Third Offset Book

• OVERVIEW 3

• PART I - CHINA’s RISE 8
• China’s Rise 9
• Change and Instability in the System 11
• Silk Road (in a Chainmail Fist) 16
• Australia openly debated splitting from America 19
• Australia Wakes Up 21
• Wolf Warrior Diplomacy 23
• PRC Operations in the “COVID moment” 25

• PART II - THE THIRD OFFSET STRATEGY? 29
• Great Power Conflict and return to Major Conventional War (GPC and MCW) 30
• Not All War is About the Gun 35
• War v Warfare 36
• Cloaked Power 41

• PART III - WAR PLAN BLACK 43
• Grand Strategy 44
• Military Strategy 48
• Offensive Operations 50
• Mission 52
• Organization 54
• Conclusion 56

The Third Offset Strategy:

a return to ungentlemanly warfare

OVERVIEW

What do special operations in contested and denied environments in Asia look like in the context of great power competition? 

Washington is very trend conscious. It has a unique capacity to turn on a dime. Once it gets bored with something or the risk du jour is perceived to have passed, an invisible hand of strategic focus somehow switches gears on the establishment and sets it in a new direction. Typically the hand takes the form of the latest three letter acronym that repackages old wine in new bottles and gets the kind of attention familiar to any newborn being taken to work for the first time to meet mom’s coworkers. A creator of an acronym hits the jackpot when their letters form the basis of a presidential or SECDEF statement. The last time this happened it was the APC (America’s Pacific Century which never quite caught on, probably because it originated in State, but it became known by its DOD usage as the Pacific Pivot). No one was really taking about what was happening in Asia because all eyes were on MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Asia-Pacific experts would implore readers to pay attention with headlines like “Wake up DC, the Asian century is here” and would get next to no attention. Then a few weeks later America’s Pacific Century (pacific pivot) is announced and its all anyone can talk about.

The following new acronyms are now on everyones lips: GPC, MCW, TOS. Ignore them at your peril. Just listing them implies an epistemology. Great Power Competition (GPC) will inevitably lead to Major Conventional War (MCW) which can be won by the Third Offset Strategy (TOS). Funding, prestige, attention, all now turn on who is the first to make it to the top of the GPC, MCW, TOS hill and dominates the rest. GPC, MCW, TOS is particularly exciting to the establishment because it triggers various cultural biases that are buried deep inside the Pentagon. Force on force conflict, decisive battles, aircraft carriers, B2 bombers, long range stand off weapons, high-tech sensor-to-shooter loops, artificial intelligence, weapon system automation (robots) - this is the stuff of Pentagon dreams. Whether they are actually applicable to the problem or condition being assessed is virtually irrelevant. As Upton Sinclair caustically observed “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

Stuck for years in counter insurgency wars it did not want, the sense of delight in the Pentagon around the new opportunity posed by GPC, MCW, TOS is palpable. GPC, MCW, TOS promise a return to what America does best. Big Wars. The excitement is not limited to the Pentagon. American heavy industry depends in some part on big platforms like ships and bombers, the production of which is highly political. There have been cases where the Department of Defense (DOD) has told Congress it does not want certain platforms but Congress authorized them anyway.

It is certainly counter-cultural to suggest that a coming MCW, as envisaged by the majority of strategic thinkers, will not depend on US conventional capabilities. No senior general or flag officer is going to admit that America’s conventional deterrent cannot be the platform or the way of thinking that will counter the new threats underpinning the GPC, MCW, TOS construct. But they should.

As will be detailed below, conventional warfare is a secondary consideration in GPC because China, Russia, Iran and al Qaeda choose not to practice it. That is not to say GPF (general purpose forces) are irrelevant. They remain fundamental to strategy and operations (as do nuclear forces that are hardly ever discussed in any context these days). GPF are not where the main effort lies. They are a blocking force. The tackling, penetration and scoring remains a task for special operations forces (SOF). This is because, like AQ, great powers seek to avoid MCW while at the same time doing all they can to undermine and weaken the US by unrestricted means. US Special Operations Forces (USSOF) have become the main effort in the past 20 years because they think like insurgents. They understand networks and how to break and build them. They know how to wield unrestricted warfare better than any other department or agency in the USG. By necessity, USSOF have become the supported force. GPF have long been the supporting force.

