The New American Way of War: Special Operations Forces in the War on Terrorism
The New American Way of
War: Special Operations
Forces in the War on
Terrorism
The war on terrorism began spectacularly with the lightning campaign
to overthrow the Taliban government in Afghanistan and smash their al-Qaida
allies. In the last months of 2001, the combination of the indigenous forces of
the Northern Alliance, a few dozen embedded Green Berets and CIA officers,
and a heavy dose of U.S. airpower was enough to overthrow the Taliban and
seize control of the country. From this auspicious start, it became clear that
special operations forces (SOF) were a critical component of U.S. counterterror-
ism strategy. In the public imagination, only the ubiquitous drone, quietly
preying on terrorists in the ungoverned spaces of the Middle East and Africa,
can outdo a team of operators as the emblematic instrument of the
“war on
terror.”
Indeed, the use of these covert masters of special operations has paradoxi-
cally become routine and expected.
Over the past 15 years of constant deployment throughout the world, the
special operations forces of the U.S. military, in close partnership with the intelli-
gence community, have developed into a highly efficient and effective counterter-
rorism force with globe-spanning reach. High-profile exploits such as Task Force
successful tracking of the infamous leader of al-Qaida in Iraq Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi in 2006 or the renowned SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden
’s compound in 2011
dramatically display SOF centrality in the U.S. counterterrorism
machine, while near-constant deployments to train, advise, and assist partner
forces demonstrates the quiet constancy of their role.
However, notwithstanding the countless
tactical and even operational successes, a
SOF-centric counterterrorism approach has
many limits. Often, counterterrorism efforts
are put on autopilot, with little thought to
overall strategic direction or the efficient use
of forces. In addition, the high operational
tempo takes a heavy toll on personnel,
machines, and institutions. Finally, because of
the more secretive nature of SOF, government oversight and direction is often
too limited, potentially undermining the effort.
Counterterrorism and counterinsurgency are sometimes compared with fight-
ing crime: victory does not mean an end to the problem, but rather reducing
the violence to the point where normal life for most people is possible. With
this standard, the United States has succeeded
for Americans at home at
least. The United States has remained remarkably secure from foreign terrorist
groups, but this has come at a price in treasure, lives, and strategic opportunity
costs. The global war on terror is entering its seventeenth year, even if it no
longer explicitly goes by that name, and the United States has special oper-
ations forces deployed around the world. Such an approach involves near-
endless deployments and combat as well as a world-spanning presence and
campaign. As the SOF role has grown operationally, however, it has been rele-
gated to the political margins in Washington, leaving the operators with
dwindling strategic direction and raising the risk of operational and strategic
overstretch. It is time for a renewed discussion about the United States coun-
terterrorism mission.
”
in Eastern Europe or a conventional war
in the Asia-Pacific, that goes beyond the scope of this piece.
In the first section, we briefly explore how SOF have become one of the preemi-
nent instruments of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, and even foreign policy more
generally. The next section analyzes the various functions of SOF in their counter-
terrorism mission. The third reviews the political and strategic advantages of SOF,
and the fourth assesses their limits. We conclude with a call for a renewed debate
about the role of SOF in U.S. foreign policy today.
How Terrorism Got SOF on Top
After the creation of modern special operations forces in World War II, military
establishments considered them misfits of only peripheral utility. SOF units
became another competitor within the military inter- and intra-service rivalries
over missions and resources. For many in the military, special operations rep-
resented a distraction or waste compared with the core purposes of their respective
branches and services. The U.S. military general view was that SOF should serve
as an auxiliary component, such as conducting deep reconnaissance, in support of
the main conventional effort in the planned wars of Europe or Northeast Asia.
Yet the special operations community, often over the fierce objections of tra-
ditional military leadership, benefited from key political patronage and protection
to grow and expand within the military establishment. As the United States and
the Soviet Union battled over the developing world, SOF independence grew in
the context of fighting Marxist insurgencies. The SOF community, in particular
the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets), was tasked with countering the
plethora of Soviet-supported guerrilla movements that sprang up across Africa,
Asia, and Latin America through unconventional warfare. These covert oper-
ations were usually directed from the highest political levels, but they generally
remained far removed from the rest of the U.S. military and public attention.
