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torgue. I'll have those in the show
notes. My name is Juan quirós.
I'm currently an active duty civil Affairs officer and I
worked civil Affairs Force modernization at Fort Bragg
North Carolina today. Once he a podcast welcomes Juan
quirós to discuss his paper. The oblique approach to a
regular Warfare civil Affairs as the main effort and strategic
competition published January. 20 23 in the small Wars Journal
we brought in Today to talk about his article and the Civil
Affairs approached the competition.
We had a lot of fun recording this interview so I don't want
to waste time. Let's get to it one.
Welcome to the one. See a podcast.
So what inspired you to write this paper before I start all
that thing is expressed in the paper and I own this call or my
own, right? So I was a team leader in an
activity, civil Affairs, Battalion from 2019 and 2020
one, and in my own conception of my career.
Dark. You can say, will coincided with
the end of Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021 and the
beginning of the competition, great power competition with the
2018 National Security strategy. I kind of saw my own career as a
team leader, kind of straddle, the beginning of competition in
the end of counterterrorism as the focus.
So besides the schoolhouse where you kind of get the basic
Doctrine and lessons learned from your instructors, I just
never saw in my own unit. How do we get after she's a
competition and a lot of people say, well, you know, we're
kautz. So you go out there, you check
out the internal environment and report back.
What you see, which if you think about others, plenty of
researchers, plenty of think tanks, and a lot of journalists
who cover Chinese activities or just foreign activities in
general and that could work. But if you think about it a lot
of what PRC does is trying to mold the civilian environment
into their favor military ties are over.
I've ridden, I agree and I think it's smart that you saw the
pivot and you tried to move off of terrorism even though
terrorism is still an active US policy.
And there are people dedicated to it.
Competition is going to start to overwhelm the agencies and the
Departments and focusing on it. It sounds like you kind of try
to get ahead of it. You think about it?
We have a partner for that. You might work with repeatedly,
doing Jay sets, training events, Sending some of their guys to
school in the US. But if that same person as gay
quality foam on a Huawei Network, all their country's
economic goods are exported to China and all their imports from
China. Then you're really giving
military training to somebody who on other levels of social
economic factors. It's not as if you hold it to
China but they're dependent on China, right?
Well, how do we get after those avenues for influence?
And Coercion obvious civil Affairs.
Focus on every non military aspects of the environment.
That's what I was trying to get at.
I'm not sure about yourself Jack, but I know me as a junior
officer besides the training. I got for the qualification
course, I never really read Doctrine in depth for myself
until I got out of that tactical time where you're always
training and you're always deploying.
So I thought well now that I have time to actually marinate
and read dr. Now how can I reinterpret this
be relevant to those guys who they don't have time to read.
150 pages of Doctrine. They can read a five-page
article, sure, and one I think, but you wrote is helpful for
that because you saw that gap between what's being taught in a
school house and what's going on in the ground and you applied
it. And that's so important because
you're the canary for policy change, because you're out in
the ground. You're seeing that the current
conflict is not terrorism. Its It's corruption on the
ground. It's payoffs, its economic
influence. Its everything except for the M
shifting conditions to where Nations change their orbits and
favor of are, you know, competitor?
Yeah, that's correct. And you applied it.
So that's great. Have you seen a lot of response,
just from my active duty peers who reached out that?
Hey you know, saw the article thing is the great summation of
what we should be doing or reply or doctor differently.
One of my oh I see s. That somebody in a different
unit sent out a mass email saying, hey you guys should read
this, check it out, somebody's free looking at CA stop touring
for competition, he's like, oh, this is written by you and I was
like how do I get stops? And more people who don't read
small Wars journal. And so, I figured it would be
good to get more awareness for it or and do you want to cover
some of the key points of the paper?
Sure, first of all, the reason why I chose that title, the
oblique approach to regular Warfare was because the
irregular warfare. You look at army Doctrine.
Says the focus of earlier warfare's operations are to gain
or maintain influence over a relevant population through
political psychological economic methods.
It isn't same overt military action or organized violence.
So there are ways to get after irregular warfare and I think
that's where civil Affairs can play.
Do you some good? We've had this before that.
This is actually just a cycle of Special Operations and low
intensity. I liked that fills the gap
between major conflict and cold Wort, I guess.
