Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Lieutenant Colonel Arnel David, co-author of Strategy in the 21st Century: People, Connectivity, and Competition, discusses the book and offers some tips for junior NCOs and officers in Civil Affairs. Available on Amazon, the book calls for rethinking how the U.S. national security community approaches population-centric warfare and strategic competition in the 21st century.
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Transcript:
a00:00:00 SPEAKER_02
Simply put, I mean, it's the intersection of actors and interests, predominantly in the land and cyber. So, you know, the cyber domain is a thing right now. It's kind of hot. But we're saying that, you know, if you if you look at the construct of all the domains and how we organize, I mean, really, it's humans first that all war is eternally human, a human endeavor. So humans are always a part of this space. But what's happening in the presnt is that. This human domain is shaping, you know, modern competition and conflict faster with the speed of networks and communications. So networks, I mean, networks define the human domain and shape the current character of conflict and competition.
00:00:40 SPEAKER_01
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Arnell David, Lieutenant Colonel in the U .S. Army. and he's currently the chief of the General Staffs Initiatives Group for Army Headquarters UK. Colonel David, thank you for being on the 1CA podcast. Thank you.
00:00:59 SPEAKER_01
Can you tell us about your current position out there in the UK? We know you're a civil affairs officer in the Army. What are you doing in the UK right now?
00:01:09 SPEAKER_02
So I'm a civil affairs officer, but working for the chief of general staff in the British Army on strategy and advising. I'm working on their strategy branch, and we're working on a new strategy for their Army.
00:01:22 SPEAKER_01
Okay. Well, that's a great tie -in to our topic for today, which is your role as author of a book. It's titled Military Strategy for the 21st Century, People, Connectivity, and Competition. And you wrote this book with Charles Cleveland, retired Lieutenant General, Benjamin Jensen, and Susan Bryant. This was published by Cambia Press this last year. We want to dig into why you guys wrote this book, why now, talk about some of the pieces of it, and pique the interest of listeners to go out and buy a copy on their own. So let me start, sir, by asking you, what's your elevator pitch about the book?
00:02:01 SPEAKER_02
Well, obviously the title gives it away a little bit, but I just tell people it's a book about military strategy and human domain. We present some new ways to think about power and influence in this rapidly changing world. And we construct a theoretical foundation for this human domain concept that, you know, not too long ago, you know, had a lot of momentum and attention, but eventually it's fallen from the discourse.
00:02:23 SPEAKER_01
So it's fallen away from discourse. Is that why you wanted to bring up this topic and this topic now? Do you think there used to be a focus in this area and it's fallen away?
00:02:33 SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So, you know, General Cleveland had a good allegory for, you know, to this bowling frog story where, you know, ever vigilant to avoid the gigging stick. The frog's unaware of the rising temperature, and that's how he describes our current situation, you know, the United States and our military, is that we're the boiling frog. We're not really aware of, like, what's really happening, how the changing character of conflict is unfolding before our eyes, but we're not really reacting in a way that makes us relevant. So the four of us, we were together in the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies Group in 2015. We all shared, you know, this common concern that the Army was going to pivot and shift to the... from the experience of our against and of counter -insurgency warfare to you know what we're most comfortable with you know full -scale conventional warfighting and rightly so you know what happened Crimea with Russia and everything and you know this multi -domain battle was emerging as a concept as well as the third offset was taking shape in the Pentagon so all of our collective experience and professional you know instinct told us that this shift this lifted shift you know Well, it might be necessary. You know, we didn't want to lose a lot of the harder insights from what we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. So what started as a series of articles that we were going to start publishing in places like War on the Rocks or Foreign Affairs, it turned into this book, which, you know, after two years, we finally got it published.
00:03:49 SPEAKER_01
Well, congratulations. Two years. To a lot of people, it's probably fast to write a book. It seems like you guys took a lot of those articles and pieced them together and then worked collectively. How did you divide the work? By chapters and focus on different areas?
00:04:04 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so in the beginning, we outlined it by focus areas, chapters. Between two or three of us, we merged chapters. Yeah, it's tough. Four authors, making that coherent. flow throughout a book is quite the challenge. But Ben Jensen was kind of the principal. He's the best writer of us all, or the primary author, stitching everything together. And we met regularly to talk to get us back on. All four of us always agree on everything.
00:04:33 SPEAKER_00
on everything.
00:04:35 SPEAKER_02
But that book, at the end of it all, after two years, I think all of us can say that, yeah, that is definitely representative of all our ideas. And we're in violent agreement of what we're recommending in the book.
00:04:44 SPEAKER_01
That's wonderful. So I know your background in civil affairs. General Cleveland, I believe, is qualified. He's retired now, but was qualified in Special Forces for the Army. Do either Benjamin Jensen or Susan Bryant have a background in civil affairs?
00:04:58 SPEAKER_02
No. So Ben Jensen was a military intelligence officer, or he is a major in the Reserves. He teaches at the Marine Corps University and at American University. He's a prolific writer. He's writing about these topics regularly. Susan Bryant is a strategist. She's helped me become a strategist and influenced me to do it, as well as John Cleveland. She just retired recently as a colonel. She's had experience as a strategist, working with all different types of capabilities to include civil affairs.
00:05:27 SPEAKER_01
What has the response been so far when you're talking about the book and you're sharing with other people in the military community?
00:05:34 SPEAKER_02
It's been quite positive. I don't know if people just don't want to be honest or don't want to give critical feedback. So far on social media and as we marketed and talked to people, I've done a couple of speaking engagements and traveled to talk about the book. I mean, even in Kuwait, I went to a convention in Kuwait, and it was received pretty well, some of the ideas in the book. People kept coming up to me afterwards saying it makes total sense, and hopefully more people will continue to pick it up and read it.
