A view of Hybrid Warfare from Finland.  The 11 page paper with some interesting graphics can be downloaded at this link: http://www.gcsp.ch/download/4612/106908

Below the summary is a blog post from the authors that provides an earlier summary of their paper.  One of the authors, Pasi Eronen, is a graduate of our Security Studies Program.

HOW ARE SOCIETIES DEFENDED AGAINST HYBRID THREATS?

Strategic Security Analysis

Strategic Security Analysis - 2015 n°9

Author(s):

• Mr Aapo Cederberg
• Mr Pasi Eronen

Release Date:

September 2015

Download publication

Key Points

• Hybrid warfare intentionally blurs the distinction between the times of peace and war making it hard for the targeted countries to devise policy responses in a proper and timely manner.
• The multi-pronged hybrid threat demands that defence planners engage all parts of society in defensive efforts. Intergovernmental or interagency efforts are not enough anymore.
• The comprehensive defence approach requires a patient build-up of national capabilities. In the short term, shortcomings can be overcome by utilising the capabilities and capacity-building efforts of one’s allies.

Wake up, West! The Era of Hybrid Warfare Is Upon Us

Aapo Cederberg and Pasi Eronen

https://www.overtaction.org/2015/08/wake-up-west-the-era-of-hybrid-warfare-is-upon-us/

 ON AUGUST 25 |  IN EUROPE, FOREIGN POLICY, RUSSIA, WAR OF IDEAS

Times have changed. We in the West—especially in Europe—should know by now that we’ve left behind us an era when wars took place in some remote foreign location, waged by professionals with American accents utilizing high-tech weapons systems in an apparently surgical manner with a limited number of casualties.

This kind of war allowed Western civilians to be seduced by an idea of perpetual peace, briefly disturbed by occasional acts of terrorism. We could stay detached from the complexities of power struggles taking place in the international arena. Similarly, this state allowed many Western militaries to resemble more of an international policing force than a solid fighting machine prepared for national and alliance defense.

Europe has now entered an era of hybrid warfare that will force us all, civilians and military alike, to participate. The events in Ukraine—first in Crimea and then in the eastern part of the country—are still currently unfolding. It’s important for the West to understand hybrid warfare is not limited to Ukraine. Russia is already waging hybrid warfare throughout the West.

We have been challenged on several fronts, which means that the time of perpetual peace is over. It’s time to wake up to the way the world is.

What is Hybrid Warfare?

These instruments, such as cyber attacks, economic blackmail, information warfare, and exploitation of ethnic divisions, target various parts of society. Targets reside wherever there are major societal vulnerabilities and greatest asymmetry between target’s weaknesses and own strengths are found.

The use of violence is by no means necessary—or even desired. The political end state should be preferably reached without reaching the threshold of war, which would allow an opponent to legally use force. This would make the conflict much more expensive, as well as draw unwanted international attention.

This is why hybrid warfare presents a great challenge to Western countries. The whole-of-society targeting makes the hybrid threat even more difficult to fight, as our siloed defense mechanisms do not work particularly well when the adversary strikes at soft targets throughout society.

Russia Is Already in the Game

Our old adversary is already mastering this new type of warfare. The Russian toolkit contains a wide variety of instruments that can be applied against a target. The recent uses of those instruments indicate the extent of the challenge the West now faces.

Russians already see themselves being in conflict with us, which is why they have deployed various instruments from their toolkit against the West. All these serve Moscow’s political goals.

As we have witnessed, Russia conducts information warfare activities in an industrial manner. Ethnic Russians residing outside ‘Mother Russia’ are taken advantage of in justifying diplomatic bullying, and military forces are used tointimidate and threaten both neighboring countries and NATO members farther away. Furthermore, Russia exploits energy issues—both as a tool for blackmail and to build new dependencies for later use.

Despite Russia’s WTO membership, trade is applied as a weapon for example by limiting imports from the West and by threatening to deny exports critical to trade partner’s industries. Other economic links are taken advantage of, such as using sovereign debt as pressurizing means. Financial means are used not only to lobby, but given out as loans tobuy political influence, financing NGOs and popular movements that can help reaching Kremlin’s goals. Moreover, Russian individuals and companies are buying stakes in Western critical infrastructure and key resources, investing inland plots located next to critical military installations.

Russia has also engaged in lawfare, utilizing legal agreements and frameworks, to serve its goals. Kremlin is also amajor cyberpower, as the Pentagon recently noted. Members of German parliament, and hundreds of private sector companies have been subjected to sophisticated cyber attacks. Most worrisome, nuclear threats have been brought back to the table to test NATO’s unity and determination.

This all leads to an unsettling conclusion that Russia has already mobilized and deployed its hybrid instruments against the West.

What Can The West Do To Defend Against Hybrid Warfare?

While we might not be fully aware of Moscow’s intentions behind the use of its hybrid capabilities, we are not powerless to face this challenge. The West can build defensive mechanisms to shield our societies and alliances while establishing deterrence to ensure any aggressor will pay a high price.

