My latest on UW.  You can read the entire article on War on the Rocks at the links below)
V/R
Dave

UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE DOES NOT BELONG TO SPECIAL FORCES

August 12, 2013 · by David Maxwell · in Commentary and Analysis

http://warontherocks.com/2013/08/unconventional-warfare-does-not-belong-to-special-forces/

“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.”

I have written those words many times in the past thirty plus years of my military service.  With those words I have implied that the unconventional warfare mission belongs solely to US Army Special Forces (SF).  I was wrong.

I began to realize this in 2009, when I participated in a working group established by the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School to re-examine the definition of unconventional warfare.  The revised definition that resulted was a compromise that did not satisfy everyone in the Special Forces (SF) or wider Special Operations Forces (SOF) community. Nonetheless, the definition currently resides in Joint Publication 1-02 the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms and is now the foundation for US military unconventional warfare doctrine:  Unconventional warfare consists of“activities to enable a resistance or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power through and with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area.”

The working group sought to develop a more universal definition, one that would describe the intent and methodology of an unconventional warfare (UW) strategy that would not be exclusive to the United States but rather, would also be able to describe UW from an enemy point of view (As I have argued recently, we should not be concerned with Al Qaeda and terrorism in the way that we have been since 9-11; instead we must focus on the unconventional warfare strategy that al-Qaeda is executing against the United States, the West and selected nations in the Middle East).

It is clear that UW cannot “belong” solely to one military force, nor even to the military alone.  It is a strategic mission that is an offensive option for policymakers and strategists.  In the United States the UW mission is in fact an interagency one at the strategic level that can be shared between the Central Intelligence Agency and the military.  Nowhere has this been better exemplified than in Afghanistan in 2001, where the mission combined the resources, human contacts, and authorities of the CIA with the capability, capacity, and expertise of the SF, to mount a very effective UW campaign. 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.”

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.  SF is organized, trained, equipped, educated and optimized for a particular aspect of UW: to work “through and with an underground, auxiliary and guerrilla force in a denied area.”   Beyond that, the decision, the strategy, and the campaign plan to enable a resistance or guerrilla force to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power is made at the strategic level at what we once called the National Command Authority – this is outside the sole purview of SOF and SF.

Due to the prevailing wisdom that SF owns the UW mission, many senior decision makers, policymakers and strategists both inside the Beltway and at the Geographic Combatant Commands (GCC) rarely consider the strategic option of conducting UW.  Furthermore, as evidenced by our myopic view of terrorism, we do not fully comprehend that our enemies are, in fact, conducting unconventional warfare. As a result, we do not consider potential strategies to conduct “counter-unconventional warfare,” instead focusing solely on the means and methods of counterterrorism.

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.  But the fact remains that, notwithstanding the notoriety of  highly visible missions such as the Bin Laden raid, years of paying little attention to SOF has led to a situation in which SOF activities and missions are not well understood, accepted, or sought after.

(Continued at the link below)

http://warontherocks.com/2013/08/unconventional-warfare-does-not-belong-to-special-forces/

Village Stability Operations: An Historical Perspective from Vietnam to Afghanistan

It is always good to look at history.

Since this paper relies heavily on COL Kelly's Vietnam Studies monograph on US Special Forces in Vietnam: 1961-1971 here is the link to it.  This is a very useful source for those who want to look at the CODG program as well as some of the early organizations of Special Forces (A Team, B Team, and C Team): 

http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/90-23/90-23C.htm

V/R
Dave

Village Stability Operations: An Historical Perspective from Vietnam to Afghanistan

by Mark L. Brown, Jr.

Journal Article | March 28, 2013 - 2:30am

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/village-stability-operations-an-historical-perspective-from-vietnam-to-afghanistan

"The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking." 

                                                                               - Karl von Clausewitz

Over the course of America’s 235 year history she has declared major war five times and has been involved in over 180 small conflicts (Boot 2002). The United States has experienced every facet of warfare in almost every geographical setting on earth (Boot 2002). Extensive archives of military strategy which could undeniably provide potential solutions for the strategic problems we are facing in warfare today are as easily accessible as a Google search. However it took the United States over eight years of fighting in the austere terrain of Afghanistan before the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A) finally proposed the strategy of the Civilian Defense Initiative (CDI). Within less than a year’s time this strategy was renamed and finally rested with the title of Village Stability Operations (VSO). Today Village Stability Operations is the premier strategy touted by the current US administration and is considered by many the strategy for success in Afghanistan.

