Insider: Short of War

To Beat China’s Navy to the Punch, Defend Forward in Taiwan

The US is falling behind China in naval power, making conventional deterrence strategies for Taiwan ineffective. In this episode, we explore an alternative military approach—one that sidesteps China's naval dominance and strengthens deterrence through irregular warfare and strategic presence. Tune in to understand why a new US military strategy for Taiwan is critical for maintaining regional stability.

Lessons from the Frontlines: Ukrainian SEAD Operations and Their Implications for Western Special Operations Forces

In this episode, we explore Ukrainian SEAD operations and their impact on modern warfare. Learn how Ukrainian special operations forces have successfully targeted Russian air defenses and what this means for the future of U.S. and NATO SOF. Tune in for an in-depth analysis of tactics, strategies, and lessons from the frontlines.

Dominating Conflict’s Leading Edge: Five Principles for an Assertive Irregular Warfare Doctrine

In today’s episode, we delve deep into the complexities of irregular warfare in the modern geopolitical landscape. With global tensions on the rise, from the Syrian conflict to the shifting power dynamics in Ukraine and beyond, this episode explores the need for an adaptive and layered U.S. strategy to navigate the "gray zone" of conflict. From proxy deterrence and economic warfare to combating disinformation, we unpack the principles that can empower U.S. policy and defense efforts without escalating into full-blown war. Join us as we explore the evolving challenges and the strategic responses needed to safeguard global stability.

Enhancing USSOF Capacity to Foster Resistance: Aligning Authorities and Resources to Win the Gray Zone

n this episode, we dive into the evolving role of U.S. Special Operations Forces (USSOF) in Irregular Warfare (IW) and their growing impact on gray zone conflicts. USSOF’s adaptability, specialized skills, and focus on building resilient partnerships have made them pivotal in shaping regions and preempting threats—especially in conflicts like the ongoing war in Ukraine.
We explore how USSOF has been crucial in fostering resistance movements, from supporting Ukrainian efforts to counter Russian aggression through unconventional tactics, to the structural challenges they face in current U.S. Security Cooperation (SC) mechanisms. These mechanisms, while vital, are insufficient for supporting the expanding scope of USSOF operations. We delve into the shortcomings of existing funding and authority structures, such as Section 127d and the SSCI process, and propose a new, streamlined approach that would ensure USSOF’s continued agility and strategic success.
Join us as we analyze the intersection of policy, military strategy, and operational needs, and discuss how refining U.S. support for resistance-focused operations can enhance national security and global stability.

How to Counter Russian Occupation: Building Multinational Resistance Networks Before a Crisis

In this episode, we delve into the historical and modern strategies for countering Russian occupation. From the guerrilla tactics of the Forest Brothers to lessons drawn from Ukraine's resistance, discover how multinational cooperation, emerging technologies, and pre-crisis planning can strengthen NATO’s eastern flank. Learn why resilience, innovation, and unity are critical to resisting occupation and safeguarding sovereignty in the face of aggression.

The Necessary Evolution of U.S. Grand Strategy: Learning from the Past to Address Modern Challenges in the Era of Strategic Competition

The Necessary Evolution of U.S. Grand Strategy: Learning from the Past to Address Modern Challenges in the Era of Strategic Competition by Doug Livermore
 
In an era of increasing global complexity and competition, the United States faces unprecedented challenges that require a fundamental reassessment of its grand strategy. As defined by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the role of grand strategy is, “to coordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war—the goal defined by fundamental policy.” Examining historical approaches to national security should inform contemporary strategic thinking, all while acknowledging that modern threats demand innovative solutions that go beyond traditional frameworks. The transformation of the international system from a unipolar moment following the Cold War to today's multipolar reality necessitates a comprehensive reevaluation of American strategic priorities and approaches.
 
Historical Foundations: The Containment Strategy
 
The Cold War era's containment strategy, first articulated by George Kennan in his 1947 article in Foreign Affairs, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” and later formalized in National Security Council Paper 68 (NSC-68), represented a watershed moment in American strategic thinking. This comprehensive approach successfully constrained Soviet expansion through multiple interconnected mechanisms. The strategy established a robust military deterrent through the nascent North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other regional alliances, thus creating a credible counter to Soviet military power. Simultaneously, it leveraged economic tools, including the Marshall Plan, to strengthen democratic allies and create a resilient international order. These efforts were complemented by sophisticated diplomatic initiatives to isolate the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact while building a coalition of democratic nations.
 
