"Special" forces: a corps deployed too broadly.

• Author: Stevenson, Jonathan

THE UNITED States' special operations forces (SOF) have come a long way since their post-Vietnam War decline in doctrinal prominence. During the 1980s, the U.S. defense establishment chose their "national wars of liberation" more carefully. The United States stayed closer to home, targeting mainly Central America, and Army Special Forces enjoyed some success in bolstering El Salvador's defense capabilities in a way that they had not done for South Vietnam's. Yet the emphasis remained on firepower rather than on training indigenous forces and the small-unit patrol operations favored by other counter-insurgency practitioners. In any case, the 1990-91 Gulf War--a high-intensity, high-technology blitzkrieg-extinguished any residual institutional enthusiasm for hands-on involvement in messy third world conflicts. "Fighting the nation's wars" again became the national military priority, with "low-intensity conflict"--later rebranded the even more soporific "military operations other than war"--strictly subordinate. As of 2001, the Army's principal field manual devoted only two of 313 pages to counterinsurgency.

Then came the September 11 attacks. The first salvo in the global counter-terrorism coalition's response to the attacks was the U.S.-led takedown of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in late 2001. That essentially military effort was distinguished by the central role that primarily American SOF played. SOF differ from regular combat soldiers in that they are highly trained to perform a wide variety of tasks and use a broad range of equipment, operate in small units--frequently behind enemy lines--and sometimes act covertly. Most professional militaries incorporate SOF capabilities. In the U.S. military, they include Army Special Forces (i.e. Green Berets) and Navy SEALs, as well as Air Commandos and now some Marines. Their rough UK counterparts are the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service. In Afghanistan, American SOF led and coordinated the indigenous anti-Taliban Northern Alliance fighters, which minimized the adverse political impact among Afghans from the presence of foreign troops. They also acted as forward observers and thus facilitated more accurate air strikes. SOF's admirable performance in such a successful operation thus appeared to augur an increasingly prominent role for them in what the U.S. government soon dubbed the "War on Terror."

At the same time, the very elimination of Afghanistan as a physical base for the global jihadist network has forced it to disperse and further decentralize. At this point, Al-Qaeda's core leadership may often do little more than inspire, rather than command or facilitate, operations by local "self-starter" terrorist cells that have fully infiltrated urban areas. This circumstance would appear to make the blunt and relatively indiscriminate instrument of military power less suited to countering Islamist terrorist threats than civilian intelligence and law-enforcement means. Yet the Department of Defense (DOD) has continued to stress the importance of SOF and devoted a rising share of the U.S. defense budget to special-operations capabilities.

The Pentagon's Bullishness

THE QUADRENNIAL Defense Review (QDR) and the National Military Strategic Plan (NMSP) for the War on Terror, both released earlier this year, broadly embody the view that the War on Terror integrally involves the military, in that aggressive intervention abroad is necessary to forestall terrorist operations on U.S. territory. The DOD's principal counter-terrorist instruments are special operations forces, which "will possess an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally." The fact that after 9/11 U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) became a "supported" as well as a "supporting" combatant command, received substantial budgetary and operational independence from the regional combatant commands, and was assigned the lead military counter-terrorist role under the 2004 Unified Command Plan, reinforces this mission. So does the 9/11...