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I'll have those in the show notes, Shadow government's, what
they're doing is they're performing governance but what
they're providing to the resistance or Insurgency is
legitimacy. Today, we welcome Josh
Bedingfield who has studied at the Army school of advanced
military studies or Sam's. I brought Josh in today to talk
about his upcoming paper. The value proposition of Shadow
governments and resistance operations which should be out
this summer. Josh will give us a preview of
his findings and discuss how they are applied.
This is part 1 of 2. The second portion will be out
next week so let's get started. I am I trade.
The Baltic. Guy is how I would describe
myself while doing a lot of work in the baltics and then a tour
where I was focused on the entirety of the Yukon aor.
Do you bump into the 353? Civil Affairs.
Command, my had worked with them.
Personally, there was actually a 353 civil Affairs team in
Latvia. While I was in Latvia us never
to see a team's when used to kapok and one 95th while we were
there. Okay, did somebody plan that or
is it just they just happen to be there because two sides of
the coin were thrown in the pond man?
That's a short question. I think is a very complex
answer. You think the G9 of be like I'm
bringing an active duty and reserve one to Latvia and
there's What I need you guys to do?
Yeah, it wouldn't you'd also think there was some delineation
and responsibilities. Oh absolutely and synthesize
efforts but that's our job so well.
And this is the same thing that the Marine Corps with their
combination of influence and messaging.
You know, that was one of their first frustrations is, how do
you get all these individuals who've had their own silos for
so long work together and it almost resulted in torture.
I yeah yeah. So I think what it is is at some
point we're going to have to just start competing to where
people like, if a team lead wants to go out in the field and
they start saying, okay well these are the this is the
combination that I need in order to make that happen and I know
Jack's a good PA. Oh, I know that Andre is a good
I/O and I want if they're available I want them to come
with me and and it goes by name so that we're more effective.
Yeah. Like I would say, Kind of lends
itself towards a theory of assignment by purpose or
assignment by Talent, right right.
Instead of saying I need the insert position here, regardless
of who is in that position because their ruins trained at
the same level and capability. We need to make sure that the
right person is in that position.
Or if the right person is not in that position is so nice just to
be the right person regardless of position, right to fulfill a
specified function at a given time and place.
Yeah. So about your paper.
Do you want to give a big picture overview of it?
Sure. Yeah so you know I'm currently a
student at the advanced military studies program at Sam's one of
the core outputs of your one-year time.
Here is a research monograph. Sure.
So I have started both research project that I've done over the
last two years. The first one at CGS see, sort
of War scholar in the second. One here is stands by just going
to the Joint Special Operations. University Research proposals.
Yeah. So I found one in there that had
to do with Shadow government's. What is their role?
What's their purpose? What is our role as Special
Operations forces within that portion of a resistance?
And or I'm going to use a word here that I will come back
around to or Insurgency framework right on my research
proposal, kind of looking at what our Owners have to say
about Shadow governments in existing Doctrine and or
concepts, right? And when I found was Shadow
governments are mentioned within Special Forces Doctrine very
minimally. There's about four paragraphs of
text, right? We can translate that to about a
few pages of text. We could even say that I'm
partially wrong and that I'm missing some, but it's still a
small amount, right? And in multinational Concepts
namely the resistance operating concept.
Offered by Auto fiala. He spends considerably more
time, talking about Shadow governments but I argue he
spends that time talking about Shadow governments in terms of
their relationship to enhancing the outcomes of other more
common resistance or Insurgency, structures notably, the gorillas
underground, an auxiliary. So I had to work that way
towards understanding exactly what we meant when we said
Shadow government. So, when we go by Doctrine
Shadow governments exist, As one of three forms of what do U s--
Army Doctrine defines as the public component of a resistance
or an Insurgency. So the public component can
manifest, as either a shadow government, a government in
Exile, or an internally displaced government, the common
thread of what each of those organizations do is that they
provision governance, right? So if gorillas fire weapons, in
order to cause some kind of a destructive effect in the
auxiliary perform, And underground perform various
functions like Logistics, and intelligence and providing Safe
Haven. Okay, these forms of government
are specifically purposed to providing governance in order to
do two things simultaneously. The first thing is to enhance
the connection between that resistance or Insurgency with an
existing government, right? Right.
And to compete for Influence and legitimacy with the occupying or
opposing government, okay, and speaking a gorilla.
