The strategic utility of New Zealand Special Forces

In 1955, the New Zealand government authorised the creation of a Special Forces unit to operate with British forces in Malaya to counter a communist-inspired guerrilla insurgency. Drawing upon the operational experiences of the New Zealand SAS largely taken from the Cold War period, and underpinned by Colin Gray's Special Forces essentials of ‘economy of force’ and ‘expansion of choice’, this article will show how New Zealand's SAS is now accepted not only as a respected and relevant part of the nation's military capability, but also empowers its political decision-makers with the confidence to take on significant, and at times difficult, strategic foreign-policy choices.     

Callwell versus Graziani: how the British Army applied ‘small wars’ techniques in major operations in Africa and the Middle East, 1940–41

The period from December 1940 through to the spring of 1941 saw the British Army win a series of rapid and decisive victories over Italian and Vichy French forces in North and East Africa and the Middle East. A key feature of these operations was the extensive British use of fast-moving all-arms mobile formations utilising superior speed and mobility to out-manoeuvre considerably larger Italian formations. A number of reasons have been given for the British Army adopting this mode of warfare, but the paper contends that the best explanation is that they were an organic evolution from methods used by the British Army in ‘small wars’ throughout the early twentieth century, use of mobile ‘frontier columns’ at the operational and tactical level of war being described and recommended by Callwell himself and visible with the Army in practice in operations in India and the Middle East in particular. The inter-war period saw the combination of this model of warfare with post-First World War military technology, notably tanks, close air support and coordination by wireless. Colonial operations in this period also saw some utilisation of what would later be identified as ‘Special Forces’ – also used extensively in the Desert War – the most obvious example being Captain Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads in Palestine in 1938.     

Warfare by other means: special forces,terrorism and grand strategy

This contribution looks at the role of Special Forces in anti-terrorist operations with particular emphasis on the British Special Air Service. It argues that Special Forces have played a pivotal role in such operations since the era of Palestinian terrorism in the early 1970s. The essay looks at the operations in Afghanistan leading to the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and shows that the seven Special Forces involved there proved crucial to the success of the limited ground forces. In particular they served a valuable force multiplier by acting as a nexus between the regional warlords and the use of air power as well as mobile strike units against fortified Al Qaeda and Taliban positions. In the latter instance their success was mixed, involving attacks on difficult cave hideouts, though overall it can be concluded that Special Forces have demonstrated their capacity in fighting unconventional warfare against mobile and transnational terrorist groupings.     

The Anglo-American military relationship: Institutional rules,practices, and narratives

The Anglo-American military relationship is a vital yet neglected area of study. This article argues that the British military have actively cultivated a relationship with the U.S. military that has contributed to the longevity of the broader so-called “Special Relationship,” even in the Trump era. The article contends that the complexities of the military relationship can best be captured by the theoretical lens provided by Lowndes and Roberts that combines different strands of institutionalism to focus on rules, practices, and narratives. The intense linkages between the United States and United Kingdom have become routinized, enabling them to adapt their peacetime cooperation to conflicts, and thereby address post-Cold War security challenges. The article draws upon semi-structured interviews with senior British military officers as well as policy documents to explore how these patterns of collaboration have become ingrained in patterns of both thinking and behavior.     

Special Forces for Counter Revolutionary Warfare: The South African Case

Special Forces have long formed a central part of counter-revolutionary warfare. In the South African case, between 1974 and 1990, these were central to Pretoria's regional strategies. Serving as the primary tool for inflicting punishment on any Frontline State that allowed the ANC and its allies basing rights, the Special Forces conducted sabotage, raids, bombings and assassinations throughout the Frontline States, alongside the Special Tasks contra-mobilization programmes throughout the region and internally. When these tools proved insufficient - especially internally - the security forces turned to the medical Special Forces, who were at the centre of South Africa's chemical and biological warfare programme, for assistance in incapacitating and killing the state's opponents. Overall, these units worked under the banner of the state's 'Total Counter-Revolutionary Strategy' and in co-operation with the more covert elements of the security forces (such as the Civil Co-operation Bureau, the SAP's Koevoet and C1 counter-intelligence units, and the Directorate of Covert Collection) involved in the direct-targeting of the state's opponents.     

Equality and diversity in the British armed forces: progress,challenges and prospects

The UK's changing political and legal landscape since 2000 reflecting transformations in wider society have elevated equality and diversity (E&D) issues to prominence in the public sector, including in the British armed forces. This research highlights key developments in the British military in relation to E&D, focusing both on areas of progress, and on the challenges still confronting the Forces. The findings reveal that the Forces have made significant strides in advancing E&D through the implementation of a range of policy initiatives but the persistence of discrimination, developments in the wider environment and the dilemmas raised by the strands of age and disability pose challenges. The value of this research is to increase our understanding of diversity management in a public sector institution that has been under-researched and views itself as “different,” and will be of interest to policymakers, E&D practitioners and academics in the field.     

