‘Full spectrum dominance’: Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense, and US irregular warfare strategy, 2001–2008

This article examines the evolution of US irregular warfare (IW) doctrine and practice from 2001 onwards. It argues that, after 9/11, top-tier civilian policymakers in the US Department of Defense (DoD) and across the US government developed a heightened awareness of asymmetric threats and non-conventional forms of warfare, especially those shaped by contemporary globalisation. The result was a gradual turn towards irregular warfare, led by Rumsfeld and the DoD, designed to ensure ‘full spectrum dominance’ across all modes of conflict. This pre-dated the insurgency in Iraq and the promotion of counterinsurgency in the US Army by General David Petraeus and others. Policymakers' reluctance to acknowledge the insurgency in Iraq was not down to a failure to understand the concept of IW, but because they had viewed Iraq in conventional terms for so many years and were reluctant to admit their mistake.

Ultimately Rumsfeld failed to convince the President that the name 'war on terror' should be changed. However, his use of the phrase 'global insurgency' is striking. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld has been overwhelmingly associated with the notion of a revolution in military affairs (RMA) -or military transformation as it came to be known under George W. Bush -which was devoted to high-technology conventional warfare and seemed to come at the expense of capabilities in, and even recognition of, other forms of unconventional or irregular warfare (IW) such as insurgency and counterinsurgency, psychological warfare, and asymmetric attacks. 2 The perception of Rumsfeld's dedication to RMA-style warfare at the expense of IW was bolstered by his unwillingness or inability -and that of most other senior policymakers in the Bush administration -to admit the existence of an insurgency in Iraq from 2003-2004 onwards, and his resistance to implementing a counterinsurgency strategy there. 3 The insurgency in Iraq catalysed a new focus in the US Army on counterinsurgency (COIN) -one variant of IW -which culminated in a new Army Field Manual on COIN in December 2006; the first such publication on counterinsurgency since the Vietnam era. 4 Piqued by the humiliating defeat in South-East Asia, the US Army had turned away from counterinsurgency and virtually excised it from the military curriculum, instead opting to focus on its preferred paradigm of war: conventional interstate conflict. 5 Faced with an insurgency in Iraq, and with no existing doctrine on COIN or guidance from senior policymakers, it was left to a small group of very well-placed Army officers and COIN policy enthusiasts, such as General David Petraeus, Lieutenants John Nagl, and David Kilcullen, and retired General Jack Keane to make the case for counterinsurgency in Iraq and eventually to develop the new Army Field Manual on COIN  to guide a policy that became increasingly attractive to the Bush administration as the situation in Iraq deteriorated. 6 As the insurgency gathered pace, policy-making in Washington became dysfunctional with neither the President nor the Secretary of Defense able to forge consensus on the way forward. This policy-making deadlock provided the political space for enthusiastic COIN advocates, such as Petraeus and the team involved in writing the new COIN Field Manual, to exercise decisive influence on US strategy in Iraq. 7 Since the publication of FM 3-24 in December 2006 and the subsequent implementation of these ideas in Iraq, the academic and professional study of counterinsurgency has proliferated with the post-2006 period seen as the highpoint of what one scholar calls 'the new counterinsurgency era' in US foreign and defence policy with Iraq the principal catalyst for this change. 8 The widespread consensus is that the so-called 'COIN-dinistas', led by Petraeus, waged a 'bottom-up' revolution in which, for the first time since Vietnam, COIN was put back on the Army's agenda and became the basis for a new -and, it is claimed by its architects and supporters, successful -strategy in Iraq from 2007 onwards. The focus on Petraeus and his associates has shed important light on changes in the doctrine and practice of the US Army specifically, as well as the formation of US strategy in Iraq especially from January 2007 onwards when the troop 'surge' began and a COIN approach was implemented. However, there is a broader context, beyond Petraeus, beyond the Army and beyond Iraq, which significantly aids our understanding of the development of US capabilities in irregular warfare in the twenty-first century, and which has thus far been neglected. This article argues that civilian policymakers at the Department of Defense -especially Rumsfeld -played an important role in encouraging the DoD and other US government agencies to embrace irregular forms of warfare organisationally, politically, and doctrinally from 2001 onwards. This may at first seem counterintuitive. Rumsfeld has been widely criticised for his initial failure to recognise the insurgency in Iraq and his stubbornness when it came to changing course there. As Jeffrey Michaels argues, however, it is uncertain whether this was because he 'either genuinely believed the United States was not involved in fighting a guerrilla war or felt that to make this admission, even in closed political and military circles, somehow reflected a personal failing that in turn could have jeopardized his bureaucratic position and authority'. 