Jeremiah "Lumpy" Lumbaca
Malign actors deploy cyberattacks, economic coercion, disinformation, and illicit gray zone tactics to destabilize the modern Indo-Pacific region. Competition in the region is currently not characterized by kinetic engagements—it is a protracted, complex struggle that advances incrementally. Economies, friendly nations, and innocent people pay the price. The primary perpetrators include the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Russia, Iran,
North Korea, and a range of Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) – the 4+1 construct of bad actors (while acknowledging that all current US security strategy documents explicitly highlight the CCP as the primary national security threat).
These actors destabilize the international order with hostile intent, prioritizing their interests over others’ sovereignty by subverting, manipulating, and circumventing established laws, rules, and norms to their benefit at the cost of others. To counter this, considering recent Irregular Warfare (IW) developments, this paper outlines a new IW framework designed to undermine and mitigate 4+1 aggression while pushing decentralized, offensive IW to the advantage of America and its partners.
The intent of this framework is to develop an evolving irregular warfare network of actors. It would eventually encompass multiple cells that inflict damage on the CCP as it seeks to dominate maritime chokepoints, Russia as it manipulates media and elections, Iran as it targets Middle Eastern adversaries in the region, North Korea as it evades sanctions and escalates tensions,
and VEOs pursue a range of political objectives through violence or the threat of violence. All of these actors employ some degree of asymmetric tactics.
The Theory of a New Irregular Warfare Approach in the Pacific
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