Liminal Warfare: Which Layer Are We At?

Simian Practicalist
4 days ago
3 min read

Given the current state of society, especially in light of the recent, highly visible events such as the deployment of the US National Guard, the deployment of warships to Venezuela, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and other seemingly random shootings, one might wonder which stage of the conflict we’re at.

One could consider our situation to be some sort of unconventional warfare between the population and what Tyrion Lannister calls the “ominous They” (and as a subset, assuming they exist, between the so-called white hats and black hats).

There are plenty of papers on the topic but one convenient paper by D. Kilcullen titled “The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare” published on 20 June 2019 discusses the classical model derived from WWII and how that has changed due to new trends.

Kilcullen discusses, amongst other things, the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) pyramid. Reproduced below is the updated 2013 version.

The author admits that the model is based on truckloads of assumptions which not everyone agrees with. He quotes George Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

For the purposes of the paper, Kilcullen differentiates between “clandestine” and “covert” activities: clandestine is an operation that remains undetected, whereas a covert operation may be detected but its sponsor remains unknown.

Updated version of the SORO pyramid (Tompkins, 2013).

Regardless of how one defines the terms used, we have seen evidence of every level of the pyramid in recent years by both sides, particularly the top half; for example, “Intense sapping of morale of government, administration, police and military”, “Increased political violence, terror and sabotage” and “Minor military and paramilitary actions”, the last crossing the line into the overt.

Kilcullen briefly mentions the work of Army Special Forces veteran J. Hasler. In his 2017 article titled “The Soro Resistance Pyramid Challenged: Critical observations and questions on a classic”, Hasler criticizes the terms used and their implications.

Typically, he considers the terms to be too vague. For example: “resistance”, “clandestine” and “leadership” do not equate to “underground”; and “clandestine” is too broad as there is a distinction between the aim, sponsor, means and effect.

The pyramid simplistically depicts the activities in a vertically linear fashion; however, in reality, each level can be executed simultaneously. As such, it “should look more like a continuum of activity” and the line between “overt” and “clandestine” should be removed.

Given Hasler’s critiques, Kilcullen elaborates on tactics used in the modern environment of widespread electronic connectivity, such as the relatively easy access to the internet as well as social media and private messaging platforms.

These allow parties to act without the need to infiltrate “denied areas” and to have an overt impact whilst remaining hidden. The advantages, particularly to propaganda, are obvious and we have seen this. These include the ability of “hiding in electronic plain sight” (amongst the massive volumes of traffic and data), “media manipulation” (by provoking an adversary and exploiting errors and reactions) and “political warfare” (by manipulating and mobilizing supporters through social media).

This has implications for the simple overt/clandestine dichotomy, that there is

…the zone of ambiguity between overt and clandestine activity is a manoeuvre space in its own right, where resistance actors (and their sponsors) can operate in the gap between detection, attribution and response. We might call this the “liminal warfare” space, from the Latin word for “threshold”.

In short, what Kilcullen calls “liminal warfare” is basically one-upmanship. To use our circumstance as an example: X knows Y is/was up to no good but can’t prove it publicly (to gain public support), so an overt response by X is limited. However, if the proof is available and palatable to the public, then X can respond overtly without causing widespread panic and/or starting a civil war.

Liminal warfare: layers between clandestine and overt action.

However one defines these terms, it is apparent that the flow of information to the population and other actions, overt or otherwise, by both sides have reached the point that things will be increasingly overt. Or at least I personally hope so; if the so-called white hats exist: please hurry up.

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