Irregular warfare and those who operate in that space face a time of uncertainty and shifting priorities. Throughout history, IW organizations have undergone dramatic changes at all levels to meet the demands of new operating environments and threats. The book The Changing of the Guard: The British Army since 9/11 explores the difficulties the British Army faced trying to reorganize for irregular warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book’s author, Simon Akam, provides us with lessons learned and key takeaways from the British experience that can guide ongoing organizational changes. General John Allen joins him in this episode, drawing from decades of experience at the highest levels of military leadership and policy, giving his perspective on how IW organizations can successfully meet the needs of strategic competition.
Our guests reflect on organizations in the past that successfully adapted to new pressures, as well as those that failed to fully adjust to new operating realities. The conversation continues into a discussion of how emerging technologies will require significant acceleration of change and necessitates adjustments across the security sector from modernizing the military procurement system to recruiting and retaining the talent needed for future conflict. Our guests then discuss the difficulties in changing rigid organizational structures and ingrained cultures and explore avenues to encourage change from within.
Simon Akam is the author of The Changing of the Guard: The British Army since 9/11. Born in Cambridge, England, he held a Gap Year Commission in the British Army before attending Oxford University. He won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Columbia Journalism School, and in 2010 won the professional strand of the Guardian’s International Development Journalism competition. He has worked for the New York Times, Reuters, and Newsweek, and is currently a contributing writer for the Economist‘s 1843 magazine. His work has appeared in other publications including GQ, Bloomberg Businessweek, Outside, and the Atlantic. He cohosts the writing podcast Always Take Notes (@takenotesalways, alwaystakenotes.com).
General John Allen assumed the presidency of the Brookings Institution in November 2017, having most recently served as a distinguished fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings. Allen is a retired US Marine Corps four-star general and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and US forces in Afghanistan. After retiring from the Marine Corps, Allen also served as senior advisor to the secretary of defense on Middle East security, during which he led the security dialogue for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and as special presidential envoy to the global coalition to counter ISIS. He is the coauthor of the books Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Future War and the Defence of Europe.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast is part of the broader Irregular Warfare Initiative. IWI generates written and audio content, coordinates events for the IW community, and hosts critical thinkers in the field of irregular warfare as fellows. You can follow and engage with the Irregular Warfare Initiative on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss any new content.
Image credit: Sgt. Tim Ortez, US Army
Such things as irregular warfare, one might suggest, must be viewed within the context of what various groups are seeking to achieve, and which of these groups might have common interests.
As to groups seeking to achieve "containment" and "roll back" today — in response to the U.S./the West's long-running "expansionist"/"global change" initiative — consider the following:
First, re: the U.S./the West's long-running "expansionist"/"global change" initiative:
“Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a strategy aimed at overturning the status quo by spreading liberalism, free markets, and U.S. influence around the globe. … the United States’ posture stokes fear in Beijing and beyond. … But at its heart, U.S. grand strategy seeks to spread liberalism and U.S. influence. The goal, in other words, is not preservation but transformation. … The United States has pursued this transformational grand strategy all over the world. … In each of these regions (Europe, the Middle East, East Asia), U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military policies are aimed not at preserving but at transforming the status quo. (Item in parenthesis is mine.)
(See Dr. Jennifer Lind’s Foreign Affairs [Mar/Apr 2017 edition] article “Asia’s Other Revisionist Power: Why U.S. Grand Strategy Unnerves China.”)
Next, in response to the U.S./Western such "expansionist" "threat" — note (a) Russia's current "containment" and "roll back" initiative and (b) Russia's appeal to such things as "traditional values" in this cause:
“In his annual appeal to the Federal Assembly in December 2013, Putin formulated this ‘independent path’ ideology by contrasting Russia’s ‘traditional values’ with the liberal values of the West. He said: ‘We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilization in every nation for thousands of years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but also spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity.’ He proclaimed that Russia would defend and advance these traditional values in order to ‘prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.’ ”
(See the Wilson Center publication “Kennan Cable No. 53” and, therein, the article “Russia’s Traditional Values and Domestic Violence,” by Olimpiada Usanova, dated 1 June 2020.)
