Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Analysis and Action

by David H. Ucko

The 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy made headlines by officially downgrading terrorism as a national security priority in favor of “inter-state strategic competition.” Many interpreted the statement as signifying a return to “conventional combat,” yet a closer reading suggests that even state-based competition is likely to be “irregular.” Much like insurgent adversaries, states blend separate instruments of power to offset military weakness, weaponize narratives to ease strategic progress, and exploit social and political contradictions to undermine and divide target societies. The effort to understand this approach has generated new jargon—“hybrid war,” “the gray zone”—yet the United States and the West in general struggle to overcome their entrenched presumptions about war. Such confusion constitutes an upstream source of analytical friction with implications for how strategy is conceived and implemented. Based on the pedagogical approach of the College of International Security Affairs within the National Defense University, this article presents an analytical framework to assess and respond to irregular threats. Though terminological precision and analytical frameworks are no panacea for the malaise facing Western strategy, it is an indispensable starting point for all that must follow.

71 pages, Paperback

Published August 4, 2020

About the author

David H. Ucko, Ph.D., is the Head of the Net Assessment Section at NATO HQ. Prior to joining NATO, he was a professor at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) of the National Defense University, Washington DC, where he taught irregular warfare and strategy to international military and civilian practitioners. From 2019-2023, he was the chair of CISA's Department of War & Conflict Studies (WACS) and, from 2018-2022, the Director of the Regional Defense Fellowship Program, whereby he led the College's international deployment of mobile education teams. Dr Ucko is a senior visiting fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr Ucko has published several books on war-to-peace transition, civil wars, and strategy. Most recently, he authored The Insurgent's Dilemma: A Struggle to Prevail (Hurst / Oxford University Press, 2022) and, with Thomas A. Marks, Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Analysis and Action, 2nd ed. (NDU Press, 2022). His publications also include a wide variety of peer-reviewed articles on political violence, strategy, and irregular warfare.

Dr Ucko was previously program coordinator and research fellow for the Conflict, Security & Development Research Group at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. He has also held visiting fellowships and research positions at various think-tanks, including the RAND Corporation in Washington DC, the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in both in DC and in London.

Dr Ucko obtained his Ph.D. at the Department of War Studies in 2007, with a thesis examining the US military's institutional learning of counterinsurgency in the 2001-07 period. In 2001, he was awarded a First Class BSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and, in 2004 a MRes at the Department of War Studies.