Developing Irregular Warfare Leaders for the 21st Century
By David L. Grange

On April 28, 2007, the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment foiled an insurgent attack north of Baghdad at the Huda girl school. Insurgents wired the school with explosive shells and propane tanks while it was under construction. Their demonic plan was to detonate the explosives, killing as many school girls as possible during the school’s grand opening.

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) continue to be the biggest killers of American troops in Iraq. Why? Because our technical countermeasures cannot keep up with the enemy’s state-of-the-art, high-tech triggering devices.

Early in 2007, Coalition Forces exposed extensive Iranian involvement in Iraq. Iran’s purpose was to fuel chaos, arm Shiite militant groups, and advise and train the regulars to fight American soldiers and Sunni Arabs.

The Taliban and al Qaeda continue to receive safe-haven and logistical support from the local tribes along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. They move against NATO and Afghan government forces with immunity from these safe havens.

This is irregular warfare, a form of war that, since the end of the Vietnam War, Americans have had difficulty fighting, coping with, and maintaining support at home.

The definition of irregular warfare (IW) - A form of warfare that has as its objective the credibility and/or legitimacy of the relevant political authority with the goal of undermining or supporting that authority. Irregular Warfare favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities to seek asymmetric advantages, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will. (Working definition approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense, 17 April 2006.)

Examples of the range of operations and activities that can be conducted as part of IW are: insurgency; counterinsurgency (COIN); unconventional warfare (UW); terrorism; counterterrorism (CT); foreign internal defense (FID); stabilization, security, transition, and reconstruction operations (SSTRO); strategic communications; psychological operations (PSYOP); information operations (IO); civil military operations (CMO); intelligence and counterintelligence (CI) activities; transnational criminal activities, including narcotrafficking, illicit arms dealing, and illegal financial transactions that support or sustain IW. (Irregular Warfare (IW) Joint Operating Concept (JOC) Department of Defense Version 1.0, February 2007)

Other examples of IW are: Economic warfare; strategic immigration; low-intensity conflict; asymmetric warfare; piracy; and intellectual terrorism.

IW is not new. War has not always followed convention, and violent clashes of interest often include irregular warfare and irregular forces. Many irregular forces are non-state actors. The history of the United States is replete with IW conflicts: the Barbary Wars; the Indian Wars; the Philippine Insurrection; the war with Mexico; "small wars" in Central America and the Caribbean; Vietnam; Dominican Republic; El Salvador; the Balkans; Lebanon; Somalia; and the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The difference between conventional and IW is that conventional warfare’s desired effect is to defeat the opponent’s military while isolating the population from conflict. It has little desired effect as far as influencing a government, except to defeat it. In contrast, IW’s focus is to influence a government and gain or erode the support of the population for that government, the military or another armed group.

IW is a non-standard form of conflict for the United States. We are uncomfortable with the chaotic conditions, unfamiliarity of actors, intangible measures of effectiveness, indirect methods required for success, unconventional thought, lack of patterns, asymmetric means, disregard for borders, non-traditional actors, violation of accepted rules, complex dimensions of influencers, and the importance of cultural nuances. We like to look at conflict in black and white. However, IW comes in shades of gray. We have a hard time operating within the gray.

IW is about people, not platforms. The human dimension dominates, not technology. IW is not only for the military or for the Foreign Service officer but also for the corporate executives. IW is the norm today in the international world of business.

In all endeavors, leadership is the cause, all else is effect. With trained and competent leaders, the accomplishment of any task/mission is possible. Some missions are very complex, difficult to understand, challenging to determine the center of gravity (the tipping point), and resolve. IW is an example of a complex, uncomfortable, ambiguous, and demanding task.

War is war whether it is labeled conventional or irregular. It is about winning. It is about imposing your will on the adversary and creating conditions advantageous to your goals, your end-state. The real difference is the uniqueness of that particular conflict in relation to time, place, opponent, conditions, and means/methods required to win. In all cases, the level of effort and the commitment to win will decide the outcome.

Increasingly, sophisticated, irregular methods – e.g. terrorism and insurgency – challenge US security interests. Adversaries employing irregular methods aim to erode US influence, patience, and political will. Irregular opponents often take a long-term approach, attempting to oppose prohibitive human, material, financial, and political costs on the United States to compel strategic retreat from a key region or course of action.

        - 2005 National Defense Strategy

The USA is struggling with IW around the world today. We prefer large-scale conventional wars, a clearly defined enemy, quick results, no interruption to our lifestyles, the use of technology to do the job (yet, we are weak doing battle on the Web), and we allow ourselves to be overmatched by irregular approaches.

Opportunities are lost due to not understanding, not recognizing, a lack of relevant information and intelligence, and a lack of boldness. We have a culture of competition instead of cooperation, are predictable (which means we are vulnerable), and think with a linear approach, not a geometric approach. We thrive on centralized command and control. Consequently, the enemy defies our mindset and the strengths of our hierarchical institutions.

