Adapt and Achieve

“The world’s strategic environment has evolved toward one that is characterized more by Irregular Warfare activity rather than major nation state warfare.”  -- Admiral William H. McRaven


Detractors of counterinsurgency have, among others, three preeminent reservations. One, that policy aims ascribed to counterinsurgency are grandiose on paper and in practice; two, that those policy aims are of an indeterminate scope (“stability”; “rule of law”) coupled with an unnecessary commitment of American personnel for an indeterminate amount of time; and three, that counterinsurgency does not serve the broader national security objectives of America, and can in fact be achieved by other, more palatable means sans the unnecessarily large logistical tail.

America’s national security commitments around the globe can still be met in a measured and responsible way, while utilizing the materiel, resources and personnel we already have. It has been suggested that America can no longer meet its national security objectives unless it retains the ability to fight two major theater wars (with whom?), become embroiled in large counterinsurgencies (for what?) and establish “rule of law”; (to what end?) the world over, all while pursuing bottom-tier adversaries in Asia. I reject this premise.

As the United States right-sizes its force structure around the globe the Pentagon and the White House expect this nations Marine Expeditionary Units, special operations and national mission force to stand up; not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Latin America, Africa and innumerable “unlit spaces”. Even in an age of supposed fiscal austerity, a global campaign of this magnitude will still require general purpose forces; including the National Guard and reserves, our so-called “strategic reserve”.

America’s commitment to deter, disrupt and defeat the enemy will not change. Rather, what should change is the manner in which we expend our own resources and political capital.

The basic tenets of this approach are a political, operational and institutional commitment to:

— Countering violent extremism’s influence and expansion

— Developing and maintaining synthetic partner nation capabilities

— Augmenting human and area intelligence

For too long, the Pentagon and the Fourth Estate have allowed policymakers to conflate pie-in-the-sky idealism with American interests. They are not the same. Not every revolution is worthy of American intervention, nor does every potential failed state necessitate a costly, overbearing and ultimately counterproductive conventional American presence. As operational tempos increase, the consequences of not resourcing varied areas of responsibility increases. To preempt a strategic deficit, greater attention must be paid to the employment of specialized capabilities in the same breath as partner nation synthetic capabilities in order for them to be exploited.

The width and breadth of this campaign must be commensurate with operational realities, asymmetric in both its inception and its execution.

Capitalizing on Counter-Network Operations and  Building Sandcastles

Sandcastles can only be built on the beach, and no further. In order to combat resurgent and emergent threats, policymakers should invest in synthetic capabilities whenever possible, resulting in both minimal loss of American life and expenditure of political capital. Historically, a robust synthetic capability enhances the overall strategy. The political logic of asking general purpose and special operations forces to do more with less is detestable if understandable; the second- and third-order effects, untenable.

Back to The Future

In its simplest form, offshore balancing does not eschew the use of conventional military force to shape the global commons so much as it relies on allies and proxies to contain their dangerous neighbors — and do the fighting (and dying) in lieu of Americans. While morally questionable, one would be remiss if they did not see the advantages of partner nations countering the very extremists policymakers have pledged to defeat, with little to no loss of American lives.

The inevitable rebuttal by offshore balancing deniers is to point to an imagined strategic deficit and the realities of thrusting an all-volunteer force into an actual — rather than perceived — state of persistent warfare a la the Barbary Wars. The former is preposterous. The latter is a legitimate concern. There are some in the national security arena and academia who question America’s willingness to combat nation-states, their proxies and assorted non-state actors. This, too, is of legitimate concern. A pivot to a national security strategy reliant on tactics, techniques and procedures resulting in past American triumphs is preferable to the large-scale, manpower-intensive counterinsurgencies of the present.

Modern-day counterinsurgency — predicated on something colloquially referred to as “graduate-level warfare” — purports among other things that the only way to deter, disrupt and defeat extremism is to unnecessarily put hundreds of thousands of American servicemembers, their materiel and soccer balls in harms way for negligible, even non-existent returns. This would be lamentable, if not for the lofty rhetoric and faulty intellectual assertions articulated by some of the finest minds in foreign policy and national security circles.

