Special operations forces have never been in such high demand. Just more than a year ago, the Pentagon approved a major expansion of their ranks and a substantial funding increase.
But experts are questioning whether the Pentagon is making the best use of these highly skilled forces in the nation’s war against extremist Islamic groups.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it one of his top priorities to boost the size and influence of special operations forces. The U.S. Special Operations Command will be growing to more than 54,000 personnel — which is nearly 10,000 more people than it had three years ago — and its budget has soared from $4 billion to nearly $7 billion. Rumsfeld also directed SOCOM to “take the lead” in the war on terrorism.
But it was never clear to anyone in the military’s top leadership what exactly it meant for SOCOM to take the lead. The most likely rationale for Rumsfeld’s plan was his conviction that, unlike the conventional military services, special operations forces could take care of business quickly and inexpensively — with only 2 percent of the Pentagon’s budget.
The problem with Rumsfeld’s thinking is that he overemphasized the “direct action” piece of the SOF portfolio, which involves the capture and killing of terrorist operatives. His plan gave short shrift to one of the other major missions of special operators: the training of foreign militaries in critical regions of the world, says Dick Couch, a retired Navy SEAL and author of “Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior.”
The so-called “foreign internal defense” mission is essential because it builds indigenous forces — in places such as Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East — that, in theory, will fight terrorists and insurgents, and ultimately forward U.S. interests without large military interventions.
Given the current U.S. struggle against extremist Muslim militants, the foreign-internal defense mission arguably can go much further toward winning the war on terrorism than just capturing and killing terrorist suspects, Couch says.
“Special operations forces have tremendous direct-action capability to take out bad guys. Rumsfeld really liked that. … They can jump on a helicopter on a moment’s notice and get the job done quickly.” But their abilities to work with foreign nations and help them build robust counterterrorist capabilities are key to achieving U.S. goals, he adds. “Rumsfeld seemed to be overly charmed by the direct-action portion” of the SOF mission.
The skills associated with foreign-internal defense have been mastered over decades by the Army Green Berets, who only make up less than one-tenth of the Special Operations Command. In “Chosen Soldier,” Couch explains how Special Forces are trained and how they are adapting to insurgency warfare. Special Forces have the skills that the U.S. military needs right now more than ever, says Couch. They are taught to operate in foreign cultures, often behind enemy lines; to recruit, train, and lead local forces; to gather intelligence in hostile territory and to forge bonds across languages and cultures.
The disappointing outcome of the invasion of Iraq makes the value of Special Forces all the more obvious, he says. “We have a military that is very good at maneuver and expeditionary warfare but not very good at insurgency warfare … We can do insurgency warfare on a small scale, but not on a large scale,” Couch says. “Our forces are built to fight major wars and have not been effective in this one [in Iraq].”
Special Forces are the only members of the military whose primary job is to teach other forces how to fight, he explains. “They know their job is to learn other cultures, languages and to work with other people. Nobody else is trained like that on a regular basis. You can train regular Army to do that but it’s not something they habitually train to do.”
The U.S. military will have a tough time fighting terrorism as long as missions such as foreign-internal defense are underappreciated and considered unglamorous. The mindset is that that “nobody can do it better than the United States,” says Couch. “We are Americans. Nobody is as good as we are.” But unless the Defense Department finds a way to expand the training of foreign militaries where it makes sense, U.S. forces will continue to be expected to intervene.
Even within the special operations community, the emphasis is on unilateral, direct-action operations, as opposed to a commitment to train the locals, Couch writes in “Chosen Soldier.” The SOF proponents of direct action “feel that if you find and kill enough senior-level insurgents, then the insurgent gears will grind to a halt and buy us the time to win local hearts and minds. … They are trying to cut the head off the snake, as they did with the targeting and elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi” in Iraq last summer. To those who practice foreign-internal defense, the locals, if properly trained, are better at the job. “It’s a matter of preventive medicine or surgery,” Couch says. “While developing the language and cross-cultural skills is more difficult and more time consuming than purely tactical, behind-the-gun skills, it’s what really sets the special operator apart from his conventional counterpart.”
