Securing Our Future
Securing Our Future
SOF 011: Irregular Warfare and Economics in Today's Conflicts with Doug Livermore
Host Jeremy Hitchcock sits down with Doug Livermore, the Director of Special Operations, Irregular Warfare, Special Programs, and Sensitive Activities for the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy. Additionally, he is a Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel in the Army National Guard, currently serving as the Deputy Commander of Special Operations Detachment - NATO. Previously, Doug served as a sensitive activities advisor to both the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Multiple international affairs and security studies journals have distributed Doug’s works, including many publications in War on the Rocks, Small Wars Journal, and the Military Times. Doug is the National Director for External Communications for the Special Forces Association and is also a Non-Resident Fellow with West Point’s Irregular Warfare Initiative. Additionally, he is on the Board of Directors for both No One Left Behind and the Special Operations Association of America, where he has been instrumental in the ongoing evacuation and resettlement of Afghan interpreters and their families. Doug earned his undergraduate degree in Military History at West Point and his graduate degree in International Security Affairs from Georgetown University, and excelled in the Army Command and General Staff Officer Course.
Jeremy Hitchcock: I'm here with Doug Livermore, who is the director of Special Operations, irregular warfare, special programs, and sensitive activities for the Deputy under Secretary of the Navy. Thanks for joining us, Doug. You have an interesting background you've come up through Army special operations.
Doug Livermore: Thanks Jeremy. Great to be here.
Jeremy Hitchcock: You're currently also a bit in the commercial industry world and and variety of nonprofits that you've been attached to and and you're you're collection of responsibilities. I think is is much of a representation of your your intellect and your thoughtfulness around. The where things are going and and perhaps I was wondering if you could start off and just talk to us about some of the guiding thoughts that you've had. In terms of responsibilities that you've been able to, to be charged with and also how you thought about your Going from one place to next.
Doug Livermore: I came from a long line of military folks. My father was career, Navy growing up, you definitely instilled a sense of duty and service to others. That's something that I incorporated into my own values very early on growing up as a kid. I did Boy Scouts. They will lead to that course, see that poor in high school. So then when I was making a decision on where to go for college, I ended up at the United States Military Academy at West Point. And then that kind of continued this this incultation of a sense of service to something larger than ourselves and that's really been a guiding value that has led pretty much all my decisions is. I've moved along, I did 10 years, active duty in the army, starting in the infantry. A couple tours to Iraq that capacity. Before I made the move to Army Special Forces which was an absolutely exceptional.
Doug Livermore: Step along my route or my path. It was exactly what I had foreseen as a major goal of mine. When I started this journey. Did that for 10 years, left? Active duty. I continued to work in the private sector doing some contracting work. Continued my service to the Army National Guard first. In the Maryland, Army National Guard before I moved to the North Carolina, Army National Guard where I am now, still continuing to serve as the deputy commander for Special Operations Detachment.
Doug Livermore: And my military career has been obviously kind of as they tend to be. If you're decently successful, moving up to positions of greater responsibility, starting down at the infantry, platoon level to. Now, the deputy commander for a special operations attachment, a A6 or kernel level man. Additionally in 2022. I spent most of that year on orders deployed to Iraq growth or deputy commander for the Special Operations Advisory Group Baghdad.
Doug Livermore: Um so you know military, I think that's a pretty easy to see that increasing responsibility and that that service on the civilian side. As I mentioned after I left back of duty, I was working as a contractor for a number of years, doing some really incredible work. Mostly supporting the Department of Defense. A couple years ago I actually came a government employee. I was hired Into the Department of the Navy, oddly enough, where I assume the role that started off session talking about was the director of special operations in a regular warfare. A sense of Activities and Special Programs. We're going to shorten that here in the new future in the near future, it's been mouthful. But all to say I've continued to also find opportunities to serve on the civilian side. So I found both at the military and the civilian.
Doug Livermore: Career paths to be complementary in a lot of ways and doing me, those opportunities to continue to serve and contribute it increasingly higher levels. But you did mention the nonprofit world, I've stayed very engaged, Eric again, trying to go back to that guiding from school of Those who can contribute should on the board of directors, for no one left behind. It's a nonprofit that since 2013 has been working to advocate for resettle and more recently, evacuate Afghan, and Iraqi interpreters. Who serve alongside us during Global War on terror. I've been there for a couple years now, is the director of Evacuations from August to. November of 2021, which was the first one Afghanistan was following.
