Little Spartans: How Small State Militaries Use Special Forces to Punch Above Their Weight

Aggressive competition between great powers is once again the main steering force in global affairs. With increasingly predatory behaviour from Russia, China and Iran, and a more transactional USA less willing to be ‘global policeman’, small states around the world need to develop their own means of pursuing defence and security policy aims more than ever, particularly if they lay in regions where this competition is happening. We examine here how some small states have done this by using particular types of military unit, defined broadly as Special Forces, to achieve policy aims which may seem beyond their capacity.

The clearest definition of a small state comes from the Federation of Small States, a voluntary grouping at the United Nations (UN) open to states with populations of 10 million or less.[1] States of this size make up 108 of the world’s 197 recognised nation-states, and ways in which some overcome their smallness to become serious global players may be instructional to others. There is a small body of literature examining the importance of Special Forces to small states already, but it comes mainly from Scandinavian and Canadian authors with military, government, or academic backgrounds, so its focus, inevitably, is North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-centric, doctrinal and theoretical.[2] Analysis of small state Special Forces on actual operations is lacking: this paper begins rectifying this, presenting three real-world examples of small state Special Forces – those of New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – having policy impact beyond what might be expected from the size of population, defence budget and military capacity.

The all-important ‘so what’ of this paper is implicit in the title. Armed forces are part of the intrinsic makeup of most states, be they big or small, defining how allies and enemies alike regard them, setting their position in the world and how seriously they are taken. This is not lost on the leadership of certain small states, which have become serious international players off the back of successful military operations involving Special Forces. There are also lessons for bigger states here, particularly those, like the UK, whose armed forces are under major financial pressure and might be expected in the future to do a lot more with a lot less. Some small state militaries are masters of this, and we see examples of their Special Forces achieving genuine strategic effect, something at which UK Special Forces in particular excel already and may have to do a lot more of in future, given swingeing defence cuts and a shaky economy.

Capacity, Small State Strategies and Special Forces

A country’s military capacity depends on how big its armed forces are, both in real terms and in relation to potential enemies, how well-trained, well-equipped and ready they are for the kind of missions they are expected to carry out, and their sustainability – how long they can fight before cracking.

At first glance, small states seem disadvantaged when it comes to capacity and sustainability precisely because they are small and may, indeed, be unable to even defend themselves without allies, a particular concern if that small state lays in a region of major geopolitical contention.[3] However, there are ways to overcome this. One is alliance-building, small states tending to favour working alongside bigger allies or in coalitions or networks of coequal members offering them geopolitical ‘shelter’ in the form of long-term security guarantees: for instance, sixteen of NATO’s 32 member states fit into the ’10 million or below’ category; in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Saudi Arabia was the only member among six over that population figure from the GCC’s formation in 1981 to the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) population passing 10 million in 2022.[4] Consequently, strengthening transnational organisations such as NATO, the UN, or the European Union (EU) becomes an end in itself because strengthening the alliance strengthens the shelter and its deterrence value in the long term.[5] Nevertheless, some small states may still form more traditional partnerships with bigger powers to counter specific geopolitical threats, as the UAE did with Saudi Arabia and others in Yemen in the 2010s.[6]

As to what they can offer these alliances, among identified ‘Good Practices of Effective Small States’ is ‘innovative approaches to strengthen and supplement capacity’ and a noticeable characteristic of certain small states over the past thirty years has been delivering specialist or ‘exquisite’ capabilities to bigger allies who compensate for the mass that that particular small state military doesn’t have.[7] The small state therefore makes itself valuable by offering high quality niche capabilities that bigger allies might find useful, cementing the longer-term relationships which guarantee their security. It is in following such ‘boutique’ strategies that some small states have reached a long way outside their borders and achieved strategic effect via deploying Special Forces.

For this paper’s purposes, Special Forces are defined as military or paramilitary units, consisting of small numbers of carefully selected and highly trained soldiers or other military operators, and specializing in missions of national or theatre-level importance inside denied territory. They are lightly equipped and operate covertly in small parties either alone or alongside local allies and achieve strategic effect via combining superior tactical skill and aggression with innovative equipment and methods – indeed, they are often at the forefront of innovation in both tactics and equipment, a long way beyond the popular image of ‘door kickers’.[8] Special Forces are ideal for a small state which can organise the people and the facilities; in military terms, they are the ultimate expression of quality over quantity, providing state-level capability not reliant on mass or expensive heavy weaponry and executing missions of the highest importance. Our first example of this is one of the oldest and best small state Special Forces, which has cemented its country’s position as an effective ally and serious player way beyond the home base – 1st New Zealand Special Air Service Regiment (1 NZ SAS).

