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Introduction

But when viewed from a high level, they present numerous commonalities, and even while dispersed geographically they could be effectively viewed as a single theater of operations, which we could accurately describe as Global Operations in Tribal Territories. Many are rugged alpine war zones, most along porous borders where sub- and trans-state indigenous minorities continue to live a largely traditional lifestyle, and where state sovereignty is at best an aspiration but which in fact is largely a figment of the imaginations of mapmakers. In these tribal zones, governance remains a tribal affair with age-old systems and structures in place to ensure a social and political order. While sometimes described as “ungoverned,” this is a misnomer: in the absence of an overarching assertion of national sovereignty, there remains a continued tribal sovereignty as there has been for eons. It is this continued tribal sovereignty, if properly understood, that can lay the foundation of an enduring world order, and which can ensure an enduring peace if properly understood, effectively nurtured, and properly engaged.

To coordinate this effort at a global level requires the formation of a new functional unified combatant command (UCC), the US Tribal Command (TRIBALCOM), with responsibilities for unifying and wielding American military power in these fractious tribal zones the world over, whether between states or within states, wherever our opponents can find sanctuary, and plot attacks against us, our allies, or our vital economic and strategic interests, whether Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where Osama Bin Laden has long found sanctuary, or the anarchic Somali coastal communities where clans still define the most durable political units, and where criminal pirate gangs operating in this stateless realm threaten international shipping. In such places, tribal chiefs and clan elders are the de facto leadership, and without their support, victory will elude us.

War in the Tribal Zone

During the last few years, we have re-learned the art of tribal warfare, and more important, coalition warfare with tribal allies, a military and diplomatic art we have long excelled at, from our pre-revolutionary engagements in King Philip’s War, to our decisive conquest of the western plains during the three long centuries of the Indian Wars. While seldom celebrated, these strategic experiences have defined our nation’s approach to military power, adapting European strategic concepts to our new, frontier nation emerging from the virgin wilderness of the New World. When America went out into the world in the twentieth century as a world power, its approach to war was intimately shaped by these engagements, and the lessons learned along a chaotic and expanding frontier where state sovereignty collided with the remnants of tribal sovereignty. America’s colonial experiences in the Philippines and in the Americas were marked by its offensive application of methods cultivated during its Indian Wars, and used against foreign opponents on distant battlefields.

While the Long War has been perceived largely as a civilizational clash between Islamist forces and the West, it is more accurately a continuation of the same millennial conflict that began when European states and pre-Colombian indigenous tribes collided in the Americas, and on other continents as well from Africa to Asia, and even throughout Europe’s own fractious medieval history. The perpetuation of these intense, asymmetrical, and often annihilatory clashes between modern states and pre-existing tribes has been a recurring axis of conflict for centuries, but has less often been perceived to be the salient fault-line of conflict—perhaps in part because the historical legacy of America’s own military expansion tends to be under-emphasized in favor of the preferred narrative of its founding myth: the triumphant victory of democracy over tyranny. Properly understanding the underlying tribal dynamic, however, is nonetheless essential—and can spell the difference between military defeat and decisive and enduring victory.

During the Cold War period, numerous battles were fought between East and West, but more often than not these conflicts were waged in weaker states, many only just emerging from the colonial experience. In several of these Cold War hot spots, sub-state indigenous minorities controlled substantial swaths of territory, and were engaged in protracted conflicts with newcomers to their homelands. The ideological lens that defined these conflicts was but a mask to an underlying clash of tribe and state; not in all conflicts, to be sure, but in many, from the bitter civil war in Guatemala that raged for half a century, pitting the descendants of Spanish colonists against the remnants of the Mayan nation that once ruled over the highlands of Central America, to the decade-long anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan, where the United States entered into a unique war-time alliance with Afghanistan’s tribal peoples.

Today’s Long War again features many of these same sub-state entities in the notoriously fractious state of Afghanistan, which is more an amalgamation of tribal enclaves, some of whom are allied with us, and others such as the Taliban, a post-Soviet movement that pacified much of post-war Afghanistan in the 1990s, and the Al Qaeda movement, which also emerged from the anti-Soviet struggle and whose founders were once part of America’s war-time coalition against the Red Army. During the long anti-Soviet Jihad, it was Afghanistan’s many tribes, never truly united apart from their common occupying foe, that rose up, under American arms, against the militarily superior Soviet armed forces, holding their own, and later turning the tide of that war, until Moscow’s military commitment evaporated amidst the sweeping and frenetic pace of domestic reforms and revolution that resulted in the Soviet collapse. This unique coalition of tribal allies helped to rout the mighty Soviet Red Army, proper payback for Moscow’s own proxy victory over America and its allies in Indochina a half-generation earlier.

