source and have been quick to understand that for every road closed more are presented. The internet allows these threats to combat the United States on a level playing field as they can create programs to hack into government websites, liquidate financial accounts, steal sensitive or classified information, or spread disinformation on either official or social media platforms. One group in particular has been highly successful in this new war being waged and they are known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

In the start of 2020, much of the world and virtually all of the United States was consumed by news reports and developments about COVID-19, a new strain of the Coronavirus respiratory disease. Hysteria was rampant with people buying toilet paper and masks and gloves, despite news agencies and international health organizations urging against this; some did this of their own accord, but it is undeniable the effect that social media websites (like Facebook) and “news” agencies (like InfoWars) had on inciting this hysteria. Not only was misinformation spread about what individual countries were experiencing, but about the cause of the virus.

The political divisiveness and distrust that built up around the Nixon Administration as a result of the Watergate cover-ups and investigations, ending with President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, created a backlash to policies associated with Nixon such as détente with the Russians. Even though President Ford tried to maintain continuity with Nixon’s policies, the policy of détente had become so toxic to both Democrats and Republicans, that President Ford was forced to completely abandon it during the 1976 Republican presidential primary campaign. It was within this rare political context of bipartisan unity that the Army had the rationale it needed to make its largest doctrinal shift in the post-World War II era.

Directing violent operations against the west has been a major threat coming from Salafi-jihadi groups. While the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda is the most widely-known external attack, since the declaration of the ISIS caliphate in June 2014, conducting external operations is almost exclusive to the Islamic State.

This paper will describe the Greed versus Grievance Theory and why it is a useful theoretical framework to address the incentives for the outbreak of the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Specifically, it will argue that, although the greed argument can partly contribute in explaining the motivations that led the anti-Gaddafi rebel front to mobilize, the grievance argument renders a broader explanation to the uprising, as it includes relevant variables typical of Gaddafi’s regime, like: inequal income distribution, unemployment, lack of political rights, nepotism, and corruption.

On July 1st, the Russian people approved a constitutional amendment that reset Vladimir Putin's Presidential term tally to zero, thus allowing him to remain in office until 2036 potentially. This could make Putin a President for life since he could potentially be 83 years old when his time in office ends. This is bad news for Ukraine because it ends any hope that a change of leadership in the Kremlin will lead to a negotiated end to the Russian backed insurgency in the east. Ukraine needs to now accept this hard reality and take a long-range strategic approach that will change the political dynamics of the conflict in Ukraine's favor.

This case study is part of a larger body of work researched and produced by the students of the Military Information Support Operations (MISO) Program Design and Assessment Course at Ft. Bragg, NC. This body of work examines conflict scenarios with emphasis on determining the Psychological Operations (PSYOP) efforts and activities employed by the various competitive actors in the area of operations.

The Sahel region in Africa continues to be one of the most unstable regions in the world, with a variety of jihadist groups continuing to launch attacks. Although originally focused in Mali, it has metastasized into a major threat to bordering countries. The most critical security requirements continue to fall on the local military and police forces. Both before and after the external military and peace enforcement missions, local forces have had significant issues with maintaining security

Operational design has been adopted into Joint Doctrine. The Armed Services and US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) have also, in different forms, adopted operational design. As currently captured in JP 5-0 (Joint Planning), Joint Operational Design is seriously limited in both its usefulness and application. Joint Operational Design needs to be re-imagined.

While it is imperative to leverage personal military experiences, it is also important to recognize our experiences have the capacity to result in inaccurate assumptions, conclusions, or implicit bias. The simple solution is to integrate data into our decision-making process rather than solely relying on observations of deployed forces, leadership experience, or self-assessments. For Psychological Operations (PSYOP), this poses a severe issue, as well as a new opportunity: educate target audiences with credible data and tailor associated messaging.

In this article, our goal is to explain the factors why making peace in ethnically-divided societies, such as Mindanao, are often hard to secure. The primary argument that this article proposes is that the settlement of peace processes in ethnically divided societies are more likely to experience more cycles of violence during peace transitions. This argument is based from the various studies on ethnic conflicts after the Cold War where peaceful transitions in heterogeneous societies are more prone to interethnic violence while undergoing democratization.

Various factions (facções) exert territorial control over portions of Rio de Janeiro.  These include gangs and militias (gangues e milícias) that challenge the state, contest territorial control and illicit markets, and exert raw political power of criminal governance.  A recent study: Mapa dos Grupos Armados do Rio (Map of the Armed Groups of Rio) conducted by a team of researchers from several Rio de Janeiro universities and civil society organizations mapped the distribution of criminal armed groups (CAGs) in Rio de Janeiro.