Case Study 1 – 1st New Zealand Special Air Service Regiment

New Zealand is biggest of a patchwork of small states spread across the South Pacific, with a population of just over 5 million and an annual defence budget for 2024 of approximately US$2.5billion. The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) consists of around 15,000 people, including 10,000 regulars, mostly in the Army. Although a staunchly loyal member of the British Commonwealth and UN, New Zealand’s only current formal military alliance is with Australia; through this it links with ANZUS, Australia’s alliance with the USA.[9] However, informally, it is a close partner of the USA, the UK and Australia; it is a member of the Five-Eyes intelligence sharing community – granting access to global-level intelligence and targeting data – and NZ troops have fought alongside those partners in the Second World War and since, with the British in Malaya and Borneo and the Americans and Australians in Vietnam. New Zealand is, alongside Australia and the USA, a de facto guarantor of stability and Western interests in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific – regions on which American interest is still focused even now – the NZDF now specialising in counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and stabilisation in these regions.[10] The New Zealand Army is counted among the most professional in the world and in 1 NZ SAS has a world-class Special Forces capability.

In many ways, 1 NZ SAS epitomises the value of a Special Force to a small state, allowing the NZ Government to show commitment, exert influence and pursue strategic aims at long range but with limited risk and cost.[11] As the name implies, 1 NZ SAS has parallels with the British Army’s 22 SAS in terms of size, organisation and doctrine – indeed, its soldiers wear an identical cap badge on identical sand coloured berets, qualified operators wear identical cloth parachute wings, it shares 22’s regimental motto, ‘Who Dares Wins’, and originated in 1955 as an integral part of 22 SAS in Malaya, The New Zealand Squadron being formed because to the NZ Government, a 121-man SAS squadron represented a more economical investment than the 600+ infantry battalion Britain requested initially. Observing the Squadron’s performance in Malaya, the senior NZ diplomat, Frank Corner, argued for centring New Zealand’s defence strategy on an expanded SAS with RNZAF elements dedicated to support it, on the very ‘small state’ basis that ‘in terms of hitting power, it represents a good return on money spent’, although it took until 1985 for a second sabre squadron to be added and 1 NZ SAS had to wait for regimental status until 2013, following years of experience in Afghanistan.[12]

The two-squadron model allows 1 NZ SAS to rotate a squadron at a time through theatres, as seen in its missions to Afghanistan, Operations Concord I-III of 2001-2005 and Wātea of 2009-2012. They deployed initially in Operation Enduring Freedom, authorised by the NZ Government to support UN resolutions reacting to the 9/11 attacks; as Prime Minister Helen Clark put it, ‘New Zealand people were not neutral about terrorism and they wanted their country to be part of the effort to combat it’.[13] They arrived under a set of political caveats confining them effectively to long-range reconnaissance but these were relaxed by Concord II in 2004, 1 NZ SAS, like their British counterparts, developed into a valued auxiliary to US Special Forces, combining reconnaissance with direct action strikes on high value Taliban targets. Two episodes stand out: in 2004, Lance Corporal Willy Apiata became the second Māori to win the Victoria Cross after carrying a wounded comrade to safety under heavy Taliban fire, while in 2007, 1 NZ SAS received a US Presidential Citation in gratitude for its contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).[14] Wātea originated in a request made directly by President Obama to Prime Minister Key, indicating the esteem 1 NZ SAS had earned by then, and saw 1 NZ SAS mentoring the Afghan National Army and Police in internal counter-terrorist operations while continuing direct action strikes as ISAF withdrew from Afghanistan.[15]

We can therefore present 1 NZ SAS as a Special Force supporting its small state’s aim of being seen as a reliable and effective partner by bigger powers while combatting global terrorism, strengthening that state’s ‘shelter’ twofold. There are parallels with a Special Force from one of the smallest militaries in Europe.

