Military Review English Edition September-October 2016 | Page 42

revolutionary, or even novel, there are proving very
effective already. The sooner our strategists and policymakers recognize and acknowledge this, the better
able they will be to develop relevant counters and

hone our own indirect and nonkinetic modes of attack to better secure our republic and all Americans
in what has become a decidedly unstable and ever
more dangerous world.

Biography
Sebastian Gorka, PhD, is a professor of irregular warfare and strategy and vice president for national security support at
the Institute of World Politics, Washington, D.C. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Defeating Jihad:
The Winnable War. Gorka can be found online at http://www.The GorkaBriefing.com or followed on Twitter @SebGorka.

Notes
Epigraph. U.S. Special Operations Command, ARSOF Operating Concept: Future Operating Environmen/ARSOF Operating
Concept Phase 1 (28 June 2013), 17.
Epigraph. This quote has been apocryphally attributed to
Leon Trotsky though no original source has been found.
1. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 2 (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), 5.
2. Sebastian Gorka and David Kilcullen, “An Actor-Centric
Theory of War,” Joint Force Quarterly 60(2011): 14–18, http://www.
dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA535254.
3. Based upon the empirical data described and the frequency of unconventional wars in contrast to state-on-state conflicts,
it would seem obvious that we should, in fact, doctrinally label
irregular warfare as conventional, and see conventional warfare as
the anomaly, not the standard. Even though these are the facts of
the matter, I do not e xpect to see the Pentagon make such a switch
in the near future.
4. The Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis findings were
drawn from forty-six separate studies that looked at operations
raging from Strategic Communications Best Practices to Counter-IED
Efforts and Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan.
5. Joint Staff J7, “Decade of War, Volume I: Enduring Lessons
from the Past Decade of Operations,” Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis (2012), 20 March 2012, accessed 4 August 2016,
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/training/conferences/wjtsc12_1/
wjtsc12_1JLL_decadeOf War.pdf.
6. For a summary exposition of the key strategists of modern
Jihad, including Azzam, see Sebastian Gorka, “Understanding
Today’s Enemy: The Grand Strategists of Modern Jihad,” Military
Review 96, no. 3 (May-June 2016): 32–39, accessed 10 August
2016, http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20160630_art009.pdf.
7. This is dangerous. Although the Islamic State (IS) is currently
more impressive and capable than al-Qaida, that does not mean
that al-Qaida is finished or dormant. On the contrary, Al-Qaida
has, in fact, expanded its reach in many parts of the world outside

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of IS influence, including Africa. The war for the “crown of the
Caliphate” is far from over.
8. Bernard B. Fall, “The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and
Counterinsurgency,” Naval War College Review, 8 no. 34 (April
1965): 34.
9. Gorka, “Understanding Today’s Enemy.”
10. Abu Bakr Naji, The Management of Savagery: The Most
Critical State Through Which the Umma Will Pass, trans. William
McCants (Cambridge, MA: John M. Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies, 23 May 2006), PDF e-book, accessed 8 August 2016,
https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-theumma-will-pass.pdf.
11. Note also that it is clear the IS has studied their Mao. The
original al-Qaida had a more Guevarist approach to insurgency,
believing that spectacular attacks would trigger a mass movement and mass mobilization of fighters. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has
demonstrated an understanding of what Mao taught: the insurgent
will be successful if he can establish the “counter state” and provide services to the local population in competition to a failing
legacy government. Appreciation of what the hackneyed phrase
“hearts and minds” truly means illuminates what makes IS much
more dangerous than al-Qaida ever was.
12. Janis Berzins, Russia’s New Generation Warfare in Ukraine:
Implications for Latvian Defense Policy, Policy Paper No. 2, (Riga,
Latvia: National Defence Academy of Latvia, Center for Security
and Strategic Research, April 2014), accessed 5 August 2016,
http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP%20022014.ashx.
13. Timothy Thomas, “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and
the Military,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17 (2004): 237–56,
https://www.rit.edu/~w-cmmc/literature/Thomas_2004.pdf.
14. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999),
accessed 4 August 2016, http://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf.
Some Sinologists prefer the translation “Warfare Beyond Limits.”
15. Adapted from Maj. John A. Van Messel, “Unrestricted
Warfare: A Chinese doctrine for future warfare?” (master’s thesis,
Marine Corps University, 2005), accessed 4 August 2016, http://
www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a509132.pdf.

September-October 2016  MILITARY REVIEW