So I was thinking, is there a difference between proxy
networks and Shadow governments? Is it because they're providing
services to the public. So, when we say proxy forces
where I would draw a clear delineation between them and
Shadow governments, or even internally displaced governments
or government in Exile, is that proxy, invites a rhetoric where
those Those conducting the activity or doing it on behalf
of themselves, right? There's an installation or
another entity that is conducting.
Those functions may be similar in terms of purpose or output,
but to use a metaphor or a hypothetical situation.
It would be like the United States sending United States
Personnel. That don't necessarily find
themselves as a native part of that resistance or Insurgency to
go and perform the Auction of a shadow government or government
in Exile. Perón internally Place
government. I would be a proxy.
Okay, so, and to give an example of publicly known one would be
Wagner sure. I mean, as a proxy, whereas in
your examples, I think there's two good examples.
One would be Myanmar and the national Unity government.
That's the previously democratic government that's in.
Exile. So they are what you would say
is a shadow government versus The military regime that's in
power now. Yeah.
And you know what the second would be because you're talking
about like a rebel force that is trying to Curry favor with the
population. That probably was the farc back
when they were still in full Revolt.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So the farc had a component that was what's in, what we would
Define it as an Insurgency, and they would Define us resistance,
right? Right farting.
Ever walked around saying, let's wait and surgeon.
See they said resist right whether or not we Define things
as a resistance. An Insurgency is purely.
Based off of perspective. One man's Freedom Fighters.
Another man's terrorist is it kind of like that?
Absolutely. Yeah.
So, yeah. And even terrorists finds itself
an interesting bedfellow here with Shadow government's, right?
Because we would call the Taliban terrorists or insurgents
kind of in the same sentence. And they might buy into that for
messaging purposes, but the Taliban had a functioning Shadow
government Afghanistan for 20 years.
Absolutely. And it's interesting how I've
seen it with Terror. Groups and other insurgents in
foreign policy where they're trying, they're driving to have
some type of legitimacy and the United States does not recognize
them or the host government will not recognize him the Tamil
Target. Tigers is one example.
Excellent example. Yeah, I mean, they fought for
legitimacy. They had a government, they had
they had influence on the population but they struggled
with recognition and all the way through until they were finally.
Finally acquiesced after that massive shelling on their
population in military, but that one that one just struck me as
you were talking. So anyway, I apologize for
cutting you off. No, it's no problem.
You've actually circled back around to the root question,
what is the research about in looking at what we have to say
and Multinational concept have to say about Shadow governments,
right? We don't say a lot about it.
So I said, okay, well, I think that they're important.
That's my gut feeling was inclined to do is just say, hey,
I need to make an argument about why.
Why the US government needs to care about Shadow governments,
more notably like are soft. Sure, Army Special Operations
forces. When we talk about supporting
disrupting or building resistances, we need to care
more about it. But we don't have enough in
there to be able to determine if that's that juice, is worth the
squeeze. So, the core research question
that came up with this, What is the value proposition of a
shadow government? What are its advantages and
disadvantages in terms of a resistant structure?
What does it provide to a resistance that is novel and
unique aside from what you get in, pretty much any resistance,
which almost unilaterally includes gorillas and a grounds
and auxiliaries? What is a shadow government do
for you? And what you were just talking
about is kind of what I found. Where the research is that when
you're talking about a shadow government exercising,
governance within the occupied territory of, you know, what we
might Define as a denied environment and old Doctrine,
they're in the zone of control of an opposition government,
right? What they're doing is they're
performing governance but what they're providing to the
resistance or Insurgency is legitimacy.
So, I perform a function itay out in terms of an output and
what I get back in terms of currency is legitimacy.
And what I had to do in order to Define legitimacy because
interestingly it's not really clearly defined and US military
Doctrine. Sure is I married up a few
things that Doctrine says with a few researchers.
And essentially, when I say legitimacy, what I mean is the
number of people who support an authority, okay?
That is the measure of legitimacy.
So if a resistance has X number of gorillas and X number of
auxiliary, and X number of underground, they have 200,000
people. Right?
That's support that resistance either materially or immaterial
E passively right. When given a choice they're
going to say I'm going to follow that resistance that they tell
me to do something. Absolutely intimacy.
That's people willfully. Obeying that Authority at the
expense often of obeying the opposition Authority, right?
You saw something very similar and Burundi with that.
Attempted coup back in 2016, I believe the ruler is out of
country. They block the airport and they
threw a coup, but they weren't able to overthrow the ministry
of Defence. So when the leader got back in
country, the ministry of Defence went after the coup leaders, but
there's still a heavy support. For the opposition.
