Year
Results
Improving SOF Ethics Education
The realities of human nature combined with the realities of SOF culture and the SOF operational environment create frequent opportunities for SOF professionals to become numb to moral drift and the ethical dilemmas that follow from a culture where “if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’!” takes on an institution-wide leadership problem for SOF professionals across the joint force and across the operational spectrum. This reality requires SOF leaders who recognize the reality that the SOF profession offers its own peculiar professional and ethical challenges and leaders who are professionally ready to lead in such highly complex ethical decision-making environments.
Competing for Advantage: The Chinese Communist Party, Statecraft, and Special Operations
This edited volume highlights key challenges the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces in its rise and contextualizes the potential contributions of special operations to compete for advantage based on the CCP’s interests and vulnerabilities. Competing for advantage means accruing power and influence in such a way that the adversary’s plans cannot be realized. This volume focuses primarily on appreciating the CCP’s worldview, interests, and political culture while promoting a strategic vision for the future—a future where SOF will need to reinterpret their value from providing a military effect to providing a political effect through military means.
SOF Quills for the Porcupine: Applying Lessons from Ukraine to Taiwan
CIA Director William Burns assesses that Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine may inform China’s plan to gain control of Taiwan. Given the remarkable challenge Ukrainian resistance forces have presented Russia, Richard Clarke, General, U.S. Army, Ret. shares the desire of many U.S. officials for “Taiwan, just like Ukraine has been, to be an indigestible porcupine.” As of this writing, Ukraine has managed to avoid being metaphorically swallowed by Russia due to Ukraine’s conventional arsenal of deterrent “quills” comprised (in part) of ballistic missile defense, air defense, mine warfare, sea-denial fires, shore-denial fires, jamming, decoys, deception, civil defense, urban warfare, and life-essential infrastructure. Nevertheless, the U.S. and its allies have been reluctant to directly engage in open conflict with Russia or China due to the cataclysmic costs such a war might impose. Special Operations Forces (SOF) are uniquely suited for the delicate task of filling strategic deterrence gaps left by conventional capabilities.