Surrogate Warfare for the 21st Century

This monograph seeks to determine the adequacy of national security strategies, policies, and doctrine for the use of surrogate forces in pursuit of U.S. strategic objectives. The insufficiency in the current guidance for waging warfare by, with, and through surrogate forces requires development of an updated approach to maximize the strategic options available to the United States. The methodology of this paper is to review the role of strategy, policy, and doctrine in light of the existing definitions relevant to the use of foreign forces in U.S. operations. This leads to a more detailed review of foreign internal defense (FID) and unconventional warfare (UW) doctrine. This doctrinal guidance is compared to the contemporary operations involving surrogate forces. A comprehensive concept for surrogate warfare is proposed as a more effective way to conduct operations with foreign partners of all types. The current tendency to categorize warfare as regular versus irregular, or conventional versus unconventional is of little value in developing guidance for U.S. military operations involving surrogate forces. Surrogate warfare provides a framework that encompasses all U.S. operations that involve non-U.S. forces. This framework also provides an analysis of the surrogate warfare environment to determine the appropriate role of both conventional and special operations forces in conducting surrogate warfare operations. The 21st Century operating environment will present diverse threats and increasingly complex strategic situations. A more effective use of surrogate forces greatly enhances both the capability and the capacity of the United States to protect its interests in this demanding environment.