Yeah, let's look at that example.
So when that was occurring, when there was this surge of support,
I would argue we need to look at that.
In terms of what the balance of legitimacy is, is that you had a
government that was looking at the people saying, don't Revolt,
right? I'm going to Institute a measure
of Martial law. I'm going to deploy some of my
police. I'm gonna deploy some of my
military. I'm going to try and exercise.
My instruments of power to either Either get you to
willingly not take action or compel you into inaction, right?
And on the response you got some people and it says the curse of
the information of absence where we don't really have a good idea
of the number of people that heard that message from the
government and said all right I'm not going to go out and
protest today like I'm not going to support it right?
I will tell you that in is definitely more than zero.
But what you saw is a huge number of people who heard that
message and say, hmm, when given the choice of willfully obeying
or being coerced into obedience by the existing Authority, I'm
going to choose to obey the resistance who is telling me go
to the streets, take action today.
That is representation of legitimacy of an opposition
power, and you really only get that in large returns face.
My research, if there is a form or another of a shadow
government at play. So essentially I had a few
findings, my hypothesis is that shadow government formed
governance, and the output of governance is legitimacy.
Yes, which means that the function of a shadow government
is to return to the resistance or Insurgency legitimacy.
And my hypothesis is that as Shadow governments increase in
their efficiency. There is a correlative increase
in two other variables. The first variable is the odds
that the resistance is successful.
There's some interesting research by a young lady named
chynoweth, who is in her book. Why civil resistance Works soon
as you get to nonviolent resistance that has 3.5 percent
of the Civil population? Supporting you, the odds that
you are going to be victorious Skyrocket.
There's a noticeable jump and the odds that you are successful
Genoa. That sounds familiar.
Fantastic book. Highly.
That anybody in the Civil Affairs Community, why civil
resistance works by Erica Chenoweth?
I'll get a link to it. I'll Circle back around to you
because actually, it's two people Erica Chenoweth, the
Maria J, Stephen right? Okay, okay, so I just took that
and said, hey, we can take that as a general ISM that says you
can increase your legitimacy, which is the number of people to
support you to such a degree that the odds that you were
going to be successful approach to fit of Absent.
Some kind of a massive Crackdown on behalf of the government.
And then, secondly, is that as your legitimacy increases, the
odds that there is going to be a subsequent resistance to your
Victory, decrease because the people are brought into your
structure, right? So I did two case studies on
this hypothesis. I looked at solidarity and
Poland, which was my nonviolent resistance scenario.
And I looked at the Vietcong in Vietnam, essentially after the
front end, In a war, we would Define as the Vietnam War, but
really looking at 1955, through US, termination of involvement,
right? As the violent one, right?
Because the Vietcong were obviously violent, but they also
had a robust Shadow government. They did that cities.
Yeah, I mean, we say cities so literature.
Refers to it differently. They will call it the Vietcong
infrastructure. Yeah.
The Vietcong Shadow government, I even found some authors that
simply just thought that the whole thing was an intelligence.
Operation. But I mean, Morris is research
on the Vietcong Shadow government, they had cells of
governing authorities that reached all the way from Hamlet
to National level that were so robust.
One of her great quotes in her book, is that when Saigon fell,
when the North Vietnamese rolled into South Vietnam and declared
Victory, there was this immediate transition.
It was almost imperceptible or the shadow government because it
had so much Legitimacy and had so deeply ingrained itself into
the Runnings of the South Vietnamese sphere.
It just became the government. They just traded hands.
I just traded hands. It just became the government.
And frankly, a similar thing happened in solidarity, there's
a different transience of events because you have 10 years of
Martial law or solidarity, is pushed into the Shadows.
But when they finally emerge jerez else Keys, martial law
goes away, and you've got perestroika.
Come in and there's this evening of the playing field of
solidarity becomes legalized. Again, they go to the polls and
all that legitimacy that they built back a decade before that.
In 1981, 1982 1983 is just still there, right?
Solidarity, gets elected in a landslide Victory and nobody
looks at it side way. You're talking about the Polish
solidarity movement, right? Yeah, with luck.
We'll listen. Yeah, yeah.
So just checking, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
So you look at that and then a good kind of check on it is
Okay. Well, how do I confirm that?
That's the good finding and I will give you a counter argument
like a straw man to it right? Those institutions had good
legitimacy, they had legitimate support amongst the population
and there's no resistance to him afterwards.
What is a good example of a successful Insurgency, I will
take the heat on defining it as such and the aftermath of this.
