This arti­cle first appeared on Tom Dis­patch.

The steady rise in the number of elite operators, missions, and foreign deployments since 9/11 appears in no danger of ending, despite years of worries by think-tank experts and special ops supporters about the effects of such a high operations tempo on these troops.

“We don’t know exact­ly where we’re at in the world, mil­i­tar­i­ly, and what we’re doing,” said Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham, a mem­ber of the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, in Octo­ber. That was in the wake of the com­bat deaths of four mem­bers of the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces in the West African nation of Niger. Gra­ham and oth­er sen­a­tors expressed shock about the deploy­ment, but the glob­al sweep of America’s most elite forces is, at best, an open secret.

Ear­li­er this year before that same Sen­ate com­mit­tee — though Gra­ham was not in atten­dance — Gen­er­al Ray­mond Thomas, the chief of U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand (SOCOM), offered some clues about the plan­etwide reach of America’s most elite troops. ​“We oper­ate and fight in every cor­ner of the world,” he boast­ed. ​“Rather than a mere ​‘break-glass-in-case-of-war’ force, we are now proac­tive­ly engaged across the ​‘bat­tle space’ of the Geo­graph­ic Com­bat­ant Com­mands… pro­vid­ing key inte­grat­ing and enabling capa­bil­i­ties to sup­port their cam­paigns and operations.”

In 2017, U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces, includ­ing Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, deployed to 149 coun­tries around the world, accord­ing to fig­ures pro­vid­ed to TomDis­patch by U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand. That’s about 75% of the nations on the plan­et and rep­re­sents a jump from the 138 coun­tries that saw such deploy­ments in 2016 under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. It’s also a jump of near­ly 150% from the last days of George W. Bush’s White House. This record-set­ting num­ber of deploy­ments comes as Amer­i­can com­man­dos are bat­tling a pletho­ra of ter­ror groups in qua­si-wars that stretch from Africa and the Mid­dle East to Asia.

“Most Amer­i­cans would be amazed to learn that U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces have been deployed to three quar­ters of the nations on the plan­et,” observes William Har­tung, the direc­tor of the Arms and Secu­ri­ty Project at the Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Pol­i­cy. ​“There is lit­tle or no trans­paren­cy as to what they are doing in these coun­tries and whether their efforts are pro­mot­ing secu­ri­ty or pro­vok­ing fur­ther ten­sion and conflict.”

Growth Oppor­tu­ni­ty

“Since 9⁄ 11 , we expand­ed the size of our force by almost 75% in order to take on mis­sion-sets that are like­ly to endure,” SOCOM’s Thomas told the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee in May. Since 2001, from the pace of oper­a­tions to their geo­graph­ic sweep, the activ­i­ties of U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces (SOF) have, in fact, grown in every con­ceiv­able way. On any giv­en day, about 8,000 spe­cial oper­a­tors — from a com­mand num­ber­ing rough­ly 70,000 — are deployed in approx­i­mate­ly 80 countries.

“The increase in the use of Spe­cial Forces since 9⁄ 11 was part of what was then referred to as the Glob­al War on Ter­ror as a way to keep the Unit­ed States active mil­i­tar­i­ly in areas beyond its two main wars, Iraq and Afghanistan,” Har­tung told TomDis­patch. ​“The even heav­ier reliance on Spe­cial Forces dur­ing the Oba­ma years was part of a strat­e­gy of what I think of as ​‘polit­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able war­fare,’ in which the deploy­ment of tens of thou­sands of troops to a few key the­aters of war was replaced by a ​‘lighter foot­print’ in more places, using drones, arms sales and train­ing, and Spe­cial Forces.”

The Trump White House has attacked Barack Obama’s lega­cy on near­ly all fronts. It has under­cut, renounced, or reversed actions of his rang­ing from trade pacts to finan­cial and envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions to rules that shield­ed trans­gen­der employ­ees from work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion. When it comes to Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces, how­ev­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has embraced their use in the style of the for­mer pres­i­dent, while upping the ante even fur­ther. Pres­i­dent Trump has also pro­vid­ed mil­i­tary com­man­ders greater author­i­ty to launch attacks in qua­si-war zones like Yemen and Soma­lia. Accord­ing to Mic­ah Zenko, a nation­al secu­ri­ty expert and White­head Senior Fel­low at the think tank Chatham House, those forces con­duct­ed five times as many lethal coun­tert­er­ror­ism mis­sions in such non-bat­tle­field coun­tries in the Trump administration’s first six months in office as they did dur­ing Obama’s final six months.

