SOF'S Strategic Role in the Defense-in-Depth of the Homeland

On 15 October 2002 there was published a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times which succinctly said:

A single sniper (perhaps with an accomplice) has created enormous fear and frustration in the Washington area for more than a week. The shooter has baffled the combined police forces of the District of Colombia, Maryland, and Virginia. If a lone terrorist can wreak such havoc locally, we should have second thoughts about the ease of defeating a large, amorphous terrorist movement globally. How can destroying Iraq accomplish this?[1]

That is to say, will we become thereby more over-extended and dispersed and strategically diverted, or distracted?

On the premise that other groups and countries, not only Iraq, are defensively developing and pre-emptively putting in place “retaliatory forces” against (and within) our Homeland--and even forming their own “special operations forces” as “special mission units” designed to dislocate us mentally and to paralyze our will--how should our own Special Operations Command more adequately look at these counter-initiatives and anticipatory strategic maneuvers by an actual or potential adversary? With all of its other missions, how should the U.S. Special Operations Command conceive of its proper contribution to the strategic defense-in-depth of the Homeland?

For example, what would be the likely missions of our Special Operations Forces if the President were to declare martial law, even a partialmartial law in certain cities or regions, and especially in the Capitol Region of Washington, D.C.? For, given our many missions abroad, we must always try to economize our effort and properly proportion our forces in support of our larger National Security Strategy, and, therefore, we must try to anticipate the demands upon us, to include the domestic demands for us to answer a national emergency. The “strategic thresholds” of Mexico, Canada, and the Offshore Islands must also claim our urgent attention, in part because they constitute our “soft underbelly” and all too conspicuously display the temptation ofvery permeable borders!

How, for example, should we thus think of the probable missions of our covert, as well as our overt, Special Operations Forces within (or nearby) the Homeland, if the National Command Authority actually invoked its extraordinary emergency powers and implemented certain long-standing Presidential Executive Orders, so as to quell civil disorders or to forestall spreading contagions or to counter subtly planned foreign attacks inside our sovereign, though altogether porous, borders?

Within our own liberal democracy we have for a long time publicly professed certain principles of tolerance, and we have thereby maintained rather open immigration laws. We have become habituated to the implementation and more inclusive extension of these often unexamined liberal (or indulgent) principles without often considering where the inner logic of these principles leads. Over the years that we have been relatively unthreatened in our Homeland, we have become understandably more insouciant or inattentive about the long-range consequences of some of our facile or forgivingly comfortable assumptions. But, now what? In light of 11 September 2001, the recent shocks to our trust and to our sense of national security have elicited a rather sharp re-examination of some of our heretofore seemingly essential premises and attitudes and principles, and have prompted a further re-consideration of their fuller implications and a stricter view of their prudent limits and properproportions. But, as one of my friends recently wrote--a certain Joseph Sobran--“It can take men a depressingly long time to face the implications of their professed principles.”[2]

We often resist seeing the fuller consequences of an explicit, or subtly implicit, logical syllogism. For “psychologic” is not “logic”! Nevertheless, once a man admits a “major premise” and a “minor premise,” the mind will ineluctably connect the two logical premises and reach a conclusion. It is inescapable. That’s the way the mind works. Even though there are often psychological resistances and ruses to deny or evade such logical clarity, the human mind cannot not develop the inner logic of those premises all the way to a conclusion, even though it may be unconsciously or vaguely done. From our resistance to the long-range conclusive implications of the logically connected premises also comes our dangerous lack of strategic clarity. But, it would seem that we now no longer have the spacious privilege NOT to examine the strategic implications of our professed political, legal, cultural, and military principles. We must now see what others have intelligently foreseen and strategically anticipated and warned us about.

For example, back in 1964, the former Trotskyite-Rhodes Scholar, James Burnham, wrote his own farsighted and admonitory examination of many of our dominant liberal premises about man and society and national defense. His book was entitled Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism. Amidst our well-informed and well-educated political elites and strategic scholars--to include the currently very influential, strategic-minded Neo-Conservatives, such as Irving Kristol--Burnham’s lucid book is considered to be an unmistakable strategic classic, and an analytical classic that, moreover, has never been refuted.[3]

Now, however, we must more starkly face what Burnham was soberly and selflessly trying to warn us about, almost forty years ago, and then also again in 1974 when he added a new Postscript to his re-issued book during the Oil Embargo and the Vietnam War. He had seen very clearly our actual and potential, strategic vulnerabilities, to include our Constitutional, political, and psychological disabilities, and all of them, he thought, would, in combination, make it much more difficultfor us to have an effective grand-strategic defense-in-depth of the Homeland. Hence, comes the additional challenge for our Special Operations Forces as a strategic and grand-strategic asset of our national power and moral authority, both of which are increasingly disputed, as well as provocative to others! We may run, but we can’t hide.