The first golden age of SOF was the Vietnam War. In the first years of the war,
the Green Berets were at the forefront as they worked to train, advise, and assist
the South Vietnamese military and mobilize local forces against the Viet Cong.
In neighboring Laos, Green Berets and the CIA worked together to train the
Laotian military as it fought the North Vietnamese-supported Pathet Lao insur-
gency. However, once President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the regular Army
in 1965, most special operations forces were soon sidelined to continue their
own war, often with notable but isolated successes, or else forced into a subordi-
nate supporting role for conventional forces. Nonetheless, valuable theories and
methods were developed. Even though SOF suffered dramatic reductions to
their numbers and funding following the pullout from Vietnam, the war provided
the foundations and experience in running a special operations-centric campaign.
The end of the Vietnam War represented a low point for the U.S. military, and
also corresponded to the rise of left-wing, nationalist liberation, and (in the 1980s)
Islamist terrorism. The Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Red Army
Faction struck the heart of Western Europe, while others, such as the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Lebanese Hizballah, developed novel
tactics by hijacking airliners and suicide bombing. This relatively new threat
required a novel solution: small elite units trained for direct action. Thus, over
the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States (like many of its Western
allies) stood up new units
the Army s 1st Special Forces Operational
Detachment-Delta (or Delta Force) in 1977 and the Naval Special Warfare Devel-
opment Group (more commonly known as SEAL Team Six or DEVGRU) in 1980
—
with counterterrorism as a core mission requirement.
Despite or perhaps due to having distinct and unconventional responsibilities
and often independent operations, SOF remained almost a stepchild within the
command structure and broader military culture. In practice, the various SOF
units often enjoyed better interservice cooperation with fellow SOF components
than intraservice cooperation with the various conventional branches. Tragically
though, it took the spectacular failure of Operation Eagle Claw in 1980, the joint
service SOF rescue attempt of the embassy hostages in Tehran, to spur the estab-
lishment of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), tasked with studying,
planning, and executing joint special operations missions worldwide. Following
the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, JSOC was subsumed under a new unified
combatant command, Special Operations Command (SOCOM). SOCOM over-
sees all the respective services
’
SOF components (although they maintain their
service specific commands and institutional
connections), enabling the community to
gradually compete with the political power of
their conventional comrades.
The 1980s and 1990s had plenty of opportu-
nities for special operations: from training anti-
communist paramilitaries in Central America
to counter-narcotics operations in South
America, all the way to responding to terrorist
plots around the Mediterranean and Europe.
However, U.S. SOF generally remained out of the headlines unless something
went wrong. In 1993, U.S. forces suffered 18 dead in Somalia in the
“Black Hawk Down”
incident, where a compromised Delta Force and Ranger raid to
capture a Somali warlord turned into a day-long city-wide battle. Such debacles
stood in stark contrast to the positive publicity of the British Special Air
Service storming of the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980 or the French National
Gendarmerie Intervention Group
’s dispatch of Air France hijackers in 1994.
Instead, most of the notable U.S. SOF operations at the time were in quiet
support of larger conventional operations including Grenada in 1983, Panama
in 1989-1990, the Persian Gulf in 1990-1991, and Bosnia in 1992-1995.
The 9/11 attacks were a sea change. The
“war on terror”
meant that for the first
time in modern American history, the greatest threat to national security was not a
nation-state but a network of groups and individuals within a larger global move-
ment. The unique security challenges of terrorism are ideally suited to the
strengths of special operations forces. JSOC, as the parent of the United States’
premier counterterrorism units that also already enjoyed an established
The unique secur-
ity challenges of
terrorism are ideally
suited to the
strengths of SOF.
cooperative relationship with the intelligence community, logically took a leading
role in this new war.
