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Cavguy
07-08-2008, 09:43 PM
All,

At the organization I work for (COIN Center) there is some discussion of revising and updating FM 3-24/MCWP 33.3.5.

There is certainly a wide body of criticism of FM 3-24, to which most of the regulars here are familiar with. Many units who have employed the FM have found strengths and shortfalls in the manual when put into application.

Here's some starter questions, but don't limit yourself:

1) What was helpful/useful in FM 3-24?

2) What is missing in FM 3-24?

3) What needs amplification?

4) What needs de-emphasis?

5) What is flat wrong or needs removal?

6) Does the manual strike the balance between specific, applicable knowledge and theory of operations?

7) How does the manual hold up in application in Iraq/Afghanistan, and does its principles hold up outside of Iraq/Afghanistan?

Chapter/paragraph would help in the discussion, but is not necessary.

If you need to read the good book, (wink to Gian);), it's here (http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf).

We are considering a conference here at Leavenworth early next year to flesh out some of these issues, I thought this would be a good place to start.

Niel

slapout9
07-09-2008, 12:15 AM
Cavguy, I am not sure which section this belongs in but in the future I would look at expanding the use of the MP's. They should be the primary force used in the Hold phase of clear, hold and build. Slap

selil
07-09-2008, 01:03 AM
Can I add onto what SLAP said and state they need a better write up on corrections and jails for all phases?

SWJED
07-09-2008, 05:08 AM
I would say that COIN intelligence needs some expansion in the update and a good section on religious influencers should be added.

Rank amateur
07-09-2008, 02:47 PM
I don't know if you saw this on AM, but the PDF had some excellent points:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
FM 3-24 Roundtable

One of Charlie's favorite members of the Sosh Mafia emailed this morning to say that the recent Perspectives on Politics roundtable on FM 3-24 is now available to the huddled masses. Steve Biddle, LTC Doug Ollivant, Stathis Kalyvas, and Wendy Brown all weigh in (that, btw, is a serious murder's row of COIN commentary).

The PDF (http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/POPJune08CounterInsurgency2.pdf)

SWJED
07-09-2008, 03:48 PM
I don't know if you saw this on AM, but the PDF had some excellent points:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
FM 3-24 Roundtable

One of Charlie's favorite members of the Sosh Mafia emailed this morning to say that the recent Perspectives on Politics roundtable on FM 3-24 is now available to the huddled masses. Steve Biddle, LTC Doug Ollivant, Stathis Kalyvas, and Wendy Brown all weigh in (that, btw, is a serious murder's row of COIN commentary).

The PDF (http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/POPJune08CounterInsurgency2.pdf)

Yes, it was posted to the SWJ Blog - thanks for adding it here.

Randy Brown
07-09-2008, 06:31 PM
I don't know whether Steven Metz (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/member.php?u=755) (link to his June 2007 monograph "Rethinking Insurgency" here (http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB790.pdf)) has previously posted it elsewhere on SWJ, but this just crossed my desktop in one of those serendipitous L2I-net "the research gods must be happy" moments. It's a four-page summary of an October 2007 Strategic Studies Institute/Brookings Institute colloquium, a somewhat-tritely titled "COIN of the Realm: U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy." (http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=846) It's available in PDF.

Key insights discussed in this document include:

Regardless of whether counterinsurgency (COIN) will be the dominant form of military activity in the future or simply one of several, the United States needs an effective national strategy which explains when, why, and how the nation should undertake it.
The basic assumptions of the current approach need revisited, especially those dealing with the role of the state, the strategic framework for American involvement, and the whole-of-government approach.
Given the demands placed upon the armed forces by the current campaigns, most of the effort has been on tactics, training, and doctrine. Ultimately strategic transformation is at least as important if not more so.
Rather than thinking of counterinsurgency and warfighting as competing tasks, the military and other government agencies must pursue ways to integrate them, thus assuring that the United States can address the multidimensional threats which characterize the contemporary security environment.

I offer it here in hope of assisting backbenchers like me to frame their own questions/comments/concepts about FM 3-24 version 2.0.

John T. Fishel
07-10-2008, 02:08 PM
I have just finished reading the Perspectives on Politics symposium on 3-24. Before responding to Niel's charge with regard to useful elements of the symposium for updating the manual - there are some - let me make a few general comments. Steve Biddle and Douglas Ollivant (PhD Pol Sci IU a generation after me:D) have some real understanding of the manual and the issues. Biddle's comments are a bit dated. Kalyvas is dead wrong in his interpretation of (a) Galula, (b) Sir Robt Thompson, and (c) the manual. He also picks one of the most obscure publications on COIN from the Vietnam era as the epitome of the best analysis from that era. "Rebellion and Authority" by Leites and Wolf is a Rand Corp economic analysis of insurgency using largely data from Vietnam. Interesting but hardly the most profound. Finally, what can one say of Wendy Brown's screed? Neo-marxist, not understanding the nature of Vietnam, Iraq, COIN, the US military, or even the chain of command as specified by the Constitution, National Security Act, and Goldwater-Nichols.

Nevertheless, Brown raises a real issue that is reinforced by Ollivant in his sole area of weakness. Brown cites David Price's critique of the manual for plagiarism and shoddy research (that we have discussed in this forum extensively led by Marc T). As a "victim" of that "plagiarism" and general lack of citation of a whole body of work (see especially my work with Max Manwaring and Max's work with others, particularly our article in Small Wars & Insurgencies Vol 3 No 3 Winter 1992 and our most recent book, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited). Max and I both think there is no issue here - we were just happy that our concepts made it into the most recent manual. But there is a substantive consequence of not acknowleging previous work - esp previous FMs. Ollivant reiterates the charge that there was nothing in doctrine or research in the years following Vietnam. Yet, there was quite a lot beginning with FM 100-20 Low Intensity Conflict 1981 (which was pure COIN) thru Max Thurman's charge to SSI in 1984 to study the correlates of success in COIN. That study produced the SWORD Model in 1986 (made available to the scholarly world in 2 books prior to its detalied publication in our 1992 article) and critical to the development of FM 100-20 Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict 1990 (but finished in 1987 and published jointly with the USAF). The Army/AF Center for Low Intensity Conflict (CLIC) was established at Langley AFB in 1986 as was the Small Wars Operations Research Directorate (SWORD) in Southcom at about the same time. SWORD proposed, and Gen. Fred Franks agreed to expand the LIC (COIN) curriculum at CGSC by a 2 day symposium called Southcom Days that ran thru 1989, at least. Much of the focus was on the insurgency in El Salvador. FM 100-5 introduced the term OOTW but maintained the doctrine from 100-20 as did the 1995 JP 3-07 (which called it MOOTW). In short, there is a long history of military and academic interaction on this subject post Vietnam. (Kalyvas, obviously, has not read the right literature. ) A long way to getting to the point: a revision should make the history of the development of the post-Vietnam doctrine clear and get it right. Practitioners on the ground like Fred Woerner, John Waghelstein, and Ambassadors Deane Hinton, Tom Pickering, and Ed Corr should get credit for their contributions in El Salvador. The anonymous doctrine writers at Leavenworth should get the respect they deserve - to remove some anonymity, they include LTCs (R) Don Vought and John Hunt and COL (R) Jerry Thompson who honchoed the 1990 FM 100-20. This would serve to expand the point that Ollivant makes that there is a continuing battle for the soul of the Army over the nature of the American Way of War.

