Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare

by Seth G. Jones

But Gerasimov and other Russian leaders were unconvinced. In Gerasimov’s view, Iraq was a textbook example of the “traditional” approach to war.15 The US had deployed well-trained and well-equipped conventional forces; initiated military operations against the enemy in set-piece battles; employed ground, air, and naval forces; and achieved the eventual destruction of the enemy.16 Gerasimov assessed the American justifications for Iraq and other military operations over the previous decade. They were different each time: “threat to peace and stability,” “genocide by the Belgrade authorities,” “fight against international terrorism,” and “prevention of the proliferation of chemical weapons.”17 But he was convinced these rationalizations were fig leaves. The US approach was generally the same: decide to overthrow a government, search for a pretext to launch military operations, and then conduct military operations to install a friendly regime.

In many ways, Gerasimov was impressed by the advances in US strategy, tactics, and technology used to conduct the war in Iraq.

US military leaders heralded this revolution in military affairs. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bragged that the US military used “an unprecedented combination of speed, precision, surprise, and flexibility.”21

Yet much like with Afghanistan, Gerasimov believed there was something more sinister at work. The United States was perfecting its military capabilities to, in his words, “eliminate the statehood of unwanted countries, to undermine sovereignty, and to change lawfully elected bodies of state power” in ways that benefited the United States.22 Gerasimov saw the war as being much bigger than Iraq—or even the Middle East. It was another example, Gerasimov concluded, of the “U.S. aspiration toward global domination.”23

Gerasimov saw a fundamental flaw in the US approach. “Attempts to transfer the values of Western democracy to countries with their own mentality, spiritual values and traditions lead to the opposite result,” he remarked.

Washington failed to stabilize both countries and instead faced growing chaos, where terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and eventually the Islamic State filled the vacuum. Not only did the US fail to ensure peace, Gerasimov lectured, but the wars “led to an escalation of tension, the exacerbation of contradictions, the growth of armed violence and civil wars, the death of civilians.”26

appalling conditions during the Taliban years. The infant mortality rate declined from 90 per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 47 per 1,000 live births in 2019, and life expectancy rose from fifty-six to sixty-four years during the same time period. Education also improved, as a growing number of male and, especially, female Afghans went to school.29 Afghans were richer, healthier, and better educated than under the Taliban regime.

OVER THE NEXT several years, Russian leaders believed that the United States had moved away from the “traditional” approach to warfare. Instead, the United States had developed a “new,” more clandestine approach to overthrowing governments and maximizing influence, which Gerasimov termed a “concealed use of force.”

Gerasimov’s analysis would be borne out in the next conflict—in Libya. It was an operation that the American media covered and then quickly forgot, but it made an enduring impression on Russia and other regional powers.

Beginning in March 2011, American, French, and British aircraft began targeting Qaddafi’s air defense systems. On the first day of the operation, US-guided missile destroyers and submarines fired more than 120 Tomahawk missiles that struck Libyan radar, missile, and command-and-control sites.36 The United States flew B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, which dropped forty-five precision-guided bombs on the regime’s aircraft shelters near Sirte. Additional cruise missile strikes destroyed Qaddafi’s command-and-control facility in Tripoli. NATO aircraft conducted a total of 26,300 sorties against the regime’s armored vehicles, artillery, and other targets, and provided rebels with an opportunity for victory in Libya.

Ever the military student, Gerasimov concluded that war was now conducted by a roughly 4:1 ratio of nonmilitary and military tools. These nonmilitary measures include economic sanctions, disruption of diplomatic ties, and political and diplomatic pressure.41

The war in Libya had a profound impact on Russia’s understanding of future wars—one that largely escaped the attention of Western analysts.44 Russians saw Libya as indicative of how big powers can “erode the morale of citizens and collapse its support for the national government,” in the words of one senior Russian military official.45 And Libya was only the tip of the iceberg in the United States’ new way of warfare. When the Arab Spring and the “color revolutions” spread like wildfire throughout North Africa and the Middle East, Gerasimov and others saw the hidden hand of the United States across the globe, including in Russia itself.46

Beginning in 2011, protests erupted in Russian cities like Moscow—and continued through 2013—against fraudulent elections, corruption, and poor economic conditions in Russia. In December 2011, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking on Moscow Echo radio, even called for Vladimir Putin to resign.47 For Russian leaders, covert US activity was hitting too close to home.