Then, America’s military alliance with the Montagnards and other indigenous allies nearly achieved victory against the hated, centralized Vietnamese Communist forces; but in that long engagement, it was America’s will that evaporated first, resulting in a strategic withdrawal even after a decade of tactical victories, and our nearly successful creation of a democratic republic in the south modeled on the South Korean and Taiwanese example. Even in defeat, much was learned of long-term strategic and tactical application. But because that knowledge was not properly internalized or codified into doctrine, it was soon lost—with painful consequences in the early years of the Long War.

While much of post-World War II international relations theory has been influenced by Waltz’s famously elegant “three images,” with the individual, state, and system defining the salient levels of analysis of the international environment, many of our post-war challenges have taken place in the nooks and crannies of the international arena where a “fourth image” seems to be at work, a tribal image. This is a realm that is in many ways “pre-state,” and where modern state sovereignty remains only still emergent. These places are neither ungoverned, nor truly failed states but are rather “pre-states,” and are thus governed in a manner that is more reminiscent of the medieval order, where sect and tribe often asserted a more salient ordering principle than the still developing state. The tools required to bring order to these regions are thus uniquely tailored to the pre-state realm, and will require a specific expertise. Traditional tools of statecraft, refined by the centuries of post-Westphalia diplomatic and military history, will be of only limited utility here. That is why in the mountains of Afghanistan, anthropologists work side-by-side with our warfighters mapping the human terrain; and during the recent stand-off in the Indian Ocean, FBI hostage negotiators were deployed along side of Navy SEALs.

A New UCC for Tribal Operations

Since the end of World War II, American military power has been organized under several unified commands, some regional in structure while others oriented by their function. A new US Tribal Command (TRIBALCOM) would be a little of each; its Area of Responsibility (AOR) would not be confined to one corner of the globe but would unite the many remote regions where tribal governance remains the most salient form of effective governance and where modern state power remains unconsolidated into a single AOR. It would similarly possess a unifying functional theme, one broadly described as counterinsurgency (COIN) but which could, as seen during the Cold War battles, be applied defensively or offensively, in the form of counterinsurgency operations and through the fostering offensive proxy insurgencies—depending on the specific dynamics, and whether the governing power is an ally or opponent of the United States. This potential strategic duality is compelling. As is the persistence of the state-tribe conflict as a fault line of conflict for the last half millennium, and even further back to Roman times and the fractious medieval period that followed, before modern European states had yet to rise.

TRIBALCOM would be designed to integrate and operationalize the tactical and strategic dimensions of tribal coalition warfare; to expand upon our current COIN doctrine and to modify it for application in new theaters of conflict, and for both defensive and offensive operations; to coordinate the training and deployment of special operations forces, intelligence agents, regular armed forces—as well as teams of post-conflict stabilization, reconstruction, and information operations experts, to help our war-time coalitions in the tribal zone survive the transition to peace, and thereby plant a firm foundation for a new postwar order.

UCCs evolve over time, responding to changes in the strategic landscape. The very first, in fact, established in 1946 by President Truman, reflected the strategic contours of the post-war environment, and included the Alaskan Command, Atlantic Fleet, Caribbean Command, European Command, Far East Command, Northeast Command, and Pacific Command. In 2008, there were ten UCCs, six defined by their regional AOR and four by their specific functionality. The regional UCCs include Africa Command (AFRICOM), Central Command (CENTCOM), European Command (EUCOM), Pacific Command (PACOM), Northern Command (NORTHCOM), and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), while the functional UCCs are Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and Transportation Command (TRANSCOM).

Each new conflict is perceived, and operationalized, to some degree through the regional lens of its UCC, limiting potential cross-command synergies, and more importantly, the flow of ideas and accumulated historical knowledge that could contribute to the development of doctrine, and promote the diffusion of tactical and strategic insights gained during out-of-area conflicts past and present. That is why the creation of a new UCC to unify military planning and operations in all the tribal zones where the Long War is being waged, and those where future conflicts will surely be fought, will be of such great value.

TRIBALCOM will be dedicated to extracting knowledge from the many military conflicts of the past that were waged along a state-tribe axis, and to the development and codification of a new doctrine for the waging of coalition warfare, and the creation of enduring war-time as well as post-war alliances with sub-state tribal entities. As we saw in the post-Vietnam period, where the stain of defeat led to an unfathomable loss of so much strategic and tactical knowledge that had been acquired during that long conflict, and led to a shift toward a higher-tech form a conventional warfare better suited to the Central Front—one that avoided the frustrating complexities of counterinsurgency but which also fostered a consequential erosion of institutional memory of our many COIN experiences—America’s long-term strategic interests are not served by compartmentalizing information borne of one military experience, and preventing that knowledge from enriching America’s repository of doctrinal knowledge for posterity.