Ollivant's other point is that COIN needs to be placed in the larger context of many "wars amongst peoples". Here, I would note that the research and pubs that Max and I have been involved with could help give context since we used the SWORD Model with respect to CD, CT, PKO, and now Max is applying it to the phenomena of gangs.

Cheers

JohnT

Old Eagle
07-11-2008, 12:19 PM
Excellent recap, John. I, too, was surprised by the commentary of the participants.

Both Max Thurman and CSA Vuono understood that as critical as deterrence was, we would never fight at the Fulda Gap. In fact, as I recall, Vuono's first OCONUS trip as CSA was not to Europe, as had been customary, but to Central America.

slapout9
07-11-2008, 01:01 PM
What does SWORD stand for? Can the model be posted? Interested from the Gang aspected mentioned above.

marct
07-11-2008, 01:24 PM
John, I think you are absolutely right in the need for more information on the historical development of the doctrine and, IMO more importantly, the thinking behind the doctrine. That was one of the reasons why I was calling for a "scholarly" or "annotated" version (full citations, etc.) of FM 3-24.

I've been watching and reading a fair bit about the reaction to COIN doctrine (thanks, Gian ;)!) and trying to think of ways to reduce some of the cognitive dissonance introduced by the use of pseudo-koans such as "sometimes, less is more". I think that one of the crucial ways in which this could be done is to define the universe of discourse or, at the minimum, set some decent fuzzy boundary conditions on it.

For example, you noted Wendy Brown's piece as being


Neo-marxist, not understanding the nature of Vietnam, Iraq, COIN, the US military, or even the chain of command as specified by the Constitution, National Security Act, and Goldwater-Nichols.

and I think that's a pretty fair characterization of it. But, while I do think she misses the practical point, she has hit on a much larger point. Of course, being an Anthropologist, I have to make that point by telling a story :D.

In February, I was listening to a talk by Tom Barnett where he's talking on about the interface zone between the global economy and the third world and how the wars of the next century will be fought to bring the Third world into the global economy. Now this actually matches the perceptual structures underlying Brown's position and is the underlying structure of the economic reconstruction inherent in COIN practice. In effect, for both of these people, COIN doctrine is the formalization of the kinetic branch of economic warfare; an ongoing, "long war", that both appear to assume is inevitable.

This assumption of inevitability, along with the shared assumption of an economic base driving the conflict, shapes and conditions the concepts that are used in FM 3-24. What is most worrisome to me is that this shaping assumes a form of "centralization" (for want to a better term) that is grounded in theory but not in reality (as a example, Kilcullen's Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/anatomy-of-a-tribal-revolt/) shows the dangers of assuming such a centralization).

Now, I've got nothing against grounding doctrine in theory, but I do have a real concern about grounding it in bottom-down theory that structurally and perceptually excludes many of the things that are happening in reality.

Anyway, that's my 0.198 cents...

Steve Blair
07-11-2008, 02:07 PM
What does SWORD stand for? Can the model be posted? Interested from the Gang aspected mentioned above.

From John's post:
Small Wars Operations Research Directorate (SWORD).

No worries, Slap. I missed it the first time through, too....:o

Rank amateur
07-11-2008, 03:31 PM
I thought Brown made two good points: in spite of her obvious bias.

She refereed to research that says political disputes aren't driven by grievance as much as greed. In more practical terms, the people who have the oil in Iraq are never going to share the money with the people who don't: regardless of how much capacity building or hearts and minds work the boots on the ground do. Big problem, if true.

Two: the manual is binary; the political situation in Iraq is multifactional. My pet bugaboo and another huge problem. Arguably, clearing and holding Sadr City gives Maliki less reason to compromise with his opponents: many have wondered if Maliki is actually more interested in using military power to weakening his political opponents than stability. An issue Biddle refers to as "Interest alignment with the host government." (I may or may not have something intelligent to say on this issue later.) But if our objective is political reconciliation, these are the issues that could lead to strategic failure in spite of tactical success.

Bill Moore
07-11-2008, 04:13 PM
John I'm familiar with the SWORD model, but have yet found a concise description of it, or a graphic representation. My on-line searches led to numerous articles that talk about SWORD, but never really address the bottom line. Can you send a link, or links, to white papers or articles that accurately address the SWORD model?

The one diagram I did see was basically a triangle, and very simliar to Dr. McCormack's Diamond Model (Naval Post Graduate School), which you may be familiar with. I believe the SWORD model was the genesis of Diamond Model after researching the SWORD, but that is speculation on my part. The Diamond Model is relatively easy to interpret and apply at all levels from the tactical to the strategic level (in my opinion), and would probably be a good addition to the new 3-24.

Thanks for your help, Bill

Gian P Gentile
07-11-2008, 05:30 PM
I thought all four reviews were excellent in their own ways and brought out needed criticism of a manual that needs to be debated; heavily and deeply.

I agree with Marc T's notion of grounding the manual in reality on the ground; I would add that the manual's narrow selection of history and theory (population-centric, that is) causes it to be a narrowly applicable doctrine for the many realities of insurgencies that the United States might face. Hence the point I have made previously about the American Army becoming dogmatic in its approach to coin.

John T; what is it about Biddle's review that you thought was "outdated?"

And I believe, contrary to your stark dismissal of Kalyvas's review, that he is actually and absolutely spot-on correct in his assessment of FM 3-24. It is, depending on how you want to look at it, Galula Heavy or Trinquier Light. Go back and read the thing; its premise demands a response of protraction, heavy amounts of American combat boots on the ground to secure the population in order to separate the insurgents from the people and ultimately establish the host government as legitimate. How is this not the protracted people's war approach of the 1960s aka Thompson, Galula, Trinquier, etc?? Point to anwhere in the manual where there are other options for an american counterinsurgent force to pursue other than population-centric? There is one 5 line paragraph in Chapter 5 on "limited options" for coin. But that is it.

The entire FM needs to be deconstructed and rebuilt the same way active defense doctrine was heavily debated between 76 and 82 and in the process fundamentally changed. Unfortunately, most folks in the Army see FM 3-24 at its end point as was FM 3-0 in 1986. Or, in other words, most folks think it just needs some polishing around the edges, I on the other hand, thinks it needs to be rebuilt.

gg

Ken White
07-11-2008, 05:33 PM
...But if our objective is political reconciliation, these are the issues that could lead to strategic failure in spite of tactical success.strategic failure with respect to Iraq?

Follow on question; Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?

Ken White
07-11-2008, 05:38 PM
I thought all four reviews were excellent in their own ways and brought out needed criticism of a manual that needs to be debated; heavily and deeply.
...

Or, in other words, most folks think it just needs some polishing around the edges, I on the other hand, thinks it needs to be rebuilt.I also agree that it is overly formulaic and emphasizes numbers (mass) as opposed to tactical agility.

Steve Blair
07-11-2008, 06:17 PM
I would almost prefer to see it go in the direction of the USMC warfighting stuff (MCDP 1 series)...something that is grounded in the history and theory with practical examples from a wide spectrum of COIN. It shouldn't (IMO) focus on Iraq to the exclusion of all else (since there's a fair chance it will be needed elsewhere...and maybe not in a traditional COIN context). I don't think such a deep rewrite is being considered, but it certainly needs better sourcing, better historical examples of techniques working and (equally important) not working. I'd like to see an example of an approach working in one situation and failing in another because the people on the ground failed to look at the entire context of their situation and instead pulled out a "book solution" and suffered for it.

