Journal

As the United States military enters a new period of change following its withdraw from Afghanistan, numerous works have been published that attempt to grapple with the path that led to our involvement in so-called “forever wars”, with one such work being Moyn’s Humane. While many of these take the obvious route of inducing schadenfreude through a lightning round review of the policy foibles of the last 20 years, Humane instead takes a broader approach, reviewing how events and developments over the last century and a half led to the current geopolitical situation.

War has changed: what used to be a confined to a physical battlefield has evolved into a hidden neural war fought from every corner of the Earth. For the first 200,000 years of humanity’s existence, war was fought on the physical battlefield.. With sticks, then swords, then guns, people fought against one another directly. They took and saved lives personally on their own merit. This is now rapidly changing. With the invention of computers and the internet, cyber and informational warfare are rapidly becoming prevalent. From a grand distance, people can cause damage to other countries safely and effectively through the internet. Be they viruses, false information campaigns, or worse, cyberwarfare, it is an important tool of any nation state.

While America was consumed with the Global War on Terror for the past 20 years, Russia’s Cold War tactics directed at the West intensified, but with modern age tools. Post-Cold War, the world witnessed a unipolar system with the United States at its helm. As a result, Russia has refined old subversive techniques, sabotage, and active measures to undermine and weaken America. Russia’s 2007 cyber-attacks on Estonia, 2008 war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, support to the Syrian regime's civil war in 2015, and the U.S. Presidential election meddling of 2016 are examples of the evolution of Russian nonlinear warfare. With the U.S. constantly involved in Russia's near-abroad, Russia appears to favor strategies that cloak blame and stay below the threshold of armed conflict. Recently, Latin America has experienced a paradigm shift, and civil unrest rise while its governments increasingly turn to leftist-leaning leaders to govern their states. Reviewing historical case studies to illustrate the nonlinear strategy Russia has waged in Europe, subsequently developing a theoretical framework to create a case study on Colombia. The results of the Colombia case study may serve as a model for identifying Russian nonlinear warfare throughout other Latin American countries.

In most of our training, we fight an opposing force (OPFOR), a role player who is often scripted and told to act a certain way in order to (IOT) enable the training unit (TU) to achieve a training objective. Our missions are usually terrain focused – to seize key terrain – with an enemy that is either on the objective or inbound. But terrain doesn’t move or think. Is there a better way to train? Yes. Free-play force-on-force (FoF) exercise, where each side is precisely the enemy described above. It is the superior way to train, and how we should train every time. It trains a unit to “outthink, outmaneuver, and outfight the enemy,” instead of “pursuing perfection in method rather than obtaining decisive results.”

The world is a dynamic environment, yet Carl von Clausewitz’s principles remain current and operational, because both his definition of war and the application of his theory define contemporary terrorist organizations. In order to draw a fulsome comparison, one must use both Clausewitz’s social and structural trinities. With both levels of analysis in play, terrorist groups form and operate in a similar triadic manner to achieve their aims. Therefore, Clausewitz’s proposed theories of warfare are relevant today for terrorism warning analysis. The forces of violence, chance, and reason illuminate a terrorist organization in its gestation and may provide policy options before the outbreak of violence.

Ukraine is bracing for a Russian invasion. Undermatched, undersized, and militarily less capable, Ukraine will lose a conventional, combined arms fight, should it come. Facing this prospect, Ukraine is investing in and publicizing its hedging strategy: citizen resistance.

The construction of monuments by Russia, its proxies, and Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine reveals a new avenue for Information Operations and, in turn, a blind spot in both programs monitoring Russian IO and those monitoring cultural heritage in conflict such as USAR’s Monument Officers (38G/6V). This tactic extends to territories outside of Ukraine where Russia is conducting gray zone operations.

