Episode Details

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 Atl