Doug Livermore: So many private organizations, were partnering with the government and working on their own to evacuate Afghans from that country. Additionally, I'm the National Director for External Communications as a elected board officer, Special Forces Association. Now, in my third term there, where I spearhead all of our communications in our advocacy efforts for the Special Forces Association,
Doug Livermore: As well on the board of directors for the Special Operations Association of America, which is a more broadly focused advocacy organization that works on behalf of all, America's special operators to advance key issues, legislation, other forms of parents support, our special operators. And then finally, I'm on the board of the Director of Communications for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, which is based out of West Point. It's a nonprofit all volunteers. Here are dedicated to advancing the study and advocate for resourcing and innovation and field of regular warfare. Probably, most importantly, I'm also a father. I have three, terrific kids. I love dearly, and I'm hoping working to inculcate into them, the same sense of duty and the values I have
Jeremy Hitchcock: It sounds like a very active calendar and certainly, a lot of sense of responsibility and duty that, that, that is, that, that shows through in a lot of your, a lot of your many accomplishments.
Jeremy Hitchcock: So congrats on, on many of them. Thank you for many of them. I was wondering if we could first start talking about the. The notion of what irregular warfare, special operations it's probably a lot different from your time when you first started in Iraq. And I'm curious if you could talk about how thematically things are changing today.
Jeremy Hitchcock: And also maybe as a backdrop of how things even. Have evolved over the last 25, 50, 50 years especially with your lens of both Army and Navy. Two, two different groups, two different schools of thought, but obviously both thinking about where advantages and I'd love to hear your thoughts on, on, on the state of play.
Doug Livermore: Yeah, so I mean, in my time in uniform starting in 2004, when I was first commissioned. I think that the broader appreciation for regular warfare, the concept has definitely increased as it becomes something that's more prevalent in the public discourse now. Irregular warfare means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Currently the Department of Defense looks at a irregular warfare as a competition for influence between relevant parties. They look as a struggle. So in the context of one, we talked about a irregular warfare in the modern contemporary environment. We look at that struggle for influence between real estate United States up one side and more authoritarian regime this with some capability like the people from China and Russia together and
Doug Livermore: While I think that the understanding or at least the awareness of a irregular warfare has increased significantly probably over the last decade or so as it's become more prominent and some of our public discussions it certainly has been something has been with us for last decades decades. I would say probably going all the way back to really the Cold War if not before that but that was really where the Cold War was when you really saw the first global competition below, the threshold of traditional armed conflict between major world powers. The Soviet Union on the one side in the United States on the other, and I've made the argument before that in order to be more effective at irregular warfare, the United States needs to go back to a lot of lessons that it learned during the Cold War, when competing against the Soviet Union. Specifically, how do you pursue a whole government or a whole society approach to competition? And how that is a bit of a challenge for Democratic republics or more democratic cleaning countries, like the United States and our partners and allies?
Doug Livermore: During the Cold War, George Kennan coined the containment strategy or the containment doctrine which was talking about competing against the Soviet Union across all elements of national power so diplomatically building coalitions like NATO and some of the other organizations that we helped bring to fruition information. How do you compete with? How did we can keep Soviet Union as they would go and conduct disinformation or try to sway countries to move away from the Democratic block towards the more authoritarian Soviet block military. I think we saw really within the context of the Cold War, you have to look at all of these smaller skirmishes that are not skirmishes for those that were involved. Like the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the host of other small brush bushfire wars as being part of this broader competition between the United States and Soviet Union and then economically. And this is really where at the end of the day, we do the analysis of how the United States won the Cold War. It was unlike or not from the inherent weaknesses of the Soviet system in their inability to compete economically really allowed us to for lack of a better or better term outspend the Soviet. So towards the end of the Soviet Union, you'd like our economy which had been artificially propped up for decades. Just wasn't able to keep up with the US. IT collapse. And that was a major factor in the fall, the Soviet Union
Doug Livermore: So, when we look to how we engage in a irregular warfare today, particularly in opposition to see people, republican China and Russia to a much, lesser extent. There has to be a similar appreciation for everything old being new again. And how do you gear society towards our society of Western societies or democratically reading society as well to compete against these more authoritarian states? And it's incredibly difficult because technology has played a control and in making the environment far more complicated as we've seen over the last few election cycles, Russian influence through disinformation was a huge topic of conversation, followed the 2016 election 2020 elections. I concerns going to become an issue during the 2024 election where other countries particularly like Russia and the People’s Republica of China, undertake really persistent, and I'd say, almost like masterfully, executed, disinformation campaigns to support preferred candidates and fully knowing that any sort of influence to bring the candidate of choice to power, what could potentially need to massive policy changes that would benefit one or both of our major global competitors people to China and Russia. But that's facilitated through the global interconnected environment where no bot farm in Saint Petersburg or Beijing can have outside influence on a social media networks that reach directly in the United States and other countries. We've seen this in Europe as well as tends to interfere those elections.