A penchant for “new” doctrine and a culture that rewards risk-adversity coupled with overly restrictive rules of engagement in the face of asymmetric, emergent and conventional threats have led many to concede that victory is but a fleeting memory of years long past — and with it, America. This is a laughable premise, only because the plethora of assets a modern, joint force can bring to bear would deter even the most determined foe.

For too long, fear of shore- and ship-to-ship missile technology has laid at the heart of naval planners resistance to define any role in brownwater and littoral combat and has resulted in a Navy that has forgotten it’s there to fight, not meander thru the Mediterranean for a long string of port visits while delivering the occasional air strike. Air planners dislike utilizing naval assets due to the Air Force”s institutional bias. And the Army insists on more and more of an entrenched presence ashore vice a more balanced, expeditionary posture.

The only consistently forward-leaning and proactive branch isn’t –- it’s called the Marine Corps. Nations raise armies and navies to fight and win, not to stand-off at a twenty-mile-plus distance and eschew a tactical mindset in favor of local sensibilities and artificial operational constraints. Detractors of offshore balancing like to argue our nation is bereft of platforms and assets to wage an campaign close to shore, along the shore and ultimately on the shore. This is a falsehood.

The Navy maintains not one but four Riverine squadrons precisely for this application. The Marine Corps and, yes, the Army also have fleets on fleets of adaptable, agile craft that can take the fight to the enemy in the way that blue- and greenwater platforms cannot. The Army has so many ships sitting unused in the global war on terrorism it’s forced to mothball them at the Army amphibious base in Fort Story, Virginia.

Carriers and various amphibious platforms can be utilized as Afloat Forward Operating Bases, a proven while somewhat foreign concept to many outside observers. AFOBs have been employed in support of a Joint Special Operations Task Force innumerable times in Operation Enduring Freedom-Horn of Africa, - Philippines and - Caribbean and Central America. These can and have also been used in lieu of large, land-based forward operating bases peppered throughout the Middle East and greater Asia.

Dovetailing on these facts, it should be said that nothing is preventing the Air Force and Army from standing up forward detachments that are physically and administratively attached to these platforms. In the summer of 2007, a Joint Special Operations task Force supported by an aviation detachment from 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) embarked on the USS HARRY S TRUMAN for approximately one month. Amazingly, the world did not come to an end and doctrinal papers did not spontaneously combust. It worked. They worked in cohesion with the organic crew and embarked elements, and in turn we worked as a team — lethally so.

In that vein, embarking Joint Interagency Task Forces aboard carriers should be the next logical step. Additionally, barges can and have served as floating Contingency Operating Locations abroad, and the infrastructure exists in the private sector to buy or rent them as needed. Despite arguments to the contrary, it is fiscally sustainable to maintain a constellation of Cooperative Security Locations on the soil of both permissive and semi-permissive partner nations. It is the unnecessarily large, sprawling Forward Operating Bases and strategy they support that are fiscally unsustainable. Yemen, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Honduras are notable examples of existing Cooperative Security Locations.

False Choices

It has been said America must scale back our ambitions globally, due to a real or imagined age of fiscal austerity. While the perils of a purely direct action centric approach as a strategic substitute cannot and should not be enumerated in an unclassified forum, they are readily available to those with access to policymakers, legislators or the requisite clearance.

Alarmingly, some of this nations leading minds have advocated America acquiesce to both rising powers and the existential threat of violent extremism – primarily, but not exclusively, by radical Islamists — and instead attempt to “influence” events, instead of shaping them in accordance with American interests.

Still others portend that we must come to terms that victory will not always be achievable and America must adjust its strategic objectives accordingly, a commendable policy position that stands in stark contrast to the intellectual underpinnings of modern counterinsurgency arguments.

