Along the lines of "observe" I would say that one of the key contributions SOF can make is through area assessments, civil information management, and target audience analysis all of which contribute to the most important aspect of the human domain:  situational understanding - we have to move past situational awareness which can be provided by drones, and technical intelligence to situational understanding which allows us to understand the conditions and strategies which will allow us to devise policies and strategies and campaign plans to protect our interests.  And in some cases situational understanding may lead to an appropriate decision to not act.

Excerpts:

So given all that, what can special operators do in the Gray Zone?

“We are most valued-added when we can engage early ... and can get out and understand what’s happening in the areas and helpidentify options for our political leadership and other military leaders out there to help them address, prevent, deter actions from taking place out there,” Votel said. “What I think the Gray Zone offers to us, is the ability to get out there to shape, or detour, or influence things before they become catastrophes. That’s kind of the big idea, we want to get left of problems, and not just show up and try to deal with a bad situation.”

Though they don’t get the kind of headlines spurred by direct action missions like the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, one of Special Operations Forces’ main efforts is to observe, train and equip host nation forces in those Gray Zones.

Those kinds of training missions are taking place in Iraq, with the Iraqi Security Forces and Kurds, and have been set in motion for Kurds and Arabs in Syria.

But they also take place around the globe, Votel stressed.

​My thesis:

The future is characterized (not exclusively of course) by states and non-state actors conducting UW (revolution, resistance and insurgency (RRI)) and thus there is a requirement to conduct Counter-UW. SOF is organized, educated, trained, equipped and optimized for both​

​ ​

(but does not conduct them unilaterally or in a vacuum but as one element of the means in support of a joint campaign and national strategy)

​Special Warfare (including u

nconventional warfare

, counter-unconventional warfare and support to political warfare​)

 can provide a strategic capability to operate in this gap

​ (the gray zone between peace and war)​

.  To be effective, elements of the US military and Intelligence Community must continuously assess potential, nascent, and existing resistance organizations around the world on a day-to-day basis.  Assessments will contribute to understanding when USG interests and resistance objectives can be aligned and provide the intellectual foundation to determine if a UW campaign is warranted or if opponents’ UW campaigns should be countered

​.

​

​And a standing "PIR" for resistance (

​basic ​

information that should be sought on every deployment):

•Who is the resistance?

–Leaders, groups, former military, in or out of government, etc.

•What are the objectives of the resistance?

–Do they align with US and friends, partners, and allies?

•Where is it operating?

–From where is it getting support?

•When did it begin?

–When will it/did it commence operations?

•Why is there a resistance or the potential for resistance?

–What are the underlying causes/drivers?

•How will it turn out?

–E.g., what is the assessment of success or failure of the resistance?

•Most important  -  An expert recommendation: Should the US support or counter the resistance and if so how?

​

‘Gray Zone’ conflicts far more complex to combat, says Socom chief Votel

Army Gen. Joseph Votel calls the Islamic State “a non-state actor attempting to operate like a state.” TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO

By Howard Altman | Tribune Staff 
Published: November 28, 2015   |   Updated: November 28, 2015 at 09:51 PM

http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/gray-zone-conflicts-far-more-complex-to-combat-says-socom-chief-votel-20151128/

TAMPA — Between peace and all-out war exists the Gray Zone.

To Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, the Gray Zone is a familiar place of ambiguity. It’s a place where the Islamic State operates. A place where Russia has taken on Ukraine.

And it’s home to many other spots, hot, lukewarm or otherwise, around the globe.

“The Gray Zone,” said Votel, “really defines this area between ... for the most part healthy economic, political competition between states, and open warfare.”

It’s a place, he said, where “actors, sometimes state actors and sometimes non-state actors, act in a manner just below what would normally take us into normal open warfare.”

In September, Socom, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, issued a paper on Gray Zone challenges. The paper says that while traditional war might have been the dominant means of deadly conflict, Gray Zone challenges have now become the norm, and that countering foes like the former Soviet Union in many ways proved far less complex than taking on current adversaries.

Last week, Votel sat down to talk to The Tampa Tribune about his vision for Gray Zone conflicts, how the command he leads fits into that paradigm, and how commandos are ideally suited for a mental and physical space that challenges much of what we have come to know about the nature of conflict.

“It is certainly the most challenging environment that I have experienced in 35 years of military service,” Votel said.

It is an especially important topic, given that the Gray Zone is a space that Army Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and aviators, Navy SEALs and special warfare boat crews, Marine Raiders and Air Force special operators will be operating in for many years to come

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/gray-zone-conflicts-far-more-complex-to-combat-says-socom-chief-votel-20151128/

REBOOTING COUNTRY STUDIES by Anna Simons

Dr. Simons may indirectly make the case for a revitalized Special Operations Research Office (SORO) as we had at American University back in the 1950's and 1960's.  Not only did it produce the Assessing Revolution and Insurgent Strategies casebook (since updated in 2012 by USASOC and Johns Hopkins) it also produced country studies for the military.  With Dr. Simons advice such an office could provide a valuable capability for DOD and DOS by compiling and updating resources for study and not simply producing the traditional country studies.