The ability to control one’s interior and exterior borders has always been a measure of a country’s real sovereignty. To the extent that one cannot control one’s borders, one has only partial or illusionary sovereignty. Is this not a sobering strategic truth? For, as the Great Captains of strategic history have said--and not only Alexander the Great and Napoleon--strategy requires a twofold mastery: mastery of one’s base; and mastery of one’s communications. Our Special Operations Forces must apply these two enduring insights to our current grand-strategic context, and also to our dynamic technological context, hence with a view to our own vulnerable “critical infrastructure,” as well as to emerging “breakthrough technologies” and to adversary “counter-strategies” against our strengths--strategies which seem designed not so much to rival or emulate our strengths, but to offset them or bypass them, in the lucid words of Brigadier General Chip Franck.

For example, consider the al-Qaeda message recently released to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television station--a message conveyed by means of an interview with Mohammed al-Usuquf, who is often considered the “number three” man in al-Qaeda.[4] Asia Times Online obtained a copy of this purported interview and reproduces excerpts of what they received, but “with the caveat that the identity of the man has not yet been confirmed, nor has his membership within al-Qaeda.” Nonetheless, what al-Usuquf says is credible and strategically intelligent, and even if it is a fake, it is a useful piece of psychological warfare. It is also a good piece of strategic analysis of our exploitable vulnerabilities. Al-Usuquf himself appears to be well-educated, holding both a doctorate in physics and a master’s degree in international economics. He proposes a subtle form of economic and financial warfare, and shows himself adept at grand-strategic thinking.

Al-Usuquf criticizes “Washington’s disrespect” for all kinds of international protocols and juridical developments such as the Kyoto Protocol on the environment and the International Criminal Court (which neither the U.S. nor China has ratified or accepted). He especially criticizes America’s “financial greed,” which engenders “speculative gains over Third World countries,” and also “the manner in which America wastes wealth, like U.S. $80 billion a year on gambling.” Speaking of Americans, in general, he says, “They have lost the notion of spirituality and only live in sin,” for which reason “America must be destroyed.” America delenda est!

Al-Usuquf insists that “aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and spy satellites will be worthless in the next war.” Claiming that al-Qaeda has “5,000 first-rank operatives and around 20,000 all over the world,” he added: “We have more than 500 first-rank and 800 second-rank operatives inside the U.S.” “First-rank” are considered “ones that have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, most of them married with children,” and “They have an idea about the plans, and they are just waiting for a call,” since “They are all willing to die,” as are the “second-rank operatives” who have arrived in the past five years and “have no idea about the plans.”

Moreover, “al-Usuquf insists that ‘September 11 was just the beginning. It was a way to call the world’s attention to what’s going to happen,’” and he then “details a plan to destroy the U.S. by ‘attacking the heart of what they consider the most important thing in the world: money’.” In von Clausewitz’s strategic vocabulary “money,” in his view, is America’s “center of gravity” which al-Qaeda thus proposes to strike and subvert. This constitutes more than a military strategy!

Al-Usuquf goes on to give his reasons for the strategic economic targeting of the United States:

The American economy is an economy of false appearances. There’s no real economic weight. American GNP is something around $10 trillion, but only 1 percent [he erroneously claims] comes from agriculture, and only 24 percent from industry. So 75 percent of its GNP comes from services, and most of it is financial speculation. For someone who understands economics, and apparently America’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill does not, or cannot, the U.S. as a whole behaves like an immense dot.com, and dollars are its stocks. The value of stocks from a given company is directly proportional to its profitability. When a company only provides services, but does not produce goods, the value of its stocks depends on its credibility [i.e., its perceived trustworthiness]. What I’m saying is if U.S. credibility is affected, its stocks--the U.S. dollar--will fall at tremendous speed, and the whole American economy will collapse.

From this strategic analysis alone, we may soberly consider that our Special Operations Forces themselves will have to learn to understand a highly intelligent adversary who intends to direct its own “networked covert irregular warfare” very subtly and strategically against economic targets. Against logistics and against finance, therefore, as our critical nodes!

But, there is more for us to consider. Al-Usuquf is so “absolutely positive” in his strategic analysis of our vulnerabilities, “because, in a smaller scale, this is exactly what big financial conglomerates do with Third World countries in order to collect profits in one month that no [respectable] Swiss bank would guarantee in four to five years.” He therefore argues that, againstAmerica, al-Qaeda could do the same manipulative andspeculative thing by “provoking a deficit of $50 to 70 trillion, the equivalent to five to seven years of the GNP of the U.S.” How? By “destroying America’s seven largest cities and some other measures.”

Is this to be taken as a bluff, or merely as an hyperbole and piece of psychological warfare? Well, al-Usuquf affirms that the means of this destruction will be “atomic bombs,” which are already distributively in place somewhere inside the U.S. More explicitly, he says:

Seven nuclear heads have already been positioned on American soil,before September 11, and they are ready to be detonated. Before September 11, American security was a fiasco, and even later, if we needed, we could position the bombs there. They arrived through seaports, as normal cargo. A nuclear head is not bigger than a fridge, so it can easily be camouflaged as one. Thousands of containers arrive at a seaport every day, and even with very efficient security, it’s impossible to check and examine each one of them.