There are even those that would have us formulate doctrine and policy options around a policy of non-intervention — a policy predicated on the idea that we should choose to lose by choosing not to fight to win. Most disturbingly, it has been suggested that the global campaign to combat extremism and any nation-state that enables it — via proxies, preferred non-state actors, special technical operations, clandestine actions or other morally ambiguous means — should be discarded in favor of containment and a more nuanced, and therefore timid, approach.

While some of these assertions are more egregious than others, they all share a common theme. Save for one, all are predicated on the idea that America is somehow passé. That is, America should accept a corresponding decline in American influence and the ability to shape events while simultaneously scrapping its efforts to counter nations states, extremism and their ideology. It is a dangerous path, one fraught with danger and ambiguous logic, and should be avoided at all costs.

Seizing A New American Century

As we embark into the second decade of the 21st century, policymakers, academia, the Fourth Estate and citizenry alike should be aware that the old paradigms have given way to a new normal. America’s willingness to counter violent extremism and combat nation-states in a decisive and asymmetric capacity is a vital piece of the geostrategic puzzle. We can and must do whatever it takes to maintain hegemony on the global stage, by any means.

The only viable solution in an age of real or supposed fiscal austerity lies in a force complemented by a roster of receptive (and not so receptive) host nations and synthetic capabilities. Such a force would be horizontally and vertically integrated with the interagency. But most importantly, such a force would be led by innovative thinkers with innovative ideas that result in new and more innovative ways to deter any enemy, disrupt any sanctuary and defeat any aggressor.

Policymakers should adapt to operational realities and apply measured and consistent pressure on legislators and private industry to achieve the policy aims of their choosing. Anything less is unacceptable and not only creates a courage deficit, it leaves America three steps behind instead of two steps forward.

America can achieve its national security objectives and reestablish hegemony over the global commons in line with operational, fiscal and geopolitical realities. It requires bold and decisive momentum and the return to an emphasis on equal parts direct action, foreign internal defense, and irregular (and unconventional) warfare.

This is the way forward. This is what winning looks like.

Robert is a veteran of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM-AFGHANISTAN, -HORN OF AFRICA and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and has worked at the tactical, operational and strategic level with the Department of the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as contracting and consulting with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Department of State and the interagency intelligence community.

The great rush is on for oil and gas in East Africa. Several discoveries in the region boosted hopes that the region may be a new frontier for exploration. Northern Kenya remains the most significant, followed by gas finds in Tanzania. There are hopes that these discoveries will further boost economic growth in the region – a sentiment shared by private industry in Nigeria, where Shell has been financing and organizing a virtual army.

by Robert Caruso

Director Clapper and Secretary Panetta have had enough:

To ensure greater accountability and tracking of unauthorized disclosures, Secretary Panetta is directing a new “top down” approach as well.  The Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, will monitor all major, national level media reporting for unauthorized disclosures of defense department classified information.

Reuters is perturbed:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered senior Pentagon officials on Thursday to begin monitoring major U.S. news media for disclosures of classified information in an effort to stop the release of government secrets after a series of high-profile leaks.

The announcement came hours after Panetta and other senior defense officials appeared before a closed-door hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee to discuss recent disclosures of classified security information.

Marcy Wheeler ponders the futility of these initiatives — indeed, the utility:

But there does seem to be one problem with the plan to have Mike Vickers watch for any security breaches. Doesn’t he have a day job? Isn’t he supposed to be watching the Taliban and China and cyberattacks? Have we gotten so paranoid that one of our top intelligence people is going to spend his time watching journalists than watching our military enemies?

Short answer? No.

The impetus behind this latest wave of ‘reforms’ is not new. The Agency ran an Unauthorized Disclosure Analysis Center, shuttered in Fall 1991, that analyzed  Non-Disclosure Materials (NDMs) and Unauthorized Disclosure Material (UADM) and mitigated the damage they caused. Reporting or assertions to the contrary are inaccurate. The Defense Security Oversight and Assessment Program isn’t revolutionary, so much as it institutionalizes throughout the Department of Defense the role Air Force Office of Special Investigations special agents already play to great effect at innumerable national-level entities. 