Currently, we have a defeatist attitude in Iraq. We don’t seem to be ashamed about losing. We have allowed ourselves to be impressed with a ten-foot tall terrorist (a hobbled mental outlook). We did the same during the Cold War regarding the Soviet military. When the Berlin wall came down, we realized the Soviets’ vulnerability. Insurgents and terrorists, like the Soviets, are vulnerable and can be defeated. Like everywhere else in the world, we must value something or we won’t fight for it. We should not be ashamed about winning.

Due to globalization information innovation, we have a "flatter world." Borders are becoming irrelevant. They are disregarded. Businesses are fracturing, creating an imbalance in demographics and economics. Unconventional is becoming conventional. Everything is faster with rapidly diversifying operational environments. You cannot take a conventional approach to an unconventional situation. IW is unconventional. The fight is not about terrain, which is mostly the case during conventional warfare. It is about people. In Irregular Warfare, the focus must be on the people, the human dimension. Today, most of our adversaries do not fully understand the consequences of their actions – but they must.

What can we do about our current mindset and threat/competition challenges?

          - Robert F. Kennedy

We must look at war/competition as a continuum of conflict. There is no start point or end point to conflict. It is continuous. Our attitude must focus on winning, continuously. We can’t just focus on threats. We must recognize or turn threats into opportunities. We must out-terrorize the terrorists, out-think/out-network the insurgent, cheat the enemy, hobble him, and own the shadows. If we are to win, changes must be made in the areas of organization, strategy, intelligence, information operations, and leader development.

Unity is paramount. Self-interests, partisan politics, unrealistic expedience – must be replaced by unity of effort/purpose. We must find common ground. The approach is one team, one fight. Leaders have the responsibility to unify this nation’s bounty of diversity and power across the private and public sectors. Mobilizing our entire national team is the only way. It allows us to blend our phenomenal power and potential to achieve victory. We cannot take on IW or any war, for that matter, on the cheap. You get what you pay for. IW requires operating in the human dimension. It is expensive. We must pay that price to ensure success.

            - William Shakespeare

Move from a reactive mindset to a proactive mindset and finally to an interactive capability (one with the operational environment). We must understand and feel comfortable in these operational environments in order to influence, shape, and control where we fight/compete. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong and the NVA were in harmony with the jungle environment. They used it as their friend, as a force multiplier against the Americans who were uneasy, for the most part, in this environment.

Currently, we react in a piecemeal fashion to irregularities that we do not predict. We must become comfortable with chaos, think like the Chinese, and accept chaos as opportunity. At times, it requires using non-Western thinking on problem-solving, when and where appropriate. Think "red" (how the adversary thinks) and think "local" as we analyze our strategy.

The side gaining the greatest leverage will prevail and will win. To obtain this positional advantage and leverage, we must keep the enemy reeling, reacting, and responding to us. Leaders must figure out how to isolate enemy sectors, separate the parts from the whole, marginalize their effectiveness, and break cohesion, spirit, and will. We must get the enemy to implode by eliminating influencers and attacking the image of leaders to undermine, discredit, and spread doubt. It requires peeling apart outer rings of support and stripping away layers of protection by seducing, coercing, or collaborating where it is advantageous. The coalition’s success with turning the Sunni Sheiks against al Qaeda in Anbar Province of Iraq is an example. We may have to give something up (security) to obtain something more important (trust). Setting up outposts throughout Baghdad to protect the Iraqi people and gain their confidence is an example of this risk assessment.

We haven’t even scratched the potential of this country’s capability to conduct IW. All sectors, private and public, must be tapped for innovativeness. Why not? The power of our private sector is phenomenal.

Our adversary sidesteps with abandon through networking and innovation (high-tech and low-tech), rules, and norms that we feel obliged to follow. They use high-tech to attack and low-tech to survive.

To counter this, we cannot only analyze the surface, the obvious, the traditional, but also need to get below the water-line to what is relevant to the conflict. This involves a need for what many call "civil-cultural intelligence."

Easily observable information/intelligence above the water-line includes enemy forces (weapons, leaders, general locations, categories); religion, local food, language, dress, macro-demographics, etc. Below the water-line is relevant information that we must see and feel and understand to be successful: notion of time; level of tolerance; individual motivation; how one thinks; group values; group intentions; anthropological characteristics; casual links; personal feelings; what is worth dying for; micro-demographics; favorites; debts one owes; trust between one another; credibility of leaders; subculture gestures; how one controls; social networks; social coherence; what is accepted/shut out; who the influencers are; how people see things and make sense of things; etc. To have this cultural awareness is a force-multiplier.

All of this information must be scoped down, analyzed, and understood. Then, this relevant information and intelligence, unique to current operations, must be vetted for reliability, cross-walked to prevent confusion, interpreted for leaders, shaped for surprise and deception, and recommended for exploitation to gain effects wanted. This human intelligence is balanced with technology as an enabler, whereby high-tech and low-tech resources support both macro- and micro-operating environments.