Furthermore, updating and strengthening our policies can help us deny Russia’s access to its hybrid warfare instruments by both limiting the number of the instruments available and supportive allies. Lastly, certain steps can be taken to erode Russia’s current ability to field its existing hybrid capabilities.

There have already been a number of individual and collective actions that have some success in countering Russia’s efforts. Regarding information warfare, in addition to wide recognition of Russian information warfare activities throughout the Western media, NATO established in 2014 a Center of Excellence in Strategic Communications to Riga, Latvia. There are also other geographically well-targeted initiatives, such as offering grants for training journalists in countering the Russian narrative in Baltics.

In the area of energy security, the EU has taken concrete steps to blunt the efficacy of Russian energy blackmail against European countries. These steps have been supported by US diplomatic efforts.

In addition to defensive actions, there has been several military exercises conducted with allies and partners, andforward deployment of equipment shows support deterrence and resolve. The most proactive instruments the West has taken into use are the economic sanctions that deny certain actors Western capital and technology, thus eroding the long-term outlook both for the Russian economy and the unity of the ruling clique.

What More Can Be Done?

While the existing actions serve as a good start, there are further steps to counter Russia’s hybrid warfare activities:

In the short-term:

• Any political, military or economic benefits that Russia receives from their illegal annexations and establishment of proxy powers should continue to be denied, while Western powers should continue to increase costs for this behavior. One form of cost imposing is continued and tightened sanctions.
• More attention should be paid to identify both national and international societal vulnerabilities that can be targeted and exploited by hybrid operations. These vulnerabilities can be patched with whole-of-society approaches, such asFinnish “comprehensive security” concept. Identifying vulnerabilities helps also preparing relevant threat scenarios that support defense planning.
• As it has been already requested and despite of their known shortcomings, additional intelligence assets should be dedicated to Russia. This is necessary in order to gain more accurate situational awareness, and to better understand Russian decisionmaking system and the actions it takes. This would also help to see through the Kremlin’s diversion-and-deception tactics, thus partly removing the element of surprise. Lastly, intelligence from Russia will help the West determine whether our own response to Russian hybrid operations has been efficient.
• Counterintelligence efforts should receive further resources to prevent any further penetration of the Western societies by Russian intelligence agencies, and to begin to expose and roll back their existing networks in political, cultural, economic, and civil society circles.
• Russian propaganda and information warfare efforts needs to be exposed without at the same giving any credibility to their narrative or attempts to mess the information space. Instead of engaging in counter-propaganda, Western societies need to continue to rely to the power of free media and private organizations that reside outside governmental command structure. At the same time, it is necessary to ensure Russians will continue to have an unobstructed access to trustworthy information sources on various media platforms.
• There should be tighter cybersecurity collaboration between the United States and EU. Collaboration should include information and technology exchanges while also sharing exercises between militaries and civilian organizations. Private sector entities should also be involved.
• Furthermore, Russia should be denied from any Western developed dual-use cyber technologies. Cybercrime originating from Russia should be actively fought, as they supply some of Moscow’s hybrid capabilities.

In the medium-term:

• In order for the defensive efforts to be effective against hybrid threats and operations, they need to be well coordinated both on national and international levels. For the coordination purposes there needs to be administrative and communication structures established that help break the siloes, support sharing situational awareness, and enable preparations and defensive actions.
• Existing sanctions need to be enforced closely and evasion mechanisms have to be identified and plugged. Contamination zones should be established to ensure certain entities don’t evade sanctions.
• In addition to blocking access to Western capital, safe havens for illicit funds should be denied, and flows of illicit funds should be better blocked, as they serve the Moscow’s overall interests.
• Greater transparency should be required from Western politicians, businesses, and civil society organizations to combat toxic economic connections. Toxic economic connections help Moscow penetrate our decisionmaking systems and societies, corrupt them, and use them for their purposes.
• More US military equipment and personnel should be deployed to Europe. Force levels should be similar to those during the cold war years than those that were considered necessary during the time of ‘peace dividend’. European allies should also be more willing to bear a part of the burden and increase their military expenditure levels towards more sustainable levels.
• Russia’s nuclear rhetoric need to be countered by clearly stating that any use of nuclear weapons against any alliance members would lead to a nuclear response by the United States. Further reassurance to allies most threatened by Russian nuclear rhetoric could be offered by re-establishing the missile shield initiative in collaboration with local partners in Europe.

In the long-term:

• At the grand strategic level, there should be extra efforts taken to ensure that the transatlantic bonds are further strengthened through free trade agreements that would also have positive geostrategic implications.
• In a similar geostrategic move, China’s will to stand by Russia and collaborate with it in a creation of geostrategic alternative reality should be more rigorously tested.

