President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
While satisfied with the U.S. military’s tactical performance in irregular warfare, Cleveland rejects the argument that special operations can raid their way to victory or capture enough terrain. Cleveland uses the strategic failures of the U.S. in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to argue the U.S. military must focus on its failure to structurally, doctrinally, and militarily invest in irregular warfare to succeed.
Armstrong’s greatest contribution is including irregular warfare, or guerre de razzia, as a legitimate strategy alongside guerre de course commerce destruction and guerre d’escadre fleet action. Irregular warfare is not portrayed only as an incidental strategy that came about as a last resort, but as an accepted form of naval strategy that is part of the more general concept of naval operations and establishes precedent for practicing that strategy in today’s conflicts.
Major power competition has evolved in style. An inability to counter U.S. military superiority has led China, Russia, and major regional powers to employ unconventional warfare to achieve their national security objectives. Technological developments re-invented this type of warfare and improved its reach and potential effectiveness. Within the parameters of a democratic system, countering unconventional warfare is problematic. Attempts at global security cooperation operations may improve the efficiency of global physical presence but is no replacement for a whole-of-government effort to address root problems enabling the success of these unconventional warfare models.
As adversaries become more technologically savvy, the United States and its allies must become more adept at leveraging these trends. Open source intelligence, especially when coupled with rapidly improving big data analysis tools, which can comb through data sets that were previously too complex to derive meaningful results, has the potential to offset this growing problem, providing intelligence on enemy forces, partners, and key populations.
