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Special Warfare Comes with Advantages...

• Special warfare can improve U.S. contextual understanding of potential partners and the situation on the ground.
• Special warfare's small-footprint approach allows the United States to pursue cost-effective, cost-imposing strategies.
• Given a decision to intervene, policymakers could use special warfare to avoid making commitments beyond U.S. interests.
• Special warfare's small-footprint approach can be more fiscally and politically sustainable than alternatives when underlying sources of conflict cannot be resolved in the short term.

...As Well as Risks

• A U.S. partner may have core objectives that conflict with those of the United States.
• The opponent's level of capability and operational tempo relative to the partner's may render special warfare solutions ineffective within the required time horizon.
• Some partners may behave in ways that transgress America's normative standards and undermine their own sources of legitimacy.
• If special warfare campaigns are not carefully integrated into a holistic U.S. policy toward the targeted country, U.S. efforts can either turn into direct conflict or become out of balance.
• The global proliferation of information technology erodes the ability to keep covert activities covert, which can place the secrecy of operations at risk.

Authors Identified Eight Campaign Types That Might Help Address Current Strategic Challenges

• Hybrid guerrilla warfare in the defense.
• Support to conventional power projection.
• Support to distant blockade.
• Covert foreign internal defense for eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
• Counterproliferation against a global network.
• Foreign internal defense in a fractured state.
• Building a regional security exporter.
• Countergenocide unconventional warfare.