9 At the time of the invasion, Rumsfeld viewed Iraq as a conventional state-based threat, thought a new regime would emerge organically, and that the US could and should leave as quickly as possible. As the insurgency developed, however, the conflict became 'unconventional' and Rumsfeld's predictions and assumptions about how a relatively low number of troops would suffice to stabilise the country were proven wrong. Admitting this (if indeed he did believe a guerrilla war was taking place) could be a major political embarrassment. Nevertheless, until further documentation is released, we cannot know for certain why Rumsfeld was hostile to COIN in Iraq. What we do know, however, is that he was a strong supporter of other variants of irregular warfare elsewhere in the war on terror -such as the Philippines, Africa, and Georgia -especially foreign internal defence (FID), in which US troops would train and advise indigenous security forces and undertake the other non-kinetic elements of an IW campaign including psychological, social, economic, and political measures. Rumsfeld saw IW as an integral part of national defence in the future because he believed that irregular and hybrid wars would be the wars of the twenty-first century, and even before 9/11 he worried about America's vulnerability to asymmetric and other non-conventional forms of attack. This article argues that Rumsfeld's dismissal of COIN in Iraq did not, therefore, equate to an indiscriminate rejection of the concept of COIN; it was a rejection of counterinsurgency specifically in Iraq, but not necessarily elsewhere because Rumsfeld believed that in an age of globalisation security threats were just as likely to be irregular as conventional. The earliest roots of US IW strategy therefore lie in the pre-9/11 period, though the terrorist attacks most certainly catalysed its development. Rumsfeld did not, at this early stage, have a sophisticated and well-developed conception of what constituted IW but he and others were interpreting the war on terror as a conflict in which the hearts and minds of the world's Muslims were the battle ground, and advocating approaches that were clearly in line with, and indeed, anticipated what would later be encompassed in the official definition of IW in 2007. Thus the IW approach did not come fully formed in 2001-02, but its roots lie in this period. The ultimate objective was 'full spectrum dominance': preponderance across the entire spectrum of warfare from conventional conflicts through to irregular war. 10 In other words, the turn towards IW was designed to ensure continued US global military pre-eminence; it was not purely a response to the circumstances of Iraq. This commitment to IW is a significant material legacy of Rumsfeld's tenure and the Bush administration and continues into the Obama years.

Rumsfeld's agenda
In his first meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in January 2001, Rumsfeld 'asked for their thoughts on what "transforming" could mean for the Department'. 11 The new Secretary was committed to military transformation, as was the new President. 12 Yet Rumsfeld realised that conventional superiority alone did not immunise America from security challenges. In his memoir, he recalled that he had 'often noted that the United States then [in 2001] faced no peers with respect to conventional forces -armies, navies, and air forces -and, as a result, future threats would likely lie elsewhere'. 13 14 Rumsfeld questioned whether it was still appropriate for the military to maintain the two conventional major simultaneous war posture of the post-Cold War years and said that the QDR team would be looking at alternatives. 15 One significant change would definitely be the use of 'capabilities-based' planning models. Since the Cold War, when the most likely security threat to the United States was deemed to be the Soviet Union, the Pentagon had relied on 'threat-based' planning models; in other words, force posture would be dictated by the most likely threat. Now, however, threats were more difficult to identify and might not be recognisable in conventional terms. 'Contending with uncertainty must be a centerpiece of US defense planning', said the QDR Terms of Reference. 16 Accordingly, Rumsfeld wanted the military to develop 'a portfolio of key military capabilities' that would enable it to confront a spectrum of threats rather than planning only for one particular type of conventional adversary. 17 The ensuing QRD report, released in late September 2001, but written almost entirely before 9/11, reflected and expanded upon these themes in quite striking ways. The report acknowledged that a planning system that focused almost exclusively on conventional state-based threats was out of date because the nature of armed conflict was changing 'in ways that render military forces and doctrines of great powers obsolescent'. 18 In a globalised world [I]t is not enough to plan for large conventional wars in distant theaters. Instead, the United States must identify the capabilities required to deter and defeat adversaries who will rely on surprise, deception, and asymmetric warfare to achieve their objectives. This would be facilitated by the switch to capabilities-based planning which would 'den[y] asymmetric advantages to adversaries'. 19 The two major regional war construct was being modified: the Pentagon was 'not abandoning planning for two conflicts to planning for less than two . . . [but] changing the concept altogether by planning for victory across the spectrum of possible conflict'. 20 This was necessary because, in the future, the US was likely to be challenged 'by adversaries who possess a wide range of capabilities, including asymmetric approaches to warfare'. 21 This was far from being an articulation or endorsement of IW, but it showed that the Pentagon was beginning to think about non-traditional security threats in a different way and now recognised that not all challenges would take a conventional form. It was clear that, for Rumsfeld at least, the extant military did not have the capabilities required for 'full spectrum dominance'.