The driving force behind these initiatives are various personalities within the Defense Intelligence Enterprise & Defense Security Enterprise, at the direction of the interagency Unauthorized Disclosure Working Group. It’s not responsible to enumerate who those personalities are, and frankly it doesn’t matter. After a series of methodical reviews, the DIE and DSE have determined existing operational security, information security, information assurance and military deception paradigms are insufficient.

In an official release, the Department of Defense furthers clarifies that one of their new initiatives will be…a retooled fusion cell:

It is the first body to bring the functions of security, counterintelligence, and information assurance together for decision-making and proponency of the security mission and for its workforce.

This is not a freedom-of-the-press-debilitating mechanism, either. It is a result of two things: one, the result of reviews conducted by interagency red cells, most notably elements of ELDER PRINCE; and two, the institutionalization of the aforementioned entities’ best practices. 

Being as this is the second decade of the 21st century, a departure from the stale and unimaginative Cold War-era ‘strategies’ is long overdue. Often, it is difficult even for professionals to differentiate de facto responsibility from de jour responsibility for programs, policies, and emergent security issues. The painfully archaic information and operational security practices of the past must give way to the more applicable approaches of present-day. This is best epitomized by the responsible security paradigm, which holds that most information traditionally considered classified can be declassified at the discretion of the cognizant authority in favor of focusing on the protection of operational-level planning, structures, communications and — most importantly — personnel.

It is not enough to articulate a desire to curb the flow of information to the press or unauthorized individuals; indeed, aside from the obvious futility of such endeavors, such statements stand in stark contrast to the democratic principles of this nation. The answer, then, becomes not one of preemption — a nonsensical proposition if there ever was one — but of mitigation.

Every solitary United States Government employee entrusted with classified information signs a -312 (pronounced thirty-one two). When bestowed with controlled access to special access required or alternative compensatory control measures compartments and silos, additional signatures are required. Every United States Government employee is more than cognizant of their responsibilities.

It is the responsibility of the security managers, special security representatives and special security officers to mitigate the release of classified information. To mitigate unauthorized disclosures, one must be proactive. To be proactive, one must constantly assess the environment. To properly assess the environment, one must constantly aggregate new and more devious practices to do so without running afoul of legal restrictions or policy directives. Therefore, to innovate, one must embody an adversarial mindset, because that is precisely the mentality of the adversary — or insider threat — you seek to foil.

This is a consummate example of what happens when an individual selfishly abdicates their responsibility to do all of those steps in concert. 

It takes a wolf to catch a wolf. A failure to adapt to the operational reality ultimately results in mission failure — not achievement. At present, the vast majority of the counterintelligence, military deception, information and operational security communities are populated by sheep — or worse, self-styled sheepdogs.

The press is not the enemy. Those entrusted with the safeguarding of classified information — and the mitigation of its inadvertent or unauthorized release — must understand the media cycle, its political dynamics, and the individuals who drive it. To be ignorant of the same is to abdicate the responsibilities and trust placed in them by the taxpayer and their cognizant authority. Clamping down and terrorizing the media is not the answer. Mitigation is the answer. The question, of course, is how the Department of Defense and the broader interagency intelligence community should go about it.

The status quo is unacceptable.

Assess, aggregate, adapt, achieve. It’s a simple concept — but is it too difficult to understand? That remains to be seen. 

Via Danger Room. Links are my own.

In a sense, McRaven is becoming more of a diplomat as Clinton becomes more of a warrior. Meeting in the middle, they’ve apparently chosen to be allies instead of rivals.

In that context, Clinton’s appearance at an otherwise minor military trade show is an important signal. McRaven is showing his officers that if he and America’s top diplomat can get along, then they can get along with their own State Department counterparts, as well.

An evolving vision of American warfare is counting on it.

While the committee is supportive of additional interagency coordination efforts, the committee expresses concern at the potential redundant costs associated with the establishment of interagency coordination centers within the National Capitol Region, associated infrastructure costs, information technology, and how these potentially duplicative centers may be rendering previous multi-million dollar investments such as USSOCOM’s Interagency Task Force redundant or obsolete. The committee expects these interagency initiatives to be resource-neutral. The committee further expects to be kept fully and currently informed of these interagency initiatives.

