Book Review - Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America’s Special Operations Forces by Ian F.W. Beckett, Wall Street Journal

In May 1980, British television was interrupted by a live broadcast of balaclava-clad Special Air Service men storming the Iranian Embassy in London to rescue hostages taken by an Iranian separatist group. Such operations were not perhaps a surprise for the baby-boomer generation. After all, we had been brought up with celluloid heroics in which Dirk Bogarde —it was nearly always Dirk Bogarde—snatched German generals from Crete or raided Rommel’s supply lines in North Africa. But for younger generations of Britons, the embassy raid had an enormous impact, spawning a new fascination with special-operations forces. Their growing mystique has led to a stream of often lamentable books with “SAS” on the cover as well as, more seriously, a misleading confidence in their superiority to conventional forces for many missions.

As Mark Moyar’s “Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America’s Special Operations Forces” demonstrates, there has been a similar trend in the U.S. The various American special forces, which date from the formation of the Army First Ranger Battalion in 1942, now number 70,000 members. They have moved from being a secondary weapon to a primary weapon. Gen. Peter Schoomaker became the first special-forces officer to be Army chief of staff in 2003, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal the first special-forces officer to be given direction of an entire campaign—in Afghanistan—in 2009.

But, at best, unconventional units have offered tactical rather than strategic success. The one exception was the ousting of the Taliban from Afghanistan in support of the Northern Alliance immediately after 9/11; operations against al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan were not as successful. There has been a litany of failures, including Operation Eagle Claw in Iran in April 1980 and Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia in October 1993. Successive presidents, however, have fallen under the spell of special forces, although their support has often been qualified and quickly withdrawn, as was the case with President Bill Clinton after Somalia.

It is Mr. Moyar’s contention that the problem has been that few incumbents of the White House have understood special forces’ limitations. Special forces, he says, are best suited to counterinsurgency...

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It’s Much Bigger Than Afghanistan: US Strategy for a Transformed Region by Barnett Rubin, War on the Rocks

… It is time to recognize that the United States might be able to maintain an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan or stabilize the country, but not both. A permanent military presence will always motivate one or more neighbors to pressure the United States to leave by supporting insurgents — and forestalling stabilization. Currently, Pakistan, Iran and Russia — which together control access to all usable routes to landlocked Afghanistan — are trying to exert such pressure.* Precipitous withdrawal without a settlement, of course, could lead to even more violence.

Such a settlement would be as much with Afghanistan’s neighbors as the Taliban, but U.S. strategic thinking about the region is caught in a time warp. Washington still conceives of the region as a theater of the war on terror, and forms bilateral policies toward Afghanistan and its neighbors on that basis. The economic growth of China and India, however, has changed the stakes in the region. Both the apparently permanent U.S. military presence and the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State have changed the region’s perception of the Taliban…

As what everyone, including the United States, thought would be a time-limited counter-terrorism intervention in Afghanistan has morphed into a permanent outpost, neighboring states view the U.S. presence in Afghanistan as geostrategic. In their view, the United States could use its bases and other military assets in Afghanistan against them under the banner of counter-terrorism[RE1] . The United States said support for terrorism was one of the rationales for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It could easily do so again to justify intervention in Iran, classified by the U.S. State Department as a leading state sponsor of terrorism, or Pakistan, where Washington fears nuclear materials or weapons could fall into terrorist hands. Russia also suspects that the U.S. may use counter-terrorism for broader purposes…

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