A Wide World of War

U.S. com­man­dos spe­cial­ize in 12 core skills, from ​“uncon­ven­tion­al war­fare” (help­ing to stoke insur­gen­cies and régime change) to ​“for­eign inter­nal defense” (sup­port­ing allies’ efforts to guard them­selves against ter­ror­ism, insur­gen­cies, and coups). Coun­tert­er­ror­ism — fight­ing what SOCOM calls vio­lent extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions or VEOs — is, how­ev­er, the spe­cial­ty America’s com­man­dos have become best known for in the post‑9/​11 era.

In the spring of 2002, before the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, SOCOM chief Gen­er­al Charles Hol­land tout­ed efforts to ​“improve SOF capa­bil­i­ties to pros­e­cute uncon­ven­tion­al war­fare and for­eign inter­nal defense pro­grams to bet­ter sup­port friends and allies. The val­ue of these pro­grams, demon­strat­ed in the Afghanistan cam­paign,” he said, ​“can be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in sta­bi­liz­ing coun­tries and regions vul­ner­a­ble to ter­ror­ist infiltration.”

Over the last decade and a half, how­ev­er, there’s been lit­tle evi­dence America’s com­man­dos have excelled at ​“sta­bi­liz­ing coun­tries and regions vul­ner­a­ble to ter­ror­ist infil­tra­tion.” This was reflect­ed in Gen­er­al Thomas’s May tes­ti­mo­ny before the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. ​“The threat posed by VEOs remains the high­est pri­or­i­ty for USSO­COM in both focus and effort,” he explained.

How­ev­er, unlike Hol­land who high­light­ed only one coun­try — Afghanistan — where spe­cial oper­a­tors were bat­tling mil­i­tants in 2002, Thomas list­ed a panoply of ter­ror­ist hot spots bedev­il­ing America’s com­man­dos a decade and a half lat­er. ​“Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces,” he said, ​“are the main effort, or major sup­port­ing effort for U.S. VEO-focused oper­a­tions in Afghanistan, Syr­ia, Iraq, Yemen, Soma­lia, Libya, across the Sahel of Africa, the Philip­pines, and Central/​South Amer­i­ca — essen­tial­ly, every­where Al Qae­da (AQ) and the Islam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS) are to be found.”

Offi­cial­ly, there are about 5,300 U.S. troops in Iraq. (The real fig­ure is thought to be high­er.) Sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of them are spe­cial oper­a­tors train­ing and advis­ing Iraqi gov­ern­ment forces and Kur­dish troops. Elite U.S. forces have also played a cru­cial role in Iraq’s recent offen­sive against the mil­i­tants of the Islam­ic State, pro­vid­ing artillery and air­pow­er, includ­ing SOCOM’s AC-130W Stinger II gun­ships with 105mm can­nons that allow them to serve as fly­ing how­itzers. In that cam­paign, Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces were ​“thrust into a new role of coor­di­nat­ing fire sup­port,” wrote Lin­da Robin­son, a senior inter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy ana­lyst with the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion who spent sev­en weeks in Iraq, Syr­ia, and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries ear­li­er this year. ​“This fire sup­port is even more impor­tant to the Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces, a far more light­ly armed irreg­u­lar force which con­sti­tutes the major ground force fight­ing ISIS in Syria.”

Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces have, in fact, played a key role in the war effort in Syr­ia, too. While Amer­i­can com­man­dos have been killed in bat­tle there, Kur­dish and Arab prox­ies — known as the Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces—have done the lion’s share of the fight­ing and dying to take back much of the ter­ri­to­ry once held by the Islam­ic State. SOCOM’s Thomas spoke about this in sur­pris­ing­ly frank terms at a secu­ri­ty con­fer­ence in Aspen, Col­orado, this sum­mer. ​“We’re right now inside the cap­i­tal of [ISIS’s] caliphate at Raqqa [Syr­ia]. We’ll have that back soon with our prox­ies, a sur­ro­gate force of 50,000 peo­ple that are work­ing for us and doing our bid­ding,” he said. ​“So two and a half years of fight­ing this fight with our sur­ro­gates, they’ve lost thou­sands, we’ve only lost two ser­vice mem­bers. Two is too many, but it’s, you know, a relief that we haven’t had the kind of loss­es that we’ve had elsewhere.”