Doug Livermore: We see this and other technological challenges where it comes to the vigorous technical surveillance and that getting built out in many parts of the world. There's been plenty of discussions about Chinese companies selling those massive city-wide surveillance networks to countries all around the world. Fully with those country being either fully unaware or not really carrying that all that data is being pushed back to China, which then they use for their own purposes.
Doug Livermore: I think that. Those are just some of the ways in which we see technology, having a huge impact on irregular warfare in the modern era. And it's really, I think Increasing the importance of some of those other elements of national power that we were talking about earlier whereas is a navy, an Army guy I'm primarily focused on the military, and so national power. Really, once you start talking about the advent of technology advancement of some of these communication capable of interconnected environment, really like information and economy become far more important because a country with good technology with dedicated strategy to influence the internet, social media, whatever other tools they want to use, hacking, they can really have an outsized impact in both the information space, swaying whole populations turning elections potentially. It can have huge economic impacts either by the damage to our economies through cyber attacks, malicious activity.
Doug Livermore: That it can alter that the playing field in a way that I don't think that we as the winners use that term loosely of the Cold War might not necessarily be prepared for because there's assumption and democratic countries that are probably a powerful. Our messages are very very resilient and people clearly want to to be in our camp but that might not necessarily be the case particularly as we see the outside influence of technology.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Now it's it's interesting because you know that a lot of lot of themes you touched on and whether you think of how how we think about what's what's old is new again and and us rediscovering the things that took place in the and the late 40s, Marshall Plan all the way into you know really a technological race on on space as being a frontier that there was a great level of competition on which spurred a whole set of scientific innovation. There's fight over obviously a lot of the scientists and key scientists about where those people would serve and and it's interesting because that that's there seems to be a bit of a buzz around coming up with what, what does a 21st century democratically aligned competitive landscape look like. And and that really is, the question is, What type of system works best for prosperity? Is it, a democracies? Is it, is it authoritarian regimes and What's fascinating is that's essentially playing out. I don't think we're concerned about that, that whole of nation approach.
But at the same time we have a very federated strategy. We have lots of different countries and they Practice democracy in different ways and obviously the American experiment: lots of states, one federal government has proven to be somewhat resilient. Pretty resilient. We'll see how that continues on.
Jeremy Hitchcock: And you talk about the national instruments of power and maybe thinking through again that, that promise of prosperity you wrote an article about the arsenal of democracy and economic strength and scientific innovation. And you spend a lot of time actually talking about the mechanisms in which conflicts were and wars were financed as being a critical asset to how people are successful in the Cold War, economic race. Talk about how the western way of war is thinking about not just deterrence, but success and economic success and how is that still an enduring theme and what has to change in the 21st century with a different landscape? Or we're thinking around a lot of those, those issues around digital authenticity people kind of mucking around and internal affairs. How do you think about that?
Doug Livermore: Yeah, so you're absolutely correct. I’m always reminded of it of the Winston Churchill quote about democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. It certainly has its challenges and I think he did a great job of outlining, some of them. It's a consensus-based system. So to get a whole bunch of different folks with all of their various different interests to align on anything, it is a huge challenge. And I know that we start talking about very power competition with the United States and the democratically aligned countries on the one side and Russia and China and the more authoritarian countries on the other side, there's on the face of it, a huge disadvantage that the United States in our partners allies space and that as laid out as a consensus based system, it is harder for us to move together in one direction with a common vision, whereas the Kremlin or Beijing under, the Chinese Communist Party can pretty easily based on their systems kind of say pay. This is the way it's going to be in this middle. I'm going to do and there's very little room for dissent.
Doug Livermore: And we're on the face of at least in the short term, that is an advantage that those authoritarian regimes and joy, and puts the United States. It's partners that a little bit of the disadvantage in the aggregate over the long term. I would offer that. That is actually a weakness. We've seen this play out, particularly focusing on the technological and industrial development. We've seen how this plays out a few different times. Soviet Union, again, during the Cold War with the control economy, the centralized control economy, which is just never able, even with the massive resources, put into it, able to achieve the same level of innovation and productivity that you saw under the Americans system to the point where towards the end of the Cold War the Soviet Union was basically unable to produce semiconductors at any sort of scale or quality and was forced to either completely copy American designs or steal them or, as you see today, find ways to import components from other countries. And I think that, that really speaks to some of the inherent strengths that you see in a capitalist Free market economy, where? While there are certainly some challenges and some dangers to avoid at the end of the day, it is a system that incentivized innovation that incentivizes productivity in a way that just from a natural.