00:06:00 SPEAKER_01
Good. Let's talk about some of the details of the book, and I want to start with the preface. In it, General Cleveland wrote, We lack organizations and leadership. at the highest levels oriented to the most prevalent forms of conflict, irregular and population -centric. Colonel David, why do you think that's the case?
00:06:18 SPEAKER_02
That's a good question. So that point was made early in the book for good reason. I mean, if you look at how things progressed in the global war on terror, there was a lot of initial success. It started with small special operations elements in Afghanistan with the infamous core soldiers with all these moves coming out now, in Iraq with 10th Group and General Cleveland. working alongside the Kurds and Peshmerga, and to the overlooked success of Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines and a similar effort in Colombia. These are all led by special warfare leadership at the operational and tactical levels, not necessarily your civil affairs, your PSYOP, special forces leadership, not necessarily your surgical strike types. They are instrumental to the fighting of irregular population -centric conflicts. But as these things grow in scale, You know, the military response is, you know, like if you look at what happened in Mosul and Iraq when we went back in just recently, I mean, the only things we have to offer are, you know, your brigade, the Beijing Corps, field army headquarters of conventional leaders who are, you know, are charged to lead and prosecute these wars amongst the people. It's not that they are not good leaders, but by no means, I mean, they are the best in the world, but they are the best at bringing the hammer and violence. And these types of conflicts require, you know, those most intimate with its conduct and understand its character. And so a lot of the leaders that, you know, whether it's your special forces group commander or what have you, they might rise up to be a TSOC commander, commanding general. But in terms of managing these larger efforts, I mean, it's not likely the way we're structured right now that they would be in charge of prosecuting that type of war.
00:07:50 SPEAKER_01
And when you look, so that's the U .S. When you look at some of our adversaries, do you think that they're succeeding in having the leadership organizations formed for irregular or population -centric warfare?
00:08:01 SPEAKER_02
and publish such warfare. I mean, it's like what's happened with the Taliban. I mean, even though they're getting some support or external support from whether it's Pakistan or elsewhere, how can we, with all these resources and tremendous might of NATO and the U .S., continue to struggle in dealing with the Taliban and they're able to recruit? So I think they're way effective at controlling the narrative, their information campaigns, the way they're connecting with the people. I mean, they're really good. And one to look out for right now. I mean, for quite some time is Iran. I mean, how they're able to mobilize massive networks of people all over the world with their reach, with Hezbollah and all these different groups that are connected to Iran. I mean, it's pretty impressive. I was at a conference the other day at Chaser at Sandhurst, and this was a big topic of discussion there.
00:08:53 SPEAKER_01
Are there any other adversaries who are doing it well?
00:08:56 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so I mean, there's a host of them, right? The Chinese, they went without fighting. I mean, they're fighting in this threshold below armed conflict with the way they're creating these networks. I mean, we talk about in the book the One Belt, One Road project they have where they're just creating these flows, these big networks, and it's to increase their power and influence in that whole area, the One Belt, One Road, all the different areas it's moving through. Russia, of course, is hybrid warfare stuff that they're doing, trying to avoid. That's a similar threshold of Article 5 with NATO, are doing a number of things in cyberspace and disinformation campaigns, to name a few.
00:09:37 SPEAKER_01
Right. Colonel David, in the book you wrote, America's military needs to be part of a global security network optimized for 21st century influence campaigns backed by military force as opposed to fighting 20th century military campaigns backed by information operations that often do not match the local context. Sir, are you calling for influence before force?
00:10:01 SPEAKER_02
In some cases, yes. I think that the information objective should have primacy and lead off. Ultimately, it comes down to every circumstance is different, and it might be a matter of sequencing, but too often, you know, and I've watched this in a number of campaigns or places I've been on deployments, you know, they plan the kinetic effect or the lethal aspect of the fight, and then they're like, okay, let's sprinkle in some magical IO dust after the kinetic operation. or even to use a little bit of it before. But it might be the main thing, the main object that we need to pursue. So on my last deployment, I was asked as the CIG Chief for Special Operations Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Sajid Afay. I was asked by the CIG to look into information warfare and assess how well we were doing it across not just Sajid Afay, but Resilist Support with NATO and the Afghans. And so I brought a Sergeant Major from Asymmetric Warfare Group, AWG. And we'd go around as we're doing our assessment, and he had a good way, a clever way of explaining it. He would say, hey, if I was, you know, if I just walked up to you and slapped you in the face, you'd be like, why'd you just hit me? But if I said, hey, stop this behavior, and then I walk up and then punch you in the face, you know why it hits you, and then that's kind of the way, you know, what should lead out. So the IO objective or trying to explain, you know, whether it's trying to intimidate or influence or coerce or manipulate. That may lead. That might be the main thing. And then you might be able to accomplish your objectives without even having to physically fight. So I thought it was kind of a clever way of explaining information warfare and why it matters and what should come first, you know,
00:11:36 SPEAKER_01
if that answers the question.
00:11:37 SPEAKER_02
answers the question.
00:11:38 SPEAKER_01
I think it does, and that's built on your experiences and those of the other authors. So let's talk about the three policy recommendations in the book. First, you and the fellow authors advise that we define the human domain. So how would you define it?
00:11:52 SPEAKER_02
So, of course, we define it in the book. But simply put, I mean, it's the intersection of actors and interests, predominantly in the land and cyber. So, you know, the cyber domain is a thing right now that's kind of odd. But we're saying that, you know, if you look at the construct of all the domains and how we organize, I mean, really, it's huma