The content of the QDR was a reflection of Rumsfeld's priorities. A report on the QDR process written by the General Accounting Office, and based on discussions with anonymous officials from the DoD, repeatedly noted the 'top-down leadership for the [QDR] process'. The Secretary of Defense and other key officials 'actively participated in planning and implementing the 2001 QDR', even attending a five-day meeting to discuss threats, capabilities, and force structure. 22 In addition: The Secretary was directly involved in reviewing and revising drafts of the QDR report. One high-ranking OSD official stated that he had not seen as much interaction among the senior leadership in any of the three prior defense planning studies he had participated in. The broad consensus of officials we spoke with across DOD is that the QDR report represents the Secretary's thinking and vision. 23 In May 2002, Rumsfeld reflected further on these themes in an article in Foreign Affairs. America's unparalleled conventional power meant that 'it makes little sense for potential adversaries to try to compete with us directly . . . [T]hey will likely seek to challenge us asymmetrically by looking for vulnerabilities and trying to exploit them.' Reflecting the classic IW emphasis on a whole-ofgovernment approach to conflict, Rumsfeld argued that since conventional military power could not counter every threat . . . wars in the twenty-first century will increasingly require all elements of national power: economic, diplomatic, financial, law enforcement, intelligence, and both overt and covert military operations. Clausewitz said, 'War is the continuation of politics by other means.' In this century, more of those means may not be military. 24 Moreover, at a relatively early stage of what had become known as the 'war on terror' Rumsfeld had become convinced that this conflict was an example of the kind of irregular war the US would increasingly face. In July 2002, he asked the head of US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), General Charles R. Holland, to work on a plan to make SOCOM the lead unified command for planning and synchronising the Global War on Terror. 25 SOCOM's core activities included unconventional warfare, psychological operations, FID, special reconnaissance, and civil affairs -ideal for leading an irregular war.
The elevation of SOCOM was countercultural and the conventional commands opposed giving it synchronising authority -meaning it could issue orders to other commands regarding global counterterrorism operations. Nevertheless, the 2004 Unified Command Plan designated the SOCOM commander as 'the lead combatant commander for planning, synchronising, and as directed, executing global operations against terrorist networks in coordination with combatant commanders'. 26 This assuredly did not mean that the Pentagon was abandoning its commitment to conventional military superiority; instead it sought to complement conventional strengths with IW capabilities so that it could fight and win across the full spectrum of conflict.

New developments in national strategy and organisation
Although in relation to Iraq it suited the administration to emphasise the concept of state-sponsorship of terrorism, elsewhere the nature of the terrorist threat in a globalised world was defined in a more meaningful and sophisticated way as a transnational, often stateless phenomenon. The required response incorporated some (although not all) of the key elements of IW. These included: identifying and treating the perceived root causes of conflict, expanding the scope and importance of stability and reconstruction operations, developing train and equip programmes for US partners, winning the ideological war so as to win the allegiance of indigenous populations, and ultimately using all instruments of national power to achieve victory. These precepts had been key elements of IW campaigns historically, such as the British COIN campaign in Malaya and the French in Algeria, both of which were hugely influential in the writing of FM 3-24, and were also integral to Washington's FID campaigns in Central America during the 1980s. 27 This article will now examine the new definition of terrorism and the key elements of IW, described above, that were deemed appropriate ways to respond to it.

The nature of the terrorist threat
Although state-sponsorship of terrorism was invoked in relation to Iraq, in parallel an alternative, more sophisticated analysis of terrorism was also emerging; one which interpreted the phenomena as an unconventional kind of threat for which conventional military power would not be an appropriate response. The September 2002 National Security Strategy -the result of an interagency process led by National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice -hinted at this: Enemies past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger America. Now shadowy networks of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering . . . Terrorists are organized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of modern technologies against us. 28 The 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism was more explicit, defining terrorism as a phenomenon that was not just state-sponsored but also transnational. The terrorist challenge had 'changed considerably over the past decade', it said; state-sponsorship had declined and in some cases stopped completely. Terrorism itself had evolved as a result of 'dramatic improvements in the ease of transnational communication, commerce and travel'. Now the terrorist group was described as 'a flexible, transnational structure, enabled by modern technology and characterized by loose interconnectivity both within and between groups'. Such networks would act in asymmetric ways 'avoiding our strengths and exploiting our vulnerabilities'. 29 In May 2004, the National Military Strategy of the United States of America identified a range of potential adversaries. As well as emanating from states, security challenges could come from 'non-state actors, including terrorist networks, international criminal organizations and illegal armed groups that menace stability and security'. 30 These groups posed four kinds of security challenge: traditional ('posed by states employing recognized military capabilities and forces'), irregular ('com[ing] from those employing "unconventional" methods to counter the traditional advantages of stronger opponents'), catastrophic ('involv[ing] the acquisition possession, and use of WMD or methods producing WMD-like effects'), or disruptive ('from adversaries who develop and use breakthrough technologies to negate current U.S. advantages in key operational domains'). 31 This meant that two out of the four possible challenges US forces were now to prepare for involved an adversary negating US conventional strength (irregular and disruptive challenges), while a third (catastrophic) involved technology that could be used by either states or, just as likely, by non-state actors. The 2004 Strategy reaffirmed the purpose of a capabilities-based approach to planning: '[t]he goal is full spectrum dominance -the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations'. 32 By 2006, the concept of state-sponsorship of terrorism had been relegated to a tertiary concern. The updated National Strategy for Combating Terrorism did not mention state-sponsorship until page 4 and it was absent from the 'Overview' of the strategy on page 1. Islamist terrorist movements were 'not controlled by any single individual, group or state' but were unified by 'a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world'. 33 This was also reflected in the National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism published by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in February 2006, a document designed to implement the priorities laid out by policymakers in the National Security Strategy. It described al Qaeda as 'a complex and ever-shifting network of networks': There is no monolithic enemy network with a single set of goals and objectives . . . the primary enemy is a transnational movement of extremist organisations, networks, and individuals -and their state and non-state supporters, which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends. 34 Thus the characterisation of terrorism now reflected the impact of globalisation on international security.