It follows that if great powers engaged in competition with the US refrain from use of GPFs in favor of the full gamut of unrestricted methods available to them (which they have), then USSOF must remain the primary driver of American efforts to counter malign influences flooding the world. 

Unrestricted warfare is counter-cultural to Pentagon orthodoxy. This is why opponents use it! If the Pentagon de-emphasizes irregular warfare as an ‘historical’ relic suited only to the defeated enemies of the 2010s, it needs to remind itself that AQ, ISIS and the rest are like zombies in the movies. Having been shot multiple times they tend to spring up and keep running towards us with an axe. Indeed, AQ and the rest have not been defeated. They are suppressed just sufficiently for life in the west to go on and that’s probably the best we can hope for until they tire.

Great powers have seen the effectiveness of AQ’s unrestricted warfare against the US and have responded accordingly. For example, Russia is economically weak, politically compromised, a military paper tiger (compared to its old Soviet self). It has achieved more in a decade with the use of memetic warfare, than 72 years of global ideological struggle from the Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia has sown division within and between the EU and US on levels Stalin could only dream of. It has done so at almost no cost compared to mounting a major conventional fight that it would surely lose. As this analysis will show in detail, China has also been engaged in unrestricted warfare against the US and its allies. So far their activities have been more in the political and economic domain, but they have craftily woven in physical operations into this mix. Not only has the PRC invaded and occupied an entire sea vital to global trade unopposed, as a matter of routine they conduct kinetic operations against civilians and military forces of regional powers without meaningful sanction. 

It is time to ask whether USSOF is fit for purpose in the context of a future war with a great power in Asia. The lesson is that to prevail in GPC we have to adapt SOF to take on great powers. In some ways the techniques are the same as those developed in the past 20 years but radical changes are required in the mindset within SOF and related organizations in the USG. The way of war USSOF has developed through painful experience since 911 (F3EA/night-raid machine) is as highly effective as it is unique. Is it transferable to GPC? The answer is yes. However, SOF will be used completely differently. In fact, the most significant contribution will be systems/operational design thinking to create the next F3EA against a great power. This analysis will show how USSOF thinking can help inform how the USG approaches the future strategic environment in Asia while remaining under the threshold of MCW.

This assessment aims to start an important discussion about the future of USSOF. The objective is to anticipate future challenges and threats rather than get stuck behind a power curve driven by our strategic competitors. Some of the ideas presented here will provoke passionate debate. This is natural when facing big changes. This is not the time for time-wasting definitional debates, or timid incrementalism nor is it the time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. USSOF has a powerful track record of success and it will only maintain that edge if it smart-innovates. That means keeping what works and building new capacity, skills, ideas and approaches and testing them. Some degree of failure is inevitable. It is not possible to perfectly anticipate all unknown unknowns. But if we don’t try to anticipate what success looks like in the new environment then systemic failure is guaranteed. This analysis will help shape smart-innovation of the force.

According to the latest US defense strategy GPC involves China, Russia and lesser powers like Iran and the DPRK. The US has a lot of experience dealing with the militaries all of these countries. With the important exception of China. The PLA of 2020 is a completely different animal from the PLA of 2000. In a very short period of time the PLA has transformed from a dumb massed land army to a smart maritime power projection force with close to global reach and near permanent persistence. For the first time in history, its conventional military capabilities have matured to a degree that former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert Work, elevated China from a competitor to ‘peer’ ‘pacing threat’. As Chinese military power rapidly transformed, the USG (and many countries in the region) has become skeptical about the peaceful rise mantra recited by Beijing. This is a valid concern given the PLA already has the power to deny access to international sea lanes in the South China Sea (SCS), invade and occupy Hong Kong unopposed, and forcefully coerce Taiwan.

The Chinese consider the SCS their Caribbean. That much is clear. China maintains the line that outside interference in the SCS is "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward [China]”. Historians will recognize that last sentence as the operative sentence in the Monroe Doctrine (1823). Accordingly, a question can be asked whether Xi Jinping is their McKinley/Roosevelt. Will Xi speak softly once he has completed building his big stick? The evidence to date suggests that the reverse is true. Chinese foreign policy has shifted from “hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead” to “prepare for military struggle in all strategic directions,” in order to “lay the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position”. 

