This is a somber and angry book. As previewed in his subtitle, David Kilcullen argues that, in all but one significant respect, 15 years of Western counterterrorism efforts have failed. He acknowledges that further attacks on the scale of September 11, 2001, have been prevented, both by enhancing domestic security measures and diminishing the capacity of al-Qaeda (AQ) and other groups to organize complex, expensive, and distant operations. “The disaggregated, atomized terrorist cells and radicalized individuals of today can mount a larger number of smaller, less sophisticated and far less damaging attacks than the centrally organized AQ of 2001,” he writes. “If that were the only outcome [of Western policies], you would have to call the past fifteen years a resounding success.”

United States special operations forces (SOF) have engaged in a number of long-duration missions around the globe in the last 15 years. One of those, Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines (OEF-P), epitomized the type of partnered, light footprint approach that recent defense strategy guidance has called for as a way to defend U.S. national security interests and promote global stability without incurring the crushing cost or unwanted side effects of large-scale military interventions

Contemporary conflicts have become more transnational, protracted, irregular, and resistance-centric. They can be best described as protracted internal conflicts with multiple state actors and nonstate actors intervening much like the multidimensional hybrid operational environment discussed in Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) 2022.