Strategic forgetting can be as destructive a force as any strategic blunder, since knowledge—as Sun Tzu noted centuries ago, and as echoed by later theorists from Machiavelli to Clausewitz and now to Petraeus—is power, and must be wielded effectively for victory to be possible. As learned in America’s successful COIN effort in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, coalition warfare with sub-state tribal entities can turn the tide of war, helping to achieve a military victory in a struggle considered by many to have been a lost cause.

As chronicled by NPS professor James Russell in his forthcoming book, Innovation in the Crucible of War: The American Counterinsurgency Campaign in Iraq, 2005-2006, the bottom-up innovation process took place in real-time, pacifying a conflict zone where blunt conventional military power proved to be a double-edged sword, and where more precise and calibrated force was required in conjunction with a diplomatic offensive at the clan, village, and tribal level. This helped to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, proving that President Bush’s intuition as Commander-in-Chief was correct and that the salient lesson of Vietnam was not that the cause was lost, just our will—and that a smarter, more committed application of military power, and a quicker process of integrating successful battlefield innovations into evolving doctrine, could change the outcome of a conflict, and thus redefine the very flow of history.

Indeed, in Vietnam the Tet Offensive was a tremendous tactical failure for the Viet Cong, resulting in their near-annihilation; but strategically, it was a victory for the NVA which not only watched its rival for political power in the South get wiped out by American and ARVN forces, but at the same time saw America’s will for continued war sapped by the surprise VC offensive, never to recover. Hanoi smartly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat that time; but America had learned much in the course of fighting that long war, and had its will not been so eroded back home, it may well have achieved a lasting victory—securing its ally in the south, and rolling back its opponent in the north through tribal coalition warfare with the hill tribes of Vietnam, Laos, and perhaps even southwest China. The map of postwar Indochina could have looked much different; instead of oppression and genocide, we’d have instead witnessed liberty taking root in the region’s fertile soils.

In tribal zones, where formal state sovereignty never fully reached, borders tend to be porous, and sub-state and trans-state tribes, stateless nations, and minority cultures tend to predominate at the local and regional level. Politics in these zones can be complex, with inter-clan and inter-tribe rivalries and strong anti-colonial sentiment toward their central governments—providing ingredients for micro-level alliances in the Long War. When engaged in military operations in these tribal zones, it is imperative to understand the detailed nuance of tribal identity, culture, and politics in order to comprehend these foundational building blocks of a new political order, and to nurture allies and strategic partners around the world, whether as part of the Long War or in future conflicts—such as against a rising China, whose southwestern frontier is one of the world’s most complex ethnocultural regions.

Indeed, with minority populations like the Miao (Hmong) and Yi numbering in the millions (there are some eight million Yi, and nine million Miao in China today), as well as numerous other minorities like the Naxi numbering in the hundreds of thousands, many could stand alone as nation-states, much as the Hmong of Laos long dreamed, transforming the political geography of the region. As the U.S.-Montagnard war-time coalition demonstrated during the Vietnam War, and as our current efforts forging new bonds with tribal minorities in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, these efforts can not only spell the difference between victory and defeat, but also lay a foundation for a new and enduring order.

From GWOT to TRIBALCOM

President Bush famously declared “Mission Accomplished” after piloting his S-3B Viking jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, formally announcing an end to major combat operations—only to discover that the war in Iraq was anything but over, and would soon enter into a chaotic phase as conventional operations transitioned to asymmetrical warfare, and a complex insurgency burst forth in a frenzy of violence. On that day, the war between two states ended, and a new war—between the armed forces of the victorious state and the newly emancipated sub-state components of the defeated state—began. President Obama campaigned hard against the tactical and strategic errors of his predecessor, and pledged to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq. But even as the President implements his disengagement plan from Iraq, he has already increased America’s troop commitment to Afghanistan—announcing a 17,000-troop surge of his own on February 17, 2009, and will consider the addition of further troops in the months ahead should the fight require it. After five, long years of war, the sub-state struggle inside Iraq was now largely won, enough so that the White House could shift its attention to the even more complex and dangerous sub-state struggle inside Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While engaging in an Afghani surge reminiscent of the very strategy he campaigned so hard against in Iraq, the President has nonetheless declared the “War on Terror” to be over. Not finished, nor won—but in rhetorical terms, the term “Global War on Terror” has been retired. The retirement of the GWOT terminology came to national attention on March 30, 2009, when Secretary of State Clinton told the press that the new administration had “stopped using the phrase, and I think that speaks for itself,” noting she had not “gotten any directive about using it or not using it. It’s just not being used.” At around the same time, the media reported that Pentagon staff had received a memo the Office of Security Review that explained the White House “prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT). Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”

