Resistance

Phases of Resistance Development

 

USASOC and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL) National Security Analysis Department will use  the Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) program to examine the phases of resistance development.  ARIS will produce the  initial research paper over the next 5 months. It will examine existing theories and doctrine to determine if they are sufficient for support planning and strategy development or if a different construct would be more helpful.  The paper will provide recommendations for  the next phase which could be a full study to investigate the phases/states of resistance development and describe them, their characteristics, the catalysts for change to a new phase/state and a discussion of  key supporting factors.

The key questions which this effort must answer are:

What are the states or phases? 

What are the identifying characteristics of those states or phases? 

How many are there?

Does the capitulation of the government to the resistance only signal the transition to a new phase or state?

Should there be post transition phases or states?

Resistance organizations and Insurgencies generally follow a developmental pattern, normally described in phases.  Mao’s construct describes three phases – Strategic Defensive (Latent and Incipient), Strategic Stalemate (Guerrilla Warfare), and Strategic Offensive (War of Movement).  The Special Operations Research Office (SORO) construct provides 6 phases – Clandestine Organization, Psychological Offensive, Expansion, Militarization, Combat, and Consolidation.  While both of these constructs provide sufficient rigor to present the authors theories and ideas, they may lack the granularity to allow the strategist and planner to  formulate and design supporting campaigns. Moreover as Bard O’Neill points out, some resistances strategies are military focused and may start off in the guerrilla warfare or militarization phase.  Others  may be based on a conspiratorial strategy and begin with a small core cadre in the latent and incipient or the clandestine phase.

The types and methods of support to the insurgency are significantly different in the early periods of organization’s development than the latter where overt military forces are present. For the phase construct to suffice for planning and campaign design it must provide clear indicators both of the resistance’s state and of the transition to a new state.  For example, when a resistance movement establishes guerrilla forces—phase 2 in Mao’s or phase 4 in SORO’s—that is a significant identifiable change. It signals a shift in logistics, communications, space required for training and the legalities of support that the external supporter must take into consideration.  The volume of materiel and funding levels change as does the means of acquisition and transportation.

Irregular Warfare Annotated Bibliography

The second product from the Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) is the Irregular Warfare Annotated Bibliography.  Bibliographies are not new to projects like ARIS.  The predecessor to ARIS, SORO also produced several bibliographies, one on Unconventional Warfare. I have posted the February 1968 Annotated Bibliography of SORO Publications to the right under SORO.  Summer Newton from JH/APL is the primary author and editor of the current Irregular Warfare Annotated Bibliography, her introductions follows.

Irregular Warfare (IW) Introduction

In a 2011 speech to West Point cadets, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates highlighted the changing operational environment facing U.S. military forces and the shifts needed in military doctrine to successfully meet these challenges. He pinpointed the necessity of military advisement and speculated that large-scale COIN operations such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq will be relics of the past. The future focus, instead, will be on naval and air engagements as well as short-term counterterrorism strikes and disaster relief.[1]   Secretary Gates is, in part, describing a security environment that is characterized by irregular warfare, or IW.

The term IW first gained widespread attention after its inclusion and importance in the Quadrennial Defense Review 2006 (QDR 2006), a document that “[helps] shape the process of change to provide the United States of America with strong, sound, and effective warfighting capabilities in the decades ahead.” The QDR 2006 described the operational environment as one dominated by IW, requiring extended unconventional warfare; foreign internal defense; counterinsurgency; counterterrorism; and security, stability, transition, and reconstruction operations.[2]  Indeed, one of the fundamental imperatives of the U.S. military as described in the publication was to “reorient the [DoD’s] capabilities and forces to be more agile in this time of war, to prepare for wider asymmetric challenges”[3]  The Pentagon’s “execution roadmap” for IW was intended to combat the growing threat from enemy actions beyond the conventional, “state-to-state military conflict.”[4]  IW has gained more prominence after the Bush Administration launched the GWOT, which, to date, has significantly involved features of IW.  Since 2005, Special Operations Forces (SOF) skill sets have launched SOF to the forefront of the GWOT and warfare in a security environment dominated by IW.

IW as a term has been used as interchangeable with non-doctrinal con­cepts such as fourth generation warfare, asymmetric warfare, or unrestricted warfare, but it retains important distinctions from those concepts. At its core, IW is a departure from military-to-military warfare to operations that seek to gain popular support and favors “indirect, asymmetric methods”[5] and protracted warfare in order to “erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will.”[6]  JP 3-0 defines IW as “marked by a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population.”  IW may take several forms, “including insurgency, terrorism, disinformation, propaganda, organized criminal activity (such as drug trafficking)”[7] and non-state, state, or other actors:

The continued growth and power of non-state actors will remain a key feature of the environment. Globalization has transformed the process of technological innovation while lowering entry barriers for a wider range of actors to develop and acquire advanced technologies. As technological innovation and global information flows accelerate, non-state actors will continue to gain influence and capabilities that, during the previous century remained largely the purview of the state.[8]

