In this episode, I will be a heretic to the current military establishment in America and the west. They can't do unconventional warfare and I must be very specific in the conditional problem I propose: the western military has no capability to conduct long term partisan warfare in concert with indigenous forces fighting an insurgency in a non-permissive environment. It doesn't have the language skills, cultural IQ, sophisticated intelligence/communications infrastructure to support stay-behind missions, isolated stand-in force capability (nor does the USMC for FD2030 fantasies) comprehensive bushcraft and primitive skills for long loiter missions nor a fighting force that is capable of living in third world conditions for years (rotational longevity) at a time.
The emerging anti-fragile forces of indigenous irregular warfare forces in concert or independent of near-peer and peer competitors challenging US and western global hegemony are on the march and will in the end succeed.
This is Part One of a two part series in which we will discuss the converse capabilities conundrum in counter UW for the west in Part Two published o/a 26 December 2023.
References:
David Maxwell Counter-Unconventional Warfare (2014)
Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War
Ann Scott Tyson American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Grant
H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare
Mark Bowden Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern War
Bob Scales Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk
Aaron B. O’Connell Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and Minds
Hy S. Rothstein Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare
Robert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In History
Special Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide HQDA January 2020
Write me at cgpodcast@pm.me
Ep 031 "US Military Special Operations Forces Can't Do UW (Part One)"