Conclusion

While we focused upon Russia’s hybrid operations and policy options countering them, it would be a mistake to state only Russia is capable of engaging in hybrid warfare. It is not far-fetched to see several analogies between those instruments that Russia has been utilizing and those that China has in its own toolbox.

While strong, developed, autocratic nations may have an edge on the offensive side of hybrid operations, all countries have an opportunity to organize their defenses against hybrid threats. It is important to build a more resilient society. This should not be viewed only as an extra burden to already economically-struggling Western societies, but is should be seen as an opportunity to get one’s house in order.

Why? Because the structures that allow a society to respond in an agile manner to hybrid threats can better cope with the complex underlying frictions that make our modern societies fragile. A more resilient society does not equate to a militarized or fear-driven society, but rather a more functional one, as decisionmaking processes becomes more transparent and inclusive.

Putting one’s own house in order and improving defenses is only one side of the story. The other side is taking a more active role in the game. This requires assets in place to deter the adversary, actions taken to deny adversary’s access to their own and allies’ instruments, and finally using strengths to erode adversary’s ability to deploy hybrid operations.

Yet we must be wary of going too far. The West must counteract Russia’s hybrid warfare efforts without unnecessarily crossing the threshold of war-justifying destruction of lives and physical infrastructure. That would allow Moscow to legally resort to massively violent means to achieve its goals. While uncontrolled escalation of events is in no nation’s interests, Western countries need to establish a credible deterrent that will deny also Kremlin from resorting to that tool again in hopes of making more gains.

*****

Aapo Cederberg is an associate fellow in the Emerging Security Challenges Programme at Geneva Centre for Security Policy and also a retired colonel from the Finnish Armed Forces. He was previously the Secretary General for the Finnish Security Committee and prior to that was the Head of Strategic Planning in the Ministry of Defence. Twitter: @ace_aapo

Pasi Eronen is a project researcher for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on economic power projection and cyber warfare. Twitter: @pasieronen

photo: The National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) in Kiev, Ukraine, by Bert Kaufmann (Creative Commons)

Statement of Roberta Cohen at the Launch of "Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prisoner Disappearances" and "Camp 15 Imagery Update"

We need to focus on human rights as much as we do the nuclear program.

Excerpt:

I find the reports of David Hawk and Joe Bermudez significant because they make everyone so uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to know about the camps, especially diplomats who hope to negotiate with North Korea, humanitarian organizations on the ground seeking to get along with the host government, and all other parties who want to engage with Pyongyang and feel good about their doing so. These reports provide inconvenient information. It puts a human face on the political prison and re-education camps by providing testimonies of survivors, satellite imagery of camps, and for the first time a list of 181 incarcerated prisoners from Kwan-li-so Camp 15. 

David's report brings to light how women in North Korea are facing particular repression. Most of the North Koreans today who cross the border illegally are women trying to improve their lives and the lives of their families. Increasingly they are arrested, ill-treated and imprisoned. I am pleased the United States recently called for the release of female political prisoners around the world and singled out North Korea. 

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Statement of Roberta Cohen at the Launch of "Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prisoner Disappearances" and "Camp 15 Imagery Update"

http://www.hrnkinsider.org/2015/10/statement-of-roberta-cohen-on-launch-of.html

© 2015 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

by Roberta Cohen, HRNK Co-Chair Emeritus

Roberta Cohen is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution, specializing in human rights and humanitarian issues. She co-founded and co-directed the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement, served as Senior Adviser to the Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons (1994-2010), and co-authored the first major study on the subject, Masses in Flight (Brookings, 1998). For her work on internal displacement, she was co-winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. As concerns North Korea, Cohen has co-chaired the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea since 2011, has published a series of widely quoted articles and op-eds in major journals and newspapers, and has addressed major audiences. Earlier, she served on US Delegations to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the UN General Assembly and the UN Commission on Human Rights, served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the State Department’s first human rights bureau, and as a consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Bank, and NGOs. She is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration and an Adjunct Associate Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. She has an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of Bern, an MA with distinction from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in History from Barnard College.

STATEMENT OF ROBERTA COHEN, CO-CHAIR, COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA ON THE LAUNCH OF “HIDDEN GULAG IV: GENDER REPRESSION AND PRISONER DISAPPEARANCES & CAMP 15 IMAGERY UPDATE” AT THE NEWSEUM, SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

I find the reports of David Hawk and Joe Bermudez significant because they make everyone so uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to know about the camps, especially diplomats who hope to negotiate with North Korea, humanitarian organizations on the ground seeking to get along with the host government, and all other parties who want to engage with Pyongyang and feel good about their doing so. These reports provide inconvenient information. It puts a human face on the political prison and re-education camps by providing testimonies of survivors, satellite imagery of camps, and for the first time a list of 181 incarcerated prisoners from Kwan-li-so Camp 15. 

David's report brings to light how women in North Korea are facing particular repression. Most of the North Koreans today who cross the border illegally are women trying to improve their lives and the lives of their families. Increasingly they are arrested, ill-treated and imprisoned. I am pleased the United States recently called for the release of female political prisoners around the world and singled out North Korea. 

