Pulling Levers, Not Triggers: Beyond Direct and Indirect Approaches to Irregular Warfare
Cole Livieratos | 04.07.21
In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The plan on paper was that the indirect actions were primary, and that direct action was only meant to buy space and time. But in practice, direct action came to rule the day.
—Admiral Eric Olson, former commander of US Special Operations Command, October 8, 2020
After two decades of waging irregular warfare the United States remains ineffective at influencing populations. Rather than using its power to achieve legitimacy through persuasion and influence, the United States relies on two coercive approaches to irregular warfare: directly attacking enemy forces and training partner forces to directly attack enemy forces. The military refers to these as “direct†and “indirect†approaches, descriptions that differ according to narrow means, the who, rather than broader ways, the how. As a former Special Forces officer describes it, “both [approaches] come to the same place: killing somebody. The question then becomes who pulls the trigger.†This poor conceptualization leads the US military to overly focus on units and capabilities that employ coercion and neglect those that influence populations.
https://mwi.usma.edu/pulling-levers-not-triggers-beyond-direct-and-indirect-approaches-to-irregular-warfare/
