The hostile states and state-like adversaries that challenge our nation seek to gain legitimacy and influence or control over relevant populations, and if we are to prevail we must prevent them from doing so and instead win the suppport of those populations for an alternative strategic narrative at least as compelling as our adversaries' narratives. The take away is that the violence is ultimately directed at relevant population group, not defeating the opposing military directly, and that is the difference between IW and conventional war. The world has changed since 1951. 45. T.E. Which tells us that cyber warfare is a relatively new. 64 books based on 27 votes: Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T.E. by Admin. coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, The Enduring Pillars of Successful Counterinsurgency. As a wise USMC 0-6 said recently, "IW, its been decided, now lets get on with it.". 913 Words 4 Pages. Insurgency. The best example of this is in the area of Foreign Internal Defense (FID) and the rebirth of counterinsurgency in the US military after the challenges of Iraq.  Little attention was paid at this time to existing FID doctrine.  Like unconventional warfare, FID is one of the ten special operations activities specified in Section 167 of Title 10 of the US Code.  What that has meant to many outside of SOF is that FID and UW are SOF exclusive activities. It is folly to argue that the IW JOC is wrong because it does not comply with 1951 Army doctrine. UW is not a mission for all threats, and not all threats are unconventional.  But such threats do exist and they should not be neglected, overlooked, or left only to SOF. Irregular warfare favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capacities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will. For example, Frank Hoffman has advanced the intriguing concept of hybrid warfare, first observed in the 2006 Lebanon War, in which adversaries blend conventional, irregular, disruptive, and catastrophic capabilities and apply them to achieve their strategic objectives. I learned long ago that you present COAs to the commander and he makes the call. ""They cite FM 31-20 (1951) as one source and as it -- correctly in my view -- that:

"'guerilla [sic] warfare is used loosely to describe all kinds of irregular warfare. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (Paperback) by. The antipathy of the occupied population toward their occupiers was a given. The CIA and SOF in general have learned (or re-learned, if we look back to the OSS in WWII and later in Vietnam and Laos, as well as programs such as the Civilian Irregular Defense Group or Operation White Star) to work together in what some of our senior leaders term “shared battle-space.”. This global war has brought to life a timeless tactic called irregular warfare (IW). That process, which went hand in hand with the growth of nation-states, came to a head in the second half of the seventeenth century. Since you already addressed my concerns about confusing dated doctrinal references with reality (I'm confident the wise authors of the earlier doctrines were as uncomfortable with their definitions, as we are with ours), I will address a couple of other areas. As it turns out, the pre-9/11 FID doctrine expressly stated that all services were to provide trained and ready forces to conduct FID in support of the GCCs.  Yet when the need arose the services chose to start from scratch due to a mistaken belief that FID was exclusively a SOF activity. As the authors probably know, there may be several relevant population groups that the competitors may want to influence, to include external actors. The DOD Instruction 3000.7 codifies Irregular Warfare as consisting of Counterinsurgency, Stability Operations, Foreign Internal Defense, Counterterrorism, and, importantly, Unconventional Warfare. All the options on the term and the definition were presented to the Senior Leadership and they decided. Because the conduct of UW is linked with a little known and poorly understood force, policymakers, strategists, and planners dismiss UW as a less relevant threat to the US, and fail to see it as a practical and sometimes appropriate offensive option. After 9/11, we identified a need to create a description for what to many appeared to be a new form of warfare – this became Irregular Warfare. Show More. War is war, but the strategy (not just the tactics) varies considerably between conventional and irregular warfare. Unconventional warfare is operations conducted by, with, or through irregular forces in support of a resistance movement, insurgency, or conventional military operations. Irregular Warfare Books Showing 1-50 of 121 Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Paperback) by. IW JOC 1.0 is just that. a. 1. The authors of the IW JOC freely admit that the components of IW are of ancient origin. The CIA would organize, train, equip the underground, so that piece of the puzzle was never written into unclassified Army doctrine and the strategic purpose of UW was downplayed because it was not within the purview of DOD. Seems to me there is adequate historical example of both; Russian and US for just a couple and I'd further note that US Special forces were originally created specifically to assist in the conduct of guerrilla warfare as cited in items c. and d. Thus, I suggest their definition itself is 'lacking in academic rigor.' However, tactical and operational cooperation and collaboration is not enough.  Often, strategic-level analysis and decision making that is critical for UW is stifled because of the widely held belief that UW belongs solely to SOF, and in particular to SF. Irregular warfare is the oldest form of warfare, and it is a phenomenon that goes by many names, including tribal warfare, primitive warfare, "little wars," and low-intensity conflict. I found it interesting that the authors did not address recent IW historical examples, such as Iraq where we initially made little to no progress when our effort was focused on the so called overt guerrilla elements. The world since 2001 is a very different place. I suggest that the IW currently being waged in Afghanistan is in fact at the operational level as it effectively occupies the whole of NATO and US effort there. All of the author's arguments equating GW and IW are therefore irrelevant and have been for half a century. What we need are policy makers, strategists and planners who have a deep understanding of and an appreciation for unconventional warfare.  We need UW to be taught in professional military education institutions to non-SOF personnel.  We need to ensure that members of the interagency and the joint military have a thorough understanding of threats conducting UW and how to counter them.  We need academic institutions and think tanks to recognize, study, write about and advocate and education for UW.  Perhaps the historic Special Operations Research Office at American University, which was disbanded in the 1960s, should be re-established. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Irregular warfare with China, Russia: Ready or not, it's coming — if not already here, Counterinsurgency in the Philippines: An Inside Look at Partner Warfare, People's Liberation Army Operational Concepts, A NATO Urban Delaying Strategy for the Baltic States. September 11, 2001 the Global War on Terror began. Our problem is with the nature of special operations itself.  Until recent years in the post 9-11 world, SOF has been associated with secrecy and compartmentalization.  These are critically important requirements for special operations. David S. Maxwell is the Associate Director of the Center for Security Studies and the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. “US Army Special Forces is the only force in the Department of Defense organized, trained, equipped, educated, and optimized for the conduct of unconventional warfare.”. COIN. 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