The success of containment demonstrated the effectiveness of patient, multi-dimensional engagement in achieving long-term strategic objectives. However, it is crucial to note that this success came at significant cost and required sustained commitment across multiple administrations. The strategy's effectiveness stemmed from its ability to align domestic resources, international partnerships, and strategic objectives in a coherent and sustainable manner. This alignment proved essential in maintaining American resolve through periods of intense crisis and relative calm.
 
The containment strategy's success also highlighted the importance of strategic communication in maintaining domestic and international support. Through various initiatives, including the United States Information Agency and Radio Free Europe, America effectively communicated its values and objectives to global audiences while countering Soviet propaganda. This aspect of the strategy provides valuable lessons for today's information environment, where the battle for narrative dominance has become increasingly crucial.
 
The Reagan Doctrine represented both an evolution and intensification of Kennan’s containment strategy, moving beyond mere constraint of Soviet influence to actively rolling back communist expansion through support to anti-communist forces worldwide. This more aggressive approach maintained containment's fundamental recognition of the need to integrate multiple instruments of national power, but significantly expanded America's willingness to provide overt military and economic support to insurgent forces in places like Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, and Nicaragua. Reagan's strategy paired this support for anti-communist proxy forces with a massive conventional military buildup, strengthening of key alliances, and promotion of free trade– demonstrating how discrete tactical actions could serve broader strategic aims.
The strategy's success in accelerating the Soviet Union's eventual collapse highlighted several enduring principles of effective grand strategy. First, it showed how supporting local partner forces could achieve strategic objectives at relatively low cost and risk to US forces. Second, it demonstrated the importance of aligning military, economic, and diplomatic efforts – as Reagan's military pressure was amplified by economic warfare and aggressive diplomacy. Third, it revealed how focusing on adversaries’ key vulnerabilities (in this case, the ) could force them to make strategic concessions. These lessons would later influence approaches to counterterrorism and great power competition, though the unique circumstances of the late Cold War meant that not all elements of the Reagan Doctrine would translate directly to future challenges.
 
The Evolution of Political Warfare
 
Modern great power competition has evolved beyond traditional military confrontation into a complex web of political warfare. Kennan's May 1948 memorandum on political warfare offered perhaps the clearest articulation of how great powers compete across all domains, defining it as "the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace." In his analysis, political warfare was fundamentally "the employment of all means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives." This understanding wasn't new–from the Monroe Doctrine to Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's emphasis on sea power as an economic and diplomatic tool, American strategists had long recognized that great power competition demands orchestration of all instruments of national power.
 
What has fundamentally shifted is not the multidomain nature of this competition, but rather the revolutionary impact of the information environment. While Kennan emphasized overt and covert measures across diplomatic, economic, and military domains–all backed by America's growing power–today's strategic environment is dominated by the unprecedented speed, scope, and accessibility of information. The digital revolution has transformed traditional concepts of political warfare, creating new vulnerabilities and opportunities in cyberspace while accelerating the pace of influence operations to a degree that would have been unimaginable during the Cold War.
 
Political warfare in the contemporary context encompasses a broad spectrum of activities and capabilities, from economic coercion and cyber operations to information manipulation and proxy conflicts. The digital revolution has transformed the nature of political warfare, creating new vulnerabilities and opportunities in cyberspace while accelerating the pace of information operations. Understanding and adapting to these changes is crucial for developing effective strategic responses to modern challenges.
 
Counterterrorism and the Islamic State: Lessons from Recent History
 
The Trump Administration's campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) offers important lessons about the evolution of American strategy in the face of non-state threats. The approach demonstrated the importance of integrating conventional military operations with irregular warfare capabilities to create an effective counterterrorism framework. Much like with the Soviet “containment” approach, this strategy combined precision military operations with robust partner force development and the diplomatic, informational, and economic elements of US national power, creating a sustainable approach to counterterrorism that acknowledged the limitations of purely military solutions. Throughout 2017 and 2018, I represented the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence as part of the broader interagency team that drafted and then implemented the “Defeat ISIS” whole-of-government strategy, witnessing firsthand an outstanding example of an integrated national strategy.
 
That strategy highlighted the importance of operational flexibility and the need to adapt strategic approaches to local conditions. The success in degrading ISIS territorial control came through careful coordination of military pressure, diplomatic engagement with regional partners, and efforts to address underlying governance challenges. Most recently, I served as the deputy commander for our NATO Special Operations Advisory Group–Iraq throughout 2022, where we supported the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service in maintaining ever-increasing pressure on ISIS remnants following the destruction of its physical caliphate. These experiences provide valuable insights for addressing hybrid threats in other contexts, particularly in regions where state weakness creates opportunities for malign actors.
 