One African conflict that consistently flies under the radar is the struggle between Morocco and the Polisario Front over the territory of Western Sahara. This struggle dates back to the Cold War and reflected Cold War alliances throughout its duration. . Despite some flare ups, the battle over Western Sahara has moved to the realm of diplomacy and dialogue. Concern among some Polisario Front members could lead to a resurgence of armed conflict, so international spectators and interested parties need to revisit long- and short-term solutions before this conflict reignites.

In the chaotic reality of wars and armed conflicts, environmental issues are often downgraded in long lists of policy priorities. The authors suggest that this reality is partially driven by the simmering and subterraneous aspect of environmental risks; the long-term possibility of environmental degradation may not seize the attention of political decision-makers as intuitively as ongoing violence spikes or political turmoil. This paper proposes a new policy and demonstrates how that tool can rapidly contextualize environmental risks. In addition this paper also shares previously unpublished data on Ukraine’s war-driven ongoing environmental crisis.

The United States Coast Guard exists to protect American prosperity both domestically and globally. Domestically the service maintains regulatory authorities relating to shipping, coastal, and offshore operations interacting at every level of the domestic maritime environment. Whether on the high seas or in domestic waters stability is a mission inherent to the service and something that the Coast Guard has conducted in one form or another for over two hundred years.

Book Review of "Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict" by Eli Berman, Eli, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro, with Vestal McIntyre.

Helping a foreign country improve the effectiveness of their military aviation capabilities is an incredibly difficult task, made even more difficult when partner nations are facing ongoing irregular conflicts. Despite this difficulty, recent efforts to develop allied air forces through Aviation Foreign Internal Defense (AvFID) have not seen coherent strategic planning. US forces often do not develop an effective conceptual end state, long term plans do not guide operational decisions, and cognitive dissonance exists between nearly all actors.

The dichotomy of old and new wars is premised on the rupture between interstate conflict and intrastate conflict, exemplified by the military theories of Clausewitz and Mao respectively. The present article’s task is essentially conservative. It will contest this narrative of an evolving nature of war both theoretically and historically. By underlining the formative influence of Clausewitz’s On War on Mao’s thought, from which the Chinese Communist leader derived the principles of insurgency, the present article will serve three functions.

Following former Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s resignation and dissolution of his government after a military coup, the challenge of waging counterinsurgency against jihadist groups will pass to Mali’s next leaders, whoever they may be. The Keita government’s failure to provide adequate security in many communities after nearly a decade of conflict contributed to the popular calls for changes in leadership and allowed insurgent movements to metastasize

The next war will most likely take place in the information ‘cognitive’ battle-space, where the U.S. military is ill designed and ill equipped to fight. This future war will take place in ways and places far beyond the conventional Western concepts of war. The traditional ‘Western-way-of-war’ where society believes the nation is either ‘at-war’ or ‘at-peace, is a relic of the past. U.S. national policy leaders are slow to recognize the international system has changed, making the United States more vulnerable to evolving forms of hybrid warfare, asymmetric warfare and unrestricted warfare.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020 arguably created the greatest global security challenge since 1945. Faced with this unanticipated threat, scholars and practitioners from the security and counterterrorism fields have struggled to understand and assess the impact of the pandemic on global and domestic terrorism

A view from Poland on the current conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. The current conflict in the South Caucasus started on 27 September with Azerbaijan air and forces armed with massive support of artillery against the positions of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh. It is a large-scale offensive against Armenia in general, and unprecedented in its nature since the beginning of the 1990s. Neither Armenia nor the international backers of stability in this region were ready for such developments.

The world had faced with many terrorist organizations until 2014. However, after 2014, the world faced with the most complicated terrorist organization. This terrorist organization is ISIS or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS has been running a more different propaganda campaign, emphasizing the state-building and welfare schemes run by this organization and these elements make ISIS more complicated.

Advisors supporting our national counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency missions need a conceptual model of organizational leadership that crosses cultures and applies to a wide variety of organizations. We propose an organizational leadership model built on a set of cross-culturally defined intelligences and the Executive Core Qualifications used by the US Office of Personnel Management in evaluating senior leaders.

Remarks delivered for a SOCPAC Conference on Resistance and Resilience in Asia, February 4-6, 2020.

The U.S. is distracted due to the current election turmoil. This makes Taiwan vulnerable. The essay outlines how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may act against Taiwan in the coming weeks and months. It provides a concept depicting one possible course of action for an invasion of Taiwan by the PRC. The concept assumes that the PRC wants to annex Taiwan with the majority of its industrial and technological infrastructure intact with minimal fighting, which means avoiding engaging in urban warfare.