Russian leaders, however, saw the Arab Spring and color revolutions as part of the United States’ new way of warfare: an attempt to increase US influence indirectly and discreetly through clandestine means.49 As Gerasimov explained, a color revolution was “a form of non-violent change of power in a country by outside manipulation of the protest potential of the population in conjunction with political, economic, humanitarian, and other non-military measures.”50 What particularly concerned Gerasimov was the speed of state collapse that the United States, in his view, could engineer.51

American analysts felt this claim was unfounded. Outside of a few cases like Libya in 2011, the United States played little or no meaningful role in the Arab Spring or the color revolutions.55 In fact, US policy makers and US intelligence agencies were repeatedly blindsided by the rapid developments in the countries highlighted by Gerasimov. As acting CIA director Mike Morell lamented, US intelligence agencies and diplomats failed to fully anticipate the Arab Spring, in part because they had become too dependent on their counterparts in Middle Eastern governments for insights. “We were lax in creating our own windows into what was happening,”

On August 8, Taliban forces executed nine Iranian diplomats and one Islamic Republic News Agency journalist in Mazar-e-Sharif. Some in the Iranian government advocated invading Afghanistan.

The new Quds Force commander argued that it made more sense for Iran to adopt an irregular strategy through his Quds Force and support Afghan resistance groups, particularly those under the vaunted Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Using Tajikistan as a base of operation, Soleimani and his Quds Force ramped up assistance to Massoud and his Jamiat-e Islami militia force.6 A picture taken around this time shows a proud Massoud, dressed in a tan jacket, combat boots, and his iconic pakol—a soft, round-topped woolen hat. Soleimani stands to Massoud’s left, just off-center, with his hands folded comfortably in front.

ON SEPTEMBER 12, 2001, Soleimani hopped on an airplane and secretly flew to the northern Afghan province of Takhar, near the border with Tajikistan, to meet with Northern Alliance leaders. The world had turned upside down.

In December, Iran participated in the Bonn negotiations that put together a temporary Afghan government. James Dobbins, the US ambassador who led the US delegation to Bonn, recalled that US-Iranian cooperation was surprisingly good. “The Iranians were very interested in cooperating on Afghanistan and other areas,” he told me. In 2002, Ambassador Dobbins met with a Quds Force general under Soleimani who offered to help train the Afghan National Army under US leadership. “Condoleezza Rice organized a Principles Committee meeting at the White House to discuss the offer,” said Dobbins, “But there was little interest. We never even responded to Iran.”17

In late 2001, Soleimani supported providing intelligence to US officials on Taliban military positions. In return, the United States gave Iran information on an al-Qaeda facilitator in eastern Iran.20 US government officials held face-to-face discussions with Iran about the growing number of al-Qaeda operatives on Iranian soil, though the meetings produced nothing meaningful.

In early 2002, tensions between the United States and Iran significantly deteriorated for at least two reasons. The first was the decision by US president George W. Bush in January 2002 to finger Iran—along with North Korea and Iraq—as states that sponsored terrorism and produced weapons of mass destruction.

about potentially supplying them funding. “The United States was two-faced on Iran,” Dobbins sighed. “We had senior officials like me cooperating with the Iranians and Luti trying to overthrow them.”24

The “axis of evil” speech had one interesting unintended consequence. Iran had captured Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan mujahideen leader who had worked with Osama bin Laden and publicly declared his opposition to the US campaign in Afghanistan, and were holding him under house arrest in Tehran. As Crocker explained: “They were willing to hand him over to the AIA as part of a rendition operation, since [the Iranians] wanted to keep a low profile.”25 Crocker was referring to the newly established Afghan government, which was called the Afghan Interim Administration, or AIA. At that point, it would have been possible for the United States to seize Hekmatyar. After the speech, however, Iran took the option off the table. Nevertheless, Taherian told Crocker that they had brought Hekmatyar from Tehran and dropped him in Rabat, Pakistan—located in the Lower Dir District of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The CIA moved quickly to grab Hekmatyar, but just missed him.26 The Americans would regret the failure to seize Hekmatyar, since his Hezb-e-Islami organization waged a lethal campaign against US forces in Afghanistan along with the Taliban.

A second reason for the collapse of US-Iranian relations ce...

By 2002, Osama bin Laden had established al-Qaeda’s “Management Council” in Iran, which served as a backup body in case the United States captured or killed al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan.