Who did not have good legitimacy amongst the populace and
continued to face a resistance to their rule?
The Taliban. Sure they can walk out of the
conflict and say we've been successful.
The Taliban Shadow government to a degree assumes control of the
Afghanistan government but they don't have real legitimacy
because they've been relying on coercive legitimacy to compel
the population and obedience, rather than actually
establishing good governance with them, good strong bond,
right? Right.
And they take control, and they immediately had a threat on
their doorstep because they're not perceived as legitimate.
Yeah. And that's a tough one.
That's a tough one to Define. Because, in a way, they came in
with an integrated governance system.
So that like you said, they were able to basically hand over the
keys. And they had people at every
level provincial level all the way up in the National taking
positions, but they did it in a course of way.
But are they, are they still, are they a legitimate?
Government or are we just holding up and we're holding a
blind eye to it, or are they in a little illegitimate
government? That is oppressed in this
population and this is where the term legitimacy gets a little
weird. So I have to look at it from a
very specific Viewpoint of legitimacy when applied to the
population. Sure.
But when we asked a broad question, like, is the
government legitimate We can look at that and say, oh well
let's look at the percentage of the population.
Is that willingly obeys the Taliban government, right?
But when we expand that perspective as into a question
of like is it internationally legitimate?
Then we have to come up with a totally different framework for
it. Right?
Like is it internationally recognized?
Do they have allies? Do they have treaties well, that
that's an argument. You can place on Iran and a
dozen other countries you know because that's that's a good
atmosphere. It's hard to Define, it's hard
to Define, which is why I really tried to stick to it, from a
perspective of the people, okay? And what I would argue and I'll
cite Florian weekend. He wrote a great book called
waiting for dignity legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan.
Took a really great look at how the Taliban Shadow government
executed its functions through the conflict.
And then also, you know, a little bit of a look at gyro,
has actions throughout that bay area and the problem on both
which is a key part of the research that I conducted was,
If we look at it through what governments actually is, which I
don't Define the same way that the US Army defines it for not
just the actions of the government first and foremost,
my own little Insurgency, it just baffles me.
Can I strongly encourage that we as a profession actively work
toward directly acknowledging. That governance is not the
function of governments alone. There are systems of authority,
all around that have nothing to do with governments that shape
our daily lives, right? Through.
So we have to find a way to say what governance is without just
saying it's things that governments do.
If we do that, I'm a big fan of Morgan key and Selma magnussen's
theory on the social contract theory.
And they say essentially governance boils down to re
lines of effort you have shared values performance and services
of systems of exchange, right? So instead of categorizing it by
a type of action of actor, they categorize it by the types of
actions of An actor and they say, hey, this is how you get
Authority, you build systems of exchange you provision services
and performance. And you do so by demonstrating,
shared values with those who are being governed and if you do
that, well, they're going to give you a Jetta mahseer.
Going to choose to buy into this system.
This contract that you have put forward with them and what gyro
and the Taliban Shadow government didn't do very well
was demonstrate shared values. Okay, and they covered up poor
metrics of performance and really didn't have good systems
of exchange. I mean I was in Afghanistan it's
a platoon leader back in 2011 and a little tiny District
Center just south of Bagram. And you know it's this little
village and there's Hills all around them and they don't look
up like we do in America. I look up and I see him salmon
the clouds, right? Like the federal government is a
part of my daily life. The state government is a part
of my daily life. I interact with Their various
means and mechanisms as a part of the way that we are
structured. They don't do that in
Afghanistan. A local Village looks at their
elders and they look at the systems of power that actually
shape how they go about their lives.
And so, a purely democratic form of government where there's this
representative democracy with these Representatives, you know,
speaking on behalf of tribes that they don't actually Geo
locate themselves. With is actually great ties with
about why the Vietnamese Shadow government by the Viet Cong.
Shadow government was successful.
Similar values out there and where the South Vietnamese
government was trying to build this prong Western facing
democracy. The Vietcong were saying, hey I
understand that you guys are much more focused at the Hamlet
and town level hyper, local forms of governance and that's
where I'm going to be. Yeah.
So you might have had a South Vietnamese government actor.
That was governing a large area but the people in the hamlets
didn't see that, they didn't have a system of exchange with
it. There was Way to build shared
values there, that's how the Taliban were trying to influence
as well as to reach out underneath the provincial
governance and go into these Villages and work with the
elders in order to get support right, Bri wholeheartedly.
