The Defense Department Just Published a Summary of the National Defense Strategy’s Irregular Warfare Annex. Here’s Why It’s so Significant.
Kevin Bilms | October 2, 2020
The Defense Department Just Published a Summary of the National Defense Strategy’s Irregular Warfare Annex. Here’s Why It’s so Significant.
This week, the Defense Department released an unclassified summary of the Irregular Warfare (IW) Annex to the National Defense Strategy. It declares that, with respect to IW, the department will maintain “sufficient, enduring capabilities to advance national security objectives across the spectrum of competition and conflict.†Renewed focus on great power competition suggests a shift away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions, but no one should interpret this shift to imply the wholesale abandonment of the relevant toolsets and expertise of IW.
Instead, the IW Annex represents an approach to state competition that is attuned to the competitive landscape and hostile states’ strategies against the United States. Adopting this approach requires rethinking what constitutes IW, how IW fits into interagency frameworks for competition, and the ability for IW to proactively contest malign activities short of conflict.
Irregular Warfare and the Competitive Landscape
https://mwi.usma.edu/the-defense-department-just-published-a-summary-of-the-national-defense-strategys-irregular-warfare-annex-heres-why-its-so-significant/