The nature of the response
With the nature of the most salient contemporary threat established -networked, transnational terrorism -the administration made some effort to understand its root causes and to craft a response that employed unconventional techniques, including some of the key elements of IW.

Root causes: failed states
In his classic reflection on counterinsurgency warfare, the French Army colonel, David Galula, who served in Algeria during the war of independence, noted that 'the insurgent cannot seriously embark on an insurgency unless he has a well-grounded cause with which to attract supporters among the population. A cause . . . is his sole asset at the beginning.' 35 Responding to an insurgency therefore required an examination of its root causes. Understanding this was essential for the development of appropriate political, military, economic, and informational policies. In 2002, the Bush administration began to think about the root causes of terrorism. Despite the President's crude public rhetoric about 'evil-doers', some effort was made to identify root causes of terrorism beyond malevolent individuals. The chief underlying cause was considered to be weak and failed states and the power vacuum that resulted. The 2002 National Security Strategy claimed that in the twenty-first century the United States was 'threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones'. Poverty, weak institutions and corruption were phenomena that 'can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks'. 36 This was explained in greater detail in the February 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (NSCT): At the base, underlying conditions such as poverty, corruption, religious conflict and ethnic strife create opportunities for terrorists to exploit. Some of these conditions are real and some manufactured. Terrorists use these conditions to justify their actions and expand their support. The belief that terror is a legitimate means to address such conditions and effect political change is a fundamental problem enabling terrorism to develop and grow. 37 Diminishing these underlying conditions would be a key objective in the fight against terrorism. The United States would have to reach out to 'the poor and destitute masses' living with poverty, deprivation, social disenfranchisement, and unresolved political and regional disputes if it was to diminish the appeal of terrorism. Strengthening failing states would tackle the circumstances that bred terrorism. 38 The NSCT pledged to work with international and regional partners to ensure effective governance over ungoverned territory. 39 Where once the problem had been active state-sponsorship of terrorism, now it appeared to be lack of state influence: ungoverned, rather than governed, spaces. The notion that failing states were central to the problem of terrorism remained central to the US analysis of terrorism, though it was a problematic and, ultimately, unconvincing diagnosis. The lead 9/11 hijacker and head of the 'Hamburg cell', Mohammed Atta, planned the attacks while studying architecture in Germany, while the London underground bombings of July 2005 were carried out by four UK residents. Moreover, while state failure was often the result of terrorism and insurgency, it was not necessarily the cause of it. Often the absence of strong central governmental authority provided only a facilitating context rather than a compelling cause. The administration had little to say about what specific grievances might fuel such violence and the popular resonance some of those causes might have in the wider population. 40 In sum, its interpretation of terrorism was insufficiently political. Nevertheless, the emphasis on weak states as the root cause of terrorism remained.

Stability operations
The generic focus on weak and failing states as a cause of terrorism led to the development of a response that elevated the importance of stability operations, another key element of IW. During the 1990s, the US Army had increasingly been called upon to conduct what were awkwardly referred to as military operations other than war (MOOTW). 41 As David Rose has demonstrated, the army's 'Lessons Learned' process resulted in a surprising amount of change to army doctrine as a result of deployments in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, which did not fit the traditional model of conventional warfare. 42 Reflecting this, the Army released an updated Operations manual in June 2001, which added 'stability' and 'support' to the stages of warfare for the first time. 43 With the inauguration of the war on terror, stability operations quickly became integral to US counterterrorism operations and, in many ways, anticipated the further development and formalisation of doctrine and strategy in this area. From 2002 onwards, the Bush administration implemented FID programmes (another variant of IW) in the Philippines, under the auspices of Operation Enduring Freedom -the Philippines, and across Africa as Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara. The objective was to prevent the emergence of terrorism in the weak states of the Sahel and Sahara regions, and to diminish the appeal of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in the southern Philippines. Full discussion of these operations is beyond the scope of the article, but the campaigns in both Africa and the Philippines included stability operations as integral components. In the Philippines, for example, SOF worked with the Filipino Department of Social Welfare and Development in 2002 to help fund the construction and repair of infrastructure including building roads, water wells, an airport strip, a port, and bridges on the island of Basilan. 44 Across Africa, USAID, the State Department, and the DoD worked together from 2003 onwards to provide comprehensive counterterrorism programmes that included extensive stability operations and community outreach work as well as security training. 45 Stability operations were therefore integral to the operations of the war on terror from the outset.