The operational landscape in which the U.S. Armed Forces engage has experienced significant shifts. The dominance of U.S. conventional forces has encouraged outgunned adversaries to employ methods that offset our conventional advantages. “From non-state actors using highly advanced mil­itary technology and sophisticated information operations to states employ­ing unconventional technologies, our current adversaries have shown that they will tailor their strategies and employ their capabilities in sophisticated ways.”[9]  The concept of “hybrid warfare” captures this complexity, highlighting the blurring of traditional conflict categories, with state adversaries adopting unconventional, or protracted warfare strategies while some non-state actors adopting sophisticated or “high-end capabilities” heretofore exclusive to sovereign states. Furthermore, adversaries will possibly employ a number of other novel methods, including the use of criminal and terrorist networks, manipulation of the information environment, or preventing access to resource and energy markets.[10]

As its complexity suggests, IW does not rely on military prowess alone, but also “the understanding of such social dynamics as tribal politics, social networks, religious influences, and cultural mores.”[11] Its constituent activities, of which only several are discussed here—unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism[12]—reflect the necessity of engaging the population in order to align popular support with U.S. objectives in the state or region.

Policy analysts, military leaders, and scholars continue to debate the importance of the emerging threat of IW. In particular, to what extent the U.S. military forces should adapt to irregular warfare in addition to the continued emphasis on conventional warfare. BG Bennett Sacolick endorsed the need to develop conventional forces to be more “SOF-like,” as U.S. Army Special Forces are specially trained in IW, in careful consideration of the adversaries the U.S. is likely to face in the 21st-century. This sentiment was repeated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who noted that “the one requirement that jumps off the page is the requirement for all services to be SOF-like—to be netted, to be much more flexible, adaptive, faster, lethal, and precise.”[13]  However, others, including executives within the Army, do not endorse a similar position. An April 2006 White Paper issued by the Chief of Staff of the Army argued that “warfare is warfare,” whether con­ventional, irregular, or hybrid. The capabilities used in one can and must be adapted for use in the other— “Shifting our aim is not exchanging one “Either-Or” position for another. Aiming at the center of the conflict spec­trum will enable us to respond quickly and effectively to these hybrid threats across the spectrum, as the situation and mission dictate.”[14]

The following annotated bibliography is arranged according to the core tasks associated with IW: foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, uncon­ventional warfare, and counterinsurgency. Each bibliography is meant to act as a stand-alone document, thus many sources are repeated in each sec­tion as many sources address issues pertinent to the spectrum of the core tasks discussed here. Additionally, each source provides a link to large library database, WorldCat. Using the link when searching for a source will ensure that the correct one is accessed and give information on the nearest library holding the document or book. In the event that the source is available online, WorldCat also provides a link. In the rare event that a document was not listed in the extensive WorldCat database, a general link is used for the source.

The aim of this bibliography is to provide readers an offering of both a more traditional military perspective as well as perspectives from social scientists, including political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists studying similar phenomena. The following sources include general history and analysis related to each core task; operational or “how to” guides; and works discussing particular insurgencies. Additionally, while by no means comprehensive, the social science literature included in the following bibliographies addresses questions and concerns common in academia. Social science is the study of society and human behavior and unlike some hard sciences rarely provides definitive answers on what are undoubtedly highly complex matters. For example, to date, social scientists have not unearthed any hard and fast answers addressing the necessary and sufficient conditions for rebellion or the termination of insurgencies. Instead, the following sources present the scope of the debate surrounding conflict and contention, offering differing theories, oftentimes accompanied by empirical evidence, on the nature of resistance movements and insurgencies; motivations for rebellion; the dynamics of collective action; and the changing international system, among others.

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[1] Greg Jaffe, “In One of Final Addresses to Army, Gates Describes Vision for Military’s Future,” Washington Post, February 25, 2011.

[2] U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006), 36. However, SSTR operations are typically not SOF tasks. See also U.S. Department of Defense, Irregular Warfare: Countering Irregular Threats (Washington D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010), 5.

[3] U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review, 1.

[4] Jeffrey Hasler, “Defining War: New Doctrinal Definitions of Irregular, Conventional, and Unconventional Warfare,” Small Wars Journal 20, no. 2 (2007): 18.

[5] Bryan H. Cannady, “Irregular Warfare: Special Operations Joint Professional Military Education Transformation” (thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2008), 42.

[6] Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 3-0 Joint Operations (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2010), xi.

[7] 7 Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 3-0 Joint Operations, VII-7.

[8] 8 U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review, 7.

[9] 9 U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review, 8.

[10] 10 U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review, 8.

[11] Department of the Army, FM 3-05.130  Army Special Operations Unconventional Warfare (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008), I-5.

[12] USSOCOM lists these four tasks as four of eleven core SOF activities. USSOCOM Public Affairs, Fact Book, 2011, http://www.socom.mil/socomhome/documents/fact%20book%202011.pdf (accessed May 23, 2011).

[13] Bennett Sacolick, “SOF vs. SOF-like,” Small Wars Journal, April 30, 2009, http://smallwars journal.com/blog/2009/04/sof-vs-soflike/.

[14] Chief of Staff of the Army, Adapting our Aim: A Balanced Army for a Balanced Strategy, April 2009, 6, http://asc.army.mil/docs/divisions/rm/CSA_White_Paper.pdf (accessed March 3, 2011).