Police in Rio de Janeiro (RJ) began a major operation—Operação Cidade Integrada (Operation Integrated City)—on Wednesday 19 January 2022 to retake control of RJ’s Jacarezinho favela.  Approximately 1,200 police (Polícia Militar or Military Police) took part in the co-ordinated action. The operation is reminiscent of the UPP (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora or Pacifying Police Units) approach initially implemented ahead of the 2016 Olympics. This new initiative apparently seeks to expand that approach by integrating comprehensive social programs to restore state authority and governance. The action seeks to displace criminal governance by the Comando Vermelho (CV or Red Command) and milícia (militia) groups.

Currently over 50% of our best and brightest Special Forces Captains are leaving the Army and the shadow of huge morale issues continues to haunt the Special Forces Regiment.  Many factors are considered as to why: including intense deployment schedules, no deployment potential, stress on families, limited command opportunities once promoted, and the promise of a more lucrative civilian career.  Each of those reasons have traditionally had merit, but a glaring deficiency underpinning this is a flawed system that manifests itself in how we select and promote Special Forces (SF) officers.

Modern Russian statecraft does not diverge from how Moscow has traditionally pursued its foreign policy goals. The use of extraterritorial assassinations, the 2007 Bronze Night incident in Estonia, and the 2014 invasion of Ukraine provide ample evidence that Russian use of coercive statecraft is part of a long-standing grand strategy to protect itself by dividing the West.

       The topic of mission command has become a common topic in American military thought recently.  Due to the generally increasing velocity of modern combat and the constant need to evolve methods, it is a fitting time to reexamine historical examples in an effort to better plan future doctrine.  During the early days of the Eastern Front in World War II, the Nazi Army made a bold push for Moscow aiming for the complete destruction of the Soviet military.  The Soviets, through a series of serious blows and defeats nearly witnessed a complete collapse before the Nazi aggression.  While the Red Army eventually was able to go on the offensive and the war was won by the Allies, this view of the period as an unequivocal Soviet victory is problematic.  Arguably the Soviets survived due to, among other things, actions outside their control.  Even more perplexingly, they survived, in large part, due to their ability to sacrifice huge tracts of territory and quantities of manpower to buy time.  However, this does not diminish the fact that the Soviet Union had to “make extraordinary, inordinate efforts to stop the victorious advance of the Wehrmacht.”

Why are bad guys so good at spreading disinformation and good guys so bad at stopping it? Through the lens of a patented and tested framework, the Taxonomy of Influence Strategies, the author illustrates how policies and practices of response do more to accelerate than slow the deceptive and mistaken messages hostile actors sow. This essay is recommended reading for practitioners of strategic communications, public diplomacy, information operations, psyops and related fields of influence management.

When there’s a natural disaster, according to conventional wisdom, civil unrest is likely to follow. That line of thinking is as seductive as it is intuitive. However, there isn’t much data to support it. The occasional half-hearted inquiry forced by the lack of empirical evidence generally leaves you as unsatisfied as your first self-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. The notion that natural disaster increases the risk of civil unrest taps into the dark sense that people will revert to survival instincts when the norm is threatened. When it comes to non-terror political violence following natural catastrophes, though, the historical experience just isn’t there. The occasional instance of it is an anomaly at best – and a debatable one at that – with almost no foundation of 70 years of catastrophe data.

The predictable triumph by Maduro loyalists in Venezuela’s rigged November 2021 elections was a symbolic nail in the coffin for the attempt by the de jure government of Juan Guaido to restore the more liberal type of democracy previously prevailing in the country. Venezuela now seems to ever more resemble Cuba, with an authoritarian government in control for the long haul. Yet while Venezuela is unlikely to return to democratic governance anytime soon, parallels to Cuba conceal the complex dynamic between regime figures, external state actors, and criminal and terrorist groups that is shaping the country’s future.

This article is a mixed methods research study on Genaro García Luna—former head of Mexican Federal law enforcement—and his ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and other Mexican officials involved in the criminal organization from 2003 to 2008. This study thus explores the role and influence of corrupt Mexican officials that allowed for a secure and efficient illegal trafficking of drugs inside Mexico and into the United States. It should be noted that, not all individuals found in this Social Network Analysis (SNA) are assumed to be guilty or have been proven so via conviction in a court of law. The presumption of innocence is an important concept that applies to the actors discussed here.