Case Study 2 – The Irish Army Ranger Wing

The Republic of Ireland announced recently an increase in its defence budget to the equivalent of just under US$1.6billion, its highest level ever, but contextualised sharply when considering the UK Ministry of Defence spent over four times that amount alone acquiring Ajax armoured vehicles for the British Army.[16] Ireland has a population of 5.3 million, a Defence Force of just over 6,000 regular ground troops plus token naval and air assets; it is a UN and EU member but is otherwise strictly neutral, with no military alliances throughout its history – indeed, since the Defence Act of 1960, deploying Irish forces abroad has been subject to the so-called ‘Triple Lock’ – the deployment must be approved by the UN, by the Irish government and by a vote in the Dáil Eireann, the Irish Parliament, effectively placing all military activity outside of Ireland under UN control. Yet, Ireland is another small state with Special Forces capable of global missions alongside allies.

The Sciathán Fianóglach an Airm, or Army Ranger Wing (ARW), consists of around 400 soldiers who have passed selection and training not dissimilar to UK Special Forces’; it is Ireland’s designated counterterrorist (CT) force but its principal role has been as rapidly deployable light infantry performing mainly ‘Tier Two’ unconventional warfare supporting UN peacekeeping and stabilisation operations, but also more recently executing ‘Tier One’ direct action, including hostage rescues and covert personnel extraction.[17] The ARW originated in the 1970s, against the growth of international terrorism and the Irish Government’s fear that the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ could destabilise the Republic as well. The Irish Defence Force’s Special Assault Groups were raised, therefore, by officers sent for training at the US Army Ranger School and the Royal Marines Training Centre, to support the national police, the Garda Síochána, in counterterrorist scenarios.[18] The Assault Groups amalgamated into the ARW in 1980.

The ARW’s strategic context is another small state upholding transnational organisations as ‘shelter’. Ireland may be militarily neutral but is strongly supportive of the UN and EU, the Irish Defence Force featuring prominently in UN peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations since the 1950s. Over the past thirty years, the ARW has become Ireland’s force of choice for this kind of mission and there has been a detectable evolution in its role as it gained experience. On its first UN deployment, to Somalia in 1993, the ARW acted mainly as conventional infantry – besting rebel troops in several major firefights – and in East Timor in 1998, thirty ARW operators formed a platoon of the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment; however, over the next six years in East Timor, its role expanded to include long-range reconnaissance, covert surveillance of rebel supply routes and ‘hearts and minds’ liaison with the local population, roles continued into subsequent UN missions to Liberia, Chad and Mali alongside at least two hostage rescues in each of the latter two theatres.[19] Beyond the UN, the ARW has extracted Irish citizens and diplomatic staff from war zones in Libya, Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan and sent training teams to ISAF in Afghanistan. It was on the back of this experience that in 2019 the ARW was chosen to lead the SF element for the EU’s rapid deployment battlegroup based in Germany, ‘indication of the high esteem in which the specialist unit is held within the EU’, and a major return on one of the smallest defence budgets in the developed world.[20]

Our final example is ‘Little Sparta’ itself.

Case Study 3 – The United Arab Emirates Presidential Guard Special Operations Command[21]

Some Special Forces are resourced more lavishly and deployed more aggressively than others, and there are notable differences between the UAE Presidential Guard Special Operations Command (SOC) and our two previous examples. Most obvious is size – while 1 NZ SAS and the ARW are lightweight airmobile forces of 3-400 soldiers each, the Presidential Guard is a 12,000-strong army within the Army, with SOC believed to number over a thousand, reflecting a defence budget of approximately US$25 billion in 2024. The two other units need allies for deployability – particularly at long range – and logistical support; the UAE, conversely, has its own long-range heavy airlift capabilities which can move hundreds of troops and tons of ammunition and other supplies 2,000 miles from home, with bases established all over north and east Africa. The other units focus on stabilisation and counterinsurgency; UAE SOC began doing these roles with ISAF in Afghanistan; the Emirates were implacably opposed to al Qaeda and the Taliban and also keen to have a NATO-standard Special Forces capability, so from 2005 to 2015 UAE SOC were embedded with US Special Operations Forces, 22 SAS and the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) in Afghanistan, where they gained a reputation for being very quick learners.[22] However, SOC’s role has now transformed to providing the cutting edge of an ambitious national geopolitical policy agenda at the nexus of two of the world’s most volatile regions, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. As such, they now have considerable conventional warfighting experience, particularly as the framework ground force in the Arab coalition’s military intervention in Yemen in 2015-2019, where they fought alongside Yemeni pro-government forces against the Houthis and al Qaeda in major battles to control the cities of Aden, Mukalla and Hudaydah, as recorded in the works of Jean-Loup Samaan and Michael Knights.[23]