June 22, 2012

On Adversarial Mindsets and Syria

Adversaries cheat. We don’t. In academic institutions around the world, students understand that they will be expelled if they violate their college’s honor code or otherwise fail to play by the institutional rules. The dissonance between how our adversaries operate and how we teach our students puts our students at a distinct disadvantage when faced with real world adversaries who inevitably do not play by the rules. Breaking through the paradigm where students self censor their ways of thinking to a new paradigm that cultivates an effective adversary mindset is both necessary and possible.

— Gregory Conti and James Caroland

Thanks to the New York Times rather…imaginative interpretations of proper disclosure when it comes to covert actions, we the citizenry have been treated to a typically breathless headline: “CIA Said To Aid In Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition”.

How neat!

WASHINGTON — A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

[snip]

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

An inspired decision.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross already encapsulated why this wasn’t the brightest decision, barring some unforseen variable presenting itself in a real or imagined future that would either necessitate American involvement or advance American interests:

We should not base our foreign policy around heated reactions to tragedy: doing so is a recipe for error.

Second, I think it’s worth visiting reasons that it seems anti-interventionists often end up losing foreign policy debates–and on Syria, I put myself in the anti-interventionist camp. One reason is that anti-interventionists often fail to put forward competitive options, instead stopping with the case against military action. I agree with that case (at least in its conclusion, though I may differ on some of the details), but analysis should not end there. After all, the Syrian regime is perpetrating atrocity after atrocity on its own citizens, and we all have a natural human impulse, an admirable one, to want to stop massacres if we can. So can those who don’t favor military intervention propose, maybe even come to some rough agreement on, median solutions that can deal with humanitarian concerns without resorting to an air war? When the choice presented in these debates seems to be between military intervention and doing nothing, the choice of doing nothing often loses. While I don’t disagree with Trombly’s assertion that “the average American voter” probably “likes killing terrorists but is sick of war,” the relevant audience here is really foreign policy elites within the administration. They are the ones who must be persuaded not to go to war. Given that Mitt Romney is trying to out-hawk Obama on Syria, a new war in that theater may not be politically costly for Obama.

Read the rest of Daveed’s piece here. Dan Trombly’s opus that prompted it is here.

I believe very strongly in American exceptionalism. Of this, I am unashamed. However, I believe even more so in the basic courtesy of ensuring our collectors, paramilitary operations officers and general purpose/special operations forces know what they’re deploying into — before we commit them to any endeavor, no matter how noble or well-intentioned.

It is for the above-mentioned reasons I suggest we reassess our reasons for intervening in Syria. Instead of committing American manpower and materiel to be captured and killed ‘helping’ the Syrian populace, policymakers should strongly consider taking steps to confront the oft-dismissed but very real Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, their Qods Force assholes elements and MOIS.

How do I propose we do this? By prolonging the civil war. We draw in the Iranians. And then we kill them, one by one. By VBIED, and whatever else we choose to utilize. Properly motivated, I’m sure IARPA senior officers junior officers and enlisted at DARPA, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity or the Asymmetric Warfare Group can dream up an even better IRAM:

That way we can kill them even more efficiently. You know, like they did to us in Iraq.

So what is sending arms to an irregular force actually useful for? Certainly not ending a war quickly. But absolutely useful for prolonging a war. Campaigns to arm irregular or rebel groups are generally most effective when the objective is to engage the foe in a war of attrition. Arguments about creating an “equality of forces” or “leveling the playing field” are misleading and fundamentally misunderstand the political dynamics at play in Syria. The Free Syrian Army, despite its name, is not a nascent conventional force and has demonstrated very little ability to seize and defend territory on their own, the way that the Croatian Army had during the Bosnian Wars or the Confederacy had during the Civil War. Neither, really, were the Nicaraguan Contras, despite the presence of defectors from the Nicaraguan internal security forces, a military force sufficiently strong enough to hold territory within Nicaragua without U.S. support. Even with U.S. support, most Contra operations had to be run out of neighboring states such as Honduras.

