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This is your host Jack gains. When CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military diplomats development officers and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with a partner Nations. People and Leadership our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations to contact the show email us at That see a podcasting at gmail.com, or look us up on the Civil Affairs,
association website at www.flcfs.org. I'll have those in the show notes, Shadow governments. What they're doing is they're performing governance but what they're providing to the resistance or Insurgency is legitimacy. Welcome back. This is part two of the interview with Josh Bedingfield talking about his upcoming paper, the value proposition of Shadow governments, which should be out at any moment this summer
when it does become available. I will update the show notes and make an announcement for this episode. Josh and I continued to discuss his findings and how they are applied. If you missed part one, I recommend going back and checking it out first. But if you insist, let's get started with the show. This is another reason why I really like K magnussen's theory
on social contract. Because what it says is, you could theoretically have great systems of Exchange in a really Stellar performance and services metrics, but if it's not built on shared values, you're a fraud. It's just increasingly becoming simpler to determine or at least question the motives that were presented. We don't give credit to people's capacity to do that. That we just wave a way that there needs to be a measure of sincere shared values and I'll even go a step further, right?
Like Vietnam, the Vietcong actually do. All right, there's great literature on the fact that they knew that they did not have struck shared values with the South Vietnamese people. Really of, in the Vietnamese people were large, interesting, the concept of Communism of leninist. Marxist. Communism does not marry itself. Well to core, and this is a just according to literature on. Trying to speak on outside of my mouth, it just doesn't align itself.
Well with core cultural paradigms in the Vietnamese culture. It actually is directly contrary to them Concepts like the Mandate of Heaven Concepts, like, you know, the importance of local spheres of influence and whatnot, right? The predominance of a desire to
own property. And so when the Viet Cong sent their Shadow government down into Vietnam, they were actually specifically instructed, like don't talk about Cummings, don't do it. Don't bring up the thing that is going to break our effort to build shared values, right? But we want you to do is actually play into the values that we can demonstrate our shared. So you had a communist government.
Send operatives to to conduct governance activities in South Vietnam where a big part of their operation was to distribute land for private ownership, that is anti-communist, right? It was a core value of the population so it attracted only the core diet population. Right? So they took this approach to say hey I'm going to I'm going to hide it from you. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to find out what you need and I'm going to prove to you that I can get it to you.
Sure. And then when I take power, that's when I can be like hey you know, that land but I gave you we're going to collectivize it. Well it's something interesting. David Maxwell was just interviewed and he's talking about peaceful reunification of the two koreas, one thing that he was.
Ending is that South Korea, start mapping, the parcels of all the North Korean Villages. And then once the reunification starts to occur, the South Korean start handing, each of those local farmers and Village members the deed to their land. Say you own it. Now, this is your pretty face and his theory is. If you do that, you add legitimacy to the transition government, as well as keep the population of place. So they don't migrate out.
Sure, I'll drop a little thought grenade into the conversation right now is anybody can find the value in communism, but you give somebody a parcel of land and autonomy over their own ability to make away in the their lives. Communism seems weird. You're weird. Everybody's like, we all own everything until you give somebody to acres of land and say, you can shape your way offered the audience. And it's not very many cultures out there that there's not value.
Sure, that would challenge that perspective and and, and the Vietcong knew that right? Ho Chi Minh and GAP. They knew that very smart towards. And that's part of the reason China became such an economic power, is that the government started that two-tier system
where they had an economic base? That was more open capitalism and then they had the governance side on top of it that said, hey as long as you want to make money, you know you want to run a business, you want to own a business, find will leave you alone, pay your taxes paid. Whatever payoffs you have to do, just don't get into the governance side and sure. Preachy, you know, it worked pretty well.
The thing is when she took power, he started to see all that money flow and lack of control and he started to centralize it and it is caused trying to start peaking economically as well as in their foreign policy Outreach, which how Brands fears is going to cause them to be more violent in their future foreign policy actions. And actually I was Talking to John kisara. We just wrote a book about China for he did about seven indictments on their illicit activities.
