Term IW Stirs Debate

Today at Inside the Pentagon (subscription required) – Iregular Warfare Term Stirs Debate as DoD Prepares for QDR by Christopher J. Castelli. Here are several excepts:

— A QDR issue paper developed late last month at U.S. Southern Command argues that security cooperation efforts and so-called phase zero missions aimed at preventing conflict should not be described as irregular warfare (IW) because key “interagency and multinational partners” shun the term.

— Gates has embraced the term “hybrid warfare,” which includes low-end and high-end asymmetric attacks.

— A service official tracking the issue said there is “a very good chance” that a broader continuum spanning security cooperation, contested stability operations, irregular warfare, hybrid warfare and major conventional operations will displace the overly simplistic, bipolar framework that has been in vogue.

— As ITP reported last month, one of five Pentagon issue teams that will play a key role in the QDR will focus on irregular warfare. InsideDefense.com reported this week that the IW capabilities team will include Garry Reid from the DOD policy shop, Timothy Bright from the program analysis and evaluation shop and Maj. Gen. Bill Troy from the Joint Staff. Cmdr. Jerry Hendrix will be the group’s executive secretary.

— The term “irregular warfare” has been criticized for some time. In a 2007 monograph titled “The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Frank Hoffman wrote, “What we ironically and perhaps erroneously call ‘irregular’ warfare will become normal, but with greater velocity and lethality than ever before.” Foes will eschew rules and use unexpected, ruthless modes of attack, predicted Hoffman, a research fellow at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. In his recent Foreign Affairs essay, Gates cited Hoffman’s contention that hyrbid warfare merges “the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.”