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan at the end of August 2021—an event precipitated by the withdrawal of all remaining US troops in the country—questions about the Taliban’s ability to target the Western world and fears that Afghanistan would become a haven for al-Qaeda arose immediately in the minds of many government officials and non-government observers. Such concerns were well-grounded. This article analyzes the capacity of ISIS and al-Qaeda in terms of operational and organizational capabilities, use of violence, geographical expansion, and ideological inspiration for lone actors to determine which group—ISIS or al-Qaeda—is the greater threat to global security.

Field Report from Tamaulipas: English language version of "Informe de campo: Seguridad en Tamaulipas Hoy: Una Paz Simulada." Since 2010, the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas has been in a state of high-intensity armed conflict. Earlier that year, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas—who at one point worked together—began a brutal confrontation that led to levels of violence never before seen in the state. In the framework of the Mérida Initiative and the ‘war on drugs’ declared by former President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012), the extreme conflict between two violent organized crime groups—which had militarized their strategies, diversified their operations and had access to high-caliber weaponry-intensified with the entry of federal forces into the state.

Field Report from Tamaulipas in Spanish: Desde el año 2010, el estado fronterizo mexicano de Tamaulipas se ha mantenido en una situación de conflicto armado de alta intensidad. A principios de ese año, el Cartel del Golfo y los Zetas—quienes en algún momento trabajaron de forma conjunta—comenzaron una brutal confrontación que desencadenó en niveles de violencia nunca antes vistos en la entidad. En el marco de la Iniciativa Mérida y la “guerra contra las drogas” declarada por el expresidente Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012), el conflicto extremo entre dos violentos grupos del crimen organizado—que habían militarizado sus estrategias, diversificado sus operaciones y que tenían acceso a armamento de alto calibre—se intensificó con la entrada de las fuerzas federales al estado.

In the summer of 2014, the Islamic State surged across the Syrian border into Northern Iraq, seizing Mosul almost without a fight. Beyond the city to its east, however, lay territory claimed by the Kurds; and here the Islamic State’s headlong advance foundered against a breakwater of Peshmerga defenses that surrounded Mosul on three sides. For the next eighteen months, Peshmerga and Islamic State fighters manned op- posing trench lines only a few hundred meters apart in a scene reminiscent of the First World War.

An armed cell composed of ten members using high caliber weapons and six vehicles, two of which were reported to have been set on fire as a distraction, broke into the jail (Centro de Readaptación Social de Tula – Tula Social Correctional Center or CERESO) in Tula, Hidalgo, on 1 December 2021. The cell helped nine inmates escape including the presumed leader of the Pueblos Unidos (United Towns or Villages), José Artemio Maldonado Mejía, Alias “El Michoacano,” “El R” or “El Rabias.” Maldonado Mejía is an alleged head of the huachicloero (petroleum theft) enterprise known as the Cártel Pueblos Unidos. Numerous media reports mention the use of car bombs or explosives during the operation.

Russia’s use of subversion over the past three decades to undermine the military, economic, psychological, and/or political strength of liberal democracies via such means as propaganda/disinformation, paramilitary forces and proxies, assassinations, cyber-attacks, and similar methods is not a new form of warfare but instead is consistent with actions taken by Moscow ever since the October Revolution of 1917.

The weaponization of neurotechnology – neurowarfare – poses unique challenges in a strategic environment that emphasizes competition between major powers. As powers compete for influence against one another, neuroweapons that directly target the brain to sway an adversaries’ actions are likely to be employed with increasing frequency. No longer should we conceptualize the human mind as a target for psychological influence through communication operations over long periods of time; neurotechnology paves the way for influence via physical brain modification to achieve almost immediate psychological shifts. Special Operations Forces (SOF) are uniquely positioned to confront the complex and dynamic threats neurowarfare poses but is currently under-prepared to take up the challenge. In line with USSOCOM’s 2020 ‘Innovation for Future Threats’ priority, the present article aims to fill this gap by providing actionable recommendations: (1) immediately implement neurowarfare training across the SOF enterprise; (2) invest in research on (a) cognitive degradation caused by neuroweapons, and (b) neuroweapons detection, disruption, and targeting; and (3) develop doctrine on neurowarfare. Ultimately, SOCOM needs to take a proactive stance by developing ‘neuro SOF professionals’ equipped to navigate this new battlespace.