He follows everything from their fit and I'll trade to Oregon theft and the uyghurs and slavery and all that. And that's when question I asked him is, do you think that as they Peak will the dictatorship then lean more into fit and I'll trade and Oregon transfers and all of the different illicit activities. They have to make up that difference. And I'm Wait for him to respond.
So it'll be interesting. It's a great way to frame kind of one of these little side narratives of what I was working on about, like just the value of shared values, right? Building a system where the people are bought into the system that you're selling, right? Yeah. This is kind of revolving around three findings, in my research. So the third finding what is one of the disadvantages of the Shadow government. It makes the organizational structure, that is best.
Most poised to get the population to buy into the resistance or Insurgency, it makes them vulnerable because they have to be a forward facing organization. The Taliban Shadow government was partially an effective because it was actually truly a shadow government. They didn't have an office sitting there, they didn't have a structure available for the people to engage with an exchange, with this alternate form of government.
So they layered on some like, Clandestine Insurgency type thought on how they built this up when you've got a good one. One that's actually building legitimacy. You got something that looks like the Vietcong in Vietnam or I argued in solidarity, the shadow government was the national Coordinating Committee and CC, right? These were the offices that made these Regional protest movements become solidarity but they were offices. They were people that existed there to say.
I'm gonna offer you a Will contract and you can come and talk to me Monday through Friday, you know, 825, I'm representing you and this exchange that we have. I'm gonna give you these things through shared values and performance, and services, and systems of exchange. And what you're going to give me back is your part of the social contract. You're going to give me legitimacy when I tell you to strike and Poland. I don't want you to worry about the government saying.
Don't strike a way to go strike at a specific time and a specific place. We need to demonstrate that. You support the movement and people in Poland, did they had millions of members? And the first year of them coming up and it exploded? Because this social contract that solidarity was selling was very real but it made the NCC, very vulnerable. So the return on a shadow government is extremely valuable.
It's novel in terms of resistance and intermittency structures, you don't get large scale legitimacy through Guerrilla operations. You get some people will support you but it's just a different type of exchange, auxiliary, an underground, same way. So you build a Shadow government to compete with the opposition within their sphere of control. You're going to get a large-scale return on legitimacy if you perform. Good governance.
But it's going to make you very vulnerable because good governance requires you to be present, it requires you to exist, in a Real place said a real time. So the Vietcong knew this, right? They set up operatives as a part of their Shadow government, that lived in the hamlets and the towns. And guess what? That made it pretty easy for Phoenix to find them and kill them.
Capture them. It made it pretty easy to determine for US forces in the government of Vietnam to say, hey, here's where chords needs to go to counter governance, right? The problem is it took a service away that supported the core value of those local. Judges is what you're saying. Yeah, because there's no place in on it, right? Are you the same thing for like
vso in Afghanistan? So it made it easy for us to determine where it is. So you've got these resistance structures gorillas underground, an auxiliary that they can go out and live in a barn. You don't need to see them. You just need to know that they're doing their job and you get the return on their function, Shadow government's, they have to exist. They have to be with the people makes them very vulnerable and that's what you saw.
In solidarity NCC was super present, they were there and jerez else, key get elected and he's like not today. And overnight thousands of solidarity members are arrested to include Melissa. All of the, in CC Regional Offices are taken down there or shut down and solidarity for the vast majority of its organizational, purpose ceases to exist in a 24-hour period of time. That's how vulnerable it could show the government makes you,
right? And that's what And that elster Smith, who wrote the dictators hand book, argues is that the current policy of dictators is to kill off any chato governments to the point where they just, there is no resistance anymore. Putin is a great example of this. He and she of spread this kind of notion around the world which is why you're getting the problems. You are in the car is that they're just being brutal to. Any kind of resistance is going
out there. Sure no doubt and that is one of the two ways. Is that a counter government and opposition can go about combating, a shadow got, right? I argue in the paper. I essentially say listen, you got either a kill capture or counter governance approach but kill capture only works if you really good at it it only works if your total right, it's very trunky a and its approach, right? Right to trunk.
