Counter-SOF Missions for the U.S. Special Operations Command

It is the contention of this brief essay that the U.S. Special Operations Command must, in addition to our other tasks, keenly think about, and then resourcefully prepare, our own grand-strategic counter-SOF missions.[1] We must first recognize that other countries and strategic cultures--and not only China, Russia, Britain, and Israel--are making subtle strategic adjustments to offset, bypass, or emulate our own Special Operations Forces, having themselves closely studied the developments in modern military history and having also considered the likely future forms of warfare and the nature and scope of the future battlefield, to include the battlefield of the mind.

Moreover, certain new forms of special operations forces like the al-Qaeda network aregrand-strategic in their thinking and maneuver, not just military-strategic “special mission units” or “national mission units” of the Islamic Nation (or Umma). In order to counter the mentality and operations and grand-strategicdeftness of al-Qaeda, for example, we, too, in the U.S. Special Operations Command must become more grand-strategic in our thinking and initiatives. We must learn to deal with the covert irregular warfare of patient and far-sighted and deftly networked adversaries. Our own “special mission units” and “national mission units” can no longer be merely--or even primarily--tactical in focus (or out of focus), or we will be out-maneuvered and become centrifugally over-extended and dissipated.

Other strategic cultures, like Russia and China, are giving much attention to their own “counter-SOF missions” and they are thinking about them in very strategic ways, also as part of their largerdenial-of-access strategies against us. And they are also concurrently trying to harness and to employ certain “breakthrough technologies” that are also to be implemented as “denial-of-access technologies” to counter our own special capabilities. They want their counter-SOF activities to be able to produce both a strategic surprise and a technologicalsurprise against our own force-projection and against our own subtle means of stealth and access.

Our purported allies, such as the Israelis, do not always help us, either. And we often seem to be their “proxies,” especially in the Middle East, in order to do the kinds of things they do not want to do or cannot do. I have often heard the British also say that they will use “our brawn and their brains”--and I heard it first in 1964 in Southeast Asia, and then again in 1966-1967 in Turkey where the Mossad and MI6 were very influential in “guiding” us with respect to CENTO (the Central Treaty Organization of Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan) and thus to our “southern-tier strategy against the Soviet Union,” and then especially during the Israeli 6-Day War of June in the summer of 1967! (I shall pass over, in this context, the perfidious attack on our NSA’s Libertyship.)

Moreover, in Gordon Thomas’s recent book, Seeds of Fire, he extensively examines Israel’s own secret and “back-channel” dealing with the mainland Chinese government. And, in this same book, the very sensitive recent Strategic Memorandum of an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is also vividly presented and very shockingly analyzed, since it deals with our friends, the Israelis. The Canadian investigator, Sean McDade, concluded his Memorandum with the following words: “The Israelis now possess all the nuclear secrets of the United States.” Given what the China scholar Steve Mosher has unmistakably demonstrated in his recent book, Hegemon, namely that China sees the United States as its primary enemy, the Israelis may now face a special temptation. Indeed, U.S. nuclear secrets would be “a precious bargaining chip for the Israelis”! With friends like this, now what?

The Canadian McDade has also closely studied “a sophisticated Mossad computer theft operation against the United States two years ago,” and has made a sobering comparison, namely: “Compared to this espionage coup, it can be categorically stated that the Jonathan Pollard case [of 1985] is insignificant.” Just as with the Liberty ship in 1967, the Israelis have also never paid any penalty for Pollard’s spying, even though “they still refuse to return, or even identify, the stolen documents” and “so the full damage still can’t be assessed.”[2]Moreover, “the Israelis keep pressing American presidents for Pollard’s release from prison!”[3] (Jonathan Pollard’s former wife, who had herself conducted espionage very helpful to China, is now, though legally divorced from him, a resident and citizen of Israel.)

With fine irony and strategic trenchancy, Joseph Sobran thus says:

Israel, we are told, is “our only reliable ally in the Middle East.” It’s bad enough having Israel’s friendship, but we also get its enemies into the bargain. And all this for a mere five billion bucks a year! What a deal![4]

Therefore, the U.S. Special Operations Command must also be very attentive to the counter-SOF “counter-intelligence” mission with respect to certain of our purported allies, who are so thoroughly “wrapped around” our own special operations activities, both the overt and the covert ones. We must not become deluded “proxies” or “useful idiots” for others.

