Richard H. Shultz

It's war! fighting post-11 september global terrorism through a doctrine of preemption

Following the 11 September terrorist attack a number of media revelations asserted that it could have been prevented if only the intelligence community (IC) had acted on information in its possession regarding the impending attack. This article explains why and how the intelligence agencies failed on 11 September, and assesses the need for and viability of preemptive military options for striking first to combat terrorism. First, it describes how the IC doggedly refused to regard terrorism as war through the 1990s. Second, the authors explain that an alternative perspective challenged this orthodoxy in the early 1990s, arguing that war was changing and entering its fourth generation. Third, based on new information about Al-Qaeda, the article addresses how Al-Qaeda organized for war and how it carried it out by delineating Al-Qaedas organizational structure, ideology, linkages with other terrorist groups and supporting states, use of sanctuary, and financial base, and then detailing its targeting, weapons and warfighting strategy. This assessment reveals how intimately the Al-Qaeda network bears an unmistakable resemblance to fourth-generation asymmetrical warfare and not to the 1990s profile of the IC. Finally, the authors demonstrate that President Bush has grasped fourth generation warfare by advocating preemptive first strikes against terrorists in his new national security strategy.

State Disintegration and Ethnic Conflict: A Framework for Analysis

With the end of the Cold War, the growing challenges of regional conflict and instability are receiving significant international attention. Broadly, these regional clashes are taking place both between and within states. The former are concerned with regional competition and power distributions, while the latter are the result of animosities rooted in ethnic, religious, communal, secessionist, and irredentist contestations. This article proposes a framework for understanding and analyzing the dynamics and complexities of these post-Cold War internal conflicts taking place within an increasing number of states in various regions of the globe. To accomplish this, a review is undertaken of the causes and dimensions of this internal violence and the state disintegration it engenders, with particular attention to the impact of ethnicity, ethnonationalism, religion, and communalism. The framework developed for analyzing and understanding the complex developments that characterize these ethnic and religiously motivated internal conflicts and wars is employed to assess the strife in Somalia.

The Low-Intensity Conflict Environment of the 1990s:

The term “low-intensity conflict” (LIC) first appeared in the lexicon of the U.S. national security community in the latter half of the 1970s. During the 1980s, the Reagan administration and the Congress undertook several initiatives to prepare the United States to respond to various LIC challenges. Following a brief commentary on these developments, the author addresses three interrelated subjects. First, the conceptual debate surrounding LIC and its relationship to the American approach to strategy is examined. Second, the primary kinds of LIC that will occur in the 1990s are described. Finally, the implications and requirements for U.S. national security policy are outlined.

The Limits of Terrorism in Insurgency Warfare: The Case of the Viet Cong

The various types and uses of terrorism have given rise to much misunderstanding and confusion. Here the author attempts to clarify the concept and evaluate its role in revolutionary warfare. He examines in detail the place of terroristic practices in Viet Cong tactics and finds that, contrary to the perception of American policy-makers, they were employed selectively and with restraintm clearly secondary in importance to the strategy of ideological and organizational restructuring of the countryside.

U.S. Counterterrorism Operations during the Iraq War: A Case Study of Task Force 714

ABSTRACT U.S. counterterrorism (CT) forces that deployed to Iraq in 2003 as Task Force 714 (TF 714) faced an ugly surprise. Tasked to dismantle the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) dominated insurgency, the organization could not achieve that mission. General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded TF 714 concluded, “we were losing to an enemy … we should have dominated.” But TF 714 transformed in the midst of war and during 2006-2009 was able to largely dismantle AQIs clandestine networks to a degree that they could no longer function in a cohesive manner. By developing the capacity to operate inside those networks, TF 714 was able, in the words of General McChrystal, to “claw the guts out of AQI.” This transformation runs counter to what organizational experts identify as barriers inhibiting militaries from learning, innovating, and changing, especially in wartime. To decipher the puzzle of how TF 714 overcame these barriers, two questions are addressed in this study: 1) How did TF 714 transform from a specialized and compartmented unit customized for executing infrequent CT missions in peacetime to a wartime industrial-strength CT machine that by 2009 dismantled AQIs networks that operated across Iraq; and 2) Why was TF 714 able to achieve this remarkable transformation?