SOCOM, he says, should focus on foreign-internal defense and counterinsurgency because those are the essential skills. “When we killed Zarqawi, wouldn’t it have been better if we had trained Iraqis how to do it and they could have taken the lead? If we don’t teach them we can never leave.”
But even if SOF were in charge of the war on terrorism, there are not enough forces to deploy in large numbers, says Couch. The Army Special Operations Command is training at full capacity. The good news is that there are plenty of recruits, he says. “To the Army’s credit, there’s no shortage of young men willing to do this.” But it takes time before newly minted Green Berets get enough experience — at least three to four combat rotations — to really understand the business. “The 28- to 33-year old master sergeant, he’s the guy who really knows what’s going on. It takes seasoning to make a good Special Forces guy.”
Rumsfeld’s expansion plans for SOCOM would not pay off in the short term, and would not likely influence the near-term outcome of the Iraq occupation, Couch says. “If we had three to four times more Special Forces to do hard core foreign-internal defense and counterinsurgency, I’m not sure it would make a huge difference at this stage of the game.”
If the United States is to see any success in Iraq, the conventional military — Army and Marine Corps — will have to quickly morph into a counterinsurgency force, he says. “Not everyone has to be Special Forces, but we need the mechanics of counterinsurgency warfare deeply embedded in our conventional force structure.”
The occupation of Iraq and the counterinsurgency fight there unfortunately are draining scarce SOF resources, which means that fewer operators are available to conduct foreign-internal defense missions in areas that are gradually becoming terrorist sanctuaries, such as Africa, says Hamlin Tallent, a retired Navy rear admiral and former director of operations at the U.S. European Command.
EUCOM for years has attempted to build a nine-country coalition of trans-Saharan nations in Africa, whose objective is to identify and root out terrorist cells from “ungoverned” areas plagued by rampant crime and corruption, says Tallent. The problem is that EUCOM does not have enough Special Forces, Marines or equipment to train the military forces of these coalition members. “We don’t have the resources to provide the interoperability and communications. Most importantly, we don’t have the human resources,” he says.
Efforts such as the trans-Saharan coalition are not going to yield immediate results, but ultimately are the best hope to prevent another 9/11, he notes. “There is an opportunity for Congress to have a national debate over what the war on terror entails. We’ll have to resource it. We haven’t talked about what the war on terror is about, what it means.” One obviously compelling need is to counter the influence of the Islamic extremist messages that help terrorist networks recruit members in African countries, where young people are surrounded by hopelessness. “It’s not always appropriate to do that with weapons,” Tallent says.
Far more useful tools are the Internet and basic communications technologies, he says. “In a place like Africa, most militaries don’t have the ability to communicate, they are not trained. Regions within the same country don’t work together; countries don’t work together. There’s a lot of criminal activity. It’s difficult to separate criminals from terrorists.” An example of a valuable, non-kinetic tool would be a simple software package that combines Google Earth maps with a chat application that translates French, Arabic and English, Tallent says. “It’s inexpensive and quick.” Officials from different countries in the area could be looking at the same map, while they exchange information via chat or email. “Almost instantaneously you could develop a common operating picture.”
Unless the United States finds a way to empower certain countries — in Africa and elsewhere — to deal with their internal terrorist threats, “we’ll have to fight this on our own. I don’t think it’s winnable that way,” says Tallent.
Counterterrorism initiatives such as the trans-Sahara coalition are only effective when they are not viewed as U.S.-dominated, he says. “When we think of coalitions in this country we think of a U.S. centered coalition using U.S. technology, and we let people in as it benefits us. But when you are looking at a global war on terror we have to change that mindset. A coalition in Africa would be centered on Africa: on defeating the criminal elements that feed terrorism … We would be using their language, their databases. To get there, we need Special Forces to train them.”
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