Special Operations Forces Institution-Building: From Strategic Approach to Security Force Assistance

The Ukrainian Special Operations Command (UKRSOCOM) and its subordinate tactical units have emerged as significant contributors to the defense of Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression. Conducting a full range of both conventional and special operations missions—including mobile defense, guerrilla operations, direct action, and support to resistance in occupied areas—UKRSOCOM displays the qualities of a rapidly maturing special operations organization currently being tested in the crucible of combat. A contributing element to the development of UKRSOCOM as an institution was an experimental U.S. Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) advisory approach, based on an earlier initiative with Belgium, that aimed to establish a framework for developing and sustaining special operations forces (SOF)’s institutional capabilities at the national level.

As background, U.S. SOF invested years in advising and assisting European partners to build and deploy special operations tactical units of excellence to campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, as well as counterterrorism actions globally. Unfortunately, while U.S. SOF concentrated on advising at the tactical level, they ignored the institutional level. Gradually, many European states realized they possessed an insufficient strategic SOF institutional framework for sustaining forces and organizing national and coalition operations in an emerging near-peer threat environment. This situation reconfirmed a recurring problem within broader U.S. security force assistance (SFA)—a tendency to build a force without first establishing the necessary institutional framework.1 Maintaining SOF capability requires establishing the defense institutional systems that can contribute to SOF development. By 2014, certain European policymakers recognized the requirement for strategic-level SOF structures to address a deteriorating European security environment and to better manage and employ scarce SOF human and material resources.2 Beginning in 2016, SOCEUR, in collaboration with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Special Operations Headquarters (NSHQ), pioneered a SOF institution-building (SOFIB) advisory approach, nested within the broader U.S. security cooperation (SC) concept, to support specific NATO Allies and select partners in their development of special operations command (SOCOM)-like structures intended to unify various national units while providing SOF-specific institutional functions for a more effective and sustainable force. Given the inherent joint nature of SOF, these SOFIB insights offer the joint forces recommendations on SFA activities in the future.

This article highlights the SOFIB approach and its nesting within the U.S. SC and SFA framework. It then shows how SOFIB reconceptualizes SFA from its heavy tactical application, as seen in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria, and shifts efforts to national- and institutional-level defense assistance for capable European allies and partners. It then illustrates the application of SOFIB through the representative but differing cases of Belgium and Ukraine, while providing an overview of the supporting SOCEUR and, in the case of Ukraine, NSHQ strategic advisory efforts, using SOFIB objectives as a framework of analysis. The article then provides overall joint lessons learned concerning SOF transformation at the national level that can inform SFA best practices for the future.