SOC originated in the Tariq bin Zayed Group, a counterterrorist force formed in Abu Dhabi in 1971 and trained initially by personnel from 22 SAS.[24] The Presidential Guard was formed in 2011 from SOC and three other elite units, mainly in response to the Obama White House’s welcoming reaction to the ‘Arab Spring’ that year and thawing of relations with Iran; seeing this, Gulf rulers felt they could no longer rely on the USA as security guarantor, so needed their own, autonomous capacity, including intervention and expeditionary forces.[25] The Guard is recruited, like many elite units in the Arab world, from specific tribes with blood ties to the rulers, in this case, the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi, and is under direct control of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) President of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi.[26] MBZ also revived the Gulf countries’ historical practice of contracting retired Western military personnel to senior command and training posts; in 2000 he appointed Major General Mike Hindmarsh, a former Commanding Officer of SASR and Director, Australian Special Forces – allowed early retirement by the Australian Government to take up the UAE job – to help form and then command the Guard.[27] General Hindmarsh had a former US Army Brigadier General on his staff as well as British and other Australian officers further down the chain of command.[28]

The Arab coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 to prevent the Houthis from establishing an Iranian vassal state on the Arabian Peninsula, the UAE with the additional aim of forestalling al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) creating a haven from where it could subvert the Gulf States and attack commercial shipping in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.[29] UAE SOC operated in a classic ‘remote warfare’ role, training pro-government militias to do much of the ground fighting in the all-important coastal areas of Yemen, accompanying them into battle, summoning airstrikes and naval gunfire support and providing specialist capabilities including sniping, long-range patrolling and electronic warfare.[30] Tactically and operationally, this began with some resounding successes, the Houthis being driven from Aden in 2015 and al Qaeda from Mukalla the following year; however, attempts to take Maarib and Hudaydah from the Houthis in 2016-2021 ended in prolonged stalemate and a UN-negotiated local ceasefire around Hudaydah.[31] Moreover, the Arab coalition could not stop the Houthis firing Iranian-supplied ballistic missiles at Gulf cities from remote sites, while heavy civilian casualties and the less than stellar human rights record of some of the coalition’s local allies led to international pressure to end the war, with MBZ ordering withdrawal in 2019.[32] The UAE-Saudi alliance was creaking already, possibly because of SOC’s early tactical successes; following the victories at Aden and Mukalla, some militias in southern and western Yemen began to look suspiciously like they were pursuing UAE geopolitical aims in return for further support, including attacking Islamist militias backed by the Saudis.[33]

Whatever the outcome of the Yemen war, SOC demonstrated the UAE could deploy a framework force capable of sophisticated air-land operations at distance from the home base, in cooperation with local proxy forces and international allies.[34] Lessons were learned in Abu Dhabi which are now applied elsewhere, SOC being deployed currently alongside US Special Forces and Puntland Security Forces in counter-Daesh operations in Somalia; there is no official acknowledgement of SOC support for other UAE allies, General Haftar in Libya and the ‘Rapid Support Forces’ in Sudan, but all the other features of the UAE’s ‘remote warfare’ strategy are clearly present – generous financial and logistical support, intelligence sharing and buildup of proxy militias, so their involvement might be surmised.

Conclusions

These three examples demonstrate that Special Forces can allow small states with apparently limited resources to become active players regionally or within global alliances, each force upholding their countries’ strategic ‘shelter’ via strengthening the alliances guaranteeing their security. 1 NZ SAS offers any alliance a highly effective counterterrorist asset which can also mentor others, the ARW gives the UN and EU a hard edge to their peace enforcement and stabilisation operations, while UAE SOC takes the lead in carrying the Gulf Arab states’ battle back to pro-Iranian and Islamist terrorists in their safe havens. This has implications for other small states but also for some middling powers, such as the UK, France and Australia, which still aspire to regional or global reach and have deployed their own Special Forces on missions similar to the ones described here, often in the same regions. If any ‘lessons’ can be drawn from these examples and the case studies in this paper, it is that if states develop and maintain the human and technological edge epitomised by Special Forces, can guarantee a strong intelligence flow and cultivate the right allies, they can exert strategic influence a long way beyond their borders and out of proportion with numbers and size of defence budget, the epitome of ‘punching above their weight’. It is unsurprising that Special Forces are the force of choice for some small states and could now be so for some middling powers, too.

My thanks to Dr Hillary Briffa, Alex de Mello, Dom Morris, MLR Smith and Alastair Walton for their input.