Contemporary Challenges: A Multi-Threat Environment
 
Today's strategic landscape presents a more complex set of challenges than either the bipolar Cold War environment or the post-9/11 focus on counterterrorism. China represents the most comprehensive challenger to US interests, combining rapid military modernization with sophisticated economic statecraft through projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), technological competition in critical areas, and information operations that challenge democratic narratives. Both the Trump and Biden administrations’ National Defense Strategies (NDS) listed China in the top tier of global competitors. Understanding China’s “Three Warfares” approach to strategic competition has become so important that my research on this topic is featured in the latest Army Doctrine Publication 3-13 (Information). China's strategic approach demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how to leverage economic power for geopolitical advantage, while its military modernization presents increasingly significant challenges to American power projection capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region.  
 
Russia, despite economic limitations, also poses significant challenges to global stability and peaceful competition through military modernization, nuclear capabilities, hybrid warfare tactics, energy diplomacy in Europe, and sophisticated information warfare operations. The Russian approach to hybrid warfare, demonstrated in Ukraine and other theaters, highlights the importance of developing comprehensive responses to threats that blur traditional distinctions between war and peace. Iran continues to present regional challenges through its network of proxy forces, nuclear program development, cyber capabilities, and demonstrated resilience to economic sanctions. These diverse challenges require strategies that can address multiple threats simultaneously while maintaining strategic coherence.
 
The proliferation of advanced technologies has further complicated the strategic landscape. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and autonomous systems are transforming military capabilities and creating new vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, the increasing importance of space and cyberspace as domains of competition requires new approaches to deterrence and conflict management.
 
Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition
 
The modern security environment demands adaptation of irregular warfare capabilities to counter adversaries' gray zone activities while maintaining conventional deterrence. This requires developing sophisticated approaches to proxy warfare, information operations, and economic statecraft that can compete effectively below the threshold of armed conflict. The challenge lies in integrating these capabilities into a coherent strategy that can address both immediate threats and long-term strategic competition.
 
Success in this environment requires developing new operational concepts that can effectively combine conventional and irregular capabilities. It also demands new approaches to partnership and coalition building that can sustain long-term competitive efforts while managing escalation risks. The role of special operations forces must evolve to address the full spectrum of modern conflict, from direct action to strategic influence operations.
 
Toward a New Grand Strategy
 
Addressing these diverse challenges requires a comprehensive approach to grand strategy, defined by Sir Basil Liddell Hart as directing all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object, looking beyond the conflict to the “subsequent peace.” Success demands the coordinated application of all elements of national power. In the diplomatic realm, this means strengthening existing alliances while building new partnerships, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. This includes revitalizing traditional alliances like NATO while developing new frameworks for diplomatic, economic, and informational cooperation.
The information domain requires sophisticated capabilities to counter disinformation while promoting democratic values, combining defensive measures against foreign influence operations with proactive efforts to shape the global narrative. This requires not only technical capabilities but also a sophisticated understanding of how to effectively communicate American values and objectives to diverse global audiences.
 
Military strategy must maintain conventional and nuclear deterrence while developing capabilities for “gray zone” competition, including investments in emerging technologies and expansion of unique capabilities. The challenge lies in balancing these various requirements while maintaining force readiness, deployment cycles, and modernization efforts.
 
Economic tools must be deployed strategically, combining targeted sanctions against adversaries with investment screening mechanisms, trade agreements that strengthen allies and build strong relationships, and technology controls in critical sectors. Emerging technologies must be central to strategic planning, with particular attention to artificial intelligence applications, quantum computing, space capabilities, and cyber tools for both defensive and offensive operations.
 
Institutional Reform and Implementation
 
Effective grand strategy requires institutions with reformed interagency coordination mechanisms and updated decision-making processes that match the speed of modern challenges. Success in modern conflict requires breaking down traditional institutional barriers and creating more agile organizational structures capable of responding to hybrid threats.
The current national security architecture, largely designed for the Cold War era, must be updated to address modern challenges. This includes developing new mechanisms for coordinating responses to hybrid threats, improving information sharing across agencies and with partners, and creating more effective processes for strategy development and implementation that are more akin to the Cold War era containment approach and my own experience with the successful Defeat-ISIS strategy.
 
Several significant implementation challenges must be addressed. Resource constraints require careful prioritization and sustained funding across multiple domains. Domestic political dynamics necessitate building consistent policy approaches that can survive transitions between administrations. Different threat perceptions and priorities among allies complicate coalition building, while technology management demands sophisticated regulatory frameworks that balance innovation with security.
 