Yeah. In French Algeria, he does coin and he has cruelly good coin in a great task knitting interviews with the now. He's like, no, we just we just we killed everybody. Yeah, right, everybody right. You were associated. You got killed or captured period and it was very comprehensive in its approach, it's not very palatable for us in the west to acknowledge that good coin, that is relying on kill capture ideology.
Historically, speaking is really only effective if your total about it, and is it in a long-term form effect? Because the French still struggle with any kind of cooperation in Algeria and other countries around the North and South. Yeah. Great question. Right, what's your Horizon on success? Is it you know next year or is it 10 years from that? Or is it 50 years?
You may be able to bludgeon yourself into cooperation but there's a long history and the Locals are those Nations often tell stories down to their children and their children's children about it until there's a point where the legitimacy starts to creep back out. Yeah, which is why I say if you're going to go about that approach, just acknowledge how it works and how it doesn't work, it's more nuanced than
we're getting out to them work. More kind of being a little sound bite me in terms of the takeaways from it. But well, it's a podcast again, finding a little, exactly. I am committing a cardinal sin or not, you're doing a podcast. That's what you're supposed to do. And the other approaches, the counter governance approach and that's hard for us too. Because when we say Phoenix go and conduct your task, right? I get these great metrics of performance that are very military palatable.
Sure in an eccentric operation. I get to tell you how many people I captured? I could tell you how many people I killed. It makes sense to everybody. I'm not going to say I like it because we like it. I'm going to say I like it because it makes sense. If I'm measuring the delta in the variance between how much legitimacy I have taken away from from a shadow government and that's difficult for me to conceptualize and I've studied
it for you, right? And I, I will tell you that the idea of building a nice little white paper one page report for status rep to a commanding officer walking into her office and saying, man. Here's what I've done over the last three months of my counter government operations, I don't know if I could build that product, because it's very nuanced, right? And you're not going to get very good feedback. When you say, it's hard to
measure. It's difficult to measure right, but it's partially difficult to measure because we don't have a framework for it right again, going back to that, it governance is only the activities of the government. Then we have these great examples of chords and vso in Vietnam and Afghanistan of counter governance. What exactly are we doing, right?
Counter governance is not just strengthening gyro or government from South Vietnam. It's also getting after that shadow government breaking its legs metaphorically speaking, And making it less palatable to population. That's counter governance that I need metrics. I need measures of performance and measures of Effectiveness to demonstrate that. There's been a change based off of my inputs into that system and we can't start building
Frameworks like that. Until we institutionally acknowledge that governance is more complex than the activities performed by the government. Yeah so here's here's the fun question. What you're describing is exactly the same as what went on in the macro political Realm of the Cold War and the u.s. in competition. But what was a system versus system competition.
The Cold War, I see residents also in the global strategic competition that we're doing now with China and Russia and well, the four plus one do you see competition as a form of Shadow governance, where were competing for the global markets and also Do you see a strategy to where the us could be using targeted core values with our partner Nations and Target Nations that we want to build as partners as a way of outcompeting these competitors, I'm going to answer your question by not directly
answering your question. Oh, thank I'm going to running for that to tell you why. I'm not going to directly answer it because I do not think that it's what I will say, is this, I think it's very important. Ain't for Army, Special Operations forces. And frankly, the Department of State and some other other governmental agencies to get a little bit smarter on how to build support and neutralize, Shadow government's. I think that when they exist,
they're very dangerous. Westmoreland actually said that they might just be more important than the gorillas back in Vietnam. And he was, I would argue correct because they sell hope to the population. Sure they'd sell a lot of things but definitely, definitely. Threat. So we need to get smarter on building them. We're on apprehensive about saying why we would want to build them. It is hard to to proxy this kind of stuff.