This new, less catchy phrase has now been used publicly by several top officials, from the DoD to the OMB. But frustration with the GWOT’s terminology is not new. Even President Bush came to regret the one-size-fits-all simplicity of the term he made famous. As he said in 2004, “We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” President Obama’s rhetorical redefinition of the GWOT as a series of nameless “Overseas Contingency Operations” seem to have as much to do with the GWOT’s controversial verbiage as it does with his desire to redefine the conflict along a more logical axis of conflict. Indeed, despite the change in terminology, President Obama remains fully engaged militarily, and the architect of our successful Iraq counterinsurgency, General David Petraeus, remains Commander of CENTCOM, a post he has held since October 31, 2008 and to which he was promoted by President Bush. Thus far, it appears that Obama’s doctrine is a mirror image of his predecessor—applying America’s COIN doctrine largely as developed during the previous administration.

To succeed in Afghanistan and Pakistan will require detailed cultural knowledge of this expanding war zone, much as was painfully but effectively acquired in Iraq, in order to identify who among today’s opponents might become, with proper incentives, new friends and allies, bringing order from the chaotic mix of clans, tribes, sects, and movements that define the region’s fractious political geography. And to ensure the lessons learned from these conflicts are preserved in American doctrine, to benefit our warfighters as they engage new opponents in different parts of the world, will require a commitment to the preservation of these important strategic and tactical innovations, and this will be a primary mission of TRIBALCOM.

Tribal Security and the Foundations of Order

The poet and philosopher Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But as the even more famous poet and philosopher Yogi Berra explained, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” That is why it remains imperative that America look beyond the rhetoric to the underlying roots of conflict, and to counter its opponent with more than de-escalatory rhetoric, and instead to offer up field-tested ideas that have proven their worth under fire, as we did in Indochina, and later Central America and the Balkans, and now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is a wealth of knowledge, and a wealth of experience, to be gained by aligning America’s tribal warfare experiences under one unified command, and this could give America’s fighting men and women an important strategic advantage in the current battle and in tomorrow’s wars as well. The methods identified, operationalized, and systematized on the front lines of the Long War could serve as a cornerstone for a new doctrine to guide military operations in the tribal zone, and to be codified in a new field manual on tribal operations, one tailor-made to restore political order to the chaotic tribal zones that define the many fronts where the Long War is being fought, and which no doubt will define the front lines of future conflicts where the modern state and pre-state tribal entities continue to collide.

Indeed, once the Long War concludes, these tribal zones will remain strategically important for the coming peace and could serve as vital beachheads and internal fronts from which American power can be nimbly projected in the event of new conflicts arising. Abandoning our hard-won gains in these tribal zones would only result in future setbacks to American power, as we witnessed after our Mujahideen allies routed the Soviet Red Army in 1989, only to see our commitment to their cause wane upon the Soviet collapse, as our attention turned elsewhere. Just as our continued, multi-generational military presence has helped ensure the peace in Europe, Japan and Korea, a similar long-term commitment to the security of these tribal zones where the current war is being fought will be essential to ensure our hard-won victories in the Long War do not become tomorrow’s missed opportunities. It is no coincidence that our past strategic withdrawal from chaotic tribal zones have come back to haunt us, as evidenced by events unfolding in Afghanistan and Somalia in recent times.

With a new US Tribal Command in place to coordinate these many fluid fields of battle, present and emergent, and help ensure their successful transition from war to peace, it becomes more likely and not less that the day will one day come, perhaps even in our lifetimes, when America can wind down its final Overseas Contingency Operation—and truly declare a hard-fought, and well-earned, “Mission Accomplished” in a war that critics have long suggested would never end. Under the guidance of TRIBALCOM, past and present knowledge can intermingle, enhancing our efforts in the field, to transform the roots of chaos into the foundations for a lasting peace, and a new and enduring world order.

About the Author

Barry Zellen is editor of Strategic Insights and The Culture and Conflict Review and author of Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic. His forthcoming books, On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty and Arctic Doom or Boom? The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic will be published in fall 2009.