The Hawk and Bermudez reports are also significant because they provide evidence that can be used in future trials against the Kim Jong-un regime. Since the UN Commission of Inquiry report of 2014, the need for accountability has begun to take root. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly called upon the Security Council to consider referring the North Korean human rights situation to the International Criminal Court. It also called for targeted sanctions against those most responsible. And a UN human rights office has been set up in Seoul to compile information with a view to accountability. 

Accountability is essential to address deliberate state policies of starvation of prisoners, lack of medical attention, forced labor and beatings. Such practices are estimated to have led to over one hundred thousand deaths in the political prison camps over the past 50 years. Yet there seems to be an international reticence when it comes to demanding access to these camps. The United States to its credit began two to three years ago to speak out strongly against the camps and about accountability. And UN resolutions have called upon North Korea to release all political prisoners unconditionally. But one doesn’t hear much about governments coming together to make joint demarches or intercessions on a regular basis for access to these camps. One doesn’t hear a drumbeat internationally to gain entry. But there should be one because camp commanders, the officials issuing the orders to them and those carrying them out, need to become aware that what they are doing constitutes crimes against humanity and could lead to their being brought before a court in the future. South Korean experts have actually reported anecdotal evidence that commanders in some detention centers may have modified practices out of fear of possible future prosecution. Accountability has rattled the Kim Jong-un regime. Last year the focus at the UN on the ICC led the DPRK to offer for the first time visits for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN officials in order to try to remove from a General Assembly resolution the reference to accountability. 

Of the 181 prisoners listed in the Hawk report, more than 120 are reported to be missing. Their names should be part of dialogues developed with North Korea and part of demarches or statements. Where are these people? It is time for the international community to call for an accounting of prisoners—their whereabouts, the reasons for their incarceration, whether family members are held with them, whether they have perished. The UN General Assembly has called upon states that have relations with North Korea to use their influence to encourage the closure of political prison camps. But no joint strategy yet exists. 

Contingency plans being developed by different governments to deal with any sudden change in North Korea should include strategies for bringing political prisoners to safety. The UN Commission of Inquiry reported the existence of standing orders at the political prison camps to kill all prisoners in the event of conflict or revolution. The purpose of these orders is to destroy the evidence. While it’s impossible to know whether anything can be done to stop this, publicizing this information is important. And including prisoner protection in contingency planning should be urged. The Atrocities Prevention Board established in the United States in 2012 should have on its agenda as a standing item–the risk of potential massacre of North Korean political prisoners. And the U.S. should begin to add names of persons and entities engaged in serious human rights abuses in the camps to the sanctions list under the President’s executive order of January 2015. NGOs for their part should be sending information to the International Criminal Court. Even though the prosecutor cannot now address the situation, the NGOs can publicize the information with a view to future accountability. This might reach the attention of camp officials and sow doubt among North Korea’s elites.

At the present time, the situation is especially precarious for prisoners. Drought is plaguing North Korea and serious food shortages are predicted. In the past when there has been serious malnutrition and starvation in parts of the country, prisoners have suffered disproportionately. They have been left to eat grass and rats. 

Do international humanitarian agencies and NGOs on the ground have a responsibility? Yes, their stated goal is to reach the most vulnerable in the country. They should begin to compile privately whatever information they can find about starvation and disease in the camps and hammer out strategies to gain entry, in particular for organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

North Korea’s population could actually benefit from allowing the World Health Organization entry to the camps. Tuberculosis is on the rise in the country and reported to be rampant in the camps. The WHO has found in other countries that effective TB control in prisons protects the community at large. Shouldn’t the UN encourage the WHO to gain entry to the camps to try to help eradicate TB from the country? And shouldn’t improved treatment of women—another goal of the UN—extend to women prisoners in North Korea? The Secretary-General introduced a Human Rights Up Front Approach in 2013 that calls upon the entire UN system, when faced with serious violations of human rights, to develop a system wide strategy. This approach needs to be applied to North Korea, and HRNK has been calling upon the UN to do so. North Korea’s government must receive the message that the camps in North Korea are a blight on the civilized world and on any aspirations North Korea might have to improve its relationships with other countries and receive the political, economic and investment support it badly needs for its development.

