ANALYSTS MULL STRATEGIC WAY AHEAD IN FUTURE U.S. CONFLICTS
The United States must maintain its ability to conduct clandestine military and diplomatic operations, enhance civilian military assistance, continue to deny safe havens to terrorist organizations while retaining its edge in conventional warfare, if it is to succeed in future conflicts, according to a defense analyst.
The current threat environment facing U.S. and allied forces is one that has become increasingly asymmetric in scope, driven by individuals or small groups organized under a loosely-knit extremist social movement, the analyst said this week.
While the threat of traditional force-on-force conflicts between recognized nation-states is still present, U.S.
military leaders must adapt their Cold War-era warfighting strategies to cope with this paradigm shift in modern warfare, the analyst said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright and U.S. Special Operations Command chief Adm. Eric Olson, among others, have advocated this “hybrid warfare” approach that blends conventional and irregular warfare capabilities to prepare for future conflicts.
While the Pentagon’s embrace of hybrid warfare strategies was most recently reflected in Gates’ budget recommendations for fiscal year 2010, the analyst laid out several courses of action that U.S. forces should undertake to succeed in future hybrid warfare campaigns.
First, the Pentagon must not abandon its development of conventional warfare capabilities, the analyst said. While irregular warfare-driven, the threat of conventional warfare “is not going away,” the analyst said. To that end, the Pentagon’s ongoing efforts to bolster its IW capabilities must continue to be hedged against a robust conventional warfare capability, the analyst said.
The analyst’s comments fall in line those made by Gates during this week’s unveiling of DOD’s FY-10 budget plan. (See related story.)
While that conventional warfare hedge is necessary, the analyst said that U.S. and allied forces must continue to drive “strategic disruption” operations against extremists. Strategic disruption operations, as explained, are carefully planned, often clandestine surgical strikes against specific individuals or small groups operating in denied or ungoverned regions.
These strategic disruption efforts are designed to engage the enemy at the lowest levels while reducing the possibility of collateral damage, the analyst said.
The most public example of these types of missions has been the use of unmanned aerial vehicles by U.S. forces to conduct airstrikes in Pakistan against targets linked to al Qaeda. Along with increased direct action strikes against specific targets, U.S. military leaders also must consider boosting its “strategic information warfare” capabilities.
Noting the advanced information dissemination and communications abilities of groups such as al Qaeda, U.S. and allied forces must find ways to disrupt the “enemy’s narrative,” according to the analyst.
Extremists groups have been known to exaggerate reports of civilian casualties and collateral damage inflicted by U.S. airstrikes in Pakistan across the Internet and other media outlets, the analyst said.
Along with strategic disruption operations and strategic information warfare, the Pentagon must also step up its efforts to deny safe havens to extremist organizations in either ungoverned regions or nations with weak central governments, the analyst said. Those areas can be closed, the analyst said, through a combination of strategic disruption and indirect civilian military assistance.
DOD policy chief Michèle Flournoy said last month that building civilian capacity will be one of the main thrusts of the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. The United States must institutionalize and better resource capabilities for stability operations, said Flournoy, noting a whole of government approach must complement military capabilities.
While outright diplomatic efforts via civilian capacity building and civilian-military cooperation are key to future U.S. military operations, the analyst noted that clandestine diplomacy will be as important -- or more important -- to securing the U.S. advantage in future wars.
Further, the analyst credited much of the turnaround in Iraq to non-official, face-to-face meetings between U.S. diplomats and local leaders in denied areas under the cover of darkness. These meetings, the analyst added, were integral in securing indigenous support for the al Anbar awakening, creation of the Sons of Iraq militias and support for the U.S. troop surge in 2006.
These recommendations were driven by the evolution of IW from networked terrorist insurgent groups operating under a paramilitary command and control structure to that of the “superindividual” capable of committing attacks with little support or guidance, a second analyst said this week.
Further, as al Qaeda becomes more marginalized in Southwest Asia and elsewhere, the group will likely morph from a commander-in-chief type role for coordinating and carrying out terrorist operations, to more of a “inciter-in-chief,” the first analyst said.
Over time, al Qaeda will evolve into more of a global social movement, prodding these “superindividuals” or smaller, splinter factions of the organization to commit acts of terrorism in the name of global jihad, this analyst added.
The difficulty is that while U.S. and allied forces have developed formidable capabilities to combat terrorist groups and networks, creating strategies to fight global social movements is much more challenging, the first analyst said.
And with the non-state actor threat now emerging at the individual level, the U.S. and partner nations will have to create a new battle plan to combat an evolved al Qaeda and other extremist groups who adopt similar strategies, the analyst added. -- Carlo Muñoz
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