Q&A: Lieutenant General David P. Fridovich
Written by Jeff McKaughan
SOTECH 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 4 (June)
Center for Special Operations
United States Special Operations Command
In 1984, he completed the Special Forces (SF) Detachment Officer’s Qualification course and reported to the reactivated 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Lewis, Wash., where he served in the 3rd Battalion, commanding both an SF operational detachment alpha (ODA) and bravo (ODB) before becoming the battalion operations officer.
He served as the senior SF observer controller, and later chief, Special Operations Division, at the Joint Readiness Training Center. In 1995, he took command of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group and the Special Operations Task Force-Haiti, where his command was involved with Operation Uphold Democracy in support of the United Nations Mission in Haiti.
Fridovich commanded the combined/joint special operations task force in Operation Joint Forge, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, from January through July 2000. He assumed command of the 1st Special Forces Group in August 2000. He led Army Special Operations Task Force, Operation Enduring Freedom Philippines, Zamboanga, Republic of the Philippines from January through June 2002. He subsequently served as the commander, Special Operations Command, Pacific.
Fridovich’s most recent assignment was as the director, Center for Special Operations, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
Fridovich holds a master’s degree in political science from Tulane and his military education includes the Command and General Staff College, Joint Forces Staff College, and the British Forces Royal College of Defence Studies of Seaford House, London, England. He has numerous joint and Army awards and decorations.
Lieutenant General Fridovich was interviewed by SOTECH Editor Jeff McKaughan.
Q: Lieutenant General Fridovich, how would you describe the national security environment the United States and world face today?
A: Unfortunately, our world is not going to get any less challenging or return to the way it was before 9/11. The paradigm of superpowers conducting force-on-force, conventional warfare is exceedingly remote in my view.
At U.S. Special Operations Command, we believe we are living in the new normal. This new normal is not pretty, it is not clean and it is not anything that resembles a straightforward challenge.
All one has to do is read the daily newspaper or watch TV news broadcasts to understand that today’s security environment poses both new dilemmas and new opportunities that span national borders.
Today’s global drumbeat focuses on terror networks; militias and criminal groups; continued globalization; cyberspace and the empowering impact of technological advances; fragile states unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs of their people; and many other issues that contribute to the complexity of this new normal.
This global drumbeat places unprecedented levels of stress on an increasingly interconnected world that struggles to deal with competing interests and challenges. Advances in communications, transportation and global networking continue to make borders more porous. Economies are more interconnected. And information is available on an unprecedented scale.
Sovereign nations still have physical boundaries, rights and status that must be respected, but it is getting more and more difficult to secure national borders against the flow of money, criminal activity, human migration and immigration.
Q: The first factor you listed as contributing to the new normal was terrorist networks. How are terrorist networks—al Qa’ida in particular—evolving and what some of the actions that can be taken to combat their growth?
A: Asking about the evolution of the terrorist threat is an appropriate question because they have proven themselves to be an adaptive enemy.
To study current and future trends in terrorism, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, requires us to look at areas where terrorism originates, where it develops and where areas are at risk from that threat.
Currently an international coalition is focusing a great deal of effort and attention on the Horn of Africa. According to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials, al Qa’ida’s terror network in North Africa is growing more active and attracting new recruits, threatening to further destabilize the continent’s already vulnerable Sahara region.
Yemen has long been a top security concern. Al Qa’ida militants have taken refuge there for years. In January 2009, Saudi and Yemeni al Qa’ida groups united under the name of al Qa’ida on the Arabian Peninsula. This merger removed all doubt that al Qa’ida intended to use Yemen as a launching pad for operations in the Gulf and elsewhere in the world.
U.N. officials in Somalia and Yemen claim al Qa’ida operatives in Yemen are aiding Islamic rebels trying to topple the Somali government. These Islamic insurgents are turning Somali into an Afghanistan- like magnet for militant Islam and drawing hard-core fighters from around the world.
Over the last four years, a substantial number of people have travelled to Somalia from a variety of western countries, including Canada and the U.S., to join al-Shabaab, a hard-line, Jihadist group that presently controls more than half of Somalia.
Q: And Pakistan?
A: Pakistan continues to be a key partner in the struggle against terrorists. The attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan resulted in al Qa’ida and the Taliban flight to the austere Federal Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Al Qa’ida’s and the Pakistani Taliban’s increasingly deadly attacks within Pakistan, which resulted in the deaths of numerous Pakistanis, have brought the citizenry to the realization that countering extremism should be a national priority. Military operations against foreign fighters and Pakistani Taliban in the border region with Afghanistan are a direct response to this increasing threat. There is much to be done, but the Pakistanis are doing a phenomenal job of holding their recent gains.
The growing threat posed by increasingly bold militants makes the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal paramount. Continuing support for Pakistan not only assists in countering extremism, the resulting stability assists Pakistan in assuring the safeguard of its nuclear weapons.
Q: All of this indicates that strong international cooperation is necessary.
A: Although the fighting in Iraq has largely stopped, the war did inspire thousands of young men from around the world to join al Qa’ida’s cause. Every effort should be made to work with the security and intelligence services of the countries where the fighters originate. It is imperative that nations collaborate and share information that will apply deep pressure on the groups and networks that produce and support foreign fighters.