Although less dramatic than the killings or arrests of high-value terrorists, the
liaison and training skills that SOF honed in the anti-communist counterinsur-
gency era became invaluable again against jihadist-linked insurgencies around
the Muslim world. With the exception of the major American war efforts in
Iraq and Afghanistan, SOF were (and still are) often in a supporting role
working
“by, with, and through”
partner nation forces
be they national militaries
or local militia
that do much of the heavy lifting in counterterrorism and
counterinsurgency operations. In Africa alone, the U.S. SOF presence has
grown almost exponentially since 2006, to a current presence of 1700 personnel
operating in 20 countries in nearly 100 different training, advising, and assistance
missions.
In 2016, as part of the global campaign against al-Qaida, the Islamic
State, and their many affiliates and offshoots, American operators were present
on every continent except Antarctica, primarily in small training and liaison
roles to support partner nation capacities in their respective fights against
jihadist-inspired terrorism and insurgency.
The“
war on terror”
has transformed SOCOM. As a result of its new global
mandate, it has more than doubled in size since 9/11, commanding around
70,000 personnel at the start of 2017 compared with 33,000 in 2001. The majority
of this growth has been auxiliary personnel (intelligence, logistics, communi-
cations, etc.) essential to support the increased deployments and operational
tempo. During the Obama administration, while
conventional forces were coming home and having
their budgets cut by sequestration, SOF were largely
spared the cuts and maintained a growing list of
deployments.
SOCOM’s areas of operation have
also steadily increased: in 2009 it was 60 countries, a
year later it was 75 countries, in 2013 it reached 134
countries, and in 2015 it expanded to a record 147
countries.
5
It has remained at about that level, with
a presence in approximately 70 percent of the
world’s nations.
Another significant change for SOCOM and JSOC has been the effective tran-
sition from
“supporting”to“supported command
a seemingly minor linguistic
change that has tremendous bureaucratic consequences. When SOCOM was
established, it was meant to coordinate the organization, training, and procure-
ment for all the U.S. military’s SOF, but operations fell under the discretion of
the respective combatant commands (although JSOC did have a small operational
SOCOM’s oper-
ations have
increased from 60
countries in 2009 to
147 in 2015.
mandate). Starting with the invasion of Afghanistan, SOF increasingly took the
lead in operations both on the ground and in headquarters, particularly as
JSOC was given greater responsibility for the counterterrorism mission.
7
Because
of the global nature of the threat, particularly al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State
which spanned multiple regional combatant commands, there was a reasonable
justification for SOCOM to take a new leading role.
But the risk is that without a clear strategy, a powerful command with a narrow
counterterrorism mission and a global reach could unintentionally do more harm
than good. In practice, JSOC operates in coordination with and under the
authority of the regional combatant commands, but that does not always result
in complementary efforts between SOF and regular forces. It is prudent to
ensure the secrecy and urgency assigned to various SOF missions
—
such as a
minor commando raid in Yemen or signature strike by drone in Somalia
is actually justified beyond the minor immediate benefit considering the potential risk of
inadvertently destabilizing and undermining other longer-term local efforts.
This fifteen-year global counterterrorism campaign has been remarkably success-
ful. Despite the exaggerated fears of the public and the alarmist rhetoric of some of
the political class, U.S. counterterrorism efforts have accomplished their primary
responsibility of protecting the United States and the lives of her citizens. There
have been no mass-casualty attacks on the U.S. homeland even a fraction of the
scale of 9/11, and the most lethal attacks, such as the 2016 shooting in Orlando,
have been done by so-called lone wolves with no serious overseas connections.
Moreover, while terrorism (and violence generally) has increased in the Middle
East, especially with the rise and now fall of the Islamic State, the United States
has still realized concrete accomplishments against al-Qaida and other groups.
U.S. counterterrorism strategy typically aims to confine terrorist groups to a
shrinking environment in which to operate, as SOF trainers and advisers build up
and buttress local security forces, while simultaneously paralyzing and eventually
destroying terrorist groups’
leadership through SOF direct action and airstrikes.