And of course the American Army's getting dogmatic in its approach to COIN...it's done that with just about every warfare type it's encountered during its history. This doesn't surprise me.

John T. Fishel
07-11-2008, 06:39 PM
SWORD was the Small Wars Operations Research Directorate - founded as the Southcom LIC Cell (SLICC). Bad name so it became SWORD. After Galvin became SACEUR, SWORD came under the J5 as the Small Wars Operations Research Division. A year later, it was disbanded. But its contributions to the war in El Sal were significant as well as to the doctrine.

The article does not exist in electronic form. PM me and perhaps we can come up with something.

Cheers

JohnT

John T. Fishel
07-11-2008, 06:57 PM
to grasp its meaning.:o

My reading of the doctrine - 3-24 and its predecessors - does not presume any sort of inevitability. My understanding of insurgency is that it is far more complex and that while it may seek to achieve incorporation into the global economy on favorable terms, it also may have nothing to do with the global economy or even reject it entirely. One could argue that AQ, as a global insurgency, wants to turn the entire global order on its head starting with religious freedom/diversity, moving to a political endstate (or series thereof), and finishing off with adapting modern technology to 7th Century Islamic polities. If I am correct, then Brown really has little to say that is useful - which was my start point based on her inability/unwillingness to determine the facts of what she is wrting about and her lack of understanding of concepts, starting with military doctrine. (She seems to think it is some kind of quasi religious dogma whereas, an old Military Review article captures it best in its title, "Doctrine Not Dogma.")

I guess I really didn't like her piece very much - must be pretty obvious.:p

Cheers

JohnT

slapout9
07-11-2008, 06:58 PM
Hi John, I got it now. I ordered you book Uncomfortable Wars Revisited actually it is a gift I am not supposed to know about:eek: So it all came back to me. Also the first line of the book is about General Gavin resigning in 1957 in protest over our lack of ability to fight such wars;);) one of the reasons why I think he is one of the greatest Generals the Army has ever produced. I am planning a stealth operation to read the book a little ahead of schedule:wry:

John T. Fishel
07-11-2008, 07:09 PM
Oil revenues in Iraq are being shared by means of the budget if not by an oil distribution law.

Actually, the FM assumes (as the symposium writers all seem to agree) that insurgency is a 3 sided argument: 1. HN, 2. US (we called that the Intervening Power in the SWORD MODEL), and 3. the insurgents (and their external supporters). Indeed, the FM's approach is readily adaptable to a multisided war as seen in Petraeus' strategy.

Cheers

JohnT

John T. Fishel
07-11-2008, 08:48 PM
debated as was the active defense between 76 and 82 is spot on. That is a critique I can easily sign on to.:D

Biddle says, "The predominantly Shiite Maliki government has consistently resisted U.S. pressure to compromise with its Sunni rivals. And in spite of more than three years of trying , the United States has not yet produced an Iraqi security force that can consistently defend the interests of all Iraqis." (p. 349) DeBaathification law, oil revenue sharing in the budget, return of the Sunnis to the government, 15 of 18 benchmarks being achieved at an adequate rate, operations in Basra and Sadr city. All of this is not taken into account by Biddle - probably written befor it became apparent. Of couse there is room for debate on the interpretation but the stark view Biddle presents is dated and does not take account of new info.

My critique of Kalyvas is not that he correctly discusses the population centric approach/theory that is the heart of the FM and a number of its antecedants including Galula and Thompson but rather that he interprets them as enemy centric. "These earlier works conceptualized insurgencies as revolutionary movements based on mass mobilization ... and devised methods of response that integrated specific military and political strategies - with heavy emphasis on the former.... On the military front, the goal is to identify and eliminate key local insurgents while establishing effective population control...." (p. 351) The first sentence misinterprets Thompson by overemphasizing actions specifically directed against subversion vice legitimacy, clear and strong political aims, and unity of effort. The second sentence overemphasizes the FM's focus on "force" applied to the enemy rather than its pop centric focus.

Got to run an errand - more later. Your critque states correctly the FM's prime emphasis, Kalyvas' doesn't.

Cheers

JohnT

Rank amateur
07-11-2008, 09:08 PM
[O]minously, both the Pentagon and GAO reports note potential problems with the so-called Sons of Iraq program. Most Sunni Arab groups whose members have been brought into the program have yet to reconcile their differences with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, the GAO report notes. The Pentagon said the program faces the challenge of combating infiltration by extremist groups and concluded that the Iraqi government cannot currently manage the effort. (http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2008/06/big-gains-in-iraq-part-deux-gao-strikes.html)


Nearly two years into the program, however, the U.S. is gradually handing over responsibility for the Sons of Iraq to the Shiite-led government. By January, the military hopes to turn the entire program over to the Iraqis.

But the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been reluctant to absorb large numbers of armed Sunnis into the Shiite-dominated security forces. American officials fear that many of the U.S.-backed fighters may turn their guns on the government unless jobs can be found for them. (http://www.tri-cityherald.com/1180/story/225653.html)

there is concern that the government in Baghdad will continue to face questions of legitimacy from the Sunni community and even that some tribal leaders may return to insurgent activities.

[/UR"There is a very real fear that if the newer groups do not do well in the elections, they will take things into their own hands and not respect the provincial councils," said Ottaway. (http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=19174)

Our friend the aardvark:

Dissolving the Sons of Iraq... ?

The UAE newspaper al-Khaleej today reports that Prime Minister Maliki is forming a committee to study how to go about dissolving the "Sons of Iraq". According to al-Khaleej, military and political figures around the Maliki regime have been complaining about his silence with regard to the Awakenings, which they allegedly call "American militias." Now that the exceptional circumstances surrounding their formation has passed, these government and military figures reportedly believe, the time has come to break them up and correct what they believe was a strategic mistake by the Americans to support militias full of brutal killers and unreconstructed sectarians.

The move to break up the Awakenings now is also, according to al-Khaleej, tied to a secret deal with the Islamic Party of Tareq al-Hashemi (which as part of the IAF has finally announced its return to the Maliki government ). Maliki, reportedly, would move to weaken the Awakenings ahead of provincial and Parliamentary elections, breaking up their power and barring them from forming political parties (using the "no parties with militias" as the legal pretext, perhaps). This could put the Maliki government in sharp conflict with the Americans, the story concludes.

How much weight to put on this? Since the entire story rests on unidentified sources, I'm inclined to view it as an accurate reflection of what some people are talking about and would like to see happen but not necessarily what's actually going to happen (though one of the comments in an earlier thread here suggests that those stories are, at the least, widely circulating). The intense dislike and distrust of the Awakenings among Maliki's circle has been widely reported, as has been the intense political competition between the Awakenings and the Islamic Party and the recent controversies about whether the US is beginning to shut down its support for the Awakenings. Count this as one more data point in a rapidly developing story, which could go in a number of different directions depending on how it's handled.
(http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2008/07/dissolving-the.html)

Washington Post say attacks are up in one Sunni enclave because of Central government not sharing $$$$.

The Awakening fighters are growing increasingly frustrated that Iraq's Shiite-led central government has been slow to integrate them into the Iraqi police and military services. U.S. officers say the fighters appear to be breaking into factions.

