TRANS-REGIONAL RESISTANCE WORKING GROUP Sharing SOF Lessons Around the Globe BY SCOTT R. GOURLEY
U.S. Special Operations Command elements qWhile maintain a global posture, their experiences and support of and by partner nations create a range of unique geographic approaches to meet special operation forces (SOF) challenges. In an effort to share some of those challenges and approaches across the U.S. and international partner SOF enterprise, Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) co-hosted a Trans-Regional Resistance Working Group (TRWG) with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California, in early February of this year. Special Operations Outlook was honored to be invited to participate in the event. As described in TRWG overviews, the overarching theme of the three-day event involved “a comparison between Russian and Chinese aggression with the key takeaways that would be applicable to nations in the IndoPacific as they seek to increase efforts in the resilience and resistance areas of their national security strategy.” In addition to attendees from across the U.S. SOF enterprise, the TRWG included government and/or SOF representatives from nearly a dozen partner nations.
RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE SIMILARITIES “While each of you may bring different perspectives from your respective country, your respective culture, your respective politics, or your respective neighborhood, I challenge you to think that there are lots of similarities,” asserted Maj. Gen. Jonathan P. Braga, commander, U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific. In his welcome comments, Braga said that the TRWG was about “finding those similarities and places where we can share and cooperate and strengthen each other in resistance and resilience.” He added, “On the backbone of last year’s discussion at our Pacific Area Special Operations Conference [PASOC] about sovereignty, I think it really goes back to: How do you improve your house? How do you improve your country? How do you improve your resilience and your resistance and ultimately your sovereignty?”
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Special Operations Outlook
Expanding on representative regional challenges and related resilience issues, Braga pointed to the subject of elections. “I think last time I checked, there are 10 elections coming up in Asia over the next year,” he began. “As examples, there will be elections in New Zealand and Mongolia. Taiwan just had elections. The U.S. is going to have an election. And I didn’t count for our European brothers and sisters out there. I know there are elections there, too. And those elections are a commonality.” “Now, is the U.S. military in charge of protecting U.S. elections? No,” he continued. “But we are part of the national security apparatus, and we are a part of that resiliency. But are we prepared for it? I would challenge you that the U.S. military, right now, is maybe not embracing the type of challenges we’re facing.” Expanding on some of those future challenges, he summarized, “We equip the military to destroy things. We’re built to protect our homeland, but ultimately destroy things in a Phase Three high-end conflict. I hope we never have that conflict. I hope we stay in the Competition Phase. This is defensive in nature; defensive in nature to prevent mirror imaging escalating to Phase Three.” Braga emphasized the need for countries to have their “house in order” and have their sovereignty secured, in part through robust resilience and resistance planning. “You have to ask, have you affected your adversary’s – fill in the blank, whoever it is, whoever you’re most concerned about – ‘cost calculus’ for breaking into your house? Do you have a dog that’s going to bite? Do you have an alarm that’s going to go off? Are the police going to come? Is a neighbor going to take a shotgun out and do something about it? Is your resilience and resistance strong enough before Phase Three? Because nobody wants to pay that price. Nobody in the world desires high-end conflict.” Over three days of keynote addresses, panel discussions, and focused breakout sessions, the TRWG explored the type of resistance and resilience issues
U.S. ARMY PHOTO BY STAFF SGT. ELIZABETH PENA
TRWG