Furthermore, should we now also come to understand not only al-Qaeda, but also the Chinese “Triads” (Tongs) and the Japanese-Korean “Yakusa” as another form and strategic manifestation of foreign “Special Operations Forces.” They come, admittedly, from alien traditions of statecraft and strategic culture, and vividly exemplify their long-standing historic forms of military “secret societies,” not just globally networked “trans-national criminal syndicates,” and , therefore, it will constitute a considerable challenge for us to come to understand them in depth, and without self-deception. But, it is for us strategically necessary to do so, even in our “global war on terrorism,” or we shall find ourselves drifting in the dark and “wandering in the valley of the clueless.” For, there is an important “seam” between war and criminality, and not only amongst the grand-strategically minded “terrorist networks.” “Asian criminal syndicates” and “secret societies”--which often speak unusual dialects as well as a coded patois--are an historic part of Japanese and Chinese strategic culture, to include their strategic assets among the “overseas Chinese.” The “Chinese Triad Phenomenon” would be a very important matter to study!

In this context, therefore, we must also come to understand another, but newer, manifestation of strategic “special operations forces,” namely the para-military, international “private security services,” such as the former “Executive Outcomes” (originally out of South Africa) which has now been protectively re-named and very symbolically called “Sand Line,” (like the drawing of a “line in the sand” as a dare and a challenge) among its other camouflaging “labels” and dispersed “front organizations.” These groups also employ former RussianSpetsnaz and British SAS, as well as other experienced SOF personnel, in order to perform multifarious missions, to include the protection of strategic mineral and grain and diamond cartels, and not only in Africa! We may also here usefully recall the historic para-military forces that protected the powerful, political-mercantile British East India Company and the Dutch East Indies Company, and thereby clarify their analogous resurgence today. (The British East India Company was very important in the conduct of the Opium Wars against China, a humiliation the Chinese have never forgotten!)

We must attempt to understand these alien military and strategic cultures on their own terms, therefore, not only because they may be our future enemies, but also because they are aiding our current adversaries. The Chinese Triads, for example, are now in the Sudan, and not only to help with the oil! And, these foreign strategic cultures know much more about us--and much more about our overt and covert Special Operations Forces--than we know about them! Moreover, they--and their own forms of special operations forces--are making many adjustments to offset and bypass and dislocate our own unmistakable SOF enhancements and the other far-sighted developments we are now pursuing within the U.S. Special Operations Command. For example, and according to trustworthy open sources, the Iranian Naval-Maritime Special Operations Forces know so much more about our Navy SEALS than we know about them and they are planning to deal with our SEALS even in their deep “rear areas,” as well as in their remote-staging bases and “forward operating bases” in the Gulf. Furthermore, the Iranians have been well-instructed by some of our other friends, our friends from the elite Russian GRU Naval-Spetsnaz units! (And, of course, the Chinese are also very close to the Iranians, and not just because of the oil or the strategic pipelines of natural gas.)

All things considered, therefore, and given the current and likely future strategic environment--particularly in the Mid-East and the Far-East--our own Special Operations Forces especially need to understand foreign SOF and need to be prepared to counter them, for they, more than we, think in grand-strategic terms. They many not have our special “air assets” nor an analogue to our “Air Force Special Operations Command,” or Hurlburt Field, but they are patient and deftly indirect and especially adept at long-range sabotage--and maybe even deep-sea sabotage against our critical nodes. Let us recall, as if history really matters, that the Soviet Spetsnaz had special strategic missions in Europe and the U.S., namely to wreak havoc in our rear areas. Other groups have learned much from them, and also from the Chinese, and will likely employ those subtle skills against us, to our detriment and psychological dislocation.

However, it may be tragically true for us as a nation--and even for us as a military--that “Having lost our own cultural roots, we seem to have no sense of the depth of foreign cultures.”[5] In his famous 1985 essay about the United States and our own demoralized (and confused) strategic culture, even during the purposive Reagan Administration, the strategic-minded, British military historian, Sir Michael Howard saw the same thing, and thus entitled his profound analysis of us “The Bewildered American Raj.” We must awaken to these disconcerting realities and make a robust, strategic “course-correction,” and especially keep the new forms of foreign special operations forces at the tip of our mind and purposive counter-action--indeed, of our trulygrand-strategic counter-action.