Roadside bombs have suddenly become more prevalent in Adhamiyah. The U.S. military said 21 bombs were found in the area in the last 25 days of April, compared with three or four in all of March. Platoon leaders on patrol at Awakening checkpoints at the end of April sought information about the origins of fresh graffiti in support of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"It's escalating," said a checkpoint leader who gave his name as Abu Ahmad. "Some of the Awakening are chanting for al-Qaeda and using slogans for al-Qaeda. I think the district will pay the price because of these problems." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/06/ST2008050602716.html)

It may be a blind squirrel situation, but it's still an important nut.

The last article is extremely relevant. What do you do if: attacks are up in your AO because people are angry at the central government, but the sheik is on board and the area has already been cleared and is being held. In fact, it's already walled off. (
(American forces have completed construction of a concrete wall around the Baghdad district of Adhamiya despite protests from the Iraqi prime minister and local residents who claim that they are now at the mercy of militants.) (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1550361/Anger-in-Baghdad-as-Americans-finish-wall.html)) Isn't that exactly the type of situation where the local commander will turn to the FM for guidance?

Actually, now that I've done a little more research I see that Adhamiya used to be Gian Gentile's AO. I'll send him a PM. I hope he'll comment.

John T. Fishel
07-12-2008, 01:35 AM
Interesting stuff. Bottom line is that truth is elusive. My sense is that things are generally better but there will be setbacks. Based on what I have seen of him, I am inclined to think that GEN Petraeus is fully capable of accepting reality and reporting it the way it is.

Cheers

JohnT

PS For some reason the title line doesn't like all caps!

Old Eagle
07-12-2008, 02:03 AM
According to all models of FID/COIN that I've seen, the SOI need to be incorporated into a holistic security solution or the elements of future civil war, so direly predicted elsewhere, might well be the result. This really is the graduate level of warfare.

John T. Fishel
07-12-2008, 02:04 AM
On page 352, Kalyvas says, "It is possible, therefore, to characterize it as a guide to 'benevolent occupation'...." this in relation to US interventions in Iraq and Vietnam. But the FM is not just a product of Vietnam and Iraq; it is also a product of El Salvador and the research that produced the SWORD MODEL (which addressed 43 post WWII insurgencies utilizing some fairly sophisticated quantitative methodology). (This is found in the FM's unacknowledged debt to FM 100-20 of 1990, as well as other sources.) the point is that neither Vietnam nor El Savador can honestly be considered as occupations.

Dropping back a page, Kalyvas asserts that, "In some cases, the 'correct' application of violence is enough to defeat the insurgency and consolidate state control (think Sendero Luminoso in Peru....)" I worked with the Peruvians and watched the whole course of the SL war from Southcom and Leavenworth and Kalyvas' interpretation is really simplistic. the best short analysis is found in Chapter 7 of the book I did with Max Manwaring, Uncomortable Wars Revisited, U of OK Press, 2006 which is a comparative analysis of Peru and El Sal and addresses the COIN strategies along with those of the insurgents.

So, my dismissal of Kalyvas, as you can see, is hardly cavalier:wry:

Cheers

JohnT

slapout9
07-12-2008, 03:23 AM
Found this pdf file by a Captain French that applies the SWORD method to the current Afghan conflict.

http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/Our%20Seven%20Wars%20in%20Afghanistan.pdf

marct
07-12-2008, 03:46 AM
My reading of the doctrine - 3-24 and its predecessors - does not presume any sort of inevitability.

I suspect I was presenting my ideas badly, John :o. The "inevitability" I was referring to is in an underlying assumption that the economy drives the society and that "consciousness" is, at its root, the result of the labour process. The Marxist form of this is from the preface to A Contriobution to the Critique of Political economy (emphasis added).


In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

This is the "inevitability" that I see underlying both Brown's work and, also, Barnett's - the assumption that the economy or "mode of production" is driving the requirements that lead to situations were a COIN fight s "inevitable". In the doctrine itself, I believe that a filtered version of this assumption shows up in the assumptions about how infrastructure and economic reconstruction will be pursued.

Now, I'm certainly not trying to say that a certain amount of economic determinism isn't useful - it is, at least in terms of basic population level sustenance. What I am trying to say is that the basic assumption of "inevitability" is axiomatic and underlies the doctrine.


My understanding of insurgency is that it is far more complex and that while it may seek to achieve incorporation into the global economy on favorable terms, it also may have nothing to do with the global economy or even reject it entirely.

Agreed on insurgencies per se. Certainly as a general phenomenon, insurgencies tend to be related to social grievances, many of which are somewhat related to economic aspects. Actually, Algeria is a really good example of one that had little to do with "economics" per se; it was much more ideologically (or possibly "pathologically"! at the start) driven. I wasn't so much addressing insurgencies as I was the specific COIN doctrine.


One could argue that AQ, as a global insurgency, wants to turn the entire global order on its head starting with religious freedom/diversity, moving to a political endstate (or series thereof), and finishing off with adapting modern technology to 7th Century Islamic polities.

I certainly wouldn't argue with that interpretation :D. As the Great Philosopher Stan once quipped "They're a buncha wackos!".


If I am correct, then Brown really has little to say that is useful - which was my start point based on her inability/unwillingness to determine the facts of what she is wrting about and her lack of understanding of concepts, starting with military doctrine. (She seems to think it is some kind of quasi religious dogma whereas, an old Military Review article captures it best in its title, "Doctrine Not Dogma.")

I guess I really didn't like her piece very much - must be pretty obvious.:p

Naw :eek:!!! Honestly, I didn't really like her piece either, for many of the same reasons - I find her piece to be as predictable as one of David Price's.

John T. Fishel
07-12-2008, 12:24 PM
I never thought you could just dismiss Marx's analysis out of hand, although I do think that the Marxists never advanced it much beyond old Karl himself,:rolleyes: You really couldn't understand El salvador without a copy of The Communist Manifesto in your ruck and Das Kapital in your office.

On your last 2 points LOLOL!!!! (I really did when you cited old philospher Stan:D)

Cheers

JohnT

Gian P Gentile
07-12-2008, 01:48 PM
All great points and well articulated.

Rank Am; thanks for posting these articles, i had not seen some of them. I did not "own" Adimiyah while I was but the Ameriyah. Still I had a sense of Adamiyah becauae of its largely sunni nature and a senior goi person I worked closely with was from the area.

John T: I appreciate your most articulate responses to my question and my initial responses to your earlier posts. I will read them carefully today and hopefully get back to you soon on them. As with many other folks, one has to ration blogging on the weekends.

gian

Rank amateur
07-12-2008, 08:44 PM
AM has an excellent post on what I was discussing.

Are the SoI SOL? (http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2008/07/are-sois-sol.html).

Yes, more SoIs have been integrated, but not nearly enough. And every step appears to require twisting Maliki’s arm to the breaking point. With Maliki's newfound (over)confidence in the capabilities of the ISF, moreover, he is growing less amenable to this kind of tactical pressure every day. There is a genuine possibility that the prime minister will basically tell the “thugs,” “criminals,” and “terrorists” in the SoI to go screw themselves.

According to doctrine "breathing space" is supposed to lead to reconciliation. In Iraq, the opposite is happening. The less violence there is, the more incentive Maliki has to tell his oppenents to "screw themselves."

Paetreus would have more leverage over Maliki if Maliki still needed us to restrain Sadr, but

a) Maliki snookered us into taking care of that problem for him according to Maliki's timeline.

b) According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.


What is strategic failure with respect to Iraq?