I would also add to this as important as country studies and area studies are (especially the way that Dr Simons describes how they should be done) to pre-mission preparation, area assessment conducted by actual personnel on the ground is critically important to deep understanding of the country and the region.  

Please see the entire article on the War on the Rocks web site. http://warontherocks.com/2013/12/rebooting-country-studies/

V/R
Dave

REBOOTING COUNTRY STUDIES

Anna Simons

December 31, 2013 · in Commentary and Analysis

http://warontherocks.com/2013/12/rebooting-country-studies/

For all the talk about “big data,” what about deep understanding?  Surely in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan—and faced with other conflicts burbling all over the place—some enterprising office in the Department of Defense or Department of State is busy re-conceptualizing the nature of what constitutes a good country study for those deploying abroad in the 21st  century.  And surely that office is being run by individuals with ample experience both in  non-Western countries and with the U.S. military.  Right?

I ask because the field grade officers I know and teach at the Naval Postgraduate School need more than just data (facts), information (assemblages of facts), and knowledge (cumulative information).  Until the pendulum swings back and Congress proves willing to issue declarations of war in circumstances that permit no-holds-barred fighting, the military will continue to be asked to act with finesse.  Yet, one problem with finesse is that it requires more than just being able to populate databases with names, dates, and information about who’s connected to whom.  Data, information, and knowledge certainly matter.  But, what they can’t do—ever—is make what others do make sense.  They can’t explain how others perceive events, conditions, their predicament, or you.

Meanwhile, there are two ways to gain a sense of what makes others tick.  You can either acquire understanding experientially, which is sometimes hard to come by.  Alternatively, you can acquire understanding second-hand.  In a perfect world, both methods should be iterative.  Arguably, great drama—and television series, like The Wire—can help convey a “sense of” and “appreciation for.”  Maybe, too, someone will be able to convince me someday that simulations can likewise build understanding.  But, for now I want to extol books.

The kinds of books I have in mind are narratives, non-fiction accounts that tell a literal story (with a beginning, a middle, and an end)—books that are just long enough that they can’t be read in a single sitting, and books that can’t effectively be skimmed.  The kinds of books I have in mind impel the reader to want to come back to them for more.  They are also books that educate, in the sense that they rearrange their readers’ point(s) of view.

For years, I have contended that the best journalists do a better job than most of the rest of us at evoking the principles that underpin life in foreign places and foreign systems. Twenty years ago, David Remnick (Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire), Tom Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem), and Joseph Lelyveld (Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White) topped my list.  This wasn’t just because these reporters wrote fluidly about complicated situations, but because at some point during the 1970s and 1980s academics started to indulge in truly awful writing.  In fact, to earn tenure you were given little choice, but to learn to write tortured prose.

Consequently, I still prefer to assign journalists’ accounts, since at least then there’s a greater chance students will actually read them.  Current favorites include Andrew Rice’s The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget set in Uganda, Peter Godwin’s When the Crocodile Eats the Sun and The Fear, both set in Zimbabwe, and Douglas Rogers’ The Last Resort (also set in Zimbabwe).  What makes these works resonate is that they zoom in and out from past to present, and from micro to macro levels, which means they educate as well as inform.  They are also written in the first person and each does an excellent job of humanizing the otherwise incomprehensible.

But, I have also discovered that even when I come across what I consider to be the best single overviews of other countries, these books don’t always work for students.  For instance, Richard Cockett’s  Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African State  is probably the single most insightful recent book about both Sudans.  But, when I assigned it a couple of years ago, students were overwhelmed.  Despite all of Cockett’s skill as a correspondent, students came away convinced of the complexity, but feeling nothing for the place or the people.  No one in the book grabbed them, which meant they walked away with no “sticky” principles for how either of the two Sudans worked.  Thus, I didn’t dare assign the next single country book I liked, Daniel Branch’s Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2011. I worried that the very thing that most impressed me about Branch’s account would be the very thing to turn the students off; there would be too much that couldn’t be familiar to people who had never been to Kenya.  This brings me to Tamim Ansary.

Unlike Branch (a professor) and Cockett (a correspondent), Tamim Ansary is an author who, until 9/11, specialized in children’s books.  He is also half Afghan and half American and happened to grow up both in Afghanistan (until the age of 16) and in the U.S.  I came across West of Kabul, East of New York, Ansary’s first adult book, in the public library right after it was published in 2002. As soon as I read the first few chapters I knew: here was someone who could do a better job than I could at transmitting the very things I was trying to teach, whether about the strength of extended families or the significance of faith.  Even better, Ansary could do so in such a way that even students who had already served in Afghanistan put down his book wishing they had read it before they deployed.  A significant number also passed it on to their wives, just because.

During the ten years I assigned West of Kabul, it always had this same effect.  It opened eyes.  It gave even the most cynical officers a new appreciation for Afghans and for that country’s rich, but tormented history.  Of course, Ansary is a gifted writer.  But, even more important, he understands what most Americans have such a hard time understanding, which he is perfectly positioned to do since he is one of us.

(Continued at the link below)

http://warontherocks.com/2013/12/rebooting-country-studies/