When first tasked with implementing what is now called the Village Stability Operations (VSO) strategy in April 2009, a proposal of what the strategy should roughly resemble was forwarded through the 7th Special Forces Group’s chain of command to Operational Detachment Alpha 7224 (ODA or “the Detachment”). The briefing that was included in the mission description was established by input from Dr. Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation and Brigadier General Reeder, the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command Afghanistan Commander (CFSOCC-A). The proposal depicted the typical counter insurgency (COIN) mission under the overarching mission in Afghanistan of Foreign Internal Defense Mission (FID). Special Forces conduct both of these mission sets on a routine basis. However the VSO mission differed from the usual mission of train, interdict, and disrupt which the Special Forces and conventional counterparts had been waging since the inception of the war in Afghanistan. The ODA realized that the VSO strategy proposal was essentially a combination of COIN and FID, and was similar to tenants that are taught in the Robin Sage portion of the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC).

When the Detachment started its initial planning on how to operationalize VSO, it conducted a historical study of some of the proposed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and came to realize that some of the key components harkened back to the Special Forces’ strategy of Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) in Vietnam. CIDG was one of Special Forces’ greatest success stories in American history and by far the greatest example of how to fight unconventional warfare with an economy of force approach and modest foot print. Amongst all the different theories, schematics, and pillars of counter insurgency, the CIDG experience was American made and executed with precision.

During the period from 1954 to 1971, the longest COIN/FID mission ever conducted by an American force was directly implemented by the US Special Forces (USSF) in South Vietnam. In the initial stages of American USSF involvement in Vietnam, President Kennedy emphasized to new Army lieutenants graduating from West Point “[t]hat this is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin - war by guerillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him” (Arnold 2009).  President John F. Kennedy stated that pure military skill is no longer enough to address the current defense challenges that our nation is facing (Olson 2011). He further elaborated that a full spectrum of military, paramilitary and civil action must be blended to produce success (Olson 2011). President Kennedy’s proposal of a whole new military strategy was considered to be ahead of his time by many. He displayed an innate ability to recognize the future of modern irregular warfare and identify it as one of the greatest existential threats to the United States beyond that of high intensity conflict. Many who have done the thorough analysis would agree that President Kennedy rather than a visionary could have been a tremendous steward of US military small war history.

Various Special Forces elements operated under the auspices of military advisory groups in South Vietnam as early as July 1954, just three months after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu (Kelly 1973). From 1954 until 1957 there were roughly 342 trainers in country, advising, training, and assisting the fledgling South Vietnamese Army (Kelly 1973). By 1957, the 1st Special Forces Group had trained over 58 men of the South Vietnamese Army which formed the trainers of the elite Vietnamese Special Forces units (Kelly 1973). With the exponential growth of the Viet Cong insurgency, the counter insurgency strategy drastically needed to be expanded and it came to be known as the Civilian Irregular Defense Group (Kelly 1973).

The Civilian Irregular Defense Group took place in rural villages where Special Forces would set up area development centers and focus on local defense and civic action. Primarily the CIDG strategy resulted in an ODA occupying a village after they made their initial assessment which encompassed tribal elder wishes with rapport building. That ODA would be responsible for establishing a village security force comprised of roughly 10-12 men per village depending on populace size and enemy activity in the area (Kelly 1973). A larger village within that same province would have a more fortified position with the construct of a Mobile Strike Force (MIKE Force) and civil action platform. The MIKE force was essentially a 35 man element or larger of a more highly trained indigenous force (Kelly 1973). The MIKE force’s main mission was to provide a counter offensive strike capability to defend villages, local defense forces, and the ODAs in them. The MIKE force was trained, advised and led by an ODA.

(Continued at the link below)

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/village-stability-operations-an-historical-perspective-from-vietnam-to-afghanistan

ARMY'S SPECIAL FORCES TRY TO REBUILD IMAGE BY LINKING BRAINS AND BRAWN

I was doing some research and I came across this 1982 New York Times article.  A very interesting perspective and some "deja vu all over again."

