Their Service. Their Sacrifice. Our Commitment.

In 2013, Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno, Marine Corps Commandant General James Amos, and commander of US Special Operations Command Admiral William McRaven cosigned a document that should have grabbed the attention of the entire American defense establishment. Its central observation was unambiguous: The Pentagon’s concept of competition does not reflect the fundamental reality that “competition and conflict are about people.” A decade later, the Army proposed cutting its special operations forces by up to 20 percent. Congress felt compelled to insert a $20 million provision into the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act simply to make permanent US special operations forces’ ability to conduct irregular warfare by, with, and through partners. The defense establishment continued its decade-long debate about whether irregular warfare capabilities are still needed at all. The warning from three four-star generals produced no durable institutional change. Why? And what should the defense establishment do about it now?

For more than two decades, U.S. national security policy has repeatedly relied on leadership decapitation as a mechanism for catalyzing systemic change. In practice, this has often meant turning to military force as the primary instrument for resolving problems rooted in political decay, institutional corruption, and fractured legitimacy.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led approximately 600 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry against a Native American coalition of 4,000 to 8,000 people, led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, and Two Moons. The Native Americans deployed decentralized command, superior terrain knowledge, mobility, psychological warfare, and cultural cohesion to defeat Custer’s force at Last Stand Hill, killing over 200 soldiers. The authors argue that Custer’s fatal underestimation of his opponent, combined with fractured command and control and a failure to conduct adequate intelligence preparation, exposed his force to a series of encirclements that his divided units could not survive.