Irregular Irregularities
Small Wars Journal, deepthinking the Pentagon’s irregular warfare directive suggests it didn’t think far enough outside the box. Sam Bannen of CSIS, “A Irregular Focus On What Has Been” suggests it’s a war after last directive in a war after next world:
Beyond the statement of the obvious a day late and a dollar short, the directive incorrectly characterizes the future of warfare. Leading defense analysts—most notably Frank Hoffman and Steve Biddle —have argued in convincing fashion that the next wars the United States fight will be an undifferentiated blend of what the Pentagon has now formally parsed as irregular warfare and traditional warfare. In an analysis of the 2006 Lebanon campaign, Biddle and Jeffrey Friedman found that “Hezbollah’s methods were…somewhere between the popular conceptions of guerilla and conventional warfare—but so are most military actors’, whether state or nonstate.” Hezbollah blended tactics and even strategic end goals of conventional and irregular warfare. The 2008 National Defense Strategy (NDS) rightly recognizes that “These modes of warfare [traditional and irregular] may appear individually or in combination, spanning the spectrum of warfare and intertwining hard and soft power.” So why does the IW directive—which should be derived from the NDS—make no mention of this reality?
Interesting read with interesting links sounds like it could be overthink, given that the issue as noted has been formally acknowledged in the NDS. It would seem formally raising the status of IW, throwing resources into it, heads in that direction. But being not particularly expert in military policy directives and how they plays down the line, what the heck do I know?
Topics: military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:48 am Comments Off on Friday, December 5, 2008