Conclusion
 
The United States faces a strategic environment more complex than at any point in its history. Success requires learning from both the patient, multi-dimensional approach of containment and the agile, targeted nature of counterterrorism operations. However, these lessons must be adapted to address contemporary challenges.
 
A new American grand strategy must leverage all elements of national power while maintaining the flexibility to both address current threats while focusing on a desired future global security environment. Such a grand strategy, in addition to describing this preferred future state, must lay out the multidimensional processes, policies, and programs necessary to achieve that outcome across an extended time horizon. This requires institutional reform, technological innovation, and sustained commitment across multiple administrations. Most importantly, it demands recognition that in today's interconnected world, American security and prosperity are inextricably linked to global stability and America’s strength within the international order. However the US ultimately decides to shape the future, it will require a coherent grand strategy to make that future a reality.
 
The path forward requires not only new capabilities and approaches but also a renewed commitment to American leadership in the international system. This leadership must be based on a clear understanding of American interests and values, combined with a realistic assessment of the resources and capabilities required to achieve strategic objectives. Success in this endeavor will require sustained effort, strategic patience, and the ability to build and maintain effective coalitions in an increasingly complex global environment.

A New Playbook for Irregular Warfare: How the United States Can Win Without Fighting

During the final stretch of the 2024 American presidential election, the Department of Justice seized 32 web domains linked to ‘Doppelganger,’ an aggressive Russian disinformation campaign to influence American voters. Meanwhile, China has continued to exploit the US sanctions regime to promote its own currency, the renminbi, as a viable alternative to the dollar. And while wildfires and winter storms ravage expansive regions of the country—not long after Hurricanes Helene and Milton had exposed glaring deficiencies in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) planning and budget—forecasters and politicians alike grapple with an increasingly grim future defined by extreme weather and climate change.
 
What do these challenges have in common? According to the siloed US national security enterprise, perhaps not much. But that assumption betrays a critical lack of vision. In reality, Americans are under siege every day, often by forces that they neither perceive nor understand. The United States is at war—not kinetically, but instead on the intangible battlefields of internet chat groups, currency exchanges, security cooperation agreements, and natural disaster responses. As the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) warns, the contemporary security environment is best described as an era of strategic competition and transnational crises. And the simultaneity of these challenges will be a defining feature of American foreign and domestic policy in the 21st century.
 
How should the US government conceive of this new “Great Game” in which it is uncomfortably enmeshed? How does one measure a state’s relative position in the ongoing geopolitical clash? And what does ‘winning’ mean in this environment? These questions serve as the primary impetus for Winning Without Fighting: Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century—a new book by Rebecca Patterson, Susan Bryant, Ken Gleiman, and Mark Troutman which establishes a holistic vocabulary and strategic framework for outcompeting America’s adversaries. In a modern era of ‘irregular’ challenges that often fall below the traditional threshold of armed conflict, the United States must employ a more expansive toolset of non-kinetic and cost-effective means, drawing upon American advantages and undermining enemy weaknesses.
 
Strategic Drift
Today’s threat landscape is daunting. A renewed era of strategic competition—featuring revisionist autocratic actors such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and violent extremist organizations—is at the forefront of national security concerns. But Winning Without Fighting also adopts the idea, which underpins the 2022 NSS, that the world has entered an “age of crises” or a “world of the polycrisis.” Indeed, the concurrent threats posed by the increasing (and often mutually-reinforcing) effects of climate change, health crises, mass migration, and the introduction of disruptive technologies will challenge the resilience of all national governments, consuming increasing amounts of economic and military power to counter them effectively. Experts may debate whether strategic competition or transnational crises pose the more significant problem, but the United States must manage both.      
 
However, America is strategically adrift. The US government, having failed to secure meaningful military success in any recent conflict, has determined the best way to succeed is to double down on preparing for a large-scale conventional operation while neglecting to recognize that its adversaries are already waging an asymmetric war using all instruments of power. As a result, America’s leaders often pursue a narrowly cast military-, technology-, and deterrence-centric strategy—instead of a more appropriate whole-of-society approach leveraging both kinetic and non-kinetic tools of military, economic, and information statecraft, as well as national resilience. At best, this flawed construct inadequately employs the necessary tools of competitive statecraft and produces suboptimal strategic outcomes; at worst, it could precipitate strategic defeat.
 