Looking forward to Displaying the most frequently asked questions here.

Adam C PhD (Cantab) served as a Principal Strategist for USSOCOM where he was involved in designing clandestine war plans for special mission units. He is now Director General of Contexr, a national security upstart start-up based in Washington DC. Dr C has lived, studied and worked all over the world including as a Special Director of Strategic Programs for an allied DoD in the Indo-Pacific. Adam earned a PhD under Sir Harry Hinsley (wartime codebreaker and official historian of British Intelligence in WWII) at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he researched the rise of non-state actors as challengers to the power of the state. Over the course of more than a decade he served with distinction as a professor of strategy at the United States Air War College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the United States Naval War College. At Newport, Adam was Director of a classified US Navy intel-planning-ops cell dedicated to assessing future enemy WMD concepts of operations and charged with devising innovative ways of deterring and defeating such threats. This organization was unique in the US Government in that it combined activities across the J2, J3, and J5, for US Strategic Command, US Special Operations Command and US Pacific Command (primarily), and worked closely with the IC and the NSC in assessing, developing and shaping America’s nuclear war plans. Contexr’s mission is helping US DOD (and related organizations) prepare for major great power conflict in Asia by providing much needed context to operational and strategic design. 

He can be reached at M@contexr.com.

Once they come in they will be placed here.

• OVERVIEW 3

• PART I - CHINA’s RISE 8
• China’s Rise 9
• Change and Instability in the System 11
• Silk Road (in a Chainmail Fist) 16
• Australia openly debated splitting from America 19
• Australia Wakes Up 21
• Wolf Warrior Diplomacy 23
• PRC Operations in the “COVID moment” 25

• PART II - THE THIRD OFFSET STRATEGY? 29
• Great Power Conflict and return to Major Conventional War (GPC and MCW) 30
• Not All War is About the Gun 35
• War v Warfare 36
• Cloaked Power 41

• PART III - WAR PLAN BLACK 43
• Grand Strategy 44
• Military Strategy 48
• Offensive Operations 50
• Mission 52
• Organization 54
• Conclusion 56

The Third Offset Strategy:

a return to ungentlemanly warfare

OVERVIEW

What do special operations in contested and denied environments in Asia look like in the context of great power competition? 

Washington is very trend conscious. It has a unique capacity to turn on a dime. Once it gets bored with something or the risk du jour is perceived to have passed, an invisible hand of strategic focus somehow switches gears on the establishment and sets it in a new direction. Typically the hand takes the form of the latest three letter acronym that repackages old wine in new bottles and gets the kind of attention familiar to any newborn being taken to work for the first time to meet mom’s coworkers. A creator of an acronym hits the jackpot when their letters form the basis of a presidential or SECDEF statement. The last time this happened it was the APC (America’s Pacific Century which never quite caught on, probably because it originated in State, but it became known by its DOD usage as the Pacific Pivot). No one was really taking about what was happening in Asia because all eyes were on MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Asia-Pacific experts would implore readers to pay attention with headlines like “Wake up DC, the Asian century is here” and would get next to no attention. Then a few weeks later America’s Pacific Century (pacific pivot) is announced and its all anyone can talk about.

The following new acronyms are now on everyones lips: GPC, MCW, TOS. Ignore them at your peril. Just listing them implies an epistemology. Great Power Competition (GPC) will inevitably lead to Major Conventional War (MCW) which can be won by the Third Offset Strategy (TOS). Funding, prestige, attention, all now turn on who is the first to make it to the top of the GPC, MCW, TOS hill and dominates the rest. GPC, MCW, TOS is particularly exciting to the establishment because it triggers various cultural biases that are buried deep inside the Pentagon. Force on force conflict, decisive battles, aircraft carriers, B2 bombers, long range stand off weapons, high-tech sensor-to-shooter loops, artificial intelligence, weapon system automation (robots) - this is the stuff of Pentagon dreams. Whether they are actually applicable to the problem or condition being assessed is virtually irrelevant. As Upton Sinclair caustically observed “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

Stuck for years in counter insurgency wars it did not want, the sense of delight in the Pentagon around the new opportunity posed by GPC, MCW, TOS is palpable. GPC, MCW, TOS promise a return to what America does best. Big Wars. The excitement is not limited to the Pentagon. American heavy industry depends in some part on big platforms like ships and bombers, the production of which is highly political. There have been cases where the Department of Defense (DOD) has told Congress it does not want certain platforms but Congress authorized them anyway.