A new book on Special Operations in the Korean War.  I was unaware of this one so I just ordered it (33.00 from Amazon, only 9 left in stock). Thanks to John Reichley for flagging Dr. Kiper's new book.  I wonder John he still has the huge collection military history memorabilia at his house.  I recall from my CGSC days that his downstairs was a military history museum. And those who serve in Special Forces Detachment Korea (DET 39 now), Special Operations Command Korea and 1st Special Forces Group will recall the annual pilgrimage to Kangwha Do to honor the Korean Partisans and hear Commander Park who is still with us today tell us how he was taught how to parachute by American soldiers and then made 61 one jumps into north Korea crossing back through the lines every time. Excerpt: A note with the book review says, "Spare not the Brave should be required reading for Special Forces and War College students, and recommended reading for all soldiers." leavenworthtimes.com Operating behind enemy lines in Korea Oct. 3, 2015   2 min read   original Posted Oct. 3, 2015 at 3:41 PM I had the information in this column when I wrote about the U.S. landings at Inchon, Korea, earlier this month. But had I included it, due to space limitations, I could only have mentioned it in passing, and I believe it deserves more than that. And since September ended earlier this week, the month of the landings 65 years ago, and there is no date in military history tied to today's date, it seemed a good time to relate the information in this column. Leavenworth is blessed to be home to many authors. I've told readers about new books I thought would be of interest or that are about the area. The book this column is about is not about the Leavenworth area, but is by an author who the Army sent here many years ago, liked the area, so when he retired, he and his wife became citizens of Kansas, as have many other authors. This author is a bit unique in what he's written. Most authors write about one war, or subject, but this one has written a few books I'm aware of that are about different wars. He was an Army historian who taught history at CGSC for several years. He stayed in the area, got a doctorate in history and teaches at local colleges among other endeavors. He is Lt. Col. (ret) Richard "Rich" Kiper, aka Doctor Kiper to students and some others. The Civil War was his primary interest and at least one book is about that 150-year-old conflict. He was an infantry officer who also graduated from Special Forces school, so he wore the famed Green Beret in his active duty days. And his latest book is about a war 100 years removed from the Civil War - the Korean War. And the reason he emailed me information about it was to jog my memory that the Inchon landing anniversary was looming, and in case I wanted to remind readers about it, "here's a book review about my newest book which relates to the Inchon landing." I have not read the book and likely will not since it is 337 pages long and I'm limiting my reading to books about WW I. This one's title is "Spare not the Brave: The Special Activities Group in Korea." It has maps, photographs, a bibliography, an index and costs $45. It is about a little-known Special Forces-type unit that operated mostly behind enemy lines in Korea during its brief existence, which was from its first mission on Sept. 12, 1950, until its inactivation in March 1951. That is likely one of the shortest existences of any military unit in any army at any time. Its first mission was an amphibious raid at Kunsan, North Korea, to gather intelligence about the North Korean army and provide a diversion to camouflage the big landing coming soon at Inchon. Its volunteers were recruited from soldiers assigned to the Far East Command who received six weeks of training before the Kunsan mission. Page 2 of 2 - A note with the book review says, "Spare not the Brave should be required reading for Special Forces and War College students, and recommended reading for all soldiers." As should all books about war, it tells some anecdotes of the humorous happenings in an otherwise bleak and not-so-funny thing called war. In one example, things got real dicey for a few moments when someone left an unopened C-ration can in a campfire and you can imagine the activity when it unexpectedly exploded. And there was the time a Browning Automatic Rifle blazed away in the dark of night at a nosy intruder onto the campsite that turned out to be an unsuspecting ox. It wasn't an intruder for very long. Brings back memories to this Vietnam War vet of all those "Vietcong water buffalo" blown to bits by overeager helicopter gunners while flying missions in the not-so-friendly skies over South Vietnam. This book, according to Kiper, is a re-work of one titled "Army Raiders in Korea." So anyone out there in Reader Land who has that one need not try to track down the new one. But for the rest of you, now you are aware of possibly the newest book by one of the prolific writers who lives among us. John Reichley is a retired Army officer and Department of the Army civilian employee.

USSOCOM White Paper - The Gray Zone

I received this in an email and was ask to disseminate it. 

The 3.3MB USSOCOM White Paper dated 9 Sep 2015 can be downloaded at this link:

https://db.tt/2h0viarh

Excerpt:

"Defining the Gary Zone Challenge 

Gary zone security challenges, existing short of a formal state of war, present novel complications for U.S. policy and interests in the 21st Century. We have well-developed vocabularies, doctrines, and mental models to describe war and peace, but the numerous  gray zone challenges in between defy easy categorization.  For purposes of this paper, gray zone challenges are defined as competitive interactions among and within state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional war and peace duality.  They are characterized by ambiguity about the nature of conflict, opacity of the parties involved or uncertainty about the relevant policy and legal frameworks.

Gray zone challenges can be understood as a pooling of diverse conflicts exhibiting common characteristics. Notably, combining these challenges does not imply a single solution, since each situation contains unique actors and aspects.  Overall, gray zone challenges rise above normal. everyday peacetime geo-political competition and are aggressive, perspective-dependent, and ambiguous."

I would make a few recommendations.

The gray zone is where revolutions, resistance, and insurgency take place.   We need expertise in RRI from the tactical to the strategic level and learn how to campaign in the gray zone to achieve strategic objectives.