V/R

Dave

ARMY'S SPECIAL FORCES TRY TO REBUILD IMAGE BY LINKING BRAINS AND BRAWN

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/21/us/army-s-special-forces-try-to-rebuild-image-by-linking-brains-and-brawn.html?pagewanted=all

By RICHARD HALLORAN, Special to the New York Times

Published: August 21, 1982

FORT BRAGG, N.C.— The Army's ability to fight guerrillas is being rebuilt at the Special Forces center on Smoke Bomb Hill here after an increase in insurgency and terrorism in Asia, Africa and especially Latin America.

Twenty years ago, President Kennedy made respectable what the military calls counterinsurgency, a mixture of political and military tactics to combat guerrillas flitting through the night to strike where least expected.

But a decade of struggle with meager success in the jungles of Vietnam gave counterinsurgency a bad name, and the Army's ability to do battle with insurgents nearly disappeared in the late 1970's.

Today the Special Forces, better known as Green Berets, are rebuilding with an emphasis on training foreign armies to cope with insurgents that threaten their nations. Although the Green Berets are capable of fighting, their primary responsibility is to devise strategies for other governments on how to defeat insurgents.

''We have a very viable mission today,'' said Brig. Gen. Joseph C. Lutz, the commanding officer here. ''We kind of feel we're on the upswing.'' Unit on the Upswing

That upswing is supported by the Reagan Administration, where the policy on unconventional warfare is laid out in the classified fiveyear plan called Defense Guidance. The document says, ''We must revitalize and enhance special operations forces to project United States power where the use of conventional forces would be premature, inappropriate, or infeasible.''

The Special Forces are made up of both experienced leaders and young, perceptive students of unconventional war. A Special Forces research unit has delved into the lessons of Vietnam and other insurgencies of the last 40 years to distill their causes, strategy and tactics and to devise basic principles for fighting them.

In the field, the Green Berets have gained fresh experience by training a battalion of Salvadorans here, a battalion of Liberians in their own country and other foreign armies as members of teams that teach the use of American weapons and equipment.

But that may be as far as their ability goes at this time. Whether the United States itself could mount a serious and effective counterinsurgency mission in, say, El Salvador, is open to question, according to military planners in Washington. 

''Too Much Macho''

The Green Berets are authorized to have 8,600 soldiers but are shy of officers and experienced sergeants. Also, many officers here said, they suffer from a poor image remaining from Vietnam. ''We're seen as either snake-eaters or mafia in uniform,'' said one officer. ''We've had too much macho.''

Moreover, according to officers in Washington, the Army emphasizes preparation for a massed land war in Europe and considers counterinsurgency out of the mainstream. Army officers normally receive little instruction in unconventional operations, and regular Army units get little training in the dispersed, small-unit tactics for fighting guerrillas.

Political constraints may be greater than military weaknesses. President Reagan and Congress may be reluctant to deploy the Green Berets in any sizable force for fear the move will be considered a prelude to the commitment of regular divisions, as in Vietnam, according to senior officers in Washington.

At bottom, Americans may not have the patience for fighting a guerrilla war. Military strategists from Sun Tzu in China, 2,500 years ago, to Vo Nguyen Giap in Vietnam in this century have proclaimed that insurgencies will almost always be protracted before they are successful. 

No 'Stomach for Long Wars'

''But Americans like neat, quick solutions and don't have much stomach for long, drawn-out wars,'' said an officer here. Douglas S. Blaufarb, a specialist in guerrilla war who is retired from the Central Intelligence Agency, may have put it best in his book ''The Counterinsurgency Era'' when he said that effective counterinsurgency ''is a complex and difficult manuever for which the United States has shown no talent.''

Even so, the Reagan Administration has begun to revive the Army's ability in counterinsurgency. Administration officials in Washington said that the Special Forces would be enlarged in the next few years, although by how much and in what units has not been decided. They said that more money would be spent on sophisticated but compact communications equipment, on air transport for infiltration, and especially on training, not only here but with similar units in the Navy and Air Force.

The Green Berets are also working on their image. ''One of my goals is to improve our image by our behavior,'' said General Lutz, a muscular, articulate man with a master's degree in human relations. ''We are demonstrating to the Army and the other services that we are, in fact, mature professional soldiers.'' 

Tactics

Maj. Thomas J. Kuster Jr. of the Bronx speaks fluent Spanish, has served with Special Forces in Panama and can quote from such insurgent strategists as the famous Ernesto (Che) Guevara of Cuba and the little-known Carlos Marighella of Brazil.