Strategic Culture
This dependence on overwhelming military force is rooted deep in American strategic culture. Relying on the work of Colin Gray and Tom Manhken, Winning Without Fighting argues that American strategic culture suffers from a binary conception of war and peace incompatible with the gray-zone style of competition in which it is currently enmeshed. This binary also extends to the definition of war itself, which Americans conceive of solely as military conflict—in contrast to the more holistic Chinese view of warfare, which also encompasses economic and informational competition, and to Russian strategic culture, which prefers authoritarian governance and strategic depth in the form of a well-controlled near abroad. And while military power remains necessary in a world that features a stalemated Russo-Ukrainian War and an escalating Middle East conflagration, it is not sufficient.
 
This strategic culture deeply affects the framing of national security issues in the policy discourse. Even when the government develops sound conceptual frameworks for competing below the threshold of war—such as “irregular warfare,” the “competition continuum,” and even “integrated deterrence”—these supposedly whole-of-society concepts are often solely or mostly led by the Department of Defense (DoD) rather than the interagency process. They often focus disproportionately on the role of applied violence rather than the large toolset of non-kinetic means at America’s disposal. Instead, the United States needs a more holistic strategic framework.
 
 
Irregular Warfare: The Ends
Winning Without Fighting advances irregular warfare (IW) as the concept that should guide US foreign and domestic policy in the 21st century. While every term is flawed, IW captures two essential areas of focus: 1) the ‘irregular’ nature of today’s competition, which should involve a greater reliance on non-kinetic means of competitive statecraft; and 2) the idea that such competition is indeed ‘warfare,’ even when it is waged non-kinetically, thereby instilling greater urgency and purpose into an American policy discourse that often neglects peacetime threats. Therefore, Winning Without Fighting arms policymakers, experts, and students with the vocabulary for addressing today’s challenges—if the threat landscape is marked by ‘strategic competition’ and an ‘era of crises,’ then the predominant domain will be the ‘gray zone’ between war and peace, where ‘irregular warfare’ must be the prevailing strategic concept.
 
So, what does IW look like? Winning Without Fighting articulates three relative ends that the United States should always aim to achieve to bolster its competitive standing while diminishing that of the adversary. First is power, or the ability to affect others’ behavior. This often involves coercive military and economic tools “to compel our enemy to do our will,” in the words of Carl von Clausewitz. Second is influence, or the ability to affect others’ perceptions. And third, is legitimacy, or the collective belief among a relevant population that a certain actor or action is rightful. Influence and legitimacy require a greater reliance on tools such as informational statecraft, which can shape leaders’ and populations’ views of facts and reality, and national resilience, which can bolster a government’s legitimacy among people under siege. To prevail in irregular warfare, the United States must pursue all three objectives simultaneously.
 
 
Irregular Warfare: The Means
While the United States must pursue the same long-term ends (power, influence, and legitimacy) as its adversaries, it should not use the same means. Autocracies like China and Russia have certain advantages, especially their ability to marshal state resources and control information. However, democratic states have advantages, too, including their economic vitality, more extensive networks of allies and partners, and the legitimacy of their political institutions. American strategies have traditionally neglected fundamental US advantages across the economic, informational, and resilience elements of statecraft. However, US IW strategies prevailed during the Cold War and could prevail again today. Winning Without Fighting develops the foundation for a more holistic strategic approach based on the purposive integration of all instruments of statecraft and the more balanced participation of the agencies that wield them, with a particular focus on non-kinetic means that can generate power, influence, and legitimacy.
 
The first set of tools is military statecraft. While the United States must continue investing in conventional and nuclear forces to deter great-power war, it also has a variety of non-kinetic tools that are too often underutilized. Ironically, the United States ‘wrote the book’ on non-kinetic military statecraft during the Cold War—using a variety of interpersonal tools (e.g., Key Leader Engagements and International Professional Military Education), organizational tools (e.g., Foreign Military Sales), and systemic tools (e.g., global force posture) to enhance military power, influence, and legitimacy among its allies and partners. These tools represent major advantages in IW struggles as adversaries seek to entice countries into their spheres of influence. Therefore, US military statecraft must be at the core of future IW efforts to combat enemy military and paramilitary threats worldwide while bolstering and expanding the American alliance architecture.
 
Second is economic statecraft. The academic literature and policy discourse often focus too much on sanctions and embargoes. However, American-led or -influenced economic institutions have been at the center of the global economy since the end of World War II, and the dollar is still the international currency of choice. Therefore, Winning Without Fighting chronicles the diverse economic tools available to American policymakers, dividing them into a useful typology of trade-based tools (e.g., boycotts and embargoes, import and export controls, and tariffs), capital-based tools (e.g., asset freezes, financial sanctions, and the provision or withdrawal of aid), and domestic policies (e.g., fiscal, monetary, and industrial policy).
 