1. First is to study the Assessing Revolution and Insurgent Strategies Project at this link.  The 46 case studies as well as the human factors and legal research provide a foundation for study of the phenomena that take place in the gray zone.  Those who want to understand the gray zone should study the documents and publications at this link: http://www.soc.mil/ARIS/ARIS.html  Below are the selected or representative cases of the 5 types of revolutions categorized from 1962-2009.

•Modify the Type of Government

–NPA, FARC, Shining Path, Iranian Revolution, FMLN, Karen National Liberation Army

•Identity or Ethnic Issues

–LTTE, PLO, Hutu-Tutsi Genocides, Kosovo Liberation Army, PIRA

•Drive out Foreign Power

–Afghan Mujahidin, Vietcong, Chechen Revolution, Hizbollah, Hizbol Mujahedeen

•Religious Fundamentalism

–Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Taliban, Al Qaeda

•Modernization or Reform

–Niger Delta (MEND), Revolution United Front (RUF), Orange Revolution, Solidarity

2.  Second I would look at George Kennan and his 1948 concept of political warfare: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/65ciafounding3.htm

3.  Third, I would recall the work of Sam Sarkesian on unconventional conflicts  in 1993:

–Asymmetric conflicts: For the US these conflicts will be limited and not considered a threat to its survival or a matter of vital national interests; however, for the indigenous adversaries they are a matter of survival.

–Protracted Conflicts: Require a long term commitment by the US, thus testing the national will, political resolve, and staying power of the US.

–Ambiguous and Ambivalent Conflicts:  Difficult to identify the adversary, or assess the progress of the conflict; i.e., it is rarely obvious who is winning and losing.

–Conflicts with Political-Social Milieu Center of Gravity: The center of gravity will not be the armed forces of adversaries as Clausewitz would argue but more in the political and social realms as Sun Tzu espouses.

Sam Sarkesian in Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam,  in 1993

​4.  Lastly I would read the USASOC White Paper on SOF Support to Political Warfare that can be downloaded at this link: https://db.tt/wsGXrO4S

A Clausewitz for Every Season by Hew Strachan

Although this is from 2007 it is still very much worth reading today as this is probably the best essay that exposes those who read Clausewitz for the pithy quotes and not for On War's true and deep meaning.  It is the best explanation of why the Trinity is not simply the people, government, and army but passion, reasons, and chance.

Conclusion:

The Clausewitz so readily condemned by commentators of today, such as Martin van Creveld, John Keegan and Mary Kaldor, is the Clausewitz who was fashionable in the 1970s. The fact that the rationality of the “formula” of war’s relationship to policy looks less clear in 2007 does not invalidate it as an interpretative tool. The problem has arisen from its artificial exclusivity, from its being taken so very much out of context. There is much more to On War than one hackneyed catchphrase, and the tragedy for the armed forces of the United States and their allies today is that greater attention to rather more of the text would have provided the intellectual underpinnings for greater self-awareness and strategic sensitivity than has been evident over the last half decade. We need not to ditchOn War but to read more of it, and to read it with greater care.

Appeared in: Volume 2, Number 6
Published on: July 1, 2007

A Clausewitz for Every SeasonHEW STRACHAN

HTTP://WWW.THE-AMERICAN-INTEREST.COM/2007/07/01/A-CLAUSEWITZ-FOR-EVERY-SEASON/

On misreading On War.

In 1975, Colin Powell entered the National War College in Washington, DC. Once there, Powell, a veteran of two tours in Vietnam, read Carl von Clausewitz’s On War for the first time. He was bowled over. On War was, Powell recalled in My American Journey, “like a beam of light from the past, still illuminating present-day military quandaries.” What particularly impressed him was Clausewitz’s view that the military itself formed only “one leg in a triad” whose other two elements were the government and the people. All three elements had to be engaged for war to be sustainable. In the Vietnam War, America’s had not been.

Powell may have been right about the Vietnam War, but not about Clausewitz. Like many others before him, Powell misread the final section of On War’s opening chapter—that which describes war as “a strange trinity.” Its three elements are not the people, the army and the government, but hate, chance and reason. Clausewitz went on to associate each of these three elements more particularly with the passions of the people, with the commander and his army, and with the political direction of the government. But in doing so he moved from the “trinity” itself to its application. The people, the army and the government are elements of the state, not elements of war. The distinction is crucial to the relevance of On War today.

Powell is not the only American soldier to have misinterpreted Clausewitz’s trinity. In 1982, Army Colonel Harry Summers wrote one of the most influential analyses of the U.S. failure in Vietnam, On Strategy. He, too, had Clausewitz saying that war consisted of the people, the army and the government. After the end of the Cold War, with wars allegedly being waged to an increasing extent by non-state actors such as guerrillas, terrorists and warlords, who in turn funded their efforts through crime and drug-trafficking, neither Powell’s nor Summers’ definitions were of much help. As they became less helpful, so too, it seemed, did Clausewitz. Their take on the trinity tied On War indissolubly to the interstate wars of Clausewitz’s own lifetime. If the so-called Westphalian order waned, so too would the applicability of Clausewitz’s insights. This was the thesis which sustained Martin van Creveld’s The Transformation of War (1991). By erroneously identifying Clausewitz’s understanding of war with the people, the army and the government—the “Clausewitzian universe”, as he termed it—van Creveld could invent in order to reject what he called “trinitarian war.”

