Control from the ground up

Modern conflicts, while being fought locally, might have a far wider and even global impact. Typically, the contemporary conflict environment, or ‘ conflict ecosystem’, consists of a wide variety of (internationally) interconnected actors and spill-over effects such as displaced persons and refugees.1 Fall simply used the overarching term ‘doctrine’ for the variegated ideology, religion, belief, socioeconomic, political or other notions these wars are fought for.2 What stands out in all these matters is the centrality of humans and their convictions, attitudes, beliefs, aspirations, norms, emotions and – most importantly – their behaviour. Despite the impact of innovations in areas such as technology and artificial intelligence, modern conflict dynamics will largely evolve as a consequence of actions undertaken in the human domain. Mitigating today’s sophisticated threats, thus, requires us to look beyond the traditional military realm and inherently involves concepts focused on relevant populations.3 Kilcullen, in this regard, devised a theory of competitive control. Based on insights from the fields of counterinsurgency and rebel governance, he argues that when armed actors vie for control over a populace, the actor ‘best able to establish a predictable, consistent, and wide-spectrum normative system of control’ will prevail.4 This chapter explores this argument and proposes multiple alterations for embedding it in modern warfare. While underlining the relevance of a local perspective and human behaviour, we aim to broaden the scope of targeted actors and argue that targeting groups is more relevant than targeting individuals. For this purpose, we adopt the fundamental proposition that a competition for control can be won by altering an existing normative system instead of establishing a new system. This will enable us to build a comprehensive framework for designing influence activities rooted in actual human behaviour – contrary to focusing on attitudes, preferences, or legitimacy.5 Thus, this chapter not only aims to provide an academic analysis of the utility of the theory of competitive control in modern warfare but also presents a guideline for actually operationalising this population-centric approach in the conduct of war. Whereas the first decade of the 21st century saw a return of counterinsurgency and affiliated influence activities during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, interest in this approach quickly faded away during the 2010s. This was the consequence not only of the lack of success in both wars but also of the renewed emergence of big power competition which acted as a catalyst for a reorientation toward conventional warfare. Yet, as aforementioned, the human domain remained central to the conflicts that were fought over the last decade. State actors like Russia or Iran actively exploited social cleavages in neighbouring countries, while non-state actors such as the Islamic State, Boko Haram and Al Shabab successfully established influence and control over relevant populations. Embedding influence activities in the conduct of war, therefore, is not only highly relevant for modern warfare but also essential for winning the competition for control over the local population in a conflict ecosystem. For this purpose, we will elaborate upon the theory of competitive control and subsequently develop a framework for influence activities. Doing so, however, first requires us to explore the most fundamental aspects of human behaviour and the relevance of the local level under conflict conditions.