So, and going back to the clausewitz's quote that
everybody likes to use war is politics.
By other means, you could argue regular Warfare is just Warfare
by political means. If you look at politics, you
manage human relations in regards to resources.
So, in my conception, the old, traditional way of warfare was
military action. Gets you to the 5 yard line and
then, to the fair, Has become in trying to help get the politics
right at the Tactical level. So that these strategic level
objectives is reached for instance, in Afghanistan.
If there's a government in place, that's what civil
Affairs, try to help get past, that 5-yard, line Tour actual
objective. But in a regular Warfare, I
would say it's reversed instead of carrying the ball, the last
five yards, civil Affairs and other civil entities in the
interagency have to carry that ball. 95 out of that, huh?
Yard. We should be doing when Jordi of
the work because nose of the battlefield for their political
economic. So I know in my article as a
subtitle strategic competition, a lot of organizations we would
be working with maybe don't necessarily view their
activities as Warfare and I would argue that's fair.
Yeah, you don't want someone from trade and commerce coming
in and talking Warfare it just it's wrong.
You want them to talk about trade and commerce and then how
we integrate To make sure we get to the same foreign policy
goals. Yeah, the paperwork tactical
soldiers and leaders so they can understand can fit into the
wider US Government. Protests civil Affairs because
we deploy in such small teams we work with.
So many senior level interagency people you need to have an idea
of the bigger picture. So way, I organize the paper
would first what would make civil Affairs?
The main effort in irregular warfare for competition.
So I try to find relevant. Bowls of these things happening.
What are the tools that are being used corruption?
Economic coercion, this information.
These are areas that civil Affairs can take the lead in and
so I just summarized fm3, Dash 57 core Mission sets of civil
Affairs, good example. So Network development and
engagement a civil Affairs. Team to build a network that
helps counter Chinese influence. My paper, I pointed out a
example of a local community in Kenya that worked with ngos to
block the construction of a Chinese Finance, coal plant,
that would have destroyed their ecosystem and their
environmental well-being and then it will knowledge
integration. Another process all civil
Affairs units do but instead of focusing on for our higher
command or adjacent units about some considerations, I'm talking
about how do we form USA? IID ngos igos about concerns
that they would be better pursuing and which could also
help counter malign foreign influence, right?
And USA, it is trying to put their arms around this whole
competition thing. So a state, everyone's
struggling to figure out how to get on the ground and be more
influential against competitors. Yeah and you can even argue that
the division of labor because Department of State and usaid
have pretty big Footprints. Yeah but so there's can go to
more places and hopefully with the paper can give some ideas
for how to go about it. Sure matter of fact I've been
looking at updating the see a core tasks on anti-corruption.
Be it's been an interesting part of my career for a long time and
it fell in my lap just recently. One of the things I've been
pitching is Not only oversight and monitoring, which is a part
of the, you know, see a core practice.
Now but also doing the interagency engagement and
targeting towards illicit, actors or oligarchs to go after
the things that drive that oligarch or that criminal actor
so that it drives them to reforms better oversight and
exit from their position. Yeah.
And You can argue civil Affairs are meant to understand and
leverage civilian environment, while also supporting.
And enabling governance countering corruption is part of
governance function implies that a society's resources aren't
being applied correctly for the benefit of that community.
So figuring out a way to operate on that line of effort will be
very useful because if there's better governance in our
partners, that means that they're stronger and more
resilient against whatever threat.
Outsider internal that they may be facing, right?
And we've seen enough collapsing.
Armies in Iraq and Afghanistan to not want to go there anymore.
Yeah. Me, ask you.
Are you a reserve CIA officer. I am.
I'm both a public affairs and civil Affairs officer.
Okay, awesome. That was going to also mention
in my paper, I mostly focus on the active component, but we can
definitely talk about like, well, what is this paper mean
for the reserves? Sure.
Well, I was just interviewing a couple people from an fx SP A
out of Staten Island. They run an agriculture cell and
they are either agricultural academics.
Or they are economists, but they all have these heavy-hitting
jobs in the outside and then they bring those skills into the
reserves and it's super helpful because USDA doesn't always want
to send people into high-risk areas, but having them going
uniform and go out to these high-risk areas in order to do
agriculture assessments. Yeah, there.
Fine with that because it's, you know what the roles for.