Follow on question; Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?

Since we stayed to promote democracy and avoid civil war, I think most people would consider a civil war or the end of democracy a strategic failure.

I've admitted before that I have no idea what our objective in Iraq is.

marct
07-12-2008, 08:57 PM
Hi RA,


According to doctrine "breathing space" is supposed to lead to reconciliation. In Iraq, the opposite is happening. The less violence there is, the more incentive Maliki has to tell his oppenents to "screw themselves."

Hmmm, I think the underlying meaning is that the "breathing space leads to a reconciliation, not "reconciliation" per se. As an example, the "breathing space" between the 2nd and 3rd Punic Wars led to "a" reconciliation :wry:.


Paetreus would have more leverage over Maliki if Maliki still needed us to restrain Sadr, but

a) Maliki snookered us into taking care of that problem for him according to Maliki's timeline.

b) According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.

Okay, this will probably get me flamed, but here goes....

If you don't want "the natives" to decide for themselves, then just declare Iraq to be under the legal jurisdiction of the US as an administered territory. If you are serious about building Iraq as a self-determining nation state, then live with the consequences of that choice, one of which will be the power brokers there manipulating the snot out of you. State building has consequences, and one of those consequences is a reduction in US power to tell "the natives" what to do - it's called "sovereignty".

Seriously, RA, I do not mean to take a dump over you, and I am truly sorry if you take it that way (which I hope you won't because it certainly isn't personal!). I just think that the idea that you can create a nation that does whatever it is told is ridiculous and that you have to expect to be manipulated.

Marc

Ken White
07-12-2008, 10:11 PM
You said:
...According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.Doctrine is a only a guide. It is designed for an ideal situation, too rigid adherence will get you killed. Situations are rarely ideal; that is particularly true in the ME. You can go quite wrong by clearing and holding terrain (or positions in all senses of that word) that you don't need to hold or that will invite more problems than said holding solves. Getting tied down holding things is, contrary to some theorists ideas, an invitation to inflexibility and stasis. It is sometimes necessary, usually not.

Like any other operational or tactical effort, "clearing and holding" is a time / place / population sensitive matter and, as I've frequently said before, any idea of 'controlling' a population should be discarded -- it is just not going to happen lacking G. Khan like efforts -- and we're are not going to do that. Nor should we.

Iraqis are going to do what they are going to do, they'll do it on their timetable and not ours and a lot of people need to accept that as reality -- possibly including some in high places and some with enhanced reputations from wandering about in the Blogosphere and reading goat entrails.

Westerners have tried to manipulate the ME for over a thousand years -- with virtually no success unless they used brutality and then the ME just waited them out. That isn't going to change. Kipling said it well with these two:

"Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."

"Now it is not good for the Christian's health To hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And it weareth the Christian down. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased-- And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who tried to hustle the East."

To my other question; "Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?" You replied
Since we stayed to promote democracy and avoid civil war, I think most people would consider a civil war or the end of democracy a strategic failure.Most might do so if they only read the media and listened to politicians, both categories of which are relatively clueless. Even some self appointed experts who have become Bloggers fascinate me with their take on things. In any event, your answer raises another question; Is that why we stayed or is that why we said we stayed?

My guess is that it's the latter. While a democracy would be nice as would lack of a civil war, my belief is that the former was and is never much more than a mild hope and the latter is likely inevitable to some degree at some time and probably sooner rather than later. I'd also submit that, other than to be nice guys, both those issues are really of small importance to the US; thus I don't believe that a lack of democracy or a major sectarian schism up to civil war level will adversely affect the US strategically -- though there would be obvious PR problems.
I've admitted before that I have no idea what our objective in Iraq is.Nor do I in totality but I'm pretty well convinced that a lot of self appointed knowledgeable people (other than self appointed me, of course ;) ) are either not as clued as they'd like to think or are not paying attention to reality -- or to the very significant differences between ME and western thinking processes and perceptions.

To attempt to judge the politics in Iraq by what is seen or said (particularly in English -- but even in published or transcribed Arabic) is to be deluded; it's what goes on behind the scenes and under the table that will make determinations and those things will only leak out slowly -- or be revealed when the Iraqis (and others -- including us) want to reveal them.

Marc gets it, as he says:
"...If you are serious about building Iraq as a self-determining nation state, then live with the consequences of that choice, one of which will be the power brokers there manipulating the snot out of you. State building has consequences, and one of those consequences is a reduction in US power to tell "the natives" what to do - it's called "sovereignty".I could be wrong but I believe that statement is not only quite accurate; I believe that it was absorbed early on and up-front by the decision makers, plural, in DC -- regardless of all the political theater and rhetoric. We made an early decision to let Iraq be sovereign; it is and we've known that for five years. They'll do what they want and we'll play along and nudge where we can. That's cool (even if Congress is too dense to understand that).

Rank amateur
07-13-2008, 02:08 AM
I just think that the idea that you can create a nation that does whatever it is told is ridiculous and that you have to expect to be manipulated.

Marc

but that's not what I'm saying. Let me stick to simple basics. Insurgency is an attempt to achieve political goals through violence. Insurgents know they can't win militarily but they keep their recruitment rate high by making the population angry at the government. They keep their loss rate low by hiding in the population. By recruiting more then they lose, they survive a long time and if they're violent long enough, they figure people will give them what they want.


To effectively counter an insurgency - and this is somewhat metaphorical, but literally true in a simple insurgency - you build a wall around the population. The insurgents can no longer hide among the people, making them easy to kill. To make sure that people don't sneak out of the wall and join the insurgency, you pacify people with job creation/hearts and minds etc inside the wall.

In Iraq - as the Washington Post article states, and as AM reiterates - the more walls we build around the Sunnis, the less incentive the Shi'ite government has to make life inside the walled Sunni enclaves livable. Therefore, a new insurgency erupts inside the walls. (Precisely because we don't control how the Iraqi government spends their money.)

In other words, as the political scientists point out, because the goals of the government and the counter insurgent aren't aligned we can - under certain circumstances - get a new insurgency: insurgency 2.0.

We need to better understand those circumstances. The manual needs more game theory. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory)

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.

Put another way, every time we create an inkspot, Maliki will change his strategy. Iran, the Sunnis and the Kurds will also change their strategy. One, or more of those people may decide to turn to violence. Therefore more clearing and holding could be - under certain circumstances that are difficult to comprehend, but that can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy - be counterproductive.

Just like we need help from anthropologists, we need help from game theorists.

marct
07-13-2008, 02:50 AM
Hi RA,


In other words, as the political scientists point out, because the goals of the government and the counter insurgent aren't aligned we can - under certain circumstances - get a new insurgency: insurgency 2.0.

Pretty often you would get new "insurgencies". But I honestly don't see why you would expect anything else :confused:. Maliki is exercising the sovereignty inherent in his position, and the MNF doesn't have sovereignty in Iraq - nor are they under Maliki's command and/or control. In game theoretic terms, this is a multi-player version of the Prisoner's Dilemma with one player (the MNF) having a de facto "get out of jail free" card.


Therefore more clearing and holding could be - under certain circumstances that are difficult to comprehend, but that can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy - be counterproductive.

I don't see why you characterize them as "difficult to comprehend". Really, they stem from the structures imposed on Iraq. If a confederate system had been constructed - the tri-partite split - you would have had a different set of structures and different forms of insurgencies.