This year, U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tors were killed in Iraq, Syr­ia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Soma­lia, and the Sahe­lian nations of Niger and Mali (although reports indi­cate that a Green Beret who died in that coun­try was like­ly stran­gled by U.S. Navy SEALs). In Libya, SEALs recent­ly kid­napped a sus­pect in the 2012 attacks in Beng­hazi that killed four Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador J. Christo­pher Stevens. In the Philip­pines, U.S. Spe­cial Forces joined the months-long bat­tle to recap­ture Marawi City after it was tak­en by Islamist mil­i­tants ear­li­er this year.

And even this grow­ing list of coun­tert­er­ror hotspots is only a frac­tion of the sto­ry. In Africa, the coun­tries sin­gled out by Thomas — Soma­lia, Libya, and those in the Sahel — are just a hand­ful of the nations to which Amer­i­can com­man­dos were deployed in 2017. As recent­ly report­ed at Vice News, U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces were active in at least 33 nations across the con­ti­nent, with troops heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed in and around coun­tries now home to a grow­ing num­ber of what the Pentagon’s Africa Cen­ter for Strate­gic Stud­ies calls ​“active mil­i­tant Islamist groups.” While Defense Depart­ment spokes­woman Major Audri­cia Har­ris would not pro­vide details on the range of oper­a­tions being car­ried out by the elite forces, it’s known that they run the gamut from con­duct­ing secu­ri­ty assess­ments at U.S. embassies to com­bat operations.

Data pro­vid­ed by SOCOM also reveals a spe­cial ops pres­ence in 33 Euro­pean coun­tries this year. ​“Out­side of Rus­sia and Belarus we train with vir­tu­al­ly every coun­try in Europe either bilat­er­al­ly or through var­i­ous multi­na­tion­al events,” Major Michael Weis­man, a spokesman for U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand Europe, told TomDis­patch.

For the past two years, in fact, the U.S. has main­tained a Spe­cial Oper­a­tions con­tin­gent in almost every nation on Russia’s west­ern bor­der. “[W]e’ve had per­sis­tent pres­ence in every coun­try — every NATO coun­try and oth­ers on the bor­der with Rus­sia doing phe­nom­e­nal things with our allies, help­ing them pre­pare for their threats,” said SOCOM’s Thomas, men­tion­ing the Baltic states as well as Roma­nia, Poland, Ukraine, and Geor­gia by name. These activ­i­ties rep­re­sent, in the words of Gen­er­al Charles Cleve­land, chief of U.S. Army Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand from 2012 to 2015 and now the senior men­tor to the Army War Col­lege, ​“unde­clared cam­paigns” by com­man­dos. Weis­man, how­ev­er, balked at that par­tic­u­lar lan­guage. ​“U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces have been deployed per­sis­tent­ly and at the invi­ta­tion of our allies in the Baltic States and Poland since 2014 as part of the broad­er U.S. Euro­pean Com­mand and Depart­ment of Defense Euro­pean Deter­rence Ini­tia­tive,” he told TomDis­patch. ​“The per­sis­tent pres­ence of U.S. SOF along­side our Allies sends a clear mes­sage of U.S. com­mit­ment to our allies and the defense of our NATO Alliance.”

Asia is also a cru­cial region for America’s elite forces. In addi­tion to Iran and Rus­sia, SOCOM’s Thomas sin­gled out Chi­na and North Korea as nations that are ​“becom­ing more aggres­sive in chal­leng­ing U.S. inter­ests and part­ners through the use of asym­met­ric means that often fall below the thresh­old of con­ven­tion­al con­flict.” He went on to say that the ​“abil­i­ty of our spe­cial oper­a­tors to con­duct low-vis­i­bil­i­ty spe­cial war­fare oper­a­tions in polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive envi­ron­ments make them unique­ly suit­ed to counter the malign activ­i­ties of our adver­saries in this domain.”

U.S.-North Kore­an saber rat­tling has brought increased atten­tion to Spe­cial Forces Detach­ment Korea (SFDK), the longest serv­ing U.S. Spe­cial Forces unit in the world. It would, of course, be called into action should a war ever break out on the penin­su­la. In such a con­flict, U.S. and South Kore­an elite forces would unite under the umbrel­la of the Com­bined Uncon­ven­tion­al War­fare Task Force. In March, com­man­dos—includ­ing, accord­ing to some reports, mem­bers of the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 — took part in Foal Eagle, a train­ing exer­cise, along­side con­ven­tion­al U.S. forces and their South Kore­an counterparts.