This article reviews the evolution of the 18th Street Gang in Los Angeles to Barrio 18 in Central America. 18th Street’s transnational shift was motivated by “internal and transnational migration flows,” as well as, the US increasing deportations of “foreign” criminals. As 18th Street members arrived in Central America, they brought their own US-based gangster culture, a particular way of dressing, talking, and bravado. These members were deported to countries where they had little to no understanding of the cultural dynamics, as many were born in Central America but raised in the United States. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were new environments, and each presented unique dynamics that 18th Street members had to adapt to, to survive.

Wargaming is often discussed as a necessary step in the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) for Army units, but it is an often misunderstood, or poorly executed due to time constraints. FM 6-0, Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, outlines the process and outcomes, but it doesn’t provide practical examples of useful tools or tactics, techniques, and procedures to reach the desired outcomes. “War-gaming results in refined COAs, a completed synchronization matrix, and decision support templates and matrices for each COA. A synchronization matrix records the results of a war game. It depicts how friendly forces for a particular COA are synchronized in time, space, and purpose in relation to an enemy COA or other decisive action tasks. The decision support template and matrix portray key decisions and potential actions that are likely to occur during the execution of each COA.”

Marine Maxims by Col. Thomas Gordon is an exceptional resource for military self-development. Its short insightful chapters are filled with valuable leadership lessons suitable for junior noncommissioned officers to field grade leaders. Col. Gordon shapes what may normally be considered as cliché leadership lessons and gives them new life by discussing how these lessons impacted his career and how these issues will continue to impact the military profession in the future. In many ways, the way Col. Gordon has structured this book is how I wish every professional reading list should be presented. He briefly discusses the 50 valuable leadership lessons and how each impacted his own career and why these lessons will be important in the future before giving the reader at least one future book or resource to further explore the topic. I would highly recommend this book for military leaders and will likely be giving copies of this work to my supervisors and subordinates to help further spread the important lessons within these pages.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of stories from and about the people in Afghanistan, those who have escaped and those who seek freedom. We wish to highlight the suffering, sacrifices, and desire for freedom of our Afghan allies as well as people and organizations who are helping to ensure the safety of those left behind and the integration of those who have made it to safety and freedom.

In the SWJ Book Review, SWJ-El Centro Intern Issac Poritzky reviews Professor Michael Kenney's examination of radicalization in Great Britain, "The Islamic State in Britain: Radicalization and Resilience in an Activist Network."

The drug trafficking faction (facção) in the “Complexo de Israel” (Israel Complex) led by Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa, known as Peixão (Big Fish) built a bridge over a canal in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte (North Zone) to elude police surveillance.  The bridge connects the Favela das Cinco Bocas, in Brás de Pina, to Cidade Alta, in Cordovil.

Five years after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), it is reported that the Biden administration will remove the organization from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations. SWJ–El Centro Fellow Alexandra Phelan examines the delisting in this commentary.

The triple border has become a free territory for criminal activities and even worse, for terrorist activities. Despite the multiplication of actions, laws and meetings of the authorities of the highest hierarchies of the countries that make up this area: Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, in addition to the monitoring of different governmental agencies of the United States.

La Triple Frontera se transformó en un territorio “liberado” para las actividades criminales y, peor aún, para las actividades terroristas. Ello, pese a que se multiplicaron las acciones, leyes y encuentros de las autoridades de las más altas jerarquías de los tres países — Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay — que lo integran y del monitoreo de diferentes agencias gubernamentales de los Estados Unidos.