I think you do have a very valid point when you note that the government and the counter-insurgents (by which I assume you mean the MNF) goal are different. But I certainly don't find this surprising - it's totally predictable from the way the initial Phase IV was (mis-)handled. In the post-Westphalian construction of the state, a model that was an assumption of the architects of the invasion, such a conflict is inevitable since the MNF does not hold sovereignty.

Ken White
07-13-2008, 04:11 AM
...if they're violent long enough, they figure people will give them what they want.IF...
...you build a wall around the population. The insurgents can no longer hide among the people, making them easy to kill. To make sure that people don't sneak out of the wall and join the insurgency, you pacify people with job creation/hearts and minds etc inside the wall.Is that permissable in today's world? Even if it is, who can afford the troops and construction effort to do that in a nation of 26M bods?
In Iraq - as the Washington Post article states, and as AM reiteratesEr, uh, well, knowledgeable sources. Sort of...
... the more walls we build around the Sunnis, the less incentive the Shi'ite government has to make life inside the walled Sunni enclaves livable. Therefore, a new insurgency erupts inside the walls.Possible but certainly not a given among westerners, almost assuredly not a given in the ME where things do not operate on western standards of reward and thought processes do not tend to short termism.
...(Precisely because we don't control how the Iraqi government spends their money.) In other words, as the political scientists point out, because the goals of the government and the counter insurgent aren't aligned we can - under certain circumstances - get a new insurgency: insurgency 2.0. (emphasis added / kw)Your solution to the problem highlighted is? Under certain circumstances the sky can be green.
Put another way, every time we create an inkspot, Maliki will change his strategy. Iran, the Sunnis and the Kurds will also change their strategy. One, or more of those people may decide to turn to violence.Well, yeah; all sides change their 'strategy' or techniques to counter opponenets, always have and always will. That is a violent part of the world...:wry:
...Therefore more clearing and holding could be - under certain circumstances that are difficult to comprehend, but that can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy - be counterproductive.Is it me or did you just do a 180 degree turn? :D

John T. Fishel
07-17-2008, 06:08 PM
I've attached an extensive commentary on the Review Symposium that I have sent to Perspectives on Politics. Most of the ideas in it I tested earlier in this forum. Thanks to Marc T for his suggestions.

Cheers

JohnT

Ken White
07-17-2008, 06:25 PM
Very well done.

John T. Fishel
07-17-2008, 07:48 PM
on Rancho La Espada, miles de gracias.

Marc T's other suggestion (I won't tell you exactly what he suggested to fix the essay ;)) was that I do a summary article on the SWORD Model. It is begun and I'll send it to Dave when done.:D

Cheers

JohnT

Ron Humphrey
07-17-2008, 08:12 PM
on Rancho La Espada, miles de gracias.

Marc T's other suggestion (I won't tell you exactly what he suggested to fix the essay ;)) was that I do a summary article on the SWORD Model. It is begun and I'll send it to Dave when done.:D

Cheers

JohnT

Really was an excellent and clear response. (clear meaning even I could understand it)

John T. Fishel
07-17-2008, 08:30 PM
This Okie wrote it so you Kansas guys could understand.:D

Thanks

JohnT

Doug Ollivant
07-18-2008, 04:32 AM
JohnT,

Thanks for your kind comments. But I'll take exception to even the mild criticism. First, I never claimed there was no research on small wars/COIN/IW/etc. I saw too many early drafts of Nagl's and Cassidy's dissertations/books in the very late 90s to ever say that. You do point out that there was indeed some doctrine. But there is a huge difference between doctrine published and doctrine absorbed. Did the publication of FM 100-20 impact the institution? I see little evidence.

But I do take very well your larger point (I think), that the current thinking about small wars/COIN is very much haunted by Iraq (and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan), and is in that sense ahistorical. I perhaps exemplify that, as the POP on piece was entirely written while I was in Baghdad (academic journals have a LONG lead time). But I think the next generation of joint and interagency doctrine will try to gain some critical distance, and perhaps much of the other writing will follow.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Best,

Doug

John T. Fishel
07-18-2008, 11:53 AM
I think the point you make about the lack of impact on the institution as a whole of 100-20 is spot on. All the references to LIC, OOTW, and MOOTW were little more than lip service to most officers. It appears that many of my Leavenworth students drifted through their MOOTW classes without a look back (until they got to Haiti or later Iraq...)

As to your "issue" with me: I interpreted your comment on p. 359 based on your discussion of the 70s and 80s where you said, "Of note, during this time period there was no doctrine on counterinsurgency, peace operations, or stability operations." 100% true for the 70s. 100-20 on COIN/LIC is 81. Peace ops and stability ops do not appear until the 90s.

So, I guess we really agree on far more than we disagree.:cool:

Cheers

JohnT

marct
07-19-2008, 03:59 AM
Marc T's other suggestion (I won't tell you exactly what he suggested to fix the essay ;)) was that I do a summary article on the SWORD Model. It is begun and I'll send it to Dave when done.:D

I still think sub-titling it "Why the Left can't get it right" was a good idea :(. Humph.... I guess I'll just have to save that for a blog post :D.

Great to hear that you're doing the summary article!

Marc

combatanalytics
07-23-2008, 02:25 PM
A central task in Counter Insurgency, peace keeping, and post conflict stabilization that the revised U.S. Army Operations Manual and FM 3-24 state as essential is the ability to execute assessments. However, what both the Army Operations manual and FM 3-24 do not provide Commander's and Staff's is the training, methodology, format, and skills to conduct a thorough assessment. Assessments, of any type, are complex undertakings that require a thorough degree of training and staff work in order to execute correctly.

In order to conduct a proper counter insurgency assessment, the assessment process needs to have good clean data; common, well understood definitions; a well structured understanding of what the commander is trying to achieve and what success looks like; and the ability to incorporate non-quantative assessments (i.e. personal opinion, etc) in a systematic fashion. Finally, the hallmark of a good, systematic assessment process is an understanding of its overall usefulness and limitations. Personal opinion, the commander's perspective of the battlefield, and quantative assessment all are part of the counter insurgency assessment process.

At the macro level, the discussion of COIN assessments has revolved around which methodology to use: PMESII, Line of Effort based scorecards, my own developed Combat Analytics Balanced Scorecard. However, the high level, end product counter insurgency assessment scorecard is merely the result of a good assessment process that use quality data; common definitions; a systematic, repeatable process; common sense data gathering; and the ability to systematically incorporate non-quantative opinions into an overall commander / staff assessment of the progress of the counter insurgency campaign.

On a note of caution, I would not combine the obvious short comings of Effects Based Operations (EBO) as a short coming of using a systematic, well defined, repeatable, and well understood assessment process to help drive counter insurgency operations. FM 3-24, in order to be a good document to truly help commanders and staffs in the counter insurgency fight, needs a well understood, documented, and step-by-step assessment process to help military organizations track their progress, determine their successes, target their shortcomings, in order to provide counter insurgency operations a compass towards successful conclusion.
.

Ken White
07-23-2008, 03:13 PM
"However, the high level, end product counter insurgency assessment scorecard is merely the result of a good assessment process that use quality data; common definitions; a systematic, repeatable process; common sense data gathering; and the ability to systematically incorporate non-quantative opinions into an overall commander / staff assessment of the progress of the counter insurgency campaign."Good luck with that, particularly the data quality and gathering...