Strategy documents soon began to catch up. The Pentagon's May 2004 National Military Strategy, designed to speak to the priorities set down by civilian policymakers in the 2002 NSS, stated that in conflict scenarios 'winning decisively' would require synchronising major combat operations with stability operations and conducting the two simultaneously if necessary. Stability operations were a force multiplier because they 'render other instruments of national power more effective and set the conditions for long-term regional stability and sustainable development'. Echoing Rumsfeld's 2002 call for the utilisation of 'all elements of national power', the 2004 strategy envisaged stability operations as part of a whole-of-government effort in which military post-conflict operations would be integrated with diplomatic, economic, intelligence, law enforcement, and information efforts. 46 The culmination of this process came in November 2005 with the issuance of Department of Defense Directive (DoDD) 3000.05 on Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations. This landmark directive made SSTR operations 'a core U.S. military mission . . . [that] shall be given priority comparable to combat operations'. Effective immediately, the directive stated that SSTR operations 'be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, material, personnel, facilities, and planning'. The immediate goal of SSTR operations was classic IW: 'to provide the local populace with security, restore essential services, and meet humanitarian needs'. The long-term goal was to create indigenous capacity for this. Ultimately, this would 'help establish order that advances U.S. interests and values'. 47 The list of activities that came under the rubric of SSTR operations was expansive and included 'rebuild [ing] indigenous institutions', 'reviv [ing] or rebuild[ing] the private sector', 'develop [ing] representative governmental institutions', 'ensuring security', 'promoting bottom-up economic activity', 'rebuilding infrastructure', and 'building indigenous capacity for such tasks'. This was particularly important because many stability operations were best performed by indigenous or US civilian professionals; 'nevertheless, U.S. military forces shall be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so.' 48 In essence, the military would be prepared to nation-build. This was a far cry from Bush's rejection of using the military for nation building during the Presidential campaign in 2000, and from the high-tech focus of the RMA.
To be sure, DoDD 3000.05 was not solely the result of the Pentagon's recognition of the changing nature of warfare in the twenty-first century; the directive was also catalysed by the post-war chaos in Iraq. The recommendation that SSTR be a core military competency originated with the Defense Science Board's 2004 Summer Study on the Transition to and from Hostilities. 49 This study was requested on 23 January 2004, not by Petraeus or his allies in the military, but by three senior civilian Pentagon officials (Michael Wynne, Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; Douglas Feith, Undersecretary for Policy; and Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary for Intelligence) largely on the basis of the situation at the time in Iraq. 50 After the Defense Science Board briefed Rumsfeld on its findings, he ordered his staff to draft a directive to put the report's recommendations into effect. 51 The lawlessness in Iraq therefore played a crucial role in encouraging senior policymakers to think about what more the military could do to win the peace. Ultimately, however, the new SSTR directive built on existing trends and operations in the war on terror and confirmed that senior civilians in the DoD were interested in how to better manage non-conventional conflict scenarios.
The new emphasis on stability operations at the DoD reflected initiatives already being implemented by State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In April 2004, the National Security Council authorised Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to create the Office of the Co-ordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS). This office was initially composed of approximately 75 employees coming from the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Labor, the Treasury, the Army, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the CIA. Its four main tasks were: watchfulness and early alert, planning, lessons learned and best practices, and crisis response strategy. 52 Nine days after the issuance of Directive 3000.05, Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 44 (NSPD-44) regarding the management of interagency reconstruction and stabilisation operations. 53 This directive instructed the Secretary of State to 'co-ordinate and lead integrated United States Government efforts, involving all U.S. Departments and Agencies with relevant capabilities, to prepare, plan for, and conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities'. 54 Thus the State Department would lead the development of 'a strong civilian response capability' for stabilisation and reconstruction activities. 55 Stability operations would embody 'all elements of national power'. 56 However, S/CRS was underfunded by Congress. In response, in 2006, S/CRS and the Pentagon established a partnership on stability operations, which was authorised under Section 1207 of the National Defense Authorization Act, and became known as 'Section 1207' funding. Under 1207, the DoD could transfer up to $100 million per year in defence articles, services, training or other support to the State Department for use in reconstruction and stability operations. 1207 was introduced in response to requests from Rumsfeld and Powell's successor, Rice. State benefitted because S/CRS had suffered from Congressional underfunding since its establishment in 2004; for the DoD the arrangement allowed it to take advantage of State's civilian expertise in post-conflict reconstruction at a time when the Pentagon was still developing its own capabilities. From fiscal years (FY) 2006 -2010, Section 1207 funded $445.2 million worth of projects in 23 countries. 57 It was the realisation of interagency collaboration on stability operations.