And that that was one of the things that one of the ca
soldiers was telling me, is the reason that people work in
agencies and join civil Affairs is so that they can get out
there into the fold a little more into The Fray than what
their agencies would allow them and apply those skills.
So that we have early prevention, we have early
inoculation to these things that cause the grand corruption or
terrorism or other things that are, I don't know, poisonous to
the system in a lot of ways that make sense it does.
And those kind of people could be the connective tissue between
the active component and the interagency since they have feet
in both worlds. I push so as a better crossover
between reserves and active duty.
So that if you needed someone who focused on energy or
agriculture, or banking, you could access a database It said
this is all of the ca forces and oh, this guy runs a bank out of
Minnesota, you know? And you call them up and he can
give you all of the structures that you need or policies that
govern or oversight on banking. Whatever it takes, whatever
you're looking for. So I wish there was that kind of
resource database. Definitely.
That's part of town management. I'm not going to get into that
because I'm not a human resources specialist but the
branches Is small enough to wear something like that.
Could be happening informally, but there should be a way to
formalize that hole. So we can have a better
connection between the reserve and active component, might be
another paper have to write about how do we bridge that
divide between reserve and active little more?
I know we've been banging our heads on it for years.
I think we're making strides in that direction.
I think there's nothing great and also you know, the first
time you meet somebody you don't want to just spend your time
asking them. Well what do you do?
Think it's definitely a little primer for somebody.
If they might not have met someone from oti a marine civil
Affairs officer, it was a great episode.
I just listened to actually a few days ago.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, in regards to the article,
the branch is so small and the demand is so critical embassies.
Want some of the capability that we have under it.
See, Andy's want Billy, we have commanders gcc's, they all want
this capability, I wanted to get more CA soldiers involved, or at
least aware of what I was writing.
So maybe they can say, well, my next deployment, a, you know
what, why can't we do that? Also, it's in the doctor and,
you know, we're also trained on this stuff or we should be
training on this stuff in our unit levels, right?
Actually, it sounds like you could be Consulting as People
are prepared to deploy so that they know they have these tricks
or some type of reach back. Also, in my experience, having a
command that's responsible for operation level effects, in a
region deploying for only six months and have to relearn it
all when then you guys come in seemed a little inefficient.
So the Strategic environment is changing where you don't need
only maneuver guys, your country armor or SF in charge of Horse
or a command, you know, you can have a civil Affairs in our sap
guy in charge because they could be better suited to orchestrate
this effects in campaigns. Sure I had some folks that were
working in. They're focused on Myanmar and
if and I'll trade and they're asking me what I could do about
it. And I started organizing talks
at panels and think tanks bringing in specialist on
Fentanyl and the military and counter-narcotics.
Aquatics and I started raising a lot of awareness on what was
going on in in Myanmar and the fentanyl trade and it's helped
me to a lot more counter Chinese fentanyl operations in that
area. So it's a weird world and you
haven't even brought up the other contributions to IO.
That's double Affairs can provide.
So obviously you know, Jo psyops, the hookes law on
messaging, but messaging is like an air campaign.
If you don't have boots on the ground to actually make the
effects reality, it's like a better term.
Kind of like an annoying add on Google or something.
So, we're pushing the u.s. is here to help or work with us
because of the benefits complement that with a see a
team were see a unit on the ground actually doing something
living up to the promise of that messaging now, I totally agree.
I think I've always believed that the Seabees and civil
Affairs are the best. Diplomats be the Navy Seabees,
because they just build. Things.
But civil Affairs, they're out there working with populations
and proving their economics, their politics.
Helping with their Health Systems bringing out doctors and
veterinarians. Whenever they're available, it
just changes the whole conditions around local
populations and governments. It's a terrific deal.
All right, well one I appreciate your time.
No. Yeah, it sounds great.
Hopefully, some of that stuff was usable for you.
I know. I'm not like the best public
speaker so maybe do fine. Actually.
You're very clear. Okay.
Maybe I'll just start doing rough cast that way.
People are like I'm gonna have a beer and start talking on the
radio. Yeah.
Longtime listener first-time caller.
Yeah, exactly. And I got something to say.
Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like
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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.
Jack your host, stay tuned for more great episodes. 1, c a
podcast. Jack your host, stay tuned for
more great episodes. 1, c a podcast.