One Team! America ’ s Theater Army in the Indo-Pacific

1. 31 AUGUST 2018 The overall classification of this brief is: UNCLASSIFIED// FOUO One Team! America’s Theater Army in the Indo-Pacific

2. Destabilized System or Stable?

3. Scope The Real World of 2018: As it Is – Complexity The Contemporary Challenge of Violent Extremist Organisations The Future: Alternative Possible Futures & the Rate and Nature of Change One Key 21ST Century Issue: The Implications of the Information Age - Thoughts Enduring Components of any successful counter VEO Strategy: The US View

4. Nothing is Simple: Regional & Global Complexity Allies and partners magnify U.S. power and extend U.S. influence.They share our interests and responsibility for resisting authoritarian trends, contesting radical ideologies, and deterring aggression. -US National Security Strategy, December 2017 Revisionist Powers - Return of Great Power Competition - Growth in A2AD capabilities Rogue States - Nuclear proliferation - Technological proliferation Non-State Actors - Grey Zone Operations - Violent Extremists • 4 billion people • ~2 billion connected to cyber domain • 24 of 36 global megacities (population 10M+) • 70% of global population by 2050 • 6 of 10 largest militaries in the world • 19 of 27 Chiefs of Defense are Army Officers UNCLASSIFIED// FOUO

5. Violent Non-State Actors in the Indo-Pacific: The Threat is Real Marawi Attack 2017 Bangladesh 2016 Jakarta Attack 2016

6. Multiple Alternate Futures: The Operating Environment Matters “It would appear we have reached the limits of what is possible to achieve with computer technology. One should be careful with such statements; they tend to sound pretty silly in five years.” John von Neumann, Computer Scientist, 1949 Tucker, P. The Singularity and Human Destiny, The Futurist, https://www.wfs.org/futuristorder.htm. This merger of man and machine, coupled with the sudden explosion in machine intelligence and rapid innovation in gene research and nanotechnology, will result in a world where there is no distinction between the biological and the mechanical, or between physical and virtual reality. Kurzweil, R. ‘Reinventing Humanity: The Future of the Human Machine Intelligence’, The Futurist, March-April 2006, www,wfs.org, p.39 Hoffman, F.G. ‘Exploring War’s Character & Nature: Will War’s Nature Change in the Seventh Military Revolution?’ Parameters, Vol. 47, No. 4,Winter 2017-18

7. Multiple Alternate Futures: Alternative Views ‘The great fusion of technologies is impelling the domains of politics, economics, the military, culture, diplomacy, and religion to overlap each other. The connection points are ready, and the trend towards the merging of the various domains is very clear. All of these things are rendering more and more obsolete the idea of confining warfare to the military domain. . . . In unrestricted warfare, there is no longer any distinction between what is or is not the battlefield. Spaces in nature including the ground, the seas, the air, and outer space are battlefields, but social spaces such as the military, politics, economics, culture, and the psyche are also battlefields. …. These characteristics of Unrestricted Warfare mark the watershed between it and traditional warfare, as well as the starting line for new types of warfare.’ Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui , Unrestricted War (1999)

8. VEO [and all of us] Operate in a Globally Connected Society

9. Contest the Narrative: One Case Study - Iraq 2016 ‘Perception & Reality” Images Above: On the left, an Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service [CTS] operator soldier sets up a portable data transfer system forward in the field to transmit imagery directly from the front to rear for wider dissemination. On the right, an example of ‘real-time’ imagery passed back of civilians liberated on the approach to Mosul in October 2016.

10. You Can Be Successful: Locally, Regionally and Globally In June 2018, IS released its smallest number of official visual propaganda since tracking in January 2015. From the high-point (August 2015) to low-point (June 2018), there was a 94 percent decrease

11. The Enduring US Strategic Approach • Understand the Threat and the Environment: Listen, Watch, Learn, Adapt, Cooperate • Respect for Sovereignty and Rule of Law • A Whole of Government/Whole of Nation Approach: Countering violent extremism will continue to require whole-of-government (diplomatic, political, economic, and security) approaches to eradicate evolving threats • Multinational Cooperation and Collaboration: The Key to Defeating the Transnational Threat in a Connected World • Contest VEO on every level – Locally, Regionally and Globally: Win the Fight but also the Battle of Ideas/Legitimacy. Relentless pursuit and competition. • An Integrated Joint, Interagency, Multinational Multi-Domain Approach [Land, Sea, Air, Cyber, Space] is optimal.

12. USARPAC Capability: Methods MULTILATERAL FORUMS EXERCISES / DREES / DME + Combined Operations SENIOR LEADER ENGAGEMENTS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT EXCHANGES

13. ONE TEAM

14. The Nature of Power in 2018?: ‘An Iphone and a Bottle of Jack’ The shift in national power may be overshadowed by an even more fundamental shift in the nature of power. Enabled by communications technologies, power will shift toward multifaceted and amorphous networks that will form to influence state and global actions. Those countries with some of the strongest fundamentals—GDP, population size, etc.—will not be able to punch their weight unless they also learn to operate in networks and coalitions in a multipolar world. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds Indeed, the primacy legacy of the Internet, for all its promise and all its brilliance has been a capacity to give ugly, idiotic and reprehensible views a platform they never had before. Even the Nazis, about whom Rosanne seems to know so much, had to work for years before they could infiltrate mass culture with their poisonous lunacy. Any public figure these days needs only an iPhone and a bottle of Jack.’ Sad truth about Roseanne’s axing, News.com.au National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, December 2012,NIC 2012-001, ISBN 978-1-929667-21-5, www.dni.gov/nic/globaltrends, p. IV Sad truth about Roseanne’s axing by Joe Hildebrand, News.com.au, May 31, 2018 1109AM

15. Operationalzing our Advantage: Sharing Resources “Alliances are key to American success. In my past, I fought many times and never did I fight in a solely American formation. It was always alongside foreign troops.” – Secretary of Defense Mattis, January 2018