Managing the Strategic Gradient: Governance, Doctrine, and the Logic of Irregular War

Small Wars Journal | Andrew Rolander

French military intervention in Mali with Operation Serval in 2013, followed by Operation Barkhane, initially pushed jihadist fighters out but ultimately led to a less stable Sahel and French expulsion by 2022. This recurring pattern highlights a fundamental failure of irregular warfare doctrine to recognize the "governance gradient"—the dynamic movement of population allegiance between competing authority systems in transitional political spaces.

Conventional doctrine, focused on battlespaces and defined end states, misapplies tools to environments where authority is contested, and conflict unfolds through political subversion, economic coercion, and information operations below traditional armed conflict thresholds. Russia's pre-2022 Ukraine operations and China's South China Sea strategy exemplify effective irregular warfare. The article argues that military pressure in these "over governed" ecotone-like environments often disaggregates problems rather than resolving them, due to classification and perception failures within existing doctrine.

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