Third is information statecraft. While the United States should never imitate its adversaries’ draconian manipulation of information, including mis- and disinformation campaigns, it has various advantages to leverage in this space. Information sharing (e.g., funding credible news outlets and promoting radio and TV broadcasting), international agreements on the right to information, and the prosecution of actors who perpetrate illegal information operations can help bring greater clarity and even truth to a murky information environment. And in more intense campaigns, infrastructure destruction—such as blocking internet access or targeting radio transmission towers—can help stall the adversary’s use of mis- and disinformation.
 
Lastly, Winning Without Fighting proposes the addition of a new instrument of national power: resilience, invoking the National Intelligence Council’s 2017 Global Trends report, which argues that “measuring a state’s resilience is likely to be a better determinant of success in coping with future chaos and disruption than traditional measures of material power alone.”  The tools of resilience and the agencies responsible for ensuring national resilience (e.g., FEMA, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have traditionally existed outside the national security sphere. But today, these agencies and their capabilities are critical for defending and advancing power, influence, and legitimacy. The states likely to prevail in IW are those capable of withstanding and mitigating severe shocks like climate change, pandemic disease, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns. Therefore, resilience must be a priority for every presidential administration regardless of political party. But unlike other proposals for a “a grand strategy of resilience,” or one “based on resilience,” the authors of Winning Without Fighting emphasize that resilience is one element of a broader, more holistic approach.
 
However, it is not enough to employ these means. Good strategies are always flexible, adaptable, and robust, and thus policymakers must be able to assess their progress toward the overall ends over long time horizons. Winning Without Fighting develops a matrix of different military, economic, information, and resilience metrics, relating them to power, influence, and legitimacy, respectively. It also encourages the development of a more formal government-wide measurement framework and a culture of assessment to ensure that any IW strategy is meeting its goals.
 
Educating the Next Generation
Irregular warfare is not a battle or campaign—it is a long-term, multi-generational struggle. Winning Without Fighting not only articulates a strategic framework for current policymakers but also builds a common vocabulary for future decision-makers. It is a comprehensive primer for anyone interested in exploring America’s history, preferences, and outlook concerning IW, and it is meant to help students and practitioners alike reframe their thinking about strategic competition and America’s place in global politics. As we enter 2025, this strategic framework should guide important upcoming decisions on military competition, trade wars, countering harmful narratives, and combating dangerous transnational crises. 

Assembling the A-Team: Creating an Interagency Office to Counter Irregular Warfare