Next, again in response to the U.S./Western "expansionist" "threat" — addressed at my "a" above — note (a) China's current "containment" and "roll back" initiative and, therein, (b) China's appeal to such things as "traditional values" in this cause:
“The neoliberal trend of thought has severely affected China’s dominant ideology and has had a serious impact on China’s Reform and Opening policy and economic foundation. [Neoliberalism] not only endangers China’s ideological security but also endangers the state’s economic security. The values of the supremacy of the individual and freedom have a negative impact on dominant Chinese values such as collectivism, equity, and justice. The theory of privatization challenges the current Chinese concept of socialist ownership and impacts the economic foundation of public ownership. Both the theory of market omnipotence and trade liberalization are in fact opposed to the role of the government and government supervision and advocate ‘de-nationalization.’ These principles have had a [negative] impact on the Party’s leadership and the socialist state system.”
(See the CSIS paper entitled “Ideological Security as National Security” by Jude Blanchette; therein, look to the translation of a May 2019 article “Ideological Security in the Framework of the Overall National Security Outlook” by Tang Aijun, Associate Professor, School of Marxism, Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, Socialism Studies.)
Last (but certainly not least), from an irregular warfare point of view, we would be exceptionally remise not to note that — in the U.S./the West itself — there are elements of our far right who, like Russia and China above, (a) are now appealing to such things as "traditional values;" this, so as to (b) "contain" and "roll back" certain unwanted political, economic, social and/or value changes that the far right does not agree with.
Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:
From the perspective of irregular warfare, one must, I suggest, come to understand how one's foreign enemies — and ones internal enemies — might have common interests.
After all, as GEN Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, has noted, one of his primary goals in life is to "create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state … "
So, in consideration of my last sentence above, let us see whether GEN Gerasimov has been successful; this, in "creating a permanently operating front (composed of, in this case, right-wing elements within the U.S.) through the entire territory of the enemy (the U.S.) state:
"Liberal democratic societies have, in the past few decades, undergone a series of revolutionary changes in their social and political life, which are not to the taste of all their citizens. For many of those, who might be called social conservatives, Russia has become a more agreeable society, at least in principle, than those they live in. Communist Westerners used to speak of the Soviet Union as the pioneer society of a brighter future for all. Now, the rightwing nationalists of Europe and North America admire Russia and its leader for cleaving to the past."
(See "The American Interest" article "The Reality of Russian Soft Power" by John Lloyd and Daria Litinova.)
“Compounding it all, Russia’s dictator has achieved all of this while creating sympathy in elements of the Right that mirrors the sympathy the Soviet Union achieved in elements of the Left. In other words, Putin is expanding Russian power and influence while mounting a cultural critique that resonates with some American audiences, casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization against Islam and the godless, decadent West.”
(See the “National Review” item entitled: “How Russia Wins” by David French.)
"During the Cold War, the USSR was perceived by American conservatives as an 'evil empire,' as a source of destructive cultural influences, while the United States was perceived as a force that was preventing the world from the triumph of godless communism and anarchy. The USSR, by contrast, positioned itself as a vanguard of emancipation, as a fighter for the progressive transformation of humanity (away from religion and toward atheism), and against the reactionary forces of the West.
Today positions have changed dramatically; it is the United States or the ruling liberal establishment that in the conservative narrative has become the new or neo-USSR, spreading subversive ideas about family or the nature of authority around the world, while Russia has become almost a beacon of hope, 'the last bastion of Christian values' that helps keep the world from sliding into a liberal dystopia.
Russia’s self-identity has changed accordingly; now it is Russia who actively resists destructive, revolutionary experiments with fundamental human institutions, experiments inspired by new revolutionary neo-communists from the United States. Hence the cautious hopes that the U.S. Christian right have for contemporary Russia: They are projecting on Russia their fantasies of another West that has not been infected by the virus of cultural liberalism."
(See the December 18, 2019, Georgetown University, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs article "Global Culture Wars from the Perspective of Russian and American Actors: Some Preliminary Conclusions," by Dmitry Uzlaner. Look to the paragraph beginning with "Russia and the United States as screens for each other’s projections.")
Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:
From the perspective that I offer above, the organizational change that the U.S./the West's military require, as relates specifically to such things as irregular warfare, this is such organization change as can be seen to be dealing quickly and effectively — directly and indirectly — with (a) the "permanently operating front" problem that I describe above and with (b) similar "permanently operating fronts" — which are sure to be in our current and near-term future.