Rice built on this further with her 'transformational diplomacy' (TD) inititive. 58 She defined TD as 'work[ing] with our many partners around the world, to build and sustain democratic and well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly'. 59 To this end, Rice established a new position, the Director of Foreign Assistance (DFA), who would be in charge of all State Department and USAID foreign assistance programmes and serve as director of USAID. Assistance programmes would now consider five criteria, which reflected some of the themes of DoDD 3000.05: peace and security; governing justly and democratically; investing in people; economic development; and humanitarian assistance. 60 For Rice the ultimate purpose was security: Our Reconstruction and Stabilization Office must be able to help a failed state to exercise responsible sovereignty and to prevent its territory from becoming a source of global instability, as Afghanistan was in 2001. 61 As part of this effort, a new course on TD was added to the curriculum at the Foreign Service Institute. Diplomats would now be required to be expert in two regions, fluent in two languages, and advancement to senior positions would be linked to service in hardship posts. From 2006From -2007 diplomatic posts were repositioned from Europe and the US to Asia and Africa. 62 This work also overlapped with the core missions of USAID, which were redefined by its director, Andrew Natsios, in 2004 'to better align them with the foreign policy needs of this new era'. Testifying to Congress in 2005, Natsios reflected on the whole-of-government effort to promote stabilisation operations: 'the whole spectrum of our foreign policy establishment had to be engaged and many of its programs re-designed' he claimed. The five new core missions of USAID were: the promotion of transformational development (including building indigenous capacity for health care, education, and social and economic progress); strengthening fragile states; providing humanitarian relief; supporting geopolitical interests ('through development work in countries of high strategic importance'); and addressing global issues (including combating criminal activities such as money laundering and trafficking in persons and narcotics). 63 By 2008, USAID had developed its own official policy guidance for cooperation with the DoD on stability operations, which were described as 'a key element of USAID's development mission'. 64 By 2010, USAID's civil -military operations included activities on the ground on Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, Yemen, Northern Uganda, Colombia, Kosovo, the countries of the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, Djibouti, and cooperation with the Medical Civil Assistance Program. 65 In addition, military representatives from the geographic combatant commands and the SOCOM were seconded to USAID headquarters to provide day-to-day coordination and management. 66 To be sure, there was still scope for further development of these activities, and in some cases more funding was required; nevertheless serious efforts to promote an interagency approach to stability operations in weak and failing states were underway at least two years before the application of a COIN strategy to Iraq. 67 Train and equip programmes Training and equipping indigenous security forces was another key element of IW that came to the fore in US national strategy in the aftermath of 9/11. The 2002 National Security Strategy pledged that '[w]here governments find the fight against terrorism beyond their capabilities, we will match their willpower and their resources with whatever help we and our allies can provide.' Building military capacity in partner nations was an integral part of the Bush administration's response to global terrorism from late 2001 onwards, particularly in Africa, the Philippines, and in Georgia. 68 In practice, this meant training and equipping indigenous military forces to undertake counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations as well as border and maritime security and, in some cases, civil affairs projects of their own. Africa was a particular region of concern in this respect. The NSS stated that the US would help 'strengthen Africa's fragile states, help build indigenous capacity to secure porous borders, and help build up the law enforcement and intelligence infrastructure to deny havens for terrorists'. 69 The 2003 NSCT called for 'enabling weak states' to 'help them acquire the necessary capabilities to fight terrorism through a variety of means'. 70 The administration's FID campaigns in Africa -covering the central belt of the country from the Horn in the east through to the Gulf of Guinea in the west -and in the southern separatist region of the Philippines, which both began in 2002, included major train and equip components. In addition, a smaller programme, the Georgia Train and Equip Programme, began in February 2002 to help the Georgian authorities assert control over the lawless Pankisi Gorge region where, it was rumoured, Islamist extremists were sheltered. 71 These programmes were endorsed by combatant commanders. In September 2004, General James L. Jones, head of US European Command (subsequently Barack Obama's National Security Advisor) described the train and equip activities in Europe and Africa as 'programs that require small investments, but that yield enormous dividends'. 72 The perceived success of these programmes led to an expansion of the DoD's train and equip capability. In 2004, Rumsfeld requested and received Congressional authority to provide $40 million per year in Special Operations Forces support to foreign forces, irregular forces, and groups or individuals that could assist with missions in the war on terror. This was known as Section 1208 authority (because the request appeared in that section of the FY 05 National Defense Authorization Act). 73 Section 1208 was limited to SOF, however. In early 2005, the DoD attempted to gain Congressional authority for a broader global train and equip programme, which would give it blanket permission -with the concurrence of State -to train and equip foreign military forces and maritime security forces anywhere outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. (There were separate appropriations for those countries.) This request, worth $200 million per year, was made in section 1206 of the FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act and subsequently became known as Section 1206 funding. 