Irregular warfare is a nebulous term that very much resembles the polycephalic hydra of Greek mythology. The manipulation of international law and norms to secure regional hegemony, use of unmarked soldiers and equipment to occupy the territory of another nation, highly violent transnational militia and terror networks, recurring cyberattacks, threats to critical infrastructure, and everything in between fall within the domain of irregular warfare. Ultimately, what binds this near-infinite array of actors is a wish to fight with just enough plausible deniability built into their respective deeds to forestall the escalation of a conflict to the level of traditional conventional or nuclear war, typically involving the use of soldiers, tanks, ships, planes, and nuclear arms to occupy territory or otherwise impose political and material defeat upon an enemy. In essence, irregular warfare consists of just about everything under the sun since it works both separately and in tandem with conventional warfare to achieve desired outcomes.
However, separating irregular warfare from conventional warfare perhaps occludes more than it clarifies. The goal of securing influence over other actors—“assur[ing] or coerc[ing] states or other groups,” in the words of the Congressional Research Service—can be seen as the goal of both conventional and irregular warfare as traditional alliance networks and wars are meant to defend friends and repel enemies through any means necessary. For instance, surreptitious cyberattacks aimed at key banks or commercial actors are not much different than the use of formal naval blocks used to curtail a nation’s economic activity. Therefore, it is of great importance to recognize that warfare—whether conventional or irregular—is a continuum requiring management from whole-of-society inputs.
Consequently, the United States government should consider the implementation of a new interagency office to coordinate these various inputs while bringing irregular threats into strategic focus. Such a body would not seek to duplicate the efforts of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) or other such entities focused solely on collecting and disseminating governmental intelligence. Rather, this new entity should resemble a more informal version of the National Defense Advisory Commission (NDAC), which was established in 1940 by Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to marry the leadership of governmental agencies (e.g. the Departments of War, Labor, and Agriculture) with that of commercial heavyweights (e.g. the Ford Motor Company or Higgins Industries) to concentrate defense production, stabilize consumer prices, and promote broad innovation.
Indeed, as the Second World War effectively demonstrated, everything the American people could muster was necessary for expelling the forces of fascism from both the Atlantic and Pacific. This meant not only recruiting millions of men to fight in uniform, but also recruiting men and women at home to create effective propaganda, to coordinate the production of materiel to support those fighting abroad, to bolster deception, and to generate revenue through things like war bonds to ensure the United States and its allies had the treasure to prosecute a war against tyrants. In other words, there was little distinction between means and ends, warfighter and civilian, as the whole heft of the United States had to be mobilized to ensure victory in two theaters.
Likewise, the numerous domains of irregular warfare today require many of the same public-private inputs as those used to fight in the Second World War. Cyber threats require both government bodies and private businesses to protect the data and infrastructure of the American people. The United States Navy must use its advanced warships and munitions to not only compete against other navies, but to protect vital shipping lanes like the Red Sea from disruptions. The American foreign policy apparatus must take staunch positions in forums like the United Nations to ensure strategic competitors like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) cannot amend or abuse elements like international maritime law to become the suzerain of a whole region. In this way, there is little distinction between irregular and conventional threats, with many of the same tools used across the board.
With that in mind, it’s time to muster a new A-team to assess and respond to irregular threats in a holistic, far-seeing manner. The Department of Defense (DoD) veered close to this idea in miniature when it consolidated several military intelligence elements to form the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS). The formation of the DCS signaled a desire to overcome a degree of myopia imposed by the Global War on Terrorism. Rather than focusing solely on highly localized battlefield intelligence as it had during the start of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq in Afghanistan, the DCS would gather information relevant to the broader military capabilities of near-peer competitors and revisionist powers like the PRC and Iran. In doing so, other intelligence organizations like the overburdened Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could redirect resources away from military intelligence to securing information on the social, economic, and political aspects of a given target. This symbiotic approach allows one agency to tap into the resources and expertise of the other to create a larger, complementary vision of the world and the various threats to American interests. An upscaled version of this arrangement could help the executive office dampen the impact of irregular warfare as well. That is, creating a unified operational command center shared by various agencies could not only align means with ends, but also save costs on redundancies while enhancing the strengths of each constituent organization.
A new interagency effort might consist of a small office filled with one or two senior officials from many of the major federal departments and agencies who are responsible for American defense or foreign policy (e.g. the Departments of State and Defense). While not quite at the secretary or undersecretary levels, these officials should be of significant enough rank to understand the complexities of their respective organizations, the internal and external constraints they face, and be endowed with enough authority to share these complexities with others. In many ways, this new interagency office would be like the Cabinet of the United States; however, the key difference is that this new body would be focused on the warfare continuum rather than concerning themselves with maintaining the good graces of the American voter. In essence, domestic policy as it is traditionally envisioned would be eschewed by this new office in the interest of staying focused on adversaries from both within and without. Thus, the themes of terrorism (both domestic and foreign), cyberwarfare, supply chain security, and more would all fall within the purview of this office without having to redirect attention to domestic distractions like offsetting America’s carbon footprint or lowering interest rates and gas prices for consumers during pivotal election seasons.
The goal of gathering so many senior minds from disparate departments would be for each organization to regularly brief the others on the worldviews, ambitions, fears, and key projects unique to each of them. For instance, the representative(s) of the National Security Agency (NSA) could note that there has been a rise in the use of cyberattacks by Iran, the PRC, and/or North Korea against the physical infrastructure, personal records, and intellectual property of the American people. The Department of Defense could chime in to confirm this account while the Department of Commerce shares how such cyber intrusions could lead to a loss of confidence in e-commerce if left unabated. In turn, this candid sharing of information and perspectives creates a combined sense of urgency within the new counter-IW agency to curtail any shrinking of America’s economic and technological edge.
With this new cross-departmental understanding of a common threat, an operational game plan could be quickly sketched out and passed along to the relevant authorities within and between each organization. For instance, the Department of Commerce could use its connections with the civilian tech sector to create new security protocols and reporting mechanisms to better home in on cyber threats. Likewise, the NSA could work in conjunction with the DoD to launch tailored, retaliatory cyberattacks to let adversaries know that cyberweapons cut both ways. Moreover, select technology companies could help to enhance the counter-IW efforts of the federal government by enabling agencies to use things like generative artificial intelligence to create allied botnets, targeted disinformation campaigns, and other smokescreens to slow enemy operations in the cyber domain and beyond. Even the Departments of Education and Labor could be brought into the mix by offering tuition assistance, grants, and stronger wage standards to incentivize young Americans to seek degrees and jobs in cybersecurity, creating a long-term commitment to the cause.
Again, the goal would be to create a more effective division of labor while bringing in voices that are typically not heard by the conventional intelligence community under the NSC, ODNI, and other such organizations. By allowing the Cabinet to deliberate and determine the strategic interests of the United States, the interagency counter-IW consortium could freely haggle amongst itself and brainstorm how to actualize those interests and create desired effects at the operational level. With a truly interagency picture in mind, not just broad departmental directives from the President and Cabinet, each agency within the federal government could then use its respective strengths and resources to create a whole-of-government, if not whole-of-society, response to pertinent threats.
Of course, this assumes that each organization within the counter-IW office does not view the others as competitors. Indeed, agencies may fear that too much collaboration could blur the mandates or prohibitions that distinguish one agency from another, leading to legal trouble, exacerbating battles for funding, or creating internal dysfunction within each agency. For example, the CIA’s restrictions on collecting information on U.S. persons could be compromised by too eagerly participating in an interagency crackdown on domestic violent extremists hypothetically being radicalized and funded, at least in part, by foreign adversaries such as Russia. Thus, with only one or two folks to represent the CIA at such a juncture, decision overload may lead to self-restrictive behavior, effectively promoting or maintaining the very bureaucratic siloing the counter-IW office is meant to resolve. Nevertheless, it is important to create some sort of vehicle that actually mobilizes interagency cooperation rather than merely gesturing at the concept.
To reiterate, there is considerable overlap between the means and ends of conventional and irregular warfare. Both modes of conflict seek to influence an adversary, whether through overt fighting, use of proxies to harass or undermine allied institutions, or the clandestine battle for hearts and minds in cyberspace and beyond. Indeed, we now find ourselves in a space where conflict is a continuum rather than a stark dichotomy constituted by peace on one end and war on the other. Even when the United States is not involved in kinetic combat with adversaries like the PRC on land, at sea, or in the skies, both parties (and many others) seek to shape the political, social, and economic environments to favor their forces if conventional or nuclear war does erupt. Thus, competition in the 21st century has once again become a whole-of-society effort as highly sophisticated polities seek to defeat each other in a multitude of ways before shots are ever fired. Recognizing this, a dedicated office to mobilize the whole might of the United States as was done during the Second World War is essential to maintain an edge or, at the very least, mitigate the harm done from nonstop competition below the threshold of conventional warfare. The A-team would channel the creative and destructive energies of the American republic—though perhaps under a different name to escape copyright infringement.

