Outskirts Press, INC.

Going Big By Getting Small: The Application of Operational Art by Special Operations in Phase Zero

Going Big by Getting Small examines how the United States Special Operations Forces apply operational art, the link between tactics and strategy, in the non-wartime, steady-state environments called Phase Zero. With revised and innovative operational art constructs, US Special Operations offer scalable and differentiated strategic options for US foreign policy goals. This book analyzes light footprint special operations approaches in Yemen, Indonesia, Thailand, and Colombia. When a large military presence may be inappropriate or counterproductive, Colonel Brian Petit makes the case for fresh thinking on Phase Zero operational art as applied by small, highly skilled, joint-force teams coupled with interagency partners. The past decade (2002-2012) of operations focused on large-scale, post-conflict counterinsurgency. Less publicized, but no less important in this same decade, was the emerging application of nuanced campaigns, actions, and activities in Phase Zero. These efforts were led or supported by special operations in countries and regions contested, but not at war. This book fills a gap in the literature of how to adapt the means, method, and logic of US military foreign engagements in a diplomacy-centric world with rapidly shifting power paradigms. Going Big by Getting Small is not a yarn on daring special operations raids nor a call for perpetual war. It is the polar opposite: this book contemplates the use of discreet engagements to sustain an advantageous peace, mitigate conflict, and prevent crises.

Grand strategy is the singular, defining idea that orients a nation’s power and influence abroad. The process of grand strategy involves marshaling and integrating national resources in pursuit of a nation’s interests, security, and future prosperity. Equal parts ideology and policy, national grand strategies cannot be ordered into existence by executive fiat. Some take flight and some do not. Past American grand strategies include expansionism, isolationism, Rooseveltian imperialism, Wilsonian idealism, and Cold War containment. Twenty years after the Cold War, the United States (US) lacks a grand strategy. This absence reflects the difficulty in defining an overarching idea for the US in today’s complex, multipolar, and power-diffused world. Lacking a grand strategy, the US executes multiple strategies that compete in a Darwinian forum to gain prominence, influence policies, and determine resource commitment. Of these competing strategies, one means has emerged as a poor substitute, yet a reliable surrogate, for grand strategy: engagement. Engagement is broadly defined as “the active participation of the United States in relationships beyond our borders.” Engagement is conducted by US diplomatic, defense, or development agencies to promote relationships, programs, and progress deemed mutually beneficial to both the US and its friends and allies. For adversaries and competitors, engagement displays transparency and dialogue with strategic signaling that demonstrates US power, intent, and capability without unnecessary provocations. Peacetime engagement events represent US policy-in-action. Engagement events, enacted in the diplomatic, military, information, and economic realms, comprise the ways and means to achieve strategic ends. In military parlance, engagement occurs in “Phase Zero” or the pre-crisis environment in which state relations are peaceful and routine. Though all military engagements can inherently be associated with preparation for warfare, the explicit purpose of many Phase Zero military engagements is to prevent war. The strategic logic is that where engagements exist, the US is in dialogue, applying a spectrum of efforts – short of warfare - to shape the strategic environment to its advantage. USSOF currently conducts engagements in over 77 countries. 18 Nearly all these USSOF engagements occur in the Phase Zero environment declared as routine military activities, informally labeled “upstream engagement.”19 In these environments, special operations are less a tool for war than a method of statecraft for achieving a favorable international order. The aim of special operations in Phase Zero is to offer combatant commanders, ambassadors, and host nations the right instrument to meet their security, diplomatic, or political challenges. As the strategic setting for the US shifts from large-scale expeditionary wars to multilateral cooperation, the skilled use of USSOF in upstream engagements holds great potential. This study aims to answer the question: What are the special operations elements of operational art in Phase Zero? To answer this question, three supporting questions are examined. How do the synchronized application of special operations operations, actions, and activities in Phase Zero constitute a military campaign? What are the unique characteristics that distinguish special operations in Phase Zero campaigns from traditional military campaigns? How do special operations in Phase Zero campaigns support the broader theater campaigns?