Like the others, van Creveld had not read the original text with sufficient care. He had also not thought sufficiently about Clausewitz’s use of language—in this case, German. Scholars during the Cold War, determined to use On War as a mirror for their own times, cherry-picked the text for readings and quotations which sustained their views rather than reflected Clausewitz’s. Van Creveld was responding to them, not to Clausewitz, but in the process ditched On War as well.

Where did Clausewitz’s trinity come from in the first place? Clausewitz, like some other military theorists—most obviously British Major General J.F.C. Fuller—had a penchant for thinking in threes (a point to which we shall return). But the significance of Clausewitz’s triad is that it is not a triad but a trinity: not just three related elements, but three parts of one whole. The Christian connotations are self-evident and could not be anything other than deliberate for an author whose family came from a long line of Lutheran pastors. Therefore, the first issue posed by the trinity in On War is not the identity of its three constituent elements but that of its mystical unit: What is the god in which the father, son and holy ghost are united?

Once the question is posed, the answer is self-evident: It is war itself, whose essential element, as Clausewitz makes clear in the opening paragraph of the section, is violence. Remember Clausewitz’s opening definition of war in the same chapter: “War is an act of force to compel our adversary to do our will.” Even if war can change its outer character like a chameleon (the analogy Clausewitz uses in the section on the trinity), its inner nature must, according to this simple description, be unchanging.

Carl von Clausewitz

What war is not, or at least not by its inner nature, is a political instrument. Reason and its extrapolation, the political objects of government, make up a single subordinate element of the trinity, not the trinity itself. Clausewitz likened each of the three elements of the trinity to magnets, so that reason, hate and chance alternately attracted and rejected each other, so never forming a fixed relationship. “A theory, which insisted in leaving one of them out of account, or on fixing an arbitrary relationship between them”, wrote Clausewitz, “would immediately fall into such contradiction with reality that through this alone it would forthwith necessarily be regarded as destroyed.”

Arbitrary and Fixed

One theory has formed an arbitrary and fixed relationship between war and policy, and we are living with the unfortunate consequences. When Powell went to the National War College, strategic thought had a vested interest in elevating and exaggerating Clausewitz’s interest in the relationship between war and policy. And that was why Clausewitz’s axiom, stated in the heading to another section in the opening chapter of On War, that “war is a mere continuation of policy by other means”, became the thesis statement that presumably summed up Clausewitz’s very essence. This enabled the searching inhabitants of the second half of the 20th century to place Clausewitz on the side of the angels. Even the great French thinker Raymond Aron, in his 1976 book on Clausewitz, called it simply the “formula.”

The Cold War gave Aron little choice. The possession of nuclear weapons, and their incorporation into a system of international relations that pivoted on deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction, meant that war had to be avoided, not waged. War had to be subordinated to policy if mankind was to survive. Clausewitz could therefore be associated with notions of limited war, with the need to moderate and even avoid war. According to this interpretation, those who linked Clausewitz to Prussian militarism, to the brutality of battle and to wars of annihilation, had misjudged him. That was not “Clausewitzian”; this was.

Aron’s work notwithstanding, the “liberal” Clausewitz we think we know today was the work of two of the most distinguished scholars of modern war, Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Their fluent and readable translation of On War, which appeared in 1976, became a bestseller in a way the original German never has. Most students, particularly in the English-speaking world, cite Howard and Paret when they refer to On War, not Clausewitz himself. In so many ways both Clausewitz and we have benefited: The text has a grace that early 19th-century German, with its predilection for passive constructions, does not have. Its English version also possesses a greater coherence than is immediately evident in the German. Indeed, Howard and Paret gave the world not so much a translation of Clausewitz as an interpretation of him.

Howard and Paret gave consistency to On War through their choice of English words and, occasionally, by their glosses on the text itself. As a result they do not always translate the same German word with the same English word, instead preferring the English most consonant with its immediate context, or with their interpretation of the text. A significant exception is the German noun Politik, which they tend to translate as “policy” rather than use the equally acceptable alternative of “politics.” This is not just a matter of semantics, and it helps to explain how “Clausewitzian” today expresses a supposed whole that is no more than a lesser part. After all, “policy” conveys an impression of direction and clear intent; politics, like war, is an adversarial business, whose implementation, also like war, is messy and confused.