It is certainly counter-cultural to suggest that a coming MCW, as envisaged by the majority of strategic thinkers, will not depend on US conventional capabilities. No senior general or flag officer is going to admit that America’s conventional deterrent cannot be the platform or the way of thinking that will counter the new threats underpinning the GPC, MCW, TOS construct. But they should.

As will be detailed below, conventional warfare is a secondary consideration in GPC because China, Russia, Iran and al Qaeda choose not to practice it. That is not to say GPF (general purpose forces) are irrelevant. They remain fundamental to strategy and operations (as do nuclear forces that are hardly ever discussed in any context these days). GPF are not where the main effort lies. They are a blocking force. The tackling, penetration and scoring remains a task for special operations forces (SOF). This is because, like AQ, great powers seek to avoid MCW while at the same time doing all they can to undermine and weaken the US by unrestricted means. US Special Operations Forces (USSOF) have become the main effort in the past 20 years because they think like insurgents. They understand networks and how to break and build them. They know how to wield unrestricted warfare better than any other department or agency in the USG. By necessity, USSOF have become the supported force. GPF have long been the supporting force.

It follows that if great powers engaged in competition with the US refrain from use of GPFs in favor of the full gamut of unrestricted methods available to them (which they have), then USSOF must remain the primary driver of American efforts to counter malign influences flooding the world. 

Unrestricted warfare is counter-cultural to Pentagon orthodoxy. This is why opponents use it! If the Pentagon de-emphasizes irregular warfare as an ‘historical’ relic suited only to the defeated enemies of the 2010s, it needs to remind itself that AQ, ISIS and the rest are like zombies in the movies. Having been shot multiple times they tend to spring up and keep running towards us with an axe. Indeed, AQ and the rest have not been defeated. They are suppressed just sufficiently for life in the west to go on and that’s probably the best we can hope for until they tire.

Great powers have seen the effectiveness of AQ’s unrestricted warfare against the US and have responded accordingly. For example, Russia is economically weak, politically compromised, a military paper tiger (compared to its old Soviet self). It has achieved more in a decade with the use of memetic warfare, than 72 years of global ideological struggle from the Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia has sown division within and between the EU and US on levels Stalin could only dream of. It has done so at almost no cost compared to mounting a major conventional fight that it would surely lose. As this analysis will show in detail, China has also been engaged in unrestricted warfare against the US and its allies. So far their activities have been more in the political and economic domain, but they have craftily woven in physical operations into this mix. Not only has the PRC invaded and occupied an entire sea vital to global trade unopposed, as a matter of routine they conduct kinetic operations against civilians and military forces of regional powers without meaningful sanction. 

It is time to ask whether USSOF is fit for purpose in the context of a future war with a great power in Asia. The lesson is that to prevail in GPC we have to adapt SOF to take on great powers. In some ways the techniques are the same as those developed in the past 20 years but radical changes are required in the mindset within SOF and related organizations in the USG. The way of war USSOF has developed through painful experience since 911 (F3EA/night-raid machine) is as highly effective as it is unique. Is it transferable to GPC? The answer is yes. However, SOF will be used completely differently. In fact, the most significant contribution will be systems/operational design thinking to create the next F3EA against a great power. This analysis will show how USSOF thinking can help inform how the USG approaches the future strategic environment in Asia while remaining under the threshold of MCW.

This assessment aims to start an important discussion about the future of USSOF. The objective is to anticipate future challenges and threats rather than get stuck behind a power curve driven by our strategic competitors. Some of the ideas presented here will provoke passionate debate. This is natural when facing big changes. This is not the time for time-wasting definitional debates, or timid incrementalism nor is it the time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. USSOF has a powerful track record of success and it will only maintain that edge if it smart-innovates. That means keeping what works and building new capacity, skills, ideas and approaches and testing them. Some degree of failure is inevitable. It is not possible to perfectly anticipate all unknown unknowns. But if we don’t try to anticipate what success looks like in the new environment then systemic failure is guaranteed. This analysis will help shape smart-innovation of the force.

