Shrinking Army special operations is a bad idea for deterring China

The most baffling Department of Defense military force structure decision of 2023 is the Army’s decision to single out the Army Special Operations community for downsizing.

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth has announced a 3,000-position cut to Special Operations in a “redesign” of the Army Special Operations community. Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD SOLIC), and Ms. Wormuth have begun to artfully parse this cut as not affecting the Green Berets but focusing on “enabler” elements without further clarification.

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (ARSOC) is made up of roughly 36,000 servicemembers and civilians, many of whom would fall into this “enabler” category. Those with a robust knowledge of special operations doctrine and operational implementation know that the world-class “shooters” in the Green Berets and Rangers are made substantially more effective, deployable, and pervasive by the enablers in Special Operations Aviation, Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, Special Operations sustainment, and other units that aren’t even acknowledged to exist.

An additional explanation from Ms. Wormuth and Mr. Maier is that there are vacant slots that can be swept up and applied toward these force structure cuts. The reason for the inability of ARSOC and the entire Army to fill these vacant slots (the Army is mandated at 452,000 personnel in Section 401 of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act) has to be addressed in full intellectual honesty to account for the “w” word: “wokeness.”

Critical Role of ARSOC in Building Partner Capacity in Taiwan

ARSOC makes up more than half of the total structure of the entire U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), so decrementing ARSOC hinders the entire SOCOM mission. One of the key SOCOM and ARSOC missions is what’s known as foreign internal defense (FID), which is building the capacity of key partners to defend themselves.

One of the critical actions directed in the 2023 and 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is Section 1309, which establishes training, advising, and institutional capacity building for Taiwan’s military. This section mandates a large-scale training program for Taiwan, where FID is a core element.

And which part of the Army force structure specializes and focuses on FID?

ARSOC, which makes the targeted cut of ARSOC puzzling.

Not well advertised has been a longstanding effort by the Special Operations community to better organize, train, and equip Taiwanese regular and reserve forces to respond to Chinese gray zone activities before or during a potential invasion by China. This effort is the spearhead of Indo-Pacific Command efforts to build deterrence capacity to discourage communist China from considering a move to open warfare in the Western Pacific.

The proposed cut in ARSOC belies a disconnect between the NDAA and the announced actions of the secretary of the Army and ASD SOLIC. Significant bureaucratic disconnects do happen in the largest bureaucracy in the world, which is where Congress, in its oversight role, needs to identify and act upon such non-sequiturs. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) has taken vocal leadership to address the proposed Army actions.

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