He says that al-Qaeda can raise the money for special weapons “because we have many sponsors.” Indeed, he added,

Many countries sponsor us, and also some very rich people. And not all of these are Arab countries. Some European countries as well areinterested in the fall of the U.S. As to the rich people, they are people who are also tired of seeing the U.S. bleeding the rest of the world.

In addition to saying, in effect, that “our friends come and go, but our enemiesaccumulate!”, al-Usuquf then says that the already implanted bombs cannot be detected by U.S. authorities, because

Even if they are old, they were modernized and are very well hidden. Even if they were located, they have autodetonation mechanismsin case something or someone gets close. Even an electromagnetic pulse is not capable of deactivating them…. They are enveloped in thick layers of lead. They could be detonated by various methods--cellphone call, radio frequency, seismic shock, or by their regressive clock,

With these suggestive and sobering details in mind, how might our own counter-terrorist SOF forces interdict or pre-empt the following plan, a few details of which al-Usuquf now proceeds to reveal?--

First, one [nuclear] head would be detonated, which would cause the deaths of 800,000 to 1 million people and a chaos never seen before. During this chaos, two or three planes, which are now disassembled inside barns near empty roads in the U.S. countryside, would take off in suicide [sic] missions to pulverize another two or three big American cities with chemicals. Once thedisease [sic] was identified, all seaports and airports would be quarantined. Land borders would also be closed. No plane, boat, or car would enter or leave the U.S. This would be total chaos.

The first U.S. city to be targeted with a nuclear bomb for detonation would be the city “that would offer the best conditions, for example, bright sky and winds of eight or more miles an hour blowing towards the center of the country, so radioactive dust can contaminate the largest possible area.” Acknowledging that such an attack would “not knock out the U.S.,” al-Usuquf says:

But the process would be initiated. As with the World Trade Center, it would be just a question of time for the whole economic structure to be turned to dust. If the objectives are reached with one bomb and disease [perhaps bio-toxins, as well as the micro-organisms which produce deep infections and pervasive contagions, as well as such psycho-tropic potent toxins], probably we [in al-Qaeda] will save the lives of other people, but it’s risky, and probably six more bombs will be detonated, one a week, and more attacks with chemical weapons [perhaps withfourth-generation agents, which are intractably neuro-tropic and psycho-tropic!] will be launched.

In addition to the approximately 15 million people who would die from “the bombs and radiation,” al-Qaeda estimates that, “among thosecontaminated by diseases, 25 percent will die, a figure around more than 5 million, plus many others due to chaos and disorder.”

Even if all of al-Usuquf’s declaration of intention and revelation of a plan is only a strategic deception, we may nonetheless see that we are dealing here with very intelligent grand-strategists, not just military strategists. Furthermore, al-Usuquf says that he “does not fear a military response” from the U.S., for “even if five or ten cities are chosen at random to be destroyed [in retaliation], it will still be a small price to pay.” In addition,

The problem [for America] is that the economic despair will be so great that even if it saves money by not using weapons [in retaliation], American liquidity will be near zero, and the U.S. will make more money selling a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier to Turkey or Italy for $5 billion, because they will urgently need to recapitalize. But it will be too late. Moreover, what will remain of an American soldier’s morale to fight knowing that his whole family died and his country ceased to exist? To fight for what?

Continuing his analysis of the plan for grand-strategic economic warfare against us, al-Usuquf does not believe that, after their attacks upon us, the world economy would collapse, although

in the beginning it will be very difficult. But without the U.S. the world will soon rise in a more just and fraternal manner. Nothing can stop the plan. And whatever America does, it’s too late.

To the question, “when will the attack begin?”, al-Usuquf replied: “I can’t tell.” Perhaps, it would come while the United States is fighting our pre-emptive (or preventative) war against Iraq, when we will become thereby even more over-extended and dispersed and strategically diverted, or distracted.

At the beginning of this strategic essay Joseph Sobran was quoted as asking “How can destroying Iraq accomplish this?”--i.e., this “defeating [of] a large, amorphous terrorist movement globally”?!

In conclusion, we must at least soberly acknowledge that the U.S. Special Operations Command will face a grave test in responding to this very difficult and protracted challenge, even in its “counter-terrorism missions” and “counter-WMD missions,” against a highly intelligent and subtly resourceful and self-sacrificially dedicatedgrand-strategic adversary. In our contributions to the strategic defense-in-depth of the Homeland, in our support of the National Campaign Plan, our Special Operations Forces and their leaders must be truly far-sighed and grand-strategic, and not just operationally and tactically deft. (And even our choice of tactics is a part of strategy!) Given our “warp-speed operational tempo,” we must also patiently preserve (or attain) a truly prudent economy of effort, lest the “Judo Principle” be used against us in our over-extension and precarious imbalance, and unto our flip and fall. We shall likely have to increase our “rear-area-security missions” and the training of others for these missions, because, in dealing with the covert irregular warfare of the al-Qaeda network (and their accomplices), we are, in effect, dealing with some very intelligent, foreign “special operations forces.” Thus, we must fittingly think of, and prepare, our own grand-strategic “counter-SOF missions.”