According to the latest US defense strategy GPC involves China, Russia and lesser powers like Iran and the DPRK. The US has a lot of experience dealing with the militaries all of these countries. With the important exception of China. The PLA of 2020 is a completely different animal from the PLA of 2000. In a very short period of time the PLA has transformed from a dumb massed land army to a smart maritime power projection force with close to global reach and near permanent persistence. For the first time in history, its conventional military capabilities have matured to a degree that former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert Work, elevated China from a competitor to ‘peer’ ‘pacing threat’. As Chinese military power rapidly transformed, the USG (and many countries in the region) has become skeptical about the peaceful rise mantra recited by Beijing. This is a valid concern given the PLA already has the power to deny access to international sea lanes in the South China Sea (SCS), invade and occupy Hong Kong unopposed, and forcefully coerce Taiwan.

The Chinese consider the SCS their Caribbean. That much is clear. China maintains the line that outside interference in the SCS is "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward [China]”. Historians will recognize that last sentence as the operative sentence in the Monroe Doctrine (1823). Accordingly, a question can be asked whether Xi Jinping is their McKinley/Roosevelt. Will Xi speak softly once he has completed building his big stick? The evidence to date suggests that the reverse is true. Chinese foreign policy has shifted from “hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead” to “prepare for military struggle in all strategic directions,” in order to “lay the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position”. 

Looking forward to Displaying the most frequently asked questions here.

Adam C PhD (Cantab) served as a Principal Strategist for USSOCOM where he was involved in designing clandestine war plans for special mission units. He is now Director General of Contexr, a national security upstart start-up based in Washington DC. Dr C has lived, studied and worked all over the world including as a Special Director of Strategic Programs for an allied DoD in the Indo-Pacific. Adam earned a PhD under Sir Harry Hinsley (wartime codebreaker and official historian of British Intelligence in WWII) at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he researched the rise of non-state actors as challengers to the power of the state. Over the course of more than a decade he served with distinction as a professor of strategy at the United States Air War College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the United States Naval War College. At Newport, Adam was Director of a classified US Navy intel-planning-ops cell dedicated to assessing future enemy WMD concepts of operations and charged with devising innovative ways of deterring and defeating such threats. This organization was unique in the US Government in that it combined activities across the J2, J3, and J5, for US Strategic Command, US Special Operations Command and US Pacific Command (primarily), and worked closely with the IC and the NSC in assessing, developing and shaping America’s nuclear war plans. Contexr’s mission is helping US DOD (and related organizations) prepare for major great power conflict in Asia by providing much needed context to operational and strategic design. 

He can be reached at M@contexr.com.

Once they come in they will be placed here.

• OVERVIEW 3

• PART I - CHINA’s RISE 8
• China’s Rise 9
• Change and Instability in the System 11
• Silk Road (in a Chainmail Fist) 16
• Australia openly debated splitting from America 19
• Australia Wakes Up 21
• Wolf Warrior Diplomacy 23
• PRC Operations in the “COVID moment” 25

• PART II - THE THIRD OFFSET STRATEGY? 29
• Great Power Conflict and return to Major Conventional War (GPC and MCW) 30
• Not All War is About the Gun 35
• War v Warfare 36
• Cloaked Power 41

• PART III - WAR PLAN BLACK 43
• Grand Strategy 44
• Military Strategy 48
• Offensive Operations 50
• Mission 52
• Organization 54
• Conclusion 56

The Third Offset Strategy:

a return to ungentlemanly warfare

OVERVIEW

What do special operations in contested and denied environments in Asia look like in the context of great power competition? 

Washington is very trend conscious. It has a unique capacity to turn on a dime. Once it gets bored with something or the risk du jour is perceived to have passed, an invisible hand of strategic focus somehow switches gears on the establishment and sets it in a new direction. Typically the hand takes the form of the latest three letter acronym that repackages old wine in new bottles and gets the kind of attention familiar to any newborn being taken to work for the first time to meet mom’s coworkers. A creator of an acronym hits the jackpot when their letters form the basis of a presidential or SECDEF statement. The last time this happened it was the APC (America’s Pacific Century which never quite caught on, probably because it originated in State, but it became known by its DOD usage as the Pacific Pivot). No one was really taking about what was happening in Asia because all eyes were on MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Asia-Pacific experts would implore readers to pay attention with headlines like “Wake up DC, the Asian century is here” and would get next to no attention. Then a few weeks later America’s Pacific Century (pacific pivot) is announced and its all anyone can talk about.