Dr. Howard Campbell, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) weighs on Season 3 of "Narcos: Mexico." In his commentary, Campbell, author of “Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and Juárez” and the recently released "Downtown Juárez: Underworlds of Violence and Abuse" asserts that the Cártel de Juárez should actually be called the Cártel de El Paso y Juárez.

Review of Howard Campbell's "Downtown Juárez: Underwords of Violence & Abuse by SWJ−El Centro Associater Daniel Weisz. In this book, Campbell, a noted ethnographer of Mexico's "Drug War Zone," examines he conditions that lead to violence in central Juárez.

The proliferation of arms and military bases on the continent of Africa according to some scholars, has been responsible for violence, crime, and terrorism especially in the sub-Saharan region. It has become one of the banes to security and development challenges in Arica since the end of the cold war. The wave of proliferation across Africa has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people each year in countries like Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria. In Nigeria for instance, arms and violence conflict proliferation across the country has ravaged lives and properties, and over 2000 people reported dead in the country.

Beijing uses five-year plans as guides to support its intelligence collection efforts, particularly cyber espionage campaigns that can be executed against several targets across the globe. Already Chinese operations against renewable energy organizations have provided competitive advantage to Chinese companies who were able to win contracts and help bankrupt at least two foreign competitors.

The roots of modern counterinsurgency are often traced to Colonial Wars or Small Wars of the 19th Century. One case which may demonstrate such a relationship is the South Africa Border War (1966-1989) in which variables such as, intelligence and people-centered operations utilized by the South African Defence Force (SADF) demonstrated striking similarities to C.E. Callwell’s reflection on 19th Century Small Wars.

The NATO and Turkey relationship has a history of almost 70 years, and it has not always gone smoothly and in harmony, rather this alliance can be described most of the time problematic at best. That fact does not necessarily mean that each side has not mutually benefited from one another though.

Rules of engagement (ROE) are the embarrassing uncle at a family party. He is engaged in polite conversation but spends most of the time in the corner being denied top-ups on the drinks and someone, normally the legal advisor in the family, stays sober to drive him home at the earliest opportunity. The operational family is obliged to invite him to the party, but everyone scrupulously avoids conversation and looks forward to his departure.

As tensions rise between mainland China and Taiwan once again, it is worth remembering a vic-tim of China’s previous expansionist actions. Tibet, labeled as “the orphan of the Cold War,” has repeatedly been forgotten on the world stage since its annexation in 1950. Similarly forgotten are the United States’ contributions to the Tibetan resistance against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Insurgencies are affected by the society and the political system as much as they affect both. For instance, an insurgency based on a sectarian identity cannot realize revolutionary aims because it will have to enforce a parochial ideological view on other factions that do not adhere to the principles espoused by the insurgency. As such, a compromise would be reached to change the formation of the political system rather than completely overhauling it. As the insurgency becomes part of the government it enters a new stage in which it becomes accountable for the population and responsible for the conduct of the government and this is when it defends the status quo rather than work against it.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. by an insurrectionist mob, government agencies and private companies across the U.S. were forced to grapple – indeed, are still grappling – with the realities of deep-seated subversion in the nation’s information environment and the potential for further acts of seditious violence. In the weeks and months since, commentators both inside the Beltway and in beyond security communities beyond likened these efforts to challenges inherent in the mission of counterterrorism forces, as well as in actions taken to restructure the politics of nations emerging from conflict.[i] In other words, debate on the paranoia of American politics[ii] rapidly shifted to envisage fringe elements less as countercultural advocates and more the unsophisticated, alternately-capable force often found in America’s small wars.

With much less than anticipated difficulties, the Taliban came roaring back to Kabul, 20 years after they were dethroned by the US forces in the wake of 9/11 terrorist attack. Ironically, the Taliban flag was hoisted on Kabul on the 20th anniversary of the most horrific attacks on the US soil. At the twilight of US presence in Afghanistan, the horrendous attack by ISIS-K killing hundreds of Afghans and 13 US service members at Kabul airport is a grim reminder to the world that the war in Afghanistan is far from over.

