Irregular Warfare Mindset Needed for Our Modern World Essay

Having the opportunity to live in America, we are not commonly exposed to the overwhelming effects of anarchy; however our United States government is known for their involvement in aiding countries experiencing disorder. For more than two decades, the country Somalia dwelled in the ruins of its own nation after the collapse of its civilization. It was considered the world’s most failed state. Recently, as reported in the article, “US recognizes Somalia government after two decades of anarchy” by Mike Pflanz, the United States government began assisting Somalia to rise from the ashes of turmoil and back on their feet. The Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud stresses that “Somalia is emerging from a very long, difficult period and now moving away from the chaos, instability, extremism, piracy, to an era of peaceful and development.” The article also notes the conflicts against Islamic extremists and pirates, who took advantage of the unrest in the country. This relates with the theme

In 1994, a conflict the US couldn't understand, between clans and tribes it didn't know, in a country where there were no national interests, occurred. The Rwandan War of 1994 did not deserve US intervention. There are four contentions on why the US should not have gotten involved in this Rwandan war. The Black Hawk Down incident, how the UN was there previously there, there being no Possible Gain, and having nothing to do with us. Through the examination of the novel, An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina, it is Obvious that these key points are valid.

2. The National Defense Strategy (NDS) counterbalances the Defense Departments tendency to focus on winning conventional conflicts rather than irregular wars by empowering those small nations to improve the security of their countries to prevent conflicts from happening. The NDS focuses on the different irregular warfare tactics that can be used by our enemies in the strategic environment. It gives us guidance on what we need to do to prevent the use of these irregular warfare tactics. It was not until the last decade that the U.S. military started fighting the irregular wars; our Special Forces units were the ones that were fighting the unconventional wars. The U.S. military has had a difficult time changing its focus on fighting conventional wars to fighting irregular wars. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military became very experienced in guerrilla warfare tactics. However, when that war ended the focus shifted back to fighting the conventional wars and that experience was lost. Now, because of the lack of experience, the U.S. military is having a difficult time fighting the unconventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Operation Anaconda was the first major joint combat operation against the war on terror that the US was committed to winning. This operation would test our military’s readiness for joint operations against a hardened and willing adversary. The primary mission was to kill/capture Taliban/Al Qaeda forces occupying towns and villages in the vicinity of Shahi Khot in order to gain control of the valley.1 The US needed the towns, villages, mountains, and more importantly, the intricate and hard to access caves cleared of enemy fighters. Units participating in the operation included elements of the 101st Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and Coalition forces from seven nations

The ways in which the United States has conducted its military operations since becoming an independent nation has largely depended upon the overall political and military objectives of each individual conflict. The United States first three hot wars after the end of World War II display the marked difference in US objectives and the operations used to achieve them better than any other modern wars in which American troops participated.

While the development of guerrilla war does not factor into Weigley’s thesis that the United States has moved from a strategy of attrition to a strategy of annihilation, it is important in understanding how and why the United States made that change. For Weigley, this change came during the American Civil War when Grant became Commanding General of the Army. Grant did not believe the war could be won with a single, decisive victory against the Confederate Army, rather, he initiated a strategy to destroy the Confederate Armies through many battles and by attacking their economic resources. The orders to begin destroying the war resources of the Confederacy may have had their roots in the Western and Trans-Mississippian Theaters of the war because of frustrations associated with guerrilla war.

The use of Irregular Warfare has been ongoing for years around the world. Irregular warfare is described as a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. I will discuss where the U.S. may apply military force in conjunction with other means of national power to stabilize the nation of Somalia. I will also discuss why it would be considered as an Irregular Warfare environment.

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

Successful examples of insurgency intervention that made strategic sense can be observed during Athen’s support of the Helot revolt against the Spartans, France’s support of the American revolutionaries against Great Britain, and the United States’ support of the Afghan tribal militia uprising against the Taliban.

This paper will be explaining the similarities, and differences, between the Vietnam War and the War in Afghanistan. There are many topics that bring these two wars together. However, I am only going to be talking about public support, policy objectives, military strategy, weapons, fighting spirit, links to home, and death totals. These topics have a lot of information about them, but there is too much to write about every little detail, so I will cover the broad overview of them. Each paragraph will be about one of the topics. There will also be a discussion about insurgencies and counter insurgency operations. These are two big topics in Vietnam and Afghanistan since almost all of the enemy in both wars were, and are, comprised of insurgents and different types of militia groups.

With a long history of violence, rebellion, and chaos, the African country of Somalia now seeks guidance. The country’s violent past started when military forces overthrew the last democratically elected government in October 1969, about 37 years ago. Military rule undermined, and ultimately destroyed the country. The military regime divided citizens into allies and enemies, and rewarded its allies while it punished whole communities. Life conditions in Somalia became so unbearable that the President Bush, Sr. was forced to act, and ordered thousands of American troops to enter Somalia in order to open the roads so that emergency food aid could be urgently delivered to the citizens.

This case study is on the battle of Mogadishu. This battle took place on October 3rd and 4th of 1993 in the country of Somalia which is located in Africa. This battle changed the foreign policy of the United States. The battle cost the Americans 18 lives, and 77 wounded. Estimates are that it cost the Somalis about 500 lives and wounded 1000.1 This battle was fought with some of Americas most highly trained and lethal warriors. The main effort of the battle was led by Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Operations Forces Detachment- Delta. It started out as a peace keeping mission and escalated into a mission to capture a Somali warlord. It ultimately ended up being a mission

Somalia is a small country in the eastern part of Africa, known as “The Horn of Africa”. According to the CIA World Factbook (2016), Somalia has a population of roughly 10.4 million, and 85 percent of people are Somali. Additionally, a significant part of the population is Muslim, (CIA World Factbook, 2016), whom have contributed to the current conflict. In this report, we analyze the recent violent conflict and U.S. intervention in Somalia.

Realism does not prevent future insurgency acts as there has been an increase in the magnitude of threat and the use of the traditional framework around war. First, a notable political scientist, John Mearsheimer argues that what has changed over time is the magnitude of the threat. What the US is up against is a more formidable and more dangerous adversary that was the case throughout the 1990s. As a counterinsurgency

The 'Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis (JCOA) case study is regarding the U.S-Philippines partnership in counter-terrorism (CT) operations that took place from 2002-2011. The CT operation was titled as 'Operation ENDURING FREEDOM-PHILIPPINES (OEF-P) and was conducted by the partnership of Philippine security forces and US Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P). The CT cooperation took place at three levels, tactical, operational, and strategic. The role of JSOTF was that of 'advise and assist' whereby ground operations were conducted by the Philippine forces. The US cooperation for CT in Philippines was guided by the Joint Publication (JP) 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, and a policy and action framework to act as a binding framework for conducting joint, interagency, and multinational CT operations using full range of military operational capacity. The OEF-P was also conducted by incorporating JP 5-0 principles and guidelines of engagement. The OEF-P took place in Southern Philippines. Following is an assessment how the US forces used termination, military end state, and objectives of operational design (Joint Pub 5-0, page III-18) to develop and refine their operational approach.