Ron Humphrey
07-23-2008, 03:27 PM
On a note of caution, I would not combine the obvious short comings of Effects Based Operations (EBO) as a short coming of using a systematic, well defined, repeatable, and well understood assessment process to help drive counter insurgency operations. FM 3-24, in order to be a good document to truly help commanders and staffs in the counter insurgency fight, needs a well understood, documented, and step-by-step assessment process to help military organizations track their progress, determine their successes, target their shortcomings, in order to provide counter insurgency operations a compass towards successful conclusion.
.

Although this may be a way of approaching it and thats always a good starting point it's also important to realize that the biggest issue with any such directive applications is the ability to ensure that those in command who might not " get it " when it comes to sometimes the circumstances allow for nothing more concrete than adhoc and changing approaches, don't use said app to avoid doing exactly that.

It's a hard balance to achieve:wry:

wm
07-23-2008, 03:28 PM
However, the high level, end product counter insurgency assessment scorecard is merely the result of a good assessment process that use quality data; common definitions; a systematic, repeatable process; common sense data gathering; and the ability to systematically incorporate non-quantative opinions into an overall commander / staff assessment of the progress of the counter insurgency campaign.

Good luck with that, particularly the data quality and gathering...Good luck with that, particularly the data quality and gathering...
What Ken said, and nice marketing pitch by the way. :eek:

Rex Brynen
07-23-2008, 03:32 PM
Good luck with that, particularly the data quality and gathering...

...not to mention the lack of an agreed quantifiable model, even in the social sciences, of how states are stabilized, legitimacy is won, etc...

Doug Ollivant
07-23-2008, 03:50 PM
Metrics are very hard to get in COIN/stabilization/peacekeeping, particularly leading measures. It's easy to get a metric that will tell you that you were doing really great--or really poorly--six months ago. Short term feedback is much harder.

But I would recommend those who work this should contact the ORSA officers who worked for me in Baghdad--LTC Scott Kain and MAJ Jeremy Newton. Both are incredibly skilled staticians/modelers with a good sensing of the multiplicity of issues involved in doing an credible assessment (and a healthy sense of limitations). While I still believe you have to balance the objective data with subjective assessment (both at a theoretical level of not all is measureable, and at a practical level that we know we don't have the capability to measure as we would like), their model was a good tool--and did pick up the improvements as Baghdad got better.

And I agree--while EBO has obvious shortcomings, we should "harvest" its two primary contributions--non kinetics matter, and assessments matter.

Doug

Mark O'Neill
07-24-2008, 01:37 AM
I accept the need for some appropriate metrics in order to assist in planning and undertstanding within the COIN environment. However, I believe that care most be taken that the 'science' of whatever process is used to gather the data to be analysed does not become confused with 'countering' insurgency. Metrics are a part of the puzzle and by no means necessarily as central to 'unlocking' COIN as what some of the discussion would perhaps have us believe.

Our 20th and 21st Century western militaries invariably have a fascination with science, frequently displaying behaviour that suggests we believe that it will clear the 'fog of war' and give us an insight superior to that of our foes. The evidence of this can be seen in instances as diverse as the McNamara era analyses of the war in Vietnam, to the premature truimphalism of the Air power advocates after the 1991 Gulf War (and, to an extent, in the thinking behind the 'light' decapitation of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq in 2003).

When I read and see offerings of 'systems' or 'processes' offering understanding in COIN, I shudder. During my time at the MNF-I COIN CFE I encountered many Officers and NCO imbued with passion and enthusiasm for various such systems. Invariably they struggled with the dissonance that resulted when their process failed to adequately explain or account for the reality of the complex environment they ended up in. Notwithstanding what I said earlier about the need for some metrics, I found that the only way that seemed to really 'help' was a more socratic approach to teaching.

In short I (and my colleagues) found that we had two options regarding COIN education: Firstly , we could teach a 'system' or 'process' (the 'science' approach) that was 'easy' to teach and quickly gave the satisfying illusion that we had passed on knowledge. This also fit nicely with the Army's and USMC's cultural predilection for receiving such process training. But doing this is not COIN education - it is rote learning process. The second approach (the 'art' approach) was to assist people in 'free thinking' based on upon looking at the situation and assessing it somewhat subjectively, relying on their own innate intelligence and based on a doctrinal principles approach. This is harder to do, it required a lot of work and effort (as well as understanding by the instructors). We chose the second approach - it lead to better comprehension and improved confidence in their own abilities amongst the trainees.

The key to being able to use such an approach is doctrine that clearly artiulates principles and concepts that can intelligently applied with a degree of thought. Doctrine that moves towards advocacy of systems or processes will generate an 'industry' of understanding that actually adds nothing tangible to the bottom line of understanding, whilst providing the very illusion of the same. I tender the example of the MDMP as evidence - Commanders and Staff Officers at all levels can gain virtual PhD levels of understanding of such the process whilst at the same time failing to have the faintest clue about tactical or operational art.

To wind up this suddenly long post, I beleive that the next draft of FM3-24 must shy away from any process driven or formulaic approach and seek to build upon an approach that reinforces clear, simple description and principles to aid soldiers in gaining truer understanding rather than rote learning of a system. Simpler is better. As COL Alex Alderson (former MNF -I plans) said ' Counterinsurgency is not alchemy' .

Regards,

Mark

William F. Owen
07-24-2008, 05:21 AM
On a note of caution, I would not combine the obvious short comings of Effects Based Operations (EBO) as a short coming of using a systematic, well defined, repeatable, and well understood assessment process to help drive counter insurgency operations. FM 3-24, in order to be a good document to truly help commanders and staffs in the counter insurgency fight, needs a well understood, documented, and step-by-step assessment process to help military organizations track their progress, determine their successes, target their shortcomings, in order to provide counter insurgency operations a compass towards successful conclusion.
.

My personal experience of a systematic, well defined, repeatable, and well understood assessment process, is that it is of limited use, when carried out by human beings dealing with incomplete, changing and ambiguous data.

Some old guy called Carl Von something called it "friction" and I think specifically warned against trying to quantify it.

However, as someone passionate about military science and thought, I'd love to see you post of one these cards or some deeper explanation so we may better assess it.

Cavguy
07-24-2008, 01:24 PM
What Ken said, and nice marketing pitch by the way. :eek:


Available in training for you via IMPAC for $2500/session! (no kidding)

I believe we discussed the merits of balanced scorecardhere (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=5008&highlight=combat+analytics).

John T. Fishel
07-24-2008, 03:08 PM
I have discussed the SWORD Model to some extent here and, at Marc T's suggestion, am working on a summary article (with a new twist or 2). Since it will take me a bit to finish, I want to make a couple of comments here that relate to Mark's post.

The SWORD Model is Social Science. It makes use of the scientific method for theory development, data collection, and data analysis. When you see the article, you will recognize its dimensions from 3-24, 100-20, JP 3-07 and lots of other places. Until the research was done, however, no quantitative metrics existed. Moreover, the model works quite well with qualitative data and analysis but only - as Mark says - as principles. Metrics in an ongoing conflict are notoriously difficult to gather and, especially difficult to cull from public sources. In the last chapter of Max and my Uncomfortable Wars Revisited I applied the model to the ongoing conflict in Iraq using only public data (this was as of 2004). I hedged and qualified all over the place but a rigorous read shows that I was overly optimistic at the time and dead wrong on unity of effort.