U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tors also were involved in train­ing exer­cis­es and oper­a­tions else­where across Asia and the Pacif­ic. In June, in Oki­nawa, Japan, for exam­ple, air­men from the 17th Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Squadron (17th SOS) car­ried out their annu­al (and odd­ly spelled) ​“Day of the Jakal,” the launch of five Air Force Spe­cial Oper­a­tions MC-130J Com­man­do II air­craft to prac­tice, accord­ing to a mil­i­tary news release, ​“air­drops, air­craft land­ings, and rapid infil­tra­tion and exfil­tra­tion of equip­ment.” Accord­ing to Air Force Lieu­tenant Colonel Patrick Dube of the 17th SOS, ​“It shows how we can meet the emerg­ing mis­sion sets for both SOCK­OR [Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand Korea] and SOC­PAC [Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand Pacif­ic] out here in the Pacif­ic theater.”

At about the same time, mem­bers of the Air Force’s 353rd Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Group car­ried out Teak Jet, a joint com­bined exchange train­ing, or JCET, mis­sion meant to improve mil­i­tary coor­di­na­tion between U.S. and Japan­ese forces. In June and July, intel­li­gence ana­lysts from the Air Force’s 353rd Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Group took part in Tal­is­man Saber, a bien­ni­al mil­i­tary train­ing exer­cise con­duct­ed in var­i­ous loca­tions across Australia.

More for War

The steady rise in the num­ber of elite oper­a­tors, mis­sions, and for­eign deploy­ments since 9⁄ 11 appears in no dan­ger of end­ing, despite years of wor­ries by think-tank experts and spe­cial ops sup­port­ers about the effects of such a high oper­a­tions tem­po on these troops. ​“Most SOF units are employed to their sus­tain­able lim­it,” Gen­er­al Thomas said ear­li­er this year. ​“Despite grow­ing demand for SOF, we must pri­or­i­tize the sourc­ing of these demands as we face a rapid­ly chang­ing secu­ri­ty envi­ron­ment.” Yet the num­ber of deploy­ments still grew to a record 149 nations in 2017. (Dur­ing the Oba­ma years, deploy­ments reached 147 in 2015.)

At a recent con­fer­ence on spe­cial oper­a­tions held in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., influ­en­tial mem­bers of the Sen­ate and House armed ser­vices com­mit­tees acknowl­edged that there were grow­ing strains on the force. ​“I do wor­ry about overuse of SOF,” said House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee Chair­man Mac Thorn­ber­ry, a Repub­li­can. One solu­tion offered by both Jack Reed, the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, and Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Joni Ernst, a com­bat vet­er­an who served in Iraq, was to bulk up Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand yet more. ​“We have to increase num­bers and resources,” Reed insist­ed.

This desire to expand Spe­cial Oper­a­tions fur­ther comes at a moment when sen­a­tors like Lind­sey Gra­ham con­tin­ue to acknowl­edge how remark­ably clue­less they are about where those elite forces are deployed and what exact­ly they are doing in far-flung cor­ners of the globe. Experts point out just how dan­ger­ous fur­ther expan­sion could be, giv­en the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ter­ror groups and bat­tle zones since 9⁄ 11 and the dan­gers of unfore­seen blow­back as a result of low-pro­file spe­cial ops missions.

“Almost by def­i­n­i­tion, the dizzy­ing num­ber of deploy­ments under­tak­en by U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces in recent years would be hard to track. But few in Con­gress seem to be even mak­ing the effort,” said William Har­tung. ​“This is a colos­sal mis­take if one is con­cerned about rein­ing in the globe-span­ning U.S. mil­i­tary strat­e­gy of the post‑9/​11 era, which has caused more harm than good and done lit­tle to curb terrorism.”

How­ev­er, with spe­cial ops deploy­ments ris­ing above Bush and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion lev­els to record-set­ting heights and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion embrac­ing the use of com­man­dos in qua­si-wars in places like Soma­lia and Yemen, there appears to be lit­tle inter­est in the White House or on Capi­tol Hill in rein­ing in the geo­graph­ic scope and sweep of America’s most secre­tive troops. And the results, say experts, may be dire. ​“While the retreat from large ​‘boots on the ground’ wars like the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s inter­ven­tion in Iraq is wel­come,” said Har­tung, ​“the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces is a dan­ger­ous alter­na­tive, giv­en the prospects of get­ting the Unit­ed States fur­ther embroiled in com­plex over­seas conflicts.”