Military Innovation Under Authoritarian Government – the Case of Russian Special Operations Forces

Russian Special Forces saw significant changes to both organization and doctrine in the years after 2008. The special forces of the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate were reduced in number, the organization’s institutional autonomy and rationale were changed, and an entirely new Special Operations Command was established in March 2013. This article seeks to assess the nature, scope and purpose of these changes, and to explain them by drawing on scholarship on military innovation. In particular, the article looks at military innovation in the context of a non-democratic political regime.     

美国退出《中导条约》与俄美关系发展走向

2018年10月,美国宣布单方面退出《中导条约》。《中导条约》是美苏两国在冷战后期达成的,并得到了切实执行的条约,对于维护冷战后全球战略平衡发挥了至关重要的作用。冷战后,俄美曾经企图将《中导条约》多边化,构建俄美新型战略关系,但最终反目成仇,使得俄美关系严重倒退,并迈入新的相互战略遏制的时代。     

‘Backing the wrong horse’: Japan in British Middle Eastern Policy 1914–18

The course of Anglo‐Japanese relations prior to 1914 rendered senior British policymakers nervous regarding possible Japanese aggrandisement in the Middle East. This article explores the factors which precluded British acceptance of Japanese military involvement there when, both before and during World War I, the idea was discussed. Particular reference is made to the views of the India Office and to those of Lord Curzon and the subject is analysed in the broader context of British Middle Eastern policy.     

The Kashmir conflict in South Asia: voices from Srinagar

This article looks at the Kashmir conflict in South Asia, which has been going on since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent from British colonial rule. After looking at some historical background, the article looks at both the external dimension as well as the internal dimension of the conflict. The external dimension tends to focus on Indo-Pak relations over Kashmir and the internal dimension looks at India's repressive state policies within the state of Kashmir. This article uses Mary Kaldor's “New War” thesis as a theoretical framework to understand the situation and pays special attention to the conflict's very complex and multifaceted nature. The article argues that although the levels of violence have differed from time to time in the region since 1947, today the conflict seems to have less to do with Indo-Pak relations or the external side of things and has more to do with the internal dimension and India's undemocratic ways within Kashmir. Today, Kashmir is one of the most militarised conflict zones in the world. The stationing of the Indian military and paramilitary forces in the region has only exacerbated the situation since it is the security personnel who cause much of the problem. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives these security forces extraordinary powers in the region, which they often abuse. The armed forces have no real understanding of the local culture or sympathy for local religious sentiments. Poverty, corruption, administrative failure, police brutality, identity politics and human rights abuses are some of the key features associated with this conflict. Methodologically, a number of interviews were carried out with the local people in the region recently. From the data gathered through the interviews, it is very obvious that the people still feel very oppressed and that the situation is still very volatile, fraught with uncertainty. Finally, after making an assessment of the situation, the article tries to suggest methods of peaceful building and conflict management as the way forward.     

Military Innovation and Tactical Adaptation in the Israel–Hizballah Conflict: The Institutionalization of Lesson-Learning in the IDF

This article highlights a pattern of military adaptation and tactical problem-solving utilized by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while engaged in protracted conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hizballah. It discusses the IDF’s recent attempts to institutionalize their historically intuitive process of ad-hoc learning by developing a formal tactical-level mechanism for ‘knowledge management’. The diffusion of this battlefield lesson-learning system that originated at lower-levels of the organization is examined, as well as its implementation and effectiveness during the 2006 Lebanon War. A nuanced analysis of IDF adaptation illustrates the dynamic interplay between both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes of military innovation.     

Chief of staff in quest of a war: Moshe Dayan leads Israel into war

That Dayan was a central figure in Israel's formative years during the 1950s is beyond dispute. His star blazed particularly bright in the Sinai War of October‐November 1956. However, the roots of Dayan's extraordinary influence are to found in the period leading up to the Sinai War rather than in the war itself.

It is impossible to understand the Sinai War, particularly its Israeli aspect, without understanding the central role played by the army and its chief in the preparations and in lobbying for its execution. For the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the idea of an Israeli‐initiated war was neither a theoretical or a practical surprise. The IDF was prepared to launch an offensive against Egypt, and that fact was of major importance far beyond the Israeli government's decision to launch a war against Egypt.

It was Dayan who ensured full coordination between progress in the military preparations and progress in the diplomatic process (the negotiations with France and Britain), as he himself was at the center of events in both spheres of activity.     