Major Kuster is among a dozen specialists inhabiting small offices on the sixth floor of the Institute for Military Assistance here, where they have scrutinized the guerrilla operations of the Vietcong of Vietnam, the Maquis of France in World War II, the Irgun in Israel, the Hukbakhalahaps of the Philippines, the Chinese in Malaysia, Fidel Castro in Cuba and guerrillas he has backed elsewhere in Latin America, and the ''wars of national liberation'' supported by the Soviet Union in Africa.

At their disposal is a flow of intelligence reports, analyses written by civilian specialists on guerrilla warfare and a library stocked with treatises on insurgency. Ho Chi Minh's thoughts are expressed in the book ''On Revolution'' and Che Guevara's in his ''Episodes of the Revolutionary War.''

From those sources, the analysts in camouflaged jungle uniforms have concluded that in countering an insurgency strategy and tactics must be fitted to the circumstances. ''There is no immediate, automatic response where you just plug in and go,'' Major Kuster said. 

Will of the Government

Before the United States offers to help counter an insurgency, General Lutz said, it is vital to determine the will of the government under attack. ''If that country doesn't have the will and wherewithal to meet the insurgency,'' he said, ''the United States cannot do it.''

Close behind that, Major Kuster said, is the need to catch the insurgency as early as possible. Then the insurgency must been seen in all of its political, economic, social and military parts. General Lutz quoted Mao Tse Tung: ''You must take care of the people.'' Major Kuster added: ''We just can't say, 'That man has military problems so he needs military help.' ''

To assess an insurgency and devise a counter, the Green Berets have adapted a five-phase scheme worked out by Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation in California, an authority on terrorism and insurgency. Unless the insurgency is stopped at one stage, this plan holds, it moves on to another and can then be beaten only with a greater, most costly effort.

In the first phase, insurgents often seek publicity, for example, by blowing up power stations or assassinating politicians. Stopping that is primarily a job for the police, but political aims of the insurgents must be battled with psychological and civic programs. 

Road Checks and Curfews

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/21/us/army-s-special-forces-try-to-rebuild-image-by-linking-brains-and-brawn.html?pagewanted=all

Why Syria’s Islamists Are Gaining

Quote:

“The people who believe in a strict Islam will do anything, fight anybody, do anything for Islam,” a barber who recently reopened his shop told me. “They are like the U.S. Special Forces. They like death more than life.”

Interesting quote from the barber.  But I would put fighting for life or death the way the Korean National hero Admiral Yi Sun-shin puts it  “The soldier who fights to death never dies, but the soldier who fights for existence never truly exists.”

February 14, 2013

Why Syria’s Islamists Are Gaining

By J. MALCOLM GARCIA

ALEPPO, Syria

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/opinion/why-syrias-islamists-are-gaining-support.html?ref=opinion&_r=0&pagewanted=print

A YOUNG fighter for the Free Syrian Army sat at a checkpoint on a couch taken from an abandoned house. He cradled his Kalashnikov and waited on the empty street for a car to inspect, or a pedestrian to pat down. If only the future of Syria would reveal itself to him as easily.

The rebels in the Free Syrian Army don’t doubt that they will drive President Bashar al-Assad from power — eventually — but they have no idea what will happen afterward: Democracy? An Islamic republic? An Islamic dictatorship? The fighters I met on a recent visit here were unable to articulate any long-term political vision.

While the young rebel sat at his checkpoint, and while Americans continue to debate whether to intervene in Syria or just look the other way, Islamist militants are exploiting the uncertainty here. They have a clear mission: imposing an Islamist state in place of Mr. Assad.

“The people who believe in a strict Islam will do anything, fight anybody, do anything for Islam,” a barber who recently reopened his shop told me. “They are like the U.S. Special Forces. They like death more than life.”

The grass-roots supporters of the Islamists whom I spoke with were a mixture of devout fundamentalist Muslims, returning merchants struggling to make ends meet, parents of dead fighters for the Free Syrian Army, and some of the fighters themselves.

They insisted that they wanted only a “pure” Islam, not a Taliban-style government, to replace the Assad family’s regime, which has ruled Syria since 1971. But they offered examples of purity that sounded Talibanesque: Women must cover their entire bodies. Everyone must pray five times a day. Dancing should be prohibited. Differing interpretations of Islam would be tolerated, they say, as long as those beliefs remained “a secret” — a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/opinion/why-syrias-islamists-are-gaining-support.html?ref=opinion&_r=0&pagewanted=print