The U.S. military has a conventional, linear planning process that does not adequately address the realities of today’s asymmetric global threat environment. The Department of Defense (DoD) joint planning model calls for phase zero (shaping) to occur before hostilities begin, and phases four (stabilize) and five (enable civil authority) to commence post-conflict. These categories can no longer be compartmented into distinct phases before and after military operations.
The military planning process needs to be restructured in a multidisciplinary manner to meet today’s challenges. Phase zero, or peacetime activities, and phases four and five should be fused to cover continual theater and global shaping operations. These operations need to be incorporated into daily military activities, specifically focused on terrorist groups and violent extremist organizations.
This reorganization represents an essential realignment in thinking. When it is implemented, military planners will consider these undertakings to be enduring tasks during peacetime, as they work with allies, international organizations such as the U.N., and nongovernmental organizations. The change will require the U.S. military to reform the current civil-military planning continuum so it actively incorporates non-military solutions prior to, during, and after hostilities.
NATO has embraced the concept by establishing the NATO Strategic Direction–South Hub (NSD-S Hub) at its joint headquarters in Naples, Italy (see “NATO Looks to the South,” April 2019 Proceedings, pp. 10-11). With Europe struggling to contain the influx of Syrian and African migrants, the Hub broke with tradition by transforming how the 29-nation alliance builds networks with civil and non-military organizations. The Hub seeks common ground with various international agencies by trying to bridge gaps in understanding to better contribute to long-term stability and peace along NATO’s southern borders.
The region to NATO’s south highlights the multidimensional nature of the global security environment. Challenges such as migration, transnational terrorism, and organized crime are complex, affecting all nations. NSD-S Hub is an innovative attempt to combine the various activities of phases zero, four, and five by reorienting NATO’s perspective on how civil-military organizations address future global challenges—especially how the transatlantic alliance promotes long-term stability and peace beyond NATO’s south. Following NATO’s military campaign in Libya and the fractured political aftermath in that country, NATO leaders surmised that merely reacting to threats and regional crises was a traditional approach that was no longer acceptable or sustainable. Instead, NATO decided to shift its collective mind-set toward anticipating and forecasting the drivers of instability by shaping the conditions to prevent a full-blown crisis.
The Hub focuses on increasing NATO’s situational awareness by functioning as a central clearing house that continually integrates, analyzes, manages, and shares information and knowledge within the political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and information systems (PMESII) framework. Building and sustaining effective regional understanding, the Hub monitors dynamics of the operating environment in the Middle East and Africa while continually assessing NATO’s military activities along its southern flank.
Part of the Hub’s nontraditional approach is to facilitate information sharing among civilian and military establishments by building ties with the various U.N. agencies and regional bodies, such as the European Union, African Union, Economic Community of West African States, and Gulf Cooperation Council. By gaining a greater understanding of the root drivers of instability, NATO will be better positioned to anticipate, preempt, limit, or negate threats.
Why NATO’s Hub Concept Works
NSD-S Hub is an innovative concept for an alliance with a historical mandate to oppose and deter the Soviet, now Russian, threat. It is also a prospective model for the Pentagon to emulate. U.S. military leaders would greatly benefit by replicating the model using the PMESII formula to establish regional hubs tailored to countering terrorist organizations and asymmetric threats. These regional hubs would be designed to produce a cadre of uniformed and civilian DoD experts with deep knowledge of extremist ideologies. The U.S. military has been effective in mastering the science of conventional warfare, but since the 9/11 attacks it has always played defense or catchup in trying to create dedicated subject matter experts on violent extremist organizations.
Most of the long-term corporate staff of regional hubs would be career DoD civilians embedded with other terrorism experts from across academia, international organizations, and civilian society. The uniformed military members assigned to regional hubs would be primarily foreign area officers, regional affairs specialists, and intelligence and information warfare officers, with the long-term goal of creating a new generation of military leaders and planners with deep expertise on nonconventional and irregular warfare.
Regional hub personnel would focus on planning and overseeing the execution of phases zero, four, and five nonkinetic operations. These individuals would build and expand networks throughout academia, international aid agencies, and other nongovernmental and private-sector groups. They would travel to U.S. embassies, exchanging information with U.S. interagency partners, regional stakeholders, and key international bodies. Because the chief goal should always be to share information, expand a common understanding of challenges, and build relationships with nonmilitary entities under the umbrella of military diplomacy, links with nontraditional partners would enhance confidence-building measures between civilian and military institutions. In the long run, this would remove obstacles or misunderstandings that may surface in future crises.
The phase zero activities would pay long-term dividends in coordinating post-military stabilization operations (phases four and five). Coalition and multinational military forces, U.S. interagency liaison officers, U.N. agencies, international organizations, and host nations affected by conflict would all work together. In essence, the regional hub would network with nontraditional civilian partners to seek solutions to global issues—similar to the way NSD-S Hub works—by effectively anticipating and responding to challenges emanating from their respective regions.
Beyond Whack-a-Mole Tactics
Linear phasing has been used for operational planning for much of the post–World War II era. However, post-9/11 realities are more like the arcade game commonly known as Whack-a-Mole. Leaders use a mallet (military option) to hit toy moles (terrorists and violent extremists), which appear at random and then retreat back into their holes. Just as one extremist group or cell is eliminated, another assemblage or surviving remnant appears to cause further chaos.
Although the military planning process has been modified over the past 17 years to support counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, it remains too fixated on producing Whack-a-Mole options. While U.S forces continue to withdraw from major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, this mind-set endures, with the United States launching cruise missiles and conducting special operations missions inside Syria and parts of Africa—without getting closer to a constructive solution or end-state.
Perhaps the Syrian civil war could have been brought to an earlier and less bloody end if a Middle East (Levant) hub had been established during the early days of the anti-Assad demonstrations, prior to armed hostilities. A Levant hub would have played an active and anticipatory role (in coordination with regional allies and international organizations in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey) in providing to U.S. policy and military planners greater insight on the complex sectarian nature of Syria.
Open-ended strike planning is the default activity when a short-term, reactive policy inevitably leaves behind weak, ineffective civilian and security sector institutions. In turn, these further hinder the military’s hand-off to civilian rule during phases four and five. This creates a vacuum for nefarious actors and a fertile breeding ground for extremists and terrorists. As the Islamic State loses its last hold on territory in Syria and Iraq, battle-hardened foreign fighters and radicalized jihadists are scoping out new frontiers in north, central, and east Africa. Today’s ideologically driven, transnational adversary is adept at exploiting the inflexibility of the anachronistic contemporary U.S. military planning process.
The initial cost to U.S. taxpayers and the impending strain on Pentagon budgets will have to be factored in when creating regional hubs. However, the long-term return on investment will be worth it—and will reinvigorate U.S. leadership standing on the world stage. Allies and partners will more willingly support efforts to strengthen governing institutions in volatile regions of the world.
The regional hub concept can steer the U.S. military away from classic Whack-a-Mole operations and tactics and alter the international battlespace by strengthening civilian-military relations to the detriment of groups who advocate violence and extremism.