Overview

Popular interpretations of recent defense strategic guidance suggest that America is turning away from messy interventions in foreign irregular wars and toward great-power conflict with China. Actual guidance, however, urges something much different: the acknowledgement that both irregular threats and a rising China are relevant to American national security. The current global security environment coupled with looming fiscal austerity demand that strategists think seriously about affordable and effective ways to deal with a wide spectrum of threats. Numerous irregular warfare practitioners and scholars have offered a method for engaging irregular threats as an alternative to expensive large-scale counterinsurgency. That alternative is small-scale foreign internal defense (FID).Civilian and military leadership have been pleased with the progress demonstrated in Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines (OEF-P) and U.S. assistance to the Colombian military. These two FID missions have been executed with a tiny number of American personnel at a fraction of the budgets required for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq. By one estimate, the annual budget for OEF-P was expended once every three hours in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The missions in the Philippines and Colombia are not the only examples of small-scale FID. Advocates point to successes in Greece, the Republic of Georgia, and a number of other locations. Two historic examples are cited most frequently: the Anti-Hukbalahap Campaign in the Philippines (1946-1956) and El Salvador's Civil War (1980-1992).The author analyzes the two frequently-cited but little-understood FID missions in the Philippines and El Salvador to expose both the truths and myths surrounding each operation. The analysis is based on a framework defined by American interests, partner-nation compatibility, and sound advising fundamentals. The assessment provided by this framework identifies the unique conditions defining each conflict to demonstrate when small-scale FID may, or may not, be an appropriate course of action in future contingencies. The author concludes that these missions had contextually unique qualities and that the study of small-scale FID is best served by acknowledging differences between individual cases, and the conditions influencing to success or failure.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

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