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HTTP://WWW.THE-AMERICAN-INTEREST.COM/2007/07/01/A-CLAUSEWITZ-FOR-EVERY-SEASON/

I wonder if Sean has public sources for all the people named in the book.  I received the book last night and though I have not read it all yet there is a tremendous amount of information that I do not think has been publicly acknowledged and I suspect a large number of the personnel named in the book probably to did not give permission to be named but were likely named by the apparently many anonymous sources who provided such information.  I am of course not surprised that all the senior officers were named who have been in the public domain but there are a lot of lower ranking personnel whose names I was very surprised to see.  I think some of the "sources" might become obvious because some of them are now television news commentator personalities and their "stories" are treated well.  Also there are quit a few interesting insights about the senior leadership that might come from disgruntled junior members (though there are many lessons that can be learned especially how operations in Afghanistan unfolded from a JSOC/CIA perspective (and Sean does acknowledge that there are differing view points regarding Karzai between JSOC, the CIA and Special Forces.

I wonder where Sean got the definition of Unconventional Warfare: "The use of proxy forces to foment rebellion against an enemy state.  In the U.S. Military it is the primary mission of Special Forces."  Needless to say I am not named in the book and Sean did not ask for my opinion on UW.

But my favorite excerpt (so far) is this on page 162:

But despite - or perhaps because of - his repeated exposure to briefings on the high-end counterterrorism that was JSOC's forte, Rumsfeld's understanding of special operations remained superficial and unbalanced.  He did not recognize the value of unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense (helping an ally defeat an insurgency), which were the specialties of Special Forces as well as SOCOM's psychological operations and civil affairs units.  To Rumsfeld, the value of special operations lay only in the spooky and lethal activities JSOC exemplified, not in training foreign militaries or standing up local militias.  "There were some things that Rumsfeld said and did that indicated that we, his staff, had not fully and well explained to him the nature of special operations forces," said Andrews, a former Special Forces Officer. "He didn't understand and we didn't beat into him an appreciation of counterinsurgency as foreign internal defense, UW [unconventional warfare], the 'white' stuff.

"Rumsfeld ... didn't care about setting up networks, he didn't care about establishing forward operating bases, he didn't want to hear all that shit."  said a Special Forces officer who briefed the secretary frequently.  "He just wanted a way for bodies to show up."  The result was Rumsfeld's almost blind faith in JSOC.  "He didn't truly understand us, but he trusted us," Hall said.   (yes, that is CSM(R) Mike Hall)

I will be using that quote in my next class on Unconventional Warfare for Policy Makers and Strategists. Thank you Sean.

taskandpurpose.com

How Joint Special Operations Command Became America’s ‘Perfect Hammer’

• by Christian Beekman 
•  Sept. 2, 2015 
•  3 min read 
•  original

America’s most elite special operations units have increasingly found themselves in the spotlight. After the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates and Operation Neptune Spear, the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, colloquially known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team 6, became the subject of immense public interest. But many outside the military have never heard about the shadowy command that SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, and other special missions units answer to: the Joint Special Operations Command.

JSOC oversees planning for joint unconventional operations, and conducts much of the “black” side of special operations. A new book, “Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command,” from author and former Army Times journalist Sean Naylor aims to highlight JSOC’s history over the past 30 years. It also illustrates how JSOC moved to the forefront of combating insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Relentless Strike” isn’t the first time Naylor has covered the units under JSOC. His previous book, “Not a Good Day To Die:The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda” is a quintessential account of the March 2002 battle in Afghanistan’s Shahikot Valley, an operation that Naylor was present for as an embedded reporter. Operators from Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, and other JSOC units played a pivotal role in Anaconda, so Naylor is covering some familiar ground. Much like his previous book, Naylor explores the full breadth of the units and personnel involved. From the high-level politicking surrounding JSOC’s formation to the individual operators kicking doors in Iraq, “Relentless Strike” isn’t daunted by the scale of JSOC’s operations.

At the center of the book is the narrative of how JSOC evolved from a small organization with a highly specific counterterrorism mission to the the direct-action juggernaut it is today. The first part of “Relentless Strike” deals with JSOC’s genesis in the wake of the failed Operation Eagle Claw, the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages held in revolutionary Iran in April 1980. Then, JSOC was mainly focused on a limited set of counterterrorism missions, like the rash of the airplane hijackings and hostage takings during the 1980s. While Delta and the rest of JSOC came close to actually getting the green light on various rescues during their two decades of operational status, their first operations successes came in support of more conventional operations in Grenada and Panama.

The book’s other narrative thrust starts here: the tendency of JSOC being handed difficult mission sets, regardless of whether JSOC was really suited for the problem; highlighting the missions given to SEAL Team 6 in Grenada in 1983, and a regular SEAL team’s airfield assault in Panama in 1989. The book also delves into some of the inauspicious details of JSOC’s birth; such as the fly-by-night antics of SEAL Team 6 founder Richard Marcinko, whose hard-drinking training regimen and unauthorized unit expenditures tainted the unit’s reputation to the point that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Colin Powell considered disbanding the unit all together in the early 1990s.

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http://taskandpurpose.com/how-joint-special-operations-command-became-americas-perfect-hammer/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tp-today