There’s your counter-proposal. No ‘argument’ or ‘framing’ required. You want to intervene in Syria? Fine. Let’s intervene: to kill IRGC-QF and MOIS personnel.

We kill a lot of them on our terms, preferably with arms supplied by the Gulf states that we don’t spend a penny on. Ironically enough, the New York Times is more than helpful in this regard, since they saw fit to allude to just this kind of capability being built.

American officials and retired C.I.A. officials said the administration was also weighing additional assistance to rebels, like providing satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements. The administration is also considering whether to help the opposition set up a rudimentary intelligence service. But no decisions have been made on those measures or even more aggressive steps, like sending C.I.A. officers into Syria itself, they said.

Perish the thought! Who needs audacity when you’re content with risk adversity and mawkishness? 

Clearly, moves are already afoot to train and equip a synthetic force. Ostensibly, America would control (for a finite period of time) these synthetics and they would function as our proxies — literally and figuratively. However, the downside of this is that you can never be sure whether they will advance your interests or not.

This is, in my opinion, the conundrum we’re faced with when it comes to the Free Syrian Army. They’re fighting for freedom. Well, that’s all well and good but freedom doesn’t hold territory. Maybe they’re fighting to advance democratic principles, and maybe to reclaim territory. There is no American territory in Syria.

To expend American blood and treasure to help other people recapture population centers isn’t worth a single drop of American blood. To deal a blow to Iran however, on Syrian soil (and on our terms) is absolutely worth it. That said, careful consideration should be paid to the strategic framework that would guide such action. After all, it’s not just private security contractors and paramilitaries from the Emirates we’d have to think about — among some of the first people on the ground would be select men and women of the military and national intelligence agencies.

Hell, even the Air Force would be involved.

DAGRE [Deployed Air Ground Response Element] is an advanced training program that equips security forces personnel with the skill set to provide enhanced security for special operations forces.

“When our operators deploy, they can concentrate on the specific mission at hand and feel confident about who has their back regarding security and force protection,” said Colonel Clifford “Skip” Day, deputy director of AFSOC installations and mission support.

Airmen with the DAGRE qualification are trained to meet security and force protection demands of SOF air assets and personnel when deployed at austere airfields lacking appropriate security or in locations where there is none at all, Day said.

IRGC and MOIS have operated with impunity, before and after Iraq. They deserve to suffer some cruelty at our hands along with their favored client state Syria. Syria, who lifted nary a finger to stem the flow of arms and personnel across their ratlines emanating from their soil. 

The majority of foreign fighters have entered Iraq either by coming across the Syrian border, or flying into Iraq from Syria.

The official said intelligence had shown that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq in recent months had come into Iraq via airports in Syria after arriving there from their home countries.

Call it whatever you want. EAGER-series falls under Central Command’s bracket, but call it whatever you want. Just don’t call it JUST CAUSE (partly because it’s not and partly because we’ve already had one of those.)

In January 2002, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) proposed a concept of operations to disrupt terrorist operations in and around Yemen.  Central to this plan, CENTCOM proposed to strengthen Yemeni Special Forces capability for counter-terrorism operations and expand intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.  Yemeni Special Forces have been trained on counter-terrorism tactics and procedures and are currently receiving maritime counter-terrorism training.  The working relationship between the US andYemeni Government has greatly improved as a result of this training program.  

CENTCOM also established Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (JTF-HOA) as part of its Theater Counter-Terrorism Campaign.  In December 2002, JTF-HOA stood up while embarked on USS Mount Whitney.  JTF-HOA provides CENTCOM a regional counter-terrorism focus in East Africa and Yemen.  It exercises command and control of counter-terrorism operations for this area.  The JTF-HOA staff will remain embarked on USS Mount Whitney for 4 to 6 months until the infrastructure is in place ashore at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. 

Good thing that never came to fruition!

(Source: kelseyatherton)