Doug Livermore: The law of nature survival to fittest. You're going to get a better product In the end. I mean, we see a similar problem with people's republican China, today in the sense that, while their economy is very huge, right? No doubt about it. It does have capability to produce its scale. Despite that there is a very clear global understanding that Chinese products tend to be less quality. We see this play out particularly, I mean again where I watch the defense space where countries kind of forward Western or American or products military articles from our partners allies, that's what they want. Chinese products are known to be inferior, tons of challenges of actually in delivered on time and frankly, I think that we're what we're seeing in China is kind of similar to what we saw towards the later years of the Soviet Union where just after years and years of substance of heavily subsidized and industry, production, and scientific innovation that incentives just aren't there. So you start to see some of this malaise and degradation and capability. I mean, one of the things that we talked about all the time in this space is a level of industrial espionage at China engages in against the United States and other partners and allies because at the end of the day for all their resources For all the centralized control of the government has, they're just not producing the kind of technology at scale and quality that you can find in the United States and amongst our partners and allies. So I think again, when you look at that, over the aggregate, there has been a slowing down of the Chinese economy and there's been a lot of discussions about this five-year window the Chinese basically have to make some sort of major move geopolitically before the short-term advantages that they've had over the last decade or so a little we'll cancel out by parent strings of the American system and that we enjoy amongst our partners now.
Jeremy Hitchcock: I was recently listening to and reading some of the work out of the special competitive studies project and really interesting lanes around thinking of not just technology, but policy and the and looking at again that, that whole of nation approach. And I'm curious if you had two or three magic wands to spend in, in either advancing collaboration, advancing particular technology areas or other types of outcomes. Where would you spend where would you spend those wishes?
Doug Livermore: From a more macro policy perspective like what we have lacked to date and our engagement and irregular warfare and broader, great power competition is that holistic coherent full of government approach to how we compete with our global competitors. I think we're been moving the right direction. So there is the 2018 national defense strategy, and then based on some discussion with Congress, we then wrote the 2020 irregular warfare annexed to the 2018 and National Defense Strategy. The new 2022 national defense strategy, identifies China, as our pacing threat, and talks about engaging in competition with them. Most recently under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 22, there was the regular Warfare Center that was established by Congress that at least in my reading of the language in the legislation was designed to establish an overarching center that would then theory direct the whole government efforts the United States. I think in practice has quite hit there and I don't know. We'll just because, yeah, I'm going back to some of the conversation about the challenges of Federated system. But yeah, if I were away my magic wand first and foremost, we need a overarching holistic full government approach to competing first with China and than with Russia. The last time I've seen something like that, that I thought was a terrific model previously written about was the defeat ISIS strategy that came at the beginning of the Trump administration. So when President Trump took office in January of 2017, one of his first acts was to direct all the departments and agencies of the Government State Department, DOT, CIA, Treasury, everyone to have 30 days to develop the framework on how are we going to the Islamic State and Iraq Syria. And I was part of that effort. I was at the office of the Secretary of Defense of the time. We got together all the interagency partners and we collaborated basically locked ourselves away for 30 days. We had lots of knockdown drag-out fights and debates and at the end of 30 days we came to back to the White House with a strategy that incorporated all the elements of National Power. How are we going to reduce ISIS's access to global economy? How are we gonna fight back against the informational and that space? How are we going to build partners and allies? Specific from the Coalition against paces. And of course, how are we going to militarily destroy the physical caliphate? And then we the White House blessed off on that. The NSC said, Yep, that's a good framework. Maybe that, as I recall, there was a few little tweaks and then we were sent back to come up with the, put the meat on the bones of that strategy. And we did that. We had another60 days, if I remember correctly after that and we were then we implemented after the White House. It go. We haven't had anything like that when it comes to dealing China.