The following new acronyms are now on everyones lips: GPC, MCW, TOS. Ignore them at your peril. Just listing them implies an epistemology. Great Power Competition (GPC) will inevitably lead to Major Conventional War (MCW) which can be won by the Third Offset Strategy (TOS). Funding, prestige, attention, all now turn on who is the first to make it to the top of the GPC, MCW, TOS hill and dominates the rest. GPC, MCW, TOS is particularly exciting to the establishment because it triggers various cultural biases that are buried deep inside the Pentagon. Force on force conflict, decisive battles, aircraft carriers, B2 bombers, long range stand off weapons, high-tech sensor-to-shooter loops, artificial intelligence, weapon system automation (robots) - this is the stuff of Pentagon dreams. Whether they are actually applicable to the problem or condition being assessed is virtually irrelevant. As Upton Sinclair caustically observed “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

Stuck for years in counter insurgency wars it did not want, the sense of delight in the Pentagon around the new opportunity posed by GPC, MCW, TOS is palpable. GPC, MCW, TOS promise a return to what America does best. Big Wars. The excitement is not limited to the Pentagon. American heavy industry depends in some part on big platforms like ships and bombers, the production of which is highly political. There have been cases where the Department of Defense (DOD) has told Congress it does not want certain platforms but Congress authorized them anyway.

It is certainly counter-cultural to suggest that a coming MCW, as envisaged by the majority of strategic thinkers, will not depend on US conventional capabilities. No senior general or flag officer is going to admit that America’s conventional deterrent cannot be the platform or the way of thinking that will counter the new threats underpinning the GPC, MCW, TOS construct. But they should.

As will be detailed below, conventional warfare is a secondary consideration in GPC because China, Russia, Iran and al Qaeda choose not to practice it. That is not to say GPF (general purpose forces) are irrelevant. They remain fundamental to strategy and operations (as do nuclear forces that are hardly ever discussed in any context these days). GPF are not where the main effort lies. They are a blocking force. The tackling, penetration and scoring remains a task for special operations forces (SOF). This is because, like AQ, great powers seek to avoid MCW while at the same time doing all they can to undermine and weaken the US by unrestricted means. US Special Operations Forces (USSOF) have become the main effort in the past 20 years because they think like insurgents. They understand networks and how to break and build them. They know how to wield unrestricted warfare better than any other department or agency in the USG. By necessity, USSOF have become the supported force. GPF have long been the supporting force.

It follows that if great powers engaged in competition with the US refrain from use of GPFs in favor of the full gamut of unrestricted methods available to them (which they have), then USSOF must remain the primary driver of American efforts to counter malign influences flooding the world. 

Unrestricted warfare is counter-cultural to Pentagon orthodoxy. This is why opponents use it! If the Pentagon de-emphasizes irregular warfare as an ‘historical’ relic suited only to the defeated enemies of the 2010s, it needs to remind itself that AQ, ISIS and the rest are like zombies in the movies. Having been shot multiple times they tend to spring up and keep running towards us with an axe. Indeed, AQ and the rest have not been defeated. They are suppressed just sufficiently for life in the west to go on and that’s probably the best we can hope for until they tire.

Great powers have seen the effectiveness of AQ’s unrestricted warfare against the US and have responded accordingly. For example, Russia is economically weak, politically compromised, a military paper tiger (compared to its old Soviet self). It has achieved more in a decade with the use of memetic warfare, than 72 years of global ideological struggle from the Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia has sown division within and between the EU and US on levels Stalin could only dream of. It has done so at almost no cost compared to mounting a major conventional fight that it would surely lose. As this analysis will show in detail, China has also been engaged in unrestricted warfare against the US and its allies. So far their activities have been more in the political and economic domain, but they have craftily woven in physical operations into this mix. Not only has the PRC invaded and occupied an entire sea vital to global trade unopposed, as a matter of routine they conduct kinetic operations against civilians and military forces of regional powers without meaningful sanction. 