I don't think that building a shadow government is the kind of thing that we can send some Bob's over say building the shadow government today. Team. Well, I'm not prescribing that as well. I'm just saying that, well, I say that there's humor in it, right? But there's a complicated history with our support of regimes. Me, Kermit Roosevelt and Iran? I mean, a lot of things, right?
I'm going to keep it real vague, so it's complicated, but if we're doing good shared values, it's not us doing it. Where it's really important for us to understand why to do it is when we talk about our partners who are integrated resistance Training Concepts and to their defense plans, right? If we look at Ukraine and we say, hey, we've had an investment within Ukraine for a period of time and a part of
that. Speaks a part of the success that we're seeing is a bi-product of the investment that we put into there where you've got these great reports coming out saying hey that offensive that came down from the North and the opening days of the conflict that wasn't really stopped unilaterally by uniformed Ukrainian forces. They were territorial defense units that stood up and held the line at a very critical access of approach.
Right? There is local populations that were throwing Molotov cocktails on trucks and vehicles and And absolutely, right, that's resistance if we're building resistance Concepts into partner and allies structures of defense and a part of that is acknowledging that in the event, that there's a scenario where we can't hold the line or they can't hold the line and we've really got to lean into this resistance as defense concept, which is what the Rock is, this
is my trying to speak out of turn here. There are nations that are our allies that Have really leaned into the Rock and I encourage it. I think it's great. I think it's a fantastic approach to use limited means to to get outsized returns in terms of Defending territory. Sure. And you acknowledge that you're going to seed from that territory then and if you acknowledge, you're going to seed from a bit. Then we're looking at a scenario Like Glue, Hans. And what are the than place to
compete? With this occupation regime that is in charge of that area? It's a shadow government. That's the organization. That's the resistant structure that we're talking about that. It's going to compete with that occupation regime and it's in saying that out loud makes it very real the threats to that organization become very palatable. We acknowledge where we'll be in play in the conflict that we're all very focused on right now, right? I said it out loud.
Knowing full, well, that I'm I'm saying there is a value return for people with in luhansk to say, I'm going to set up shop and I'm going to act on behalf of the Ukrainian government to perform a governance function that is at odds with my occupation, you're painting a Target on your back, right? I don't know how to make that more palatable because it is the reality of the situation. Sure. But how cool would it be if we knew that or we built it into
the Rock ahead of time? That's how nice would it be? I'm sorry. What do you mean by Rock the resistance operating concept? Okay, thank you. So the research sobbing calm said, yeah sure not the Republic of Korea. Okay.
The resistance operating concept we're doing a good job or that multinational concept built in cooperation with the joint Special Operations. University does a great job of saying, here's how you build gorilla and auxiliary and underground type functions in advance as a part of a
territorial defense plan. Sure. And we're good at supporting building those because it aligns with our existing Doctrine, but there's a return and a function there that I argue is important for us to just equally acknowledge when it's necessary to build support or neutralize and that's a shadow government. And if we're doing this ahead of time, we're setting these things up ahead of time and helping our partners, develop them and integrate them into their
defense plans. Then it's probably incumbent on us to at least acknowledge That there's a value here, there's a value of saying, you're going to do G activities, underground activities and auxiliary activities, I know, by the way, you guys need to work out, however, if it's within your system of governance at a national level that if this region becomes occupied, who is continuing the line of governments that is demonstrating that the insert
partner or Ally State. Here is still the legitimate Authority in this area, giving people the opportunity to make that choice and The porch step to make sense makes told us that that's how we'll answer. I think it's a great non-answer but I do like the idea of focusing on the core values of Nations that you're trying to build better relationships with and it may not be building a shadow government.
In might be just good diplomacy to reach out and focus on core values and building Mutual door, shared ideals. So at the The macro Global rule law system. I think that might be a better way of competing against You know, Nations that basically promote corruption and violence to compete with the current rule of law system. Yeah. So I think that might be the attractor that we've just not paid attention to when designing Global competition and counter malign influence.