74 This marked a significant change to the existing arrangements for training and equipping foreign security forces: under the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, the State Department was responsible for overseeing foreign military assistance even when it was delivered by DoD. Section 1206 was led by the DoD and would require only the concurrence of State. The funds were quickly put into effect. By 2008, according to the Defense Security Co-operation Agency, Section 1206 had 'rapidly become the gold standard for interagency co-operation' and was considered by combatant commanders to be the 'single most important tool to shape the environment and counter terrorism outside Iraq and Afghanistan'. Annual demand for the funds exceeded availability every year. 75 In FY 2006-2010, $1.3 billion in 1206 funding was spent across 34 countries. 76 So effective were these train and equip programmes (or at least this was the perception) that they were singled out for further consideration and expansion in the February 2006 QDR. In May that year, a QDR Execution Roadmap on Building Partnership Capacity was published, which sought to enhance the integration of the Pentagon's work with its interagency partners at home and its international partners abroad: Whenever advisable, the United States will work with or through others: enabling allied and partner capabilities, building their capacity . . . The United States must work with international partners in less familiar areas of the world to reduce the drivers of instability, prevent terrorist attacks or disrupt their networks, to deny sanctuary to terrorists anywhere in the world, to separate terrorists from host populations and ultimately defeat them. 77 Bilateral and multilateral partnerships were thus an indispensable component of the war on terror. In 2007, the Pentagon attempted to make its Section 1206 authority permanent and increase the funding to $750 million per year. 78 However, members of Congress were sceptical of what Rep. Ike Skelton, Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said 'appears to be the migration of State Department activities to the Defense Department'. Ultimately Congress agreed only to continue the status quo, meaning the 1206 funding would continue to require annual approval. 79 Winning hearts and minds If building partner capacity was a key tenet of IW, so was the administration's focus on ideological narratives and 'winning hearts and minds'. In the Terms of Reference for the 2001 QDR, Rumsfeld had called for information operations (IO) to become a core capability of future forces. 80 The 2001 QDR listed 'conducting effective information operations' as one of six critical operational goals for the DoD. 81 The 2002 National Security Strategy described the war on terror as a 'war of ideas' in which the hearts and minds of the world's Muslims were the battleground. 82 Then in November 2003 the Information Operations Roadmap, which resulted from the 2001 QDR, instructed the DoD to transform its existing I.O. capability 'into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime, and special operations'. 83  The ultimate objective was to conduct 'full spectrum information operations'. 84 Thus the strategic importance of IO had been recognised by policymakers by 2003. Moreover, Public Affairs operations were already an important component of operations in the peripheral theatres of the war on terror. Public Affairs releases from EUCOM provided vignettes of European Command's (EUCOM) civil affairs operations in Africa, from the delivery of food supplies to the construction of community centres and repairing of schools, and even support for democracy and economic stability efforts. 85 Military Information Support Teams were provided to US embassies in the countries affiliated with Operation Enduring Freedom -Trans Sahara. 86 An online news portal -magharebia.com -was designed to counter extremist views in the Maghreb region was established by EUCOM. 87 In the Philippines, Military Information Support Teams provided newspaper adverts, handbills, posters, radio broadcasts, and, most uniquely, a 10-part graphic novel series. 88 At cabinet level, Rumsfeld was the key supporter of IO. The National Defense Strategy of March 2005 included a section on 'Countering ideological support for terrorism', which was incorporated at the behest of Rumsfeld and his senior advisors over the mild objections of Powell and Rice. The section called for an information campaign incorporating all instruments of national power to 'delegitimate' the terrorists' narrative, support 'models of moderation' in the Muslim world, and reinforce the message that the war on terrorism 'is not a war against Islam, but . . . a civil war within Islam'. Victory would come 'only when the ideological motivation for the terrorists' activities has been discredited'. 89 By 2006, these ideas about IO had reached maturation. SOCOM's Capstone Concept described the counterterrorist struggle as 'a war of conflicting ideas, ideologies, social values and human rights' that required 'the tools of influence, information, and intelligence', while the 2006 QDR stressed that victory over terrorism would only come 'when the enemy's extremist ideologies are discredited in the eyes of their host populations and tacit supporters' -a classic IW precept. 90

Quadrennial Defense Review 2006
The most comprehensive description of the nature of the war on terror and the irregular challenges of the future came in the QDR of February 2006. This document, Rumsfeld stated in his foreword, 'reflects a process of change that has gathered momentum since the release of its predecessor QDR in 2001'. The 2006 QDR described the war on terror as 'the long war . . . that is irregular in nature'. 91 Fighting it would require 'irregular warfare activities including long-duration unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism, counterinsurgency, and military support for stabilisation and reconstruction efforts'. 92 The new strategic environment required preparation for conventional war against nation states and the prevention of peer-competitors but also preparation for 'multiple irregular, asymmetric operations' against decentralised network threats and non-state actors. 93 While the Bush administration was committed to exploiting the supposed RMA to enhance US conventional military dominance, this was not to be at the expense of preparing for other types of conflict.