British Policy on Total Maritime Warfare and the Anti-Shipping Campaign in the Mediterranean, 1940–1944

During World War II, the British ran a sustained anti-shipping campaign against Axis merchant and supply traffic in the Mediterranean. Although the effects of this on the land war in North Africa have been the subject of much debate, little attention has been paid to the nature and prosecution of the campaign itself. This article analyses the changes in British attitudes and policy towards attacking merchant shipping prior to and throughout the campaign. It then goes on to examine the conduct of the campaign itself and compare it with other British efforts elsewhere during the war. It concludes that the anti-shipping campaign in the Mediterranean was a unique combined arms offensive for the British, and a major evolution in their attitudes and policy towards maritime total war.     

United States special operations forces and the war on terrorism

Those leading the war on terrorism have emphasized from the beginning that this war would be unlike other wars. Special Operations Forces (SOF) are military forces unlike other military forces. The implication is that SOF and the war on terrorism are thus made for each other. This contribution examines this assumption, the war on terrorism and SOF in greater detail.     

Allies at War: British and US Army Command Culture in the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944

This article compares the philosophy and practice of command in the British and US Armies during the Italian Campaign of 1943–44. It assesses pre-war influences on the command approach adopted by each army, and shows how refinements derived from wartime experience enabled British and American commanders to successfully utilise mission command principles to outfight the German Army in the latter years of World War II. This examination directly challenges the historical consensus that Allied commanders were disadvantaged by an inability to exploit the advantages of mission command, and that the German Army retained superior command practices, despite its other failings, throughout the fighting between 1939 and 1945. These conclusions hold additional relevance to modern military organisations which have emphasised mission command as the optimal solution to effective command in battle since the 1980s, but from an inaccurate understanding of German, British and American command traditions and experience that persists to this day.     

AD HOC TRIBUNALS IN AFRICA

International judicial norms developed slowly during the Cold War but have recently begun to draw on the experiences of the Criminal Tribunal in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. These ad hoc bodies had to respond quickly to emergency situations by combining different international approaches to justice and prosecution. The Special Court for Sierra Leone is the latest of these experiments. Despite having had more time for reflective discussion and negotiation, the Special Court faces the same challenge and constraint: the parameters of time and resources are set by political imperatives. The International Criminal Court goes some way to addressing the problems of funding, good judicial appointments and contrasting legal systems, the details of future trials will not be easy. Ad hoc tribunals will probably still have a role to play in cases where the ICC cannot intervene.     

The missing dimension: IDF special operations forces and strategy in the Second Lebanon War

In the course of the 2006 Lebanon War the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) employed special operations forces (SOF) for raids against Hizb'allah's command and control structure. This article argues that a faulty conceptualization of the value of special operations and misguided expectations determined by the new IDF concept of operations impacted adversely on the employment of SOF for this kind of operations. Both these elements contributed in turn to substantially degrade SOF performance in the context of the war.     

Super-Weapons and Subversion: British Deterrence by Deception Operations in the Early Cold War

This article examines British deception operations in the early Cold War. It illustrates how, in the years before Britain could threaten atomic retaliation, Britain’s deception organisation, the London Controlling Section (LCS) was tasked with conducting operations to deter the USSR and China from starting a war or threatening British interests. It introduces a number of their ploys – some physical and military, others subversive and political. It argues that the LCS faced significant challenges in implementing its deceptions. Repeating the great strategic successes of the Second World War was extremely difficult; what remained for the Cold War were more limited deceptions.     

General Dostum and the Mazar i Sharif Campaign: new light on the role of Northern Alliance warlords in Operation Enduring Freedom

This report sheds new light on the CIA and US Special Forces' covert campaign alongside Afghan Northern Alliance leader General Dostum's horse-mounted Uzbeks during 2001's Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2003 and 2005 the author traveled over the Hindu Kush Mountains to the plains of Northern Afghanistan and lived with the legendary Northern Alliance opposition leader General Dostum. His aim was to recreate Dostum's campaign alongside the CIA and Special Forces to seize the holy city of Mazar i Sharif from the Taliban in November 2001. Based on interviews with Dostum and his Uzbek commanders, this article recreates this proxy offensive that saw the Northern Alliance opposition break out of the mountains, seize this shrine town and bring the Taliban house of cards falling down in a matter of weeks. Up until now the indigenous Afghan Uzbeks, who played a crucial role as a ‘boots on the ground’ fighting force for Centcom, have been cast as a mere backdrop for American heroics. Now their side of the story and their links to the mysterious shrine of Mazar i Sharif are for the first time revealed.