Fri, 01/06/2023 - 9:16pm
To Address the Irregular Warfare Elephant in the Room, Sacred Cattle Must First be Slain
By Tom Ordeman, Jr.
In recent weeks, the topic of the DoD's mastery of Irregular Warfare (IW) - one flavor of this being counterinsurgency (COIN) - has received some long overdue discussion, initially in an article in The Hill penned by a team of authors including LTG Charles T. Cleveland (Ret.), former commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command; and COL David Maxwell (Ret.), a distinguished former Army Special Forces officer and Editor-in-Chief of the Small Wars Journal. Discussion continues in several contributions to the latter publication.
The initial article focused upon the DoD's long-term failure to master IW, and advocated for the designation of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to lead the DoD's efforts to master IW, establishment of an Irregular Warfare Functional Center (IWFC), and supplementation through partnerships with one or more American universities. A January 3rd article by MAJ James Armstrong (Ret.) questioned the wisdom this arrangement, given USSOCOM's and Joint Special Operations Command's (JSOC) primacy in the Afghan and Iraq Wars, and their apparent failure to deliver on desired strategic outcomes. Armstrong's commentary invited several critiques, to include a formal submission by Charlie Black. Cleveland, et. al., highlight USSOCOM's role in IW, while Armstrong and Black seem to agree on what Black describes as "the U.S. Army’s rightful place to lead IW," a role underscored by Armstrong in his citation of the Army as the "primary land force."
With due respect to the aforementioned commentators, all of whom (save for Black; and Daniel Egel, PhD, one of the original article's co-authors) served in the U.S. Army, please allow a former contractor to slaughter two sacred cattle in the interest of taking aim at the proverbial "elephants in the room":
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/address-irregular-warfare-elephant-room-sacred-cattle-must-first-be-slain