As long as we Define the word work in that sentence as coerce,
right? Right violently coerce, there
were times where they were just out there paying off at for
influence and there are other times where it was agreements
on, keeping a mosque open, or allowing, In public weddings.
So it wasn't always at the barrel of a gun or at a thread.
Sometimes it was trying to get collaboration with the local
population if they could sure if they couldn't, then they got
into coercion. Let's say that the overriding
majority of the time. Yeah yeah.
That's a great way to put it, right?
Like if there was an easy way to do it.
Then yeah, we're going to get legitimate.
We're going to get actual shared values or a system built on
actual shared values. But if I don't get it that I'm
not, I'm not above, you know, a night letter, right?
Or Shooting your your father or something, right?
And that's why the u.s. is counter Taliban influence
program focused on having people on the ground doing
atmospherics. And then when a local Elder was
in contact with the Taliban and they were saying, oh yeah we'll
leave your moderate. Mosque open or will allow you to
have Sports Plus females can have sports to, we would find
out from other atmospheric said, no they had shut that down in
other towns and we would get those reports to that.
Village Elder. So they knew what was going on
around them and that would give them more power to say.
Well you're already shutting people down here and there so I
don't trust you. Sure.
And that was in hopes of then building reasonable police for
security around that Village support of state with governance
and aid for development. I never felt like the counter
Taliban program coalesce that well.
Yeah, and again not to trip on it a lot but there's another
great parallel with what the This military's approach to
combating the Vietcong Shadow government was right in
Afghanistan the program. You just mentioned, I would add
to it, you had the vso program and then the contrast that in
the Vietnam War was the Phoenix chords program, right?
Which is same Dual Purpose Phoenix, which was admittedly
kill capture, very enemy Centric.
I'm going to remove the Personnel that are performing
this function by either a killer capture method, that's Phoenix.
And then chords Was there anti governance approach and this is
where again, our Doctrine really, there's a gap in it.
When we say that governments is the activities of a government.
Then when we say, you know, hypothetically speaking were
conducting governance activities or transitional governance which
is the the recently updated 3-5 7.
Then we're saying that when we are conducting an operation in
line with governance, we're doing is strengthening Stunning.
The activities of the government were building resilient
structures within them or making them perform better and some way
shape or form. Sure.
But what we just talked about it's two great examples where we
applied military and to a degree whole-of-government approach,
but we did it to weaken a form of governance.
Yes, it wasn't. I'm not going to say that there
wasn't a purpose in Vietnam to strengthen the South Vietnamese
government will say that those programs in Afghanistan weren't
meant to strengthen. Earthen gyro up but there was a
purpose with them to weaken the opposition Shadow government.
Sure, break down those structures reorient the people
away from them toward the structures we need them to be
bought into and that's counter government.
That's an activity that is purposed toward breaking
governments and again if we don't have a good framework
which I argue we don't on what governance actually is then it
becomes very difficult to qualify what Likely governance
has a governance activity is or operation or a counter
governance operation. Then we just have to say big
things like strengthen government.
I very much agree with you because what I saw was mirroring
where we just in place the u.s. style judicial system or we in
placed a parliamentary system but we didn't really look at how
we can reinforce the local community.
Local leader, governance. Those networks that were already
naturally there. We didn't reinforce those into
something that would be a national government.
We just we just imposed style that we thought would fit and
I'll be honest, a Greco-Roman judicial system was already
tried by the Greeks and the Romans and it didn't work so I'm
not really sure why we're trying the same thing over.
That sounds kind of like trying to repeat the same thing over
and over to find a new solution. This is another reason why I
really like K and magnussen's theory on social contract.
Because what it says is, you could theoretically have great
systems of exchange and really Stellar performance and services
metrics, but if it's not built on shared values, right?
You're a fraud. It's just increasingly becoming
simpler to determine for, at least question the motives that
were presented. That's part one of two will see
Josh next week where he'll finish this discussion on the
value? Proposition of Shadow
governments. Thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please like And subscribe, and rate the show
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Also, if you're interested in coming on the show, or hosting
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have the email and see a association website in the show
notes. It's and now most importantly to
those currently out in the field working with a partner Nations
people or leadership to forward us relations.
Thank you all for what you're doing.
This is Jack, your host stay tuned for more great episodes
once the a podcast It's and now most importantly to those
currently out in the field working with a partner Nations
people or leadership to forward us relations.
Thank you all for what you're doing.
This is Jack, your host stay tuned for more great episodes
once the a podcast