So, using any Social Science model depends on the quality of the model, the quality of the data (mine was not nearly as good as it should have been), and the art of the interpreter (mine was pretty good since it was almost sufficiently hedged:rolleyes:).

On that cautionary note

Cheers

JohnT

Entropy
07-24-2008, 05:51 PM
My personal experience of a systematic, well defined, repeatable, and well understood assessment process, is that it is of limited use, when carried out by human beings dealing with incomplete, changing and ambiguous data.

Some old guy called Carl Von something called it "friction" and I think specifically warned against trying to quantify it.

However, as someone passionate about military science and thought, I'd love to see you post of one these cards or some deeper explanation so we may better assess it.

I mentioned this briefly before in a similar topic some weeks ago, but I think the methodology used by the strategic warning community, often called "indications analysis" might be useful for some of the difficulties in judging effectiveness and or progress toward various goals in coin. Indications analysis is designed to be carried out by "human beings dealing with incomplete, changing and ambiguous data" - it comes with the territory of the strategic warning problem.

Probably the best primer on the subject is Cynthia Grabo's now-declassified and updated text from the 1970's (http://www.ndic.edu/press/5671.htm). In a simplistic nutshell, indications analysis works backward from a particular end-state. A series of indicators, or signposts, on the way to that end-state are developed and then monitored. Although developed for warning, any end-state or scenario can be broken down and analyzed using this methodology. The advantages are two-fold: It can be used to make predictions (which is what it was originally designed to do) but it also can provide a means to analyze and compare various courses of action one might take.

To borrow from Mark's post below, indications analysis is both an "art" and a "science" and tries to combine the strengths of both philosophies. Although the framework might be science-based, the nature and ambiguity of information requires human judgment, particularly since indicators and indications are not limited to hard, quantifiable data. From Grabo:


An indication can be a development of almost any kind. Specifically, it may be a confirmed fact, a possible fact, an absence of something, a fragment of information, an observation, a photograph, a propaganda broadcast, a diplomatic note, a call-up of reservists, a deployment of forces, a military alert, an agent report, or anything else. The sole provision is that it provide some insight, or seem to provide some insight, into the enemy’s likely course of action. An indication can be positive, negative or ambiguous (uncertain).

and


An indicator is a known or theoretical step which the adversary should or may take in preparation for hostilities. It is something which we anticipate may occur, and which we therefore usually incorporate into a list of things to be watched which is known as an “indicator list.’’ Information that any step is actually being implemented constitutes an indication. The distinction between expectation and actuality, or between theory and a current development, is a useful one, and those in the warning trade have tried to insure that this distinction between indicators and indications is maintained. Many non-specialists fail to make this careful distinction.

Instead of "preparation for hostilities" you can substitute any theoretical end-state you desire. In fact, Indications Analysis within the intelligence community has expanded beyond the traditional role of warning of hostile actions by adversaries to monitoring a variety of issues of interest to the US. "Warning problems" have been established on a variety of topics that have little to do with the potential of an adversary's attack. I see no reason why this tested framework cannot be used in analysis of COIN and LIC, particularly since in my experience so much effort is put towards current intelligence, which has little value for this kind of estimation and analysis.

I do see two potential problems however. First, indications analysis requires a lot of resources, time and effort. Often, the strategic warning community is under-resourced in lieu of other requirements - it seems likely that a COIN-focused effort would suffer to an even greater extent.

Secondly, indications analysis requires a focused collection effort that may not be available in COIN scenarios. IOW, indicator development and monitoring are not possible if there isn't a significant body of baseline knowledge and the ability to get information in the necessary areas.

Of course, both these limitations apply equally to any other methodology or analytical framework that one might use.

Rex Brynen
07-24-2008, 06:46 PM
Probably the best primer on the subject is Cynthia Grabo's now-declassified and updated text from the 1970's (http://www.ndic.edu/press/5671.htm). In a simplistic nutshell, indications analysis works backward from a particular end-state. A series of indicators, or signposts, on the way to that end-state are developed and then monitored. Although developed for warning, any end-state or scenario can be broken down and analyzed using this methodology. The advantages are two-fold: It can be used to make predictions (which is what it was originally designed to do) but it also can provide a means to analyze and compare various courses of action one might take.

I've always thought that this quote from Grabo should be framed and hung on a number of walls (especially in the NGO/aid "early warning" community):


The researcher should take care not to be trapped in a rigid system which cannot be readily expanded or modified as new developments occur. The system should be designed to serve the analyst, not to have the analyst serve the system.

marct
07-27-2008, 01:51 PM
Entropy, thanks for posting the link to the Grabo text - I hadn't seen it before. It's an interesting blend of inductive and abductive logics; I think I will probably use it in my course this fall.

Jedburgh
07-29-2008, 12:31 PM
.....indications analysis requires a focused collection effort that may not be available in COIN scenarios. IOW, indicator development and monitoring are not possible if there isn't a significant body of baseline knowledge and the ability to get information in the necessary areas.
Entropy, thanks for posting the link to the Grabo text - I hadn't seen it before. It's an interesting blend of inductive and abductive logics; I think I will probably use it in my course this fall.
Grabo's Anticipating Surprise is a classic in the intelligence field and a great read. However, because of its fairly tight focus on warning in conventional conflict, the principles she relates may be more difficult for inexperienced readers to absorb and mentally shift into the COIN/UW context.

Entropy, I don't feel that indicator development is impossible or overly difficult in COIN/UW. But keep in mind that Grabo discusses strategic warning in her book, with the product intended to alert policymakers to emergining threats - and she also cautions about the difficulties of convincing them (and of others in the IC) of the real dangers embodied in emerging threats that are outside of their current perceptions. Warning intel in COIN/UW is most effective at the unit level.

Putting aside the formality of lists for a moment, just consider that all soldiers operating on the ground in such an environment develop their own personal indicator lists in their head. To use a cliche, but real, example - the sudden absence of locals from a normally lively street in town is usually taken as an indicator that something bad is about to happen. In the COE, such indicators range from being simple and broadly applicable as in that example, to the much more complex and focused on narrow, local context.

(Recall the bit from Go Tell the Spartans (http://www.amazon.com/Go-Tell-Spartans-Burt-Lancaster/dp/B0007TKNDI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1217333579&sr=8-1), where the analyst demonstrates to the cynical commander the ability to predict which village the VC are going to hit next.)

At an even more personal level, I used to train my HUMINT'ers in the principles of indicator analysis for interrogation. The baseline of information regarding kinesics, cognition and emotion is gathered during the first phase of the interrogation (or, if the situation allows, during the first screening interview). In this case, the indicators developed are used, not for "warning" in the standard sense, but to alert the interrogator to deception, potential leads and openings for manipulation of any one or all of the three mentioned aspects of the source.

To get back to analysis, the unfortunate truth is that many analysts at the tactical level have neither the training nor the experience to effectively implement a warning system for their units. Another obstacle is that, even if they develop the best list of indicators available in-country, unless they have an effective system for monitoring incoming information specifically for indicators and disseminating immediate warning, it ends up being a waste of valuable time of a critical asset. Just as Grabo relates for the strategic level, to be effective at the unit level it would also have to be a full time gig - and I know of few units that can spare an analyst to do nothing more than the warning job. But most competent analysts are still able to integrate elements of the warning discipline into everything else they've got on their plate. I'm sure many of those on the board can think of examples.


FYI: Several other good pubs from NDIC, along with the Grabo text, are available for download through the link posted on an earlier thread (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4823)