In Train, Advise and Assist (TAA) efforts, a conceptual model of advisor-counterpart interactions is needed to enable common understanding and to create a framework for enabling growth in our counterparts. The conceptual model presented in this article frames advisor-counterpart relationships as a balance in terms of who initiates and makes decisions.

Civil society and military actors engaged in humanitarian and peace operations will benefit from an awareness of how religion shapes individuals’ values and ideas regarding the nature of the state. Religious traditions act as foundations upon which secular society rests. Without an understanding of religion, awareness of society remains limited.

Turkey has an advantage in drones in the military-technological revolution.  It is a short period when one country is gaining an advantage in the technology and new type of warfare hence any nation has limited time for smart use of this advantage and superiority for geopolitical gains. Nieghbors  and adversaries eventually catch up,  setting a military and technological equilibrium that would constrain geopolitical adventures of any power.

The primary defense and security concerns of the 21st-century have been and will continue to be driven by the strategic phenomena of cyberspace and terrorism.[i] However, there are several competing definitions of both cyberspace and terrorism, and there is no universally accepted definition for many cyber-related activities (i.e. cyber-terrorism, cyber-warfare, and cyber-crime). Cyber-terrorism is often loosely defined as the “convergence of terrorism and cyberspace,” which allows for a wide range of interpretation and confusion.[ii] This paper provides a more pragmatic definition of cyber-terrorism by addressing the nuances of previously proposed definitions in order to help the U.S. national security apparatus address current and future threats. Additionally, it will discuss what constitutes a cyber-terror attack and how it differs from other cyber-crimes. Lastly, it will then determine what threat, if any, cyber-terrorism poses to U.S. national security. To do so, I will first provide definitions for both cyberspace and terrorism which are helpful for understanding the distinct phenomenon of cyber-terrorism.

In recent decades every time the United States’ political and military leaders discuss the use of force to deal with complex issues in the international security environment the conversation inevitably turns to the need for an exit strategy.[i]  Such discussions of exit strategies have had a deleterious effect on the development of strategy because the exit has become an end unto itself.  Thus, senior leaders have lost sight of the need to win when using force in order to secure political objectives.  The focus on exit strategy ignores the need to conduct messy consolidation operations to secure victory and ultimately translate this into political success.  Once military victory has secured the stated political objectives, then it is appropriate to discuss redeploying committed forces.  This essay offers that the focus on exit strategies is a factor that has led to strategic incompetence and therefore, it is time to discard the use of the term exit strategy as a necessary step to regain strategic competence.  This paper will discuss the origin of the term exit strategy, how it has affected policy and strategy formulation, and offer suggestions for regaining strategic competence.

When attempting to explain the causes of group violence, conflict theories usually focus on the international system of anarchistic self-help, innately violent human nature, the legal framework of warfare, the clash of civilizations, violent mass movements, or a combination of demographic, economic, sociological, and psychological factors. However, none of the major organized conflict models in existing literature explains all inter- or intrastate organized violence.

The security situation in today’s Northern Ireland is rather placid in comparison with the Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s. That said, hot-button issues like BREXIT have reignited fears of unrest and violence. The threat to peace remains high. Enter Aaron Edwards’ new book, which takes a detailed look at the importance of intelligence in the United Kingdom’s war against the IRA. Edwards is a senior lecturer with the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, author of UVF: Behind the Mask and co-author of Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the End of Empire. The author brings a wealth of academic expertise to the subject and with this book he lays bare the treachery, subterfuge, and danger of undercover work in Northern Ireland alongside the contributions it made to the peace process.

This article explores corruption in the context of street gangs in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). Combating corruption and impunity as well as reducing the ability of criminal actors to penetrate the state apparatus should be the forefront of the policy agenda of governments in the region. This article focuses primarily on the cases of El Salvador and Honduras to illustrate the failures of tough on crime policies and the intricate, arguably symbiotic, relationship between the state and organized crime.