For some US intelligence analysts, Iran’s willingness to allow al-Qaeda on its soil was a puzzle: Why would Shia Iran establish any relations with Sunni al-Qaeda? Iran and al-Qaeda did not have compatible ideological views, but they shared a common enemy: the United States. Iran was likely willing to allow some al-Qaeda leaders on its soil under tight monitoring as a wild card. If the United States attacked Iran, al-Qaeda could be helpful in responding. Once again, under Soleimani’s guidance, Iran had employed an asymmetric approach, choosing to work with an enemy in order to balance the greater threat: the United States.

With a growing contingent of al-Qaeda leaders in Iran, the United States then handed Iran a gift: it invaded Iraq. More than almost any single event since 9/11, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq shifted the balance of power in the region in favor of Iran and Soleimani.

This approach was classic irregular warfare, since Iran was operating against the United States indirectly through Iraqi partner forces—rather than directly through Iranian conventional forces. Soleimani, who would eventually develop a swagger that the CIA’s Norm Roule referred to as the “Soleimani strut,” succeeded on both fronts.40

Among the most lethal Iranian IEDs were the explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs. They were shaped charges with a concave end, which sent a molten copper slug through targets such as armored vehicles, and then created a deadly spray of hot metal. “EFPs are really bad,” recalled Brian Castner, the head of a US explosive ordnance disposal unit in Iraq. “They take off legs and heads, put holes in armor and engine blocks, and our bosses in Baghdad and Washington want every one we find.”42 Between July 2005 and December 2011, a startling 1,534 EFPs killed 196 US and coalition troops and wounded another 861.43 Soleimani and the Quds Force were instrumental in transporting EFP components from Iran into Iraq.

While American and Western culture continue to dominate the global landscape, Chinese cultural products are catching up. But China’s ascendance—at least as portrayed in Wolf Warrior II—is not inevitable.

Instead, the United States and Soviet Union engaged in intense security competition at the irregular level across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Both countries backed substate groups and states in an effort to expand their own power and influence. Under the Reagan Doctrine, for example, the United States provided overt and covert assistance to anticommunist governments and resistance movements to roll back communist gains across the globe.

the past few years, a growing body of Russian literature—very little of it translated into English—has examined why the United States won the Cold War. As many Russians now understand, they did not lose on a conventional battlefield. They lost in the hearts and minds of Russians, Eastern Europeans, and others across the globe who became disillusioned with the disastrous performance of communism. As the Russian military theorist Igor Panarin wrote, Russia lost the information war. George Kennan was right, Panarin said: “It was Kennan, a person who lived in Russia for many years, who accurately defined the direction of the main attack in the information war against the USSR.”4 Panarin contended that by the 1980s, Soviet political leaders and intelligence professionals had failed to adequately respond to an increasingly successful US information war:

They also underplayed the weaknesses of the Soviet Union’s communist system. But the broader point is unmistakable: a growing body of Russian history now argues that the United States won the Cold War through irregular means.

TODAY, the United States is in a period somewhat akin to the early years of the Cold War—“a 1947 redux,” as Undersecretary of Defense Mike Vickers told me—where the United States has an opportunity to refashion what it stands for, what it does, and what it represents in the world.

This final chapter argues that the principles and objectives that guide US foreign policy should be linked to the country’s democratic values, and US policy should leverage all the instruments of power, such as military, diplomatic, financial, development, intelligence, and ideological.

Perhaps the single most important step in competition is to refashion US foreign policy on the United States’ core principles, which have been in place since America’s founding.

While Gates argued that Maoism is “as dead as a doornail,” he nevertheless acknowledged that the Chinese “build great infrastructure. They’ve brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.” But that is not all that the Chinese bring, Gates continued with a wry grin: “You have to give up your political rights, and if you’re a Uyghur you will end up in a concentration camp. And there is political repression that gets worse every day.”8

China’s digital firewall, for example, banned over 18,000 websites that the government assessed had content unfavorable to China, as well as such platforms and services as Gmail, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and numerous virtual private network (VPN) providers.9

These three countries are challenging a US-led international system that has been committed since World War II to free market international economic institutions, bilateral and regional security organizations, and democratic political norms.

US president Ronald Reagan described competition with Moscow in black-and-white terms, as a “struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”12 Similarly, America’s competitors today do not have a desirable ideology to sell to foreign countries. “The Chinese don’t have political values that others want to model themselves after. But they do have money,” said Mike Morell.13 The same is true of Russia. “No one wants Russian television. No one wants to be like Russia,” said former JSOC commander General Stanley McChrystal.14