Limited Print and Electronic Distribution RightsThis document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

No abstract

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-0-8330-9482-7For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR1290Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2016 RAND CorporationR® is a registered trademark.iii PrefaceThe attacks by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Paris on November 13, 2015, represented a watershed moment that spurred wide international recognition of the growth and reach of ISIL and a resulting consensus that more active measures were needed to confront the group. The counter-ISIL campaign has accelerated since the fall of 2015, but questions persist as to the exact suite of measures needed and the adequacy of the overall strategy to degrade and defeat ISIL. These questions also grew more acute with Russia's military intervention on behalf of the Syrian regime starting September 30, 2015, which greatly strengthened the regime's faltering hand against its armed opponents. The anti-ISIL fight in that country has increasingly blended with that civil war, as ISIL moved westward and a skittish Turkey sought to preserve room for opposition Arab forces against the Syrian Kurds.This report assesses the first 18 months of the campaign to counter ISIL. This analysis should be of interest to the policymakers and legislators charged with overseeing the counter-ISIL strategy, as well as the military and civilian practitioners involved in executing it. The paper evaluates the viability of the partnered approach by evaluating the capabilities and interests of the various forces that the United States is attempting to support, considers the political impediments to achieving the stated objective of defeating ISIL, and assesses the approach compared with other potential alternatives. This report recommends steps to (1) improve the partnered approach to the military campaign, (2) formulate a detailed approach to the foundational political line of effort, and (3) synchronize the political and military ...

T he United States faces a number of actors who use a wide range of political, informational, military, and economic measures to influence, coerce, intimidate, or undermine its interests or those of its friends and allies. This brief summarizes a study that provided a clearer view of these adversarial measures short of conventional warfare and derived implications and recommendations for the U.S. government and military. To this end, at the request of the sponsor, RAND Corporation researchers examined the historical and current practices that fall into this realm of conflict short of conventional war. The starting point was the term political warfare, as defined in 1948 at the outset of the Cold War by U.S. diplomat George Kennan: "Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as. .. the Marshall Plan), and 'white' propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of 'friendly' foreign elements, 'black' psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states." 1 Political warfare is a historical term, but current analogues, such as gray zone, are also used to describe this realm of conflict.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-0-8330-9210-6For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR1236Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. PrefaceThis report examines the role of U.S. special operations forces in Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines from 2001 to 2014. The report documents the chief activities of U.S. special operations forces and their effects on transnational terrorist threats in the southern Philippines, the capacity and capability of the Philippine security forces, and the U.S.-Philippines bilateral relationship. The purpose of the report is to provide an authoritative and comprehensive account of a long-duration special operations mission to aid policymakers and military planners, as well as for use in professional military education. This detailed account illustrates the varied and robust types of operational assistance provided as a critical component of foreign internal defense, which distinguishes this special operations mission from security cooperation activities and train-and-equip missions. Foreign internal defense often includes training and equipping, but the focus is on employing and not just building capacity and capability. And unlike security cooperation, which often aims to secure access and build relationships, foreign internal defense seeks to harness those activities to achieve an operational result. To achieve that result, U.S. forces carry out a wide range of enabling and advisory activities on or near the battlefield, which can include direct support to combat or combat advising in accordance with rules of engagement established by U.S. policy and hostnation agreement, as well as civil affairs and information operations. Although the specific activities can vary, the U.S. emphasis in foreign internal defense is on supporting the objectives, plans, and operations of the host nation and partner forces.