Yeah, I think it's all tight end. If we talk about this from the perspective of what my findings were Shadow governments are offer a really great return for resistances, right? They offer something that other resistance organizations don't and that's legitimacy. If you build enough legitimacy, you're going to Your odds of success and short-term, that's Victory and long-term. It's less likely you're resistant. Once you re-establish control. That's good second.
They're very vulnerable if you do them. Well, they're very vulnerable and that's just a statement. The takeaway is, you need to protect them, right? They can't just exist, unprotected.
He had to find a way to protect an outward facing organization and if we're looking at disrupting them or neutralizing them, M. Then there are two approaches to do it. There's an enemy Centric one where it's kill capture which aligns itself with coin Doctrine kind of what we did in the last 20 years in Afghanistan and there's a counter governance angle kill captures hard to pull off but if you do it well you can just squash it like winning
a fight like overwhelmingly. Don't just get into a fight with bully like you know you gotta break his kneecap and he just want to fight. You get right? Like you got to do it really well really quickly. But since that's kind of hard for us to do not because it's it were not good at it because or pretty practice at it right now. It's because it's hard to do period and it's kind of unpalatable and Western doctrines. I think we should just focus on the counter governance angle.
Sure. It's a little bit of a slower approach, but if we flip my hypothesis backwards and say, all right, well, the shadow government gets you legitimacy and legitimacy increases your odds of success and decreases your odds that you're going to face a resistance. Once you're successful. The hypothesis kind of holds true on counter governance as well.
Counter governance is meant to delegitimize, a shadow government and legitimize the government that you're acting on behalf of, wouldn't we be able to equally say that we are increasing the odds of the government that we are supporting them succeeding and building legitimacy by encouraging people to buy into that system of governance. It sounds like you're taking the best of the North Vietnamese plan and flipping it to where it can be used for.
Either resistance to a dictator or trying to build a Shadow government to help go after dictators and oligarchs basically. Yeah, generally speaking just support our national objective, the tactics and strategies that you're discussing would be applicable for the u.s. out competing with line. Actors. Absolutely. Right.
And these structures to I'm saying, hey this way learn about Shadow government and to answer your question more directly if we're talking about a global competition for influence like what is Great power competition. Look like, well, in my opinion, historical allegory is the Cold War. What was the currency in the Cold War? It was influence. Yes. Who can wield their influence within a series of operations, or a steer of the world better. But that really blouses bows
down to his legitimacy. The number of people who are willingly obeying a democratic regime versus a Communist Regime, right? The challenge with the Cold War though is that a lot of countries played both sides. Absolutely. Right. Because they didn't know who was going to win. So they're gonna Give good grace to both sides. And then, as one became more dominant, they started to switch and support. Its kind of point is the formula holds and just get rid of Shadow right?
If governments perform governance as non-governmental entities are quite capable of doing right. Little knock on wood there. If governments, perform governance than the return that they get is legitimacy. Sure. And if they're in competition with something else then what better way to increase your odds of success then by Forming good, governance and increasing your legitimacy with the population because that's the Target and legitimacy population Centric operation.
And for every five people that see me is legitimate, that's five less than C use Legend. There is a point of time T value. T the it's zero-sum five people that are obeying me or obeying you that's a zero-sum exchange. It's a very powerful shift in who wields the means the people at any given point in time The interesting point is when there are swing population and they're actually using the services of both sides to see which one they like better.
Sure. And that's where I will acknowledge my research fails, a little short is because I have to use the word support without spending a huge amount of time. Looking at what the word support mean this material support is this. I'm going to make a sign out back with a fist on it and says, you know, down to the fascists like what exactly does this mean, what does support look like? Maybe support looks like I just stay home that day and I don't support the government.
Owing to support you by not supporting your opponent. Is that support? And I would say, I don't know, I think there's a lot of ways you can support something, I think that there's a lot of different metrics we can look at it, there's material support, there's moral support. Sure. The one thing that's striking me about what you're saying, that reminds me of an economic model, the the startup model that you bring in a new product that disrupts the current market and takes it over.