It is time to ask whether USSOF is fit for purpose in the context of a future war with a great power in Asia. The lesson is that to prevail in GPC we have to adapt SOF to take on great powers. In some ways the techniques are the same as those developed in the past 20 years but radical changes are required in the mindset within SOF and related organizations in the USG. The way of war USSOF has developed through painful experience since 911 (F3EA/night-raid machine) is as highly effective as it is unique. Is it transferable to GPC? The answer is yes. However, SOF will be used completely differently. In fact, the most significant contribution will be systems/operational design thinking to create the next F3EA against a great power. This analysis will show how USSOF thinking can help inform how the USG approaches the future strategic environment in Asia while remaining under the threshold of MCW.

This assessment aims to start an important discussion about the future of USSOF. The objective is to anticipate future challenges and threats rather than get stuck behind a power curve driven by our strategic competitors. Some of the ideas presented here will provoke passionate debate. This is natural when facing big changes. This is not the time for time-wasting definitional debates, or timid incrementalism nor is it the time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. USSOF has a powerful track record of success and it will only maintain that edge if it smart-innovates. That means keeping what works and building new capacity, skills, ideas and approaches and testing them. Some degree of failure is inevitable. It is not possible to perfectly anticipate all unknown unknowns. But if we don’t try to anticipate what success looks like in the new environment then systemic failure is guaranteed. This analysis will help shape smart-innovation of the force.

According to the latest US defense strategy GPC involves China, Russia and lesser powers like Iran and the DPRK. The US has a lot of experience dealing with the militaries all of these countries. With the important exception of China. The PLA of 2020 is a completely different animal from the PLA of 2000. In a very short period of time the PLA has transformed from a dumb massed land army to a smart maritime power projection force with close to global reach and near permanent persistence. For the first time in history, its conventional military capabilities have matured to a degree that former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert Work, elevated China from a competitor to ‘peer’ ‘pacing threat’. As Chinese military power rapidly transformed, the USG (and many countries in the region) has become skeptical about the peaceful rise mantra recited by Beijing. This is a valid concern given the PLA already has the power to deny access to international sea lanes in the South China Sea (SCS), invade and occupy Hong Kong unopposed, and forcefully coerce Taiwan.

The Chinese consider the SCS their Caribbean. That much is clear. China maintains the line that outside interference in the SCS is "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward [China]”. Historians will recognize that last sentence as the operative sentence in the Monroe Doctrine (1823). Accordingly, a question can be asked whether Xi Jinping is their McKinley/Roosevelt. Will Xi speak softly once he has completed building his big stick? The evidence to date suggests that the reverse is true. Chinese foreign policy has shifted from “hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead” to “prepare for military struggle in all strategic directions,” in order to “lay the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position”. 

Looking forward to Displaying the most frequently asked questions here.

Adam C PhD (Cantab) served as a Principal Strategist for USSOCOM where he was involved in designing clandestine war plans for special mission units. He is now Director General of Contexr, a national security upstart start-up based in Washington DC. Dr C has lived, studied and worked all over the world including as a Special Director of Strategic Programs for an allied DoD in the Indo-Pacific. Adam earned a PhD under Sir Harry Hinsley (wartime codebreaker and official historian of British Intelligence in WWII) at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he researched the rise of non-state actors as challengers to the power of the state. Over the course of more than a decade he served with distinction as a professor of strategy at the United States Air War College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the United States Naval War College. At Newport, Adam was Director of a classified US Navy intel-planning-ops cell dedicated to assessing future enemy WMD concepts of operations and charged with devising innovative ways of deterring and defeating such threats. This organization was unique in the US Government in that it combined activities across the J2, J3, and J5, for US Strategic Command, US Special Operations Command and US Pacific Command (primarily), and worked closely with the IC and the NSC in assessing, developing and shaping America’s nuclear war plans. Contexr’s mission is helping US DOD (and related organizations) prepare for major great power conflict in Asia by providing much needed context to operational and strategic design. 

He can be reached at M@contexr.com.

Once they come in they will be placed here.