Ethics, Integrity, and the Toll of Modern Irregular Warfare: A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Dave Philipps

This episode is part of Project Maritime, which explores modern challenges and opportunities in the maritime dimension at the intersection of irregular warfare and strategic competition. We warmly invite your participation and engagement as we embark on this project. Please send submissions with the subject line “Project Maritime Submission” and follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @proj_maritime.
Project Maritime had the pleasure of interviewing New York Times military reporter, and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Dave Philipps. Philipps’ writing has special resonance to those focused on irregular warfare in the littorals and those soldiers, sailors, marines, and operators, who have been serving in expeditionary operations in a variety of conflict zones.
Mr. Philipps may be best known for his searing and gripping book, “Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs.” Philipps has focused his writing on small units, and the soldiers, marines, and special operators who have fought the Global War on Terror.
Additionally, he has had a series of pieces over the past year focusing on the brain damage apparently caused by cumulative shock-waves to troops exposed to repeated blasts from weapons in combat or high intensity training. He has exposed injury clusters around Army and Marine artillerymen who fired up to 10,000 rounds in just several months in small units deployed against the Islamic State in Mosul. He has documented similar problems with mortars, M1 tanks,  Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, and most recently brain trauma among elite Navy Special Boat teams made up of U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen who deliver SEALs to the fight in high-powered craft that may expose their crews to 64Gs (64 times the force of gravity).
Link to article: https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/ethics-integrity-and-the-toll-of-modern-irregular-warfare-a-conversation-with-pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-dave-philipps/

Irregular Warfare in 2024: Lessons Learned, Paths Forward

by: Guido Torres, Executive Director of IWI
January 2nd, 2025
The global security environment in 2024 proved as unpredictable as ever—yet, beneath the headlines, several clear themes and patterns emerged. A review of our articles published throughout the year reveals deeper insights into how irregular warfare is evolving across multiple fronts, from the Indo-Pacific to the Sahel, and from space to the bottom of the sea. This was not a year of singular, decisive battles but of incremental advances and strategic maneuvering in unconventional ways. This episode draws on insights from over 75 articles published by the Irregular Warfare Initiative in 2024, synthesizing key lessons and identifying emerging trends in irregular warfare.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.
The essay can be found on the Irregular Warfare Initiative's website, along with all the articles cited. If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items. Subscribe to this podcast and leave us a review.