In many places in the world, we target the youth (the next generation) for influence. In other places, like Iraq, much of society is based upon a patriarchic hierarchy under which the sheik has absolute power over his tribe. They should be, and have been, targeted, as in Anbar Province. The sheiks have been key to turning the tide against al Qaeda. In some areas, it’s the women who have the influence below the water-line. In others, it’s the elite clergy. In the Serbian areas of Bosnia, it was orthodox priests and paramilitary leaders whom we targeted to shape the outcome.

     - US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual, FM 3-34, December 2006

Information Operations (IO) is the war of ideas. IO focuses on "soft power," a phrase coined by Joseph Nye in his book of the same name. Examples of instruments are cultural, ideological, psychological, social, and cultural anthropology. This is different from "hard power," which is mostly kinetic, involving military and/or economic means. The clever application of IO to defeat the IED threat is an example of obtaining enduring success to counter the continuous change of advantage provided by state-of-the-art technology used by insurgents, countered by us, counter-countered by the insurgents, and so on. Scott Swanson, a member of our foundation’s IW Task Force, advocates the following non-kinetic solution: If the cellular structure of IED teams is targeted with IO to discredit a leader, create a rift between each part – or between several different IED teams in the locale – or spread disinformation to break the link of support from the population, we can create enduring results regardless of technology. This IO soft power can be applied with technology by inserting a virus of doubt through the internet, text messaging via cell phone, or other means.

IO is about the power of images, persuasion, and branding our message. We have a great story to brand (which can be a great message): "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ... We hold these truths to be self-evident." This story can be applied properly for each environment, each locale where we are trying to influence with our brand. Words, the war of ideas, must be thought about and used as powerfully as we use kinetic means. We must condition, influence, and persuade the audience with our message, branding our product to our friendly audience positively and about the enemy negatively. It also requires an explanation of why we are at war. With this soft power, we can target the will of the opponent, the population, and the outside influencers. We can divide opposition, confuse, split up, and work the seams and gaps that are vulnerable to our message.

We must think about media networks as actors, platforms for virtual weapons systems. We must be savvy with the use of misdirection, deception, and disinformation against our adversaries. The message to our friends, allies, and local populations must be truthful, communicated in a way that is accepted by each audience, that gains the trust and loyalty critical to the success of our mission. Effective strategic communication is a necessity to win any war, conventional or irregular. Effective Communication = Trust = Confidence, Commitment, and Loyalty.

        - Harry S. Truman

Our goal is to create savvy IW leaders – leaders who are able to integrate both traditional and non-traditional sources of power against any challenge; leaders who can think creatively, in- and out- of the box; and leaders who are comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity, dynamic environments, and the gray zone. The leader development philosophy should be to educate for an uncertain future and train for the certain requirements we face now.

Leaders must understand that change is part of the natural state and that people, not terrain, are the objective. Consequently, we must optimize the human dimension. Our forces must be highly trained in the cultures of our adversaries and the people we support in operational areas. They must know their turf – understand the operational environment.

We cannot let political correctness, bureaucratic organizations, and the unwillingness to apply audacious action to hobble what is required to win. Risk-management, not blame-management, allows that audacious leadership in action.

Leaders must have multiple skill sets, ready/capable of not only being a commander of soldiers (corporate leader) but a negotiator, teacher, civic leader, or social worker. Like a lawyer, be trained technically in one’s profession and in communication (how to present and convince).

We need to: Develop a leader’s way of thinking, one of how to think vs. what to think; improve the understanding of complex operating environments and the understanding that change is the norm; and create adaptable leaders. We need to train with the old Special Operations’ saying, "When the terrain varies from the map, you gotta go with the terrain." Plans never stay the same because conditions constantly change. Plans are meant to change depending on what is found on the battlefield. It’s all about adaptive leadership.

Understand the necessity of superior networking to gain all the intelligence, elements of power, and unity of effort possible. Power is relative to the situation (what produces effects that are desired, what is appropriate to the situation, and how to expand power potential). Asymmetric advantages should be sought for reasons of economy of force, creating surprise, and inducing shock and/or speed of action.

Developing a thought process is necessary for our leaders to always gain positional advantage and become interactive in (be a part of) a complex operating environment. Understand that there are three operating domains for every war/competition: physical, organizational/functional, and moral. Understand the dimensions that must be analyzed and applied to those domain: physical (land, sea, air, natural terrain, man-made terrain), human, temporal, virtual, and informational. These dimensions provide the appropriate influencers and enablers when fighting/competing in or across the operational domains (see graph on page 9).

Time fluctuates, and the impact of the desired effects changes as the influencers/enablers of the dimensions are applied conventionally or irregularly across the domains. Asymmetric actions/means create an increase of speed and effect on an adversary’s domains. "Soft War" actions produce an increase in speed and effect without negative second and third order effects, if applied appropriately (i.e. – without alienating a population, producing negative media coverage, or thwarting international cooperation).

As a savvy IW leader mentally walks through the operational domains that should be considered during a conflict/competition, wargaming the dimensions that provide the influencers/enablers, both in soft power and hard power, the question should always be - How is positional advantage gained for victory? •

David L. Grange is CEO of the McCormick Tribune Foundation. He is a retired United States Army Major General.