This basic approach has been applied from West Africa to the Philippines, and
regardless of whether there is only a small covert team or a large multinational occu-
pation, SOF have come to the fore. This political shift has even been demonstrated
in the officer promotion rolls with SOF commanders taking top commands oversee-
ing all forces. Thus after 15 years, this globe-spanning counterterrorism war is essen-
tially being planned, commanded, and fought by operators.
What Is So Special about Fighting Terrorists?
In the public’s imagination, a typical special operation evokes the mission to kill
Osama bin Laden, with prototype stealth helicopters covertly delivering a SEAL
team deep into hostile territory to assault a terrorist compound in the dead of
night. This kind of direct action, as it is known, is an important aspect of the
SOF counterterrorism playbook, but it is only one end on a broad spectrum of
special operations. Special operations forces perform a wide variety of other mis-
sions relevant to counterterrorism.
The original function of special operations forces was unconventional or irregu-
lar warfare. This is a broad term with a long-storied evolution, but it generally
covers activities including subversion, sabotage, and intelligence, as well as train-
ing, advising, and assisting local guerrilla forces all while in hostile or politically
sensitive territory. The new official definition of special operations is“
operations
conducted by, with, or through irregular forces in support of a resistance move-
ment, an insurgency, or conventional military operations,”
as clearly demon-
strated most recently in the campaigns against the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria. Unconventional warfare remains the primary emphasis of the Army
Special Forces, which is why their training includes extensive language and cul-
tural studies for their respective group
’s regionally specific area of responsibility.
In a counterterrorism context, unconventional
warfare is essential to dealing with the ungoverned
spaces where terrorist groups flourish. While ideally
the United States would work with a partner govern-
ment to reestablish governance in those areas and
deprive groups their use as safe havens, this is impos-
sible in some situations because there is either no gov-
ernment partner (e.g. Somalia for much of the last
three decades) or the government is unacceptable or
illegitimate to the United States (e.g. Syria). Special operations forces can still
operate in these ungoverned spaces and identify and support local partners, like
village militias or rebel guerrillas, to resist or even push back against any relevant
terrorist groups without also supporting the state. In practice, this support can
range from providing rudimentary combat skills instruction for militiamen all
the way to training an expeditionary guerrilla force with embedded SOF elements
for offensive military operations.
A similar mission to unconventional warfare that is often conducted by SOF is
foreign internal defense (FID). FID entails any efforts by U.S. forces supporting the
actions of a partner nation
“to free and protect its society from subversion, lawless-
ness, insurgency, terrorism”
or any other security challenges.
As recent American
experiences building up government forces in Iraq and Afghanistan show, this task
is not necessarily exclusively assigned to SOF. Nevertheless, FID has become one
of the core functions of SOF in the war on terrorism. In most of the dozens of
countries American SOF operate in around the world, their primary task is build-
ing indigenous security/military capacity through training and advisory missions.
Special operations
forces can operate
in ungoverned
spaces and assist missions, leaving the training of more established partner militaries to a
SFAB. This same logic also applies to cases of SOF being utilized in seemingly con-
ventional military operations. In such cases, regular forces should often be used.
The U.S.-led global counterterrorism effort has helped protect the U.S. home-
land and disrupt terrorist networks and plots. However, the counterterrorism effort
and the SOF community would be best served if the White House, Congress, and
Pentagon jointly and openly addressed core objectives, strategy, and legal
authority, all of which have languished and mutated in a political purgatory.
Such an effort would require assessing the effectiveness of our counterterrorism
efforts to best inform the major budgetary and organizational decisions that
need to be made on the future structure of the force and appropriate role of SOF.
The United States has developed a nearly globe-spanning counterterrorist
apparatus, with hundreds of national and subnational partners, maintaining con-
tinuous pressure on its core adversaries. It is still a serious challenge to fully
annihilate a terrorist organization, but the United States has been successful,
even by its arguably unrealistically high standards, in disrupting al-Qaida and
the Islamic State. The problem is this machine has been running for years in
the shadows without much scrutiny and often without strategic direction.
Special operations forces, the primary counterterrorism instrument, cannot run
on autopilot if they are to be at their most effective.