Doug Livermore: That is where I think that we continue to see this disparate kind of ad hoc approach to different departments and agencies the United States government. Pursuing that competition in their own ways. Think that makes it incredibly difficult then for us to have conversation with our partners and allies and democratically aligned block of nations on how we should approach. Sorts of challenges posed by China and Russia. At the macro level, that’s where I would wave my magic wand first
Doug Livermore: . Additionally, more on the technological side. I know that we have challenges in the sense that because of our because we very rightfully, prioritize for speech freedom of expression, core censorship as a country. And as people, it's hard for us to have meaningful conversations around, how do you limit or want to encounter the efforts by countries like China and Russia to spread that influence using our technology? Using the fact that we're open society and how do we address that? I know when there was an attempt under this administration to have a disinformation Czar, it was very quickly attacked by Republicans as an attempted censorship and basically, what's completely I'd say neutralizing for even became a thing.
Doug Livermore: So I guess my second magic wand would be have If I could. We need that kind of bipartisan support that knowledge. Is that there are in fact adversaries, major global competitors that are trying to influence our populace sway policy and basically exacerbate those internal divisions that have always existed in American society and amongst our partners and allies actually, come up with solutions that be them technological to go after these bot farms, go after these organizations that are engaged in these sorts of activities, but also do show in a way that's completely bipartisan doesn't want to follow this. Frankly, the adversary successfully influencing the internal debate to prevent us from the mounting any sort of effective defense.
Jeremy Hitchcock: yeah, it's interesting to even even grok at the difference of context today, where we're Nelson, Rockefeller Kissinger here with two people that thought about the what that Cold War strategy was. And here that the definition of success is probably a lot more challenged because and I don't think there there's a great sense of well, what does it mean to have technological or economic superiority? Or is that a thing or if we don't have it? What does that mean? And and so it's fascinating because they're certainly places we can look to in the past and say, “Hey that we don't like this. We don't like this, We don't like this”, but being able to find our future state isn't quite as clear and I'm curious if you have any any ways that you think of to help guide what we desire for a future state. So that way we can think of what choices and and opportunities we need to either make or take advantage of in order to get to that future state.
Doug Livermore: No, I know there's been a lot of conversation as of late around the whole AI. I mean, you can't turn on the news about hearing about ChatGPT and some of the potential applications of artificial intelligence. And I know that when we start talking about, like, how do we define, what the future state looks like? There really needs to be. I think a lot less ear-mongering, like I listened to many of the hearings up on the hill here. I think over the last week where all these CEOs got up and said that AI—well to their defense they said AI could potentially Make our lives incredibly much more fulfilling. You could take on a lot of these more mundane tasks, that then would allow us to focus on the arts and so improvement, and building our society out. Then there was also what a lot of media focused on was that, “yeah, but it could also goes skynet on us and kill all life on earth.” And you know, while that is very real concerned and we should certainly be sober about the potential implications. I do think that those are not, those conversations are not occurring in Beijing. They continue forward with technology that could potentially outpace us. Admittedly. I also think that we have to be I think a little bit more sober about how we think about flirts about like China. I know has been talking for years about their just on the cusp of breakthroughs on quantum computing and get super Worried about that for about five minutes until the new cycle moves on. You know. I do think that we need to keep abreast of these developments but I think we also have to recognize that China is stealing technology and conducting that industrial espionage. And economic espionage against us probably because they might not be as far ahead as fear they are that's not to say that we shouldn't keep the foot on the gas and continue to identify where we think that there might be gaps and pursue those. And again, I think that comes down to a lot of, if I'm honest. Conversations. Informed By the intelligence community and those that have the best picture on where, exactly like what's the reality on where our adversaries are on this technology. And then move out smartly towards filling those gaps. Like, We keep seeing this. I know I've been talking about China a lot, but like Russia has been a perfect example as of late before, February of 2021. There is breathless panic, almost panic about the technological superiority of the Russian army. And the Russian military was developing between their side and undersea nuclear torpedo thing and their nuclear powered cruise missiles hypersonic missiles. But what we've seen that in practice, those things might not have been as capable as the Russians might have led us to believe. I think it's good to go through the process of identifying, “Hey, this is the worst case scenario for a future state,” assuming that all the claims that are adversaries are competitors, make are true. And then okay but then let's work to identify if that's actually the case. Let's not assume outright that the claims that are being made are true. But then continue to seek those opportunities where we can either counter something that competitors working on or as the opportunities, present themself or identify places where we can develop technologies that force them to be responsive to us.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Awesome. Well lots to do and and looking forward to seeing how it all plays out, I think it's going to be an interesting in a few years ahead. Decades ahead, and we all have a part to play and make it a better place. Thanks for joining us, Doug.
Doug Livermore: Yep. Okay, thank you very much.