The survival of terrorist networks is dependent on their ability to locate and maintain funding streams for training and equipment. Diplomatic pressure can be used to stop the flow of monies from state sponsors and from non-governmental organizations, while prosecutorial pressure can force immigrant and diaspora communities in other countries to curtail or stop their fundraising activities.
An active information operations campaign is needed to counter the sophisticated propaganda techniques used by terrorist groups. The Internet is the greatest asset the terrorists possess in regard to recruitment and fundraising. It should also be the tool by which the truth about their motives, goals and lies is disseminated.
Q: How has the current national security environment affected USSOCOM’s view of national security?
A: As a result of the new normal, our understanding of war is not what it used to be. Traditionally defined forms of warfare such as counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, partisan warfare and guerrilla warfare are now lumped under the new umbrella term of irregular warfare.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated it well when he wrote, ‘What is dubbed the war on terrorism, in grim reality, is a prolonged, worldwide, irregular campaign—a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation.’
Regardless of how the conflict is defined, one thing remains constant. The type of warfare we fight on the ground is not determined by what forces we have on the ground. The type of warfare we fight is determined by our adversaries. Consequently, we need to be responsive enough to adjust rapidly to whatever the enemy throws at us, and we need to have the agility to transcend the full spectrum of conflict for which we have traditionally planned. In many cases, we fight at various levels of conflict simultaneously. The ability to rapidly adjust successfully requires a holistic approach to warfare, aimed at both eliminating our most determined adversaries and eroding the conditions which led to their behavior.
Q: How has USSOCOM responded to deal with the challenges in the current security environment?
A: To successfully deter potential enemies and confront this complex environment, our U.S. military must be able to employ a complex approach to warfare. This approach must carefully blend the full spectrum of military, para-military and civil actions. We refer to this approach as balanced warfare.
Balanced warfare is the way special operations forces are combating terrorism today, and it is the guiding principle behind the Department of Defense’s campaign plan to combat global terrorist networks. The balanced approach calls for carefully balancing both direct and indirect actions.
The direct approach consists of those actions which disrupt violent extremist organizations. That is the nice way of saying capture, kill, interdict and disrupt terrorists and terrorist networks.
These direct operations are conducted mostly by the military, and certainly, the Department of Defense is in the lead for the direct approach. The direct approach is urgent, necessary, often chaotic and kinetic. The effects the direct approach produces are mostly short term, and the direct approach is not decisive.
Decisive, enduring results come from the indirect approach. The indirect approach is made up of those actions in which we support and enable our international partners to combat violent extremist organizations. We contribute to our partner-nation’s capabilities by advising, training, equipping, transferring technology and combat mentoring the partner nation’s military forces.
The indirect approach includes efforts to deter tacit and active support for violent extremist organizations, where a government is either unwilling or unable to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries. Department of Defense is not the only agency in the U.S. government that has a role in the indirect approach. The indirect approach requires a whole-of-government effort to attack the underlining causes of terrorism.
Let’s go back to the environment just for a moment. To be successful in the new normal, we must understand that finesse trumps mass and knowledge trumps doctrine in this environment. For special operations forces, this means low-level, high-quality, frequent engagements with partner-nation forces have a greater, long-term deterrent effect than high-tech, stand-off munitions or large formations on the ground.
Q: What are some of the ways that USSOCOM is working to build partner-nation capacity?
A: At USSOCOM, we have made and are making an investment in what we call international persistence. International persistence is building partnerships with our international counterparts by developing meaningful military-to-military relationships. These partnerships come in many forms.
A great example of one form is what most special operations forces are doing on most days in Iraq, where SOF eat, live, plan, prepare and fight with their Iraqi special operations forces counterparts. When our Iraqi partners conduct operations, they look like us, they move like us, they shoot like us. They take the same actions on the objective that we would take. Through the lens of night vision video, it is difficult to tell them apart from us.
After all, that is the point. The ultimate goal is to enable our partners to combat violent extremist organizations themselves. We want to be able to turn the operations over to them. We want them to be in control their own destiny.
We are also continuing to build upon the relationships that have been in existence for years with countries like Colombia and the Philippines. These are countries that are actively involved in combat operations and where we are providing training without actively participating in their operations.
Another form international persistence takes is working with partner nations that are building organizations similar to USSOCOM. A growing number of nations are gaining a greater understanding of the role special operations forces can play in providing for their national security and are building organizations whose responsibilities will mirror those of USSOCOM. We have an existing relationship with the special operations forces of some of these nations. We have fought alongside them on the battlefields of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now we can pass along our lessons learned from having a SOF headquarters for almost a quarter of a century.
I need to make one other point about building relationships with partner nations. Frequently SOF’s ability to be effective is based on our ability to discreetly work under the radar screen. I am not referring to clandestine operations. I am talking about situations in which our presence could have an adverse impact on the domestic political situation of our partner nation if our efforts are widely publicized.
At USSOCOM, we understand that relationships built on trust form the foundation for learning to adapt and excel in this new world in which we live.
Q: Thank you, Lieutenant General Fridovich. Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide your readers some insight into how we at USSOCOM view the national security challenges we face. ♦