Like its 2001 predecessor, the 2006 QDR also reflected Rumsfeld's priorities. The Terms of Reference issued by him in March 2005 identified four focus areas: defeating terrorist networks, defending the homeland, shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads, and preventing hostile states and non-state actors from acquiring or using WMD. 94 According to Ryan Henry,  There was also an interagency component: in Spring 2005, senior Pentagon leaders held meetings on the key focus areas with partners from other US government agencies and with international allies too in order to identify potential threats and required capabilities. 96 According to the General Accounting Office, one of the strengths of the process was that 'key senior DoD leaders maintained sustained involvement throughout the review. The Deputy Secretary of Defense -Paul Wolfowitz until May 2005 and Gordon England thereafter -co-chaired a senior level review group with the Vice Chair of the JCS, which met several times a week to review the work of the QDR study teams and provide guidance to ensure the QDR's strategic priorities were being addressed. 97 The QDR also instituted eight follow-up execution roadmaps to provide concrete guidance and deadlines for the implementation of key objectives. These included roadmaps on Building Partnership Capacity, Irregular Warfare, and Strategic Communications. 98 The IW roadmap was designed to facilitate the full implementation of DoDD 3000.05, as well as 'the decisions made during the 2006 QDR regarding the capabilities and capacity of the [DoD] to conduct and support protracted IW'. This was essential because IW had become 'the warfare of choice for adversaries who attempt to erode our national power and break our will through protracted conflict'. In the future, 'IW, of which the Global War on Terrorism is a part, will likely be the dominant form of conflict'. 99 The Strategic Communications Roadmap built on Rumsfeld's elevation of IO as a core military capability. This area was a particular interest of his. In July 2005 he wrote a memo to Rice, Vice President Cheney, and other senior officials asserting that 'We need a plan to mobilize moderate Muslims -both in the US and around the world' and emphasised the importance of an 'appropriate message, tone, style' and the 'means of delivering the message'. 'This is a national security issue and a vital part of winning this war', he wrote. 100 However, the 2006 QDR had identified 'significant gaps' in the DoD's ability to conduct IO. The Strategic Communications roadmap was designed to provide 'a plan of action and milestones' that would lead to 'a culture that recognizes the value of communication and integrates communication considerations into policy development, operational planning, execution, and assessment to advance national interests'. 101 This work resonated across the administration; in June 2007 the first ever National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication was released. 'The US is engaged in an international struggle of ideas and ideologies' the document stated; 'To effectively wage this struggle, public diplomacy must be treated -along with defense, homeland security, and intelligence -as a national security priority in terms of resources.' 102

Conclusions: The post-Rumsfeld era
At Rumsfeld's departure ceremony in December 2006, the President claimed, with some justification, that 'there has been more profound change at the Department of Defense over the past six years since the Department's creation in the late 1940s.' 103 This change was not just doctrinal; the FID campaigns in Africa and the Philippines, the use of Section 1207 funds to finance stability operations overseen by the S/CRS office, the widespread use of Section 1206 funds for train and equip programmes, the global diplomatic repositioning, and the USAID -DoD cooperation on the ground demonstrated that a real strategic shift had begun.
Moreover, the turn towards IW that was supported by Rumsfeld and other senior policymakers in the DoD and across the US government has largely survived not just Rumsfeld's departure from office but also the Bush administration. Rumsfeld's successor, Robert Gates, publically supported the continued development of IW capabilities in September 2008 while discussing the premises of the new National Defense Strategy: 'If I could describe the new [Strategy] in one word it would be "balance"; balance between the range of capabilities to prevail in persistent asymmetric or irregular conflict and sustaining our conventional and strategic force superiority as a hedge against rising powers' -a precise echo of the 2006 QDR and its antecedents in 2004 -2005. 'We must be ready for both kinds of conflict and fund the capabilities to do both', Gates stated. 104 In September 2007 the first Joint Operating Concept on Irregular Warfare was published. For the first time, a definition of IW was formalised as a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favours indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities in order to erode and adversary's power, influence, and will. 105 This was complemented by DoD Directive 3000.07, on Irregular Warfare, released in December 2008, which asserted that IW 'is as strategically important as traditional warfare' and that the DoD must have the capabilities and capacity to be 'as effective in IW as it is in traditional warfare'. 106 To a great extent, these priorities have continued into the Obama era too. Obama's National Security Strategy of May 2010 repeatedly emphasised the integration of 'all elements of American power': We are improving the integration of skills and capabilities within our military and civilian institutions, so they complement each other and operate seamlessly . . . We will continue to rebalance our military capabilities to excel at counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, stability operations, and meeting increasingly sophisticated security threats, while ensuring our force is ready to address the full range of military operations. 107 The Obama administration did diminish the impact of DoDD 3000.05 in January 2012 with the publication of a new national security report driven by 'the national security imperative of deficit reduction' in an age of austerity. 108 One consequence was that 'US forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations' (emphasis added). However, this did not mean the end of military involvement in these activities. The DoD 'will still nevertheless be ready to conduct limited counterinsurgency and other stability operations if required' and would also utilise 'non-military means and military-to-military co-operation to address and reduce the demand for significant U.S. force commitments to stability operations'. 109 In other words, large-scale IW, like the campaign in Iraq, was undesirable but smaller programmes like the FID campaigns that had lasted a decade in the Philippines and across Africa were acceptable -and, indeed, those programmes are ongoing at the time of writing. The new strategy recognised the full spectrum of conflict: the number one primary mission for the armed forces in the age of austerity was 'Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare'. 110 Moreover, the development of interagency programmes and capabilities meant that downplaying the military's role in non-kinetic operations would not necessarily mean an end to IW campaigns.
The reason these changes endured was because they had support from toptier policymakers from the beginning and because they transcended the Army and indeed the Pentagon to become part of America's national strategy, not just its military strategy. The openness of a key figure like Rumsfeld to unconventional methods of warfare was based on a belief that contemporary globalisation had created new types of transnational networked adversariessuch as Islamist terrorism -and Washington was now just as likely to face asymmetric and irregular challenges as conventional ones. For the United States to maintain its position as the world's pre-eminent power meant preparing to fight across the full spectrum of conflict; to win decisively against any and every type of potential adversary, not just a conventional one. 'Full spectrum dominance' was an objective that transcended Iraq and continues after the US withdrawal.