Uber was a disruptive governance system in a way that displaced taxis which were an older expensive and unofficial n't system and displaced it with a newer economic model, and that's kind of what you're also talking about is bringing in services that better fit the population. So that they're so attracted to it that they want nothing to do with the old government and its taxiways, they want to go with the new hip government with.
It's Uber ways because it's cheaper and it removes the pain in their life of having to get from one place to another with a lot of hassle. Yeah, I mean, you're treading dangerous water that I would definitely agree with.
If you were actually doing it openly by saying that corporations can perform governance like hundred percent by Into You. Well, when Zuckerberg went to Congress, a couple years ago, one of the complaints that Congressman had, is that sound like Zuckerberg was representing a population as if he was the government and he certainly represents a social contract with his users. He does Like your homeowners association does you know? I mean, you can't have a chicken coop.
What do you get for that? Well, they get onto your neighbor for leaving their trash cans out more in one day, right? That is governance and that is shaping. That is a social contract that you buy into is supported by fake or real shared values, but to betting on your homeowners association and how that's run systems of exchange and services in performance and is a governance structure from a,
from a non-government entity. The you buy into and that you can fight, if you don't want to do it, right? You want to talk about like a really great case study, what somebody should run somewhere that's not employed by the US government resisting the HOA. What like, that's it a try? You sure, we have all failed and what a great way to test some of these structures. What how does that manifest in terms of my geez? Hillary or my underground my
shadow government? Do I have like a another HOA that just sits there and performs the functions? I love the HOA. When that be a fun social test, the shadow government HOA and pre senior competing with them on Services. A yeah, you're competing with them on services and now that whole 0 something makes it make herself perfectly logical right right for every Linda and Bill that's a man you know the existing HOA to not really give me what I need. I like this other social
contract better. I'm not going to pay my dues, I'm going to pay my dues to the other HOA. I'm just going to violate my social contract. That's a zero-sum exchange of legitimacy. Well and it would also become a court battle. Yeah, I mean sure sure. Of course every government has its its backing and HOH it's the legal process. Absolutely. If you were to launch a shadow HOA and have a similar contract with them that bypass the other contract, then Court battle. Very interesting one.
Yeah, but it makes a lot more sense when we say Court battle, right? History tells us that there are international courts and or bodies that will adjudicate the aftermath of seizures of territory, just the same as a local Court, will adjudicate a shadow HOA.
Sure, there was an international body that was stood up in the aftermath of World War Two. That said hey we're gonna go back to the way things were and oh, by the way things are going to change a little bit and redistribution that's no different than, you know. Circuit Court, 506 coming in and being like well, existing HOA, you guys broke your contract, you didn't provide you Services, I told my word, right? But you did do decent, you know, cetera, cetera cetera.
Again, we're on this trail of non-government. Entities can perform governance and that gives us great ways to frame this in terms of this return and efficiency things that we can test not. We meaning me but just that are testable is very interesting. Sure. So, do you have any last thoughts or summary on the paper? You'd like to put out there now, I'll just say, you know, if didn't in reading the research in total, it will be published on TGs Digital Library, some
time. At the end of summer, I will send a link once it gets published, if you're interested in Reading anything else that I've written, there's also another thesis from my time at CGS, see, on there that I'm very interested in Sharing out there so about a concept called rice As Weapons. It's all that. I'll just say it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed the time, and thanks for thanks for having me. So, anytime I You getting on thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please like And subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an episode, email us at see a podcasting at gmail.com? I'll have the email and see association website in the show notes. And now most importantly to those currently out in the field, working with a partner Nations, people or leadership to forward us relations. Thank you all for what you're doing.
This is Jack, your host, stay tuned for more. Great episodes one, see a podcast. This is Jack, your host, stay tuned for more. Great episodes one, see a podcast.