Land Power Library - War by Others’ Means

Delivering Effective Partner Force Capacity Building

Routledge Press, Essex, 2021, 116 pp

Paperback ISBN 9780367766405

Authors: Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds

Reviewed By: James Bryant

Some authors just make good sense. Reflective, reasonable and rational, with no particular ideological axe to grind, and transparent in how they arrive at their conclusions. In this reviewer’s opinion, Jack Watling is quite simply one of the most lucid, clear and insightful analysts on modern war on land. An experienced observer with a well-regarded history of scholarship, Watling is particularly good at distilling the most convincing ideas from the ‘military-academic’ realm; blending lessons-learnt from practitioners on the ground with insights from the practitioners of statecraft at the national-political and coalition level. With a biography that reflects analysis of events in the Middle East and Africa, Watling’s and his co-author Nick Reynold’s style and approach is highly relatable. It is a style that feels, to the military reader, somehow familiar ̶ akin to a lecture from an old comrade who has ‘been around the traps a bit’.

In this book, War by Others’ Means: Delivering Effective Partner Force Capacity Building, Watling and Reynolds examines the lessons and choices faced by Western nations in forging and operationalising partnerships in what were once called ‘failing/failed states’. The themes analysed and recommendations provided, equate to clear guidance on how to effectively prosecute capacity-building operations. It’s a book that should be read widely by here if we are to once again ‘fight smart’ beyond our shores.

Multiple train-and-advise-type missions in the 20^th and 21^st centuries are mined for information and advice in this book. Lessons-learnt are identified for those leading these kinds of operations in the field, as well as for those overseeing them in a whole-of-government context. And the book logically lays out the sequence for breaking down the relevant issues.

In the first section, the writers pose the question: ‘Why do patrons embark upon capacity building? In answering this question, they set out and differentiate alternative objectives across the policy spectrum: from security sector reform to counter-terrorism. Following this is a particularly useful section setting out how partner capacity building needs to be knitted together by teams at the strategic, operational and tactical levels, each requiring different skills but blended vertically. This is in turn followed by sections concerning how partners should be identified and trained, how that training should be delivered, the vexed issue of what equipment should be provided, and most importantly – how training missions of this kind should ultimately conclude. There is something reassuring in how Watling and Reynolds illustrate that these are not modern dilemmas but age-old ones, perhaps only differentiated by the precision and lethality of modern weapons and the pervasiveness of modern media.  

The timing of the book’s release (in 2021) is fortuitous, coming at an important juncture for the Australian Army as it seeks a pathway forward from the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and the National Defence Strategy (NDS), including a transition towards a littoral enabled Army with enhanced long-range fires. Originally issued as a Whitehall Paper from the highly regarded UK-based Royal United Services Institute, Watling and Reynolds’ book makes a convincing case for an increasing and enduring focus by land forces and their partners in diplomacy on how best to capacity-build with partner forces in the modern (post-Afghanistan and Iraq war) environment. In so doing, the authors’ analysis of what occurred in these theatres is an important corrective against tendencies among some commentators to ‘write-off’ what took place there; as if the only lessons to be derived concern what not to do. By contrast, Watling and Reynolds draw lessons on partner diplomacy and its relevance in so-called proxy warfare.

They highlight that the liberation of Mosul and the recapture of Raqqa were two of the costliest battles of the 21^st century to that date. A top priority for western governments supporting the Iraq state, these battles amounted to heated, close-encounter slogging matches, that consumed tens of thousands of local combatants (90 000 in the case of Mosul, with some units suffering 40% casualties). By contrast, Coalition advisory elements suffered casualties measured in the tens. The authors attribute the reason for such comparatively low casualty rates to the deftness in which partner forces were prepared and committed to war by others’ means.

As Watling and Reynolds assert:

The contrast between the failure of recent large, expeditionary counter-insurgency operations and the apparent success of a number of low-profile operations carried out by, with and through local partners has sparked a renewed interest in a wide range of indirect military strategies. Whether framed as proxy warfare, partner force capacity building, train, advise, assist missions, or another of the myriad frameworks that have been developed, in practice these operations amount to the deployments of small, specialist liaison teams tasked with sharing skills, knowledge and capabilities to encourage non-sovereign forces to risk their lives to support their patron’s interests.[1]

A renewed interest in partnered warfare is justified. Despite the ‘extremely variable track record’ of coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, these kinds of operations offer Western nations a relatively low-risk land-based means to decisively shape the military environment in an effective and efficient way. Significantly, this conceptual and capability journey, and the operational approach, has already been embraced by Australia’s AUKUS partners via the UK’s Integrated Operational Concept and the US’ Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB)  ̶  force elements with partnered operations in their mission profile. While Watling and Reynolds point to this as best practice, it may be that the Australian Army simply doesn’t have the mass to follow this approach ̶ as long as this is a conscious decision.  

With a multitude of examples throughout the book illustrating ‘what’ and ‘what not’ to do, buttressed by a plethora of wide-ranging sources and concepts, War By Others’ Means is a really useful read for the military professional keen to come to grips with options for prosecuting land power in the modern age.

Endnote

[1] Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, War by Others’ Means. Delivering Effective Partner Force Capacity Building, Routledge Press, Essex, 2021