On the quality of participation
This is my opinion. As such it is clearly open to challenge. But it is based on a fair historical perspective and so might be worth something. At the height of the COIN revival I was fearful that we would fall back into the default mode of trying to forget about small wars as we did after Vietnam. We also did the same after every single major war we have fought. After the Revolution we fought Indians in the Northwest Territories and Florida but then along came the War of 1812 with a major conventional enemy (and we darn near lost the war). After New Orleans we fought Indians again all over the West. Then along came the Mexican War against a major conventional enemy and Scott, Taylor, and Doniphan led us to victory. After that we had to learn to fight Indians all over again. In 1861 along came the civil war with West Pointers fighting West Pointers. Big armies on the move. Lots of technical innovation. After it was all over and Sheridan had scared the French out of Mexico massing 50,000 troops on the border, we had to learn to fight Indians again. Then we fought Spain in 1898 - it is amazing how many former Confederate generals marched again to the sound of the guns in the blue and khaki uniforms of the US, Fitzhugh Lee and William Oates come to mind. In the aftermath, the dirty little wars in the Philippines and Caribbean raised up and Pershing chased Pancho Villa all over Northern Mexico but we had to learn that these weren't the kinds of wars we were prepared to fight because people were not only not learning the lessons, they weren't even recording them. WWI was followed by the Banana Wars which only the Marines were interested enough to record but they were also preparing for the next big one. They published their Small Wars Manual at almost the same time as their Tentative Landing Operations Manual which was a major influence on conventional operations in WWII.
The point of all this is that neither our political nor our military leaders like the small, nasty, dirty wars. We all want to fight the "big one" (why are we pivoting toward Asia? - not merely for the obvious and real threat of China). As the small wars wind down, interest fall off among both military and civilian national security analysts. This leaves the door open for smart, intelligent challenges to the prevailing wisdom of small wars - challenges like those of Gian Gentile both on these pages and his new book. As for our junior officers, they are looking at being assigned to units planning against conventional conflicts with China (perhaps) and certainly not toward Iraq now seen in the media as a totally foolish effort without any redeeming social virtue or Afghanistan which our president says we are leaving in 2014 regardless of conditions on the ground. The Administration has floated the idea of no residual force of any kind - the zero option. and who wants to be the last casualty of a war we have deemed is not worth fighting anyway? As a result, interest in our broad topic has died down.
This fact - loss of broader interest - makes our forum (Journal and Council alike) all the more important. Here we can not only record the lessons we needed to learn but debate them and, perhaps, allow the next generation to actually learn them and not make the same mistakes that we and previous generations made.
On that note
Cheers
JohnT
I don't see any fresh thinking on Small Wars....
An an outsider to the military, I don't see much difference between some of supposed "retreat into conventional mode" and the "small wars are important" types.
I see a comfortable retreat into familiar arguments about familiar topics using overly represented and familiar examples by some proponents of the study of small wars--with no real reflection on what might have happened in the past decade or so and no opening up of the discussion on a theoretical or practical level.
Why the constant retreat to a few examples that seem to keep cropping up, the British in Malaya, Algeria, the Indian Wars, the Phillipines?
For the study of the Afghan campaign, a very careful full-rounded study of various South Asian insurgencies (outside the comfortable frameworks often presented on SA insurgencies here, same old same old, even the Indian General that wrote an article on COIN basically just repeated "hearts and minds") might be interesting.
I feel I spend too much time commenting already and would prefer to read academic papers or books on "small wars areas of interest" to me that don't seem to be covered much here. If I find interesting things, I will post--time permitting.
The moderators are awesome. The commenters and contributors are awesome.
David is absolutely terrific as a moderator.
But if the study of small wars is so important why are those interested always circling around the same few topics in the same way? I see nothing new, just the same old half-conceived notions of American history and practice regarding small wars.
It's a fascinating topic so where is the robust study and argumentation outside a little social science and some tactical discussion?
Best to all.
Not everything can be that clear with an opinion
Hey Madhu,
Would almost tend to agree with you. However, seems all the lessons learned from the past and our members' vast knowledge of the same has fallen on deaf ears.
We are not always meandering in the past, but sharing what we may feel has indeed been overlooked and deserves a relook or, we feel a need to share what our past revealed.
As duly noted, most of us come from military backgrounds and are in one form or another, still serving.
Not everything herein is Small Wars, but most everything has something to do with what may eventually occur and has often been overlooked by far more intelligent beings.
Regards, Stan
Thanks for the correction and point of agreement
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Steve Blair
Actually, both the Indian War and the Philippines are poorly-studied here. Brian Linn is one of the few scholars who actually has devoted a great deal of time and attention to the Philippines (at least the period from 1898 through 1910 or so), and his work is outstanding. The Indian Wars tend to be rather spotty, and often the focus is on a specific individual or battle rather than a longer-term view of the conflicts. There are a few outstanding scholars to be sure, but some areas remain very neglected and would certainly repay study. That doesn't mean that they are the "be all and end all" of small wars, but to assume that they've been mined out would be a mistake.
I agree that there is a lot of (misplaced) focus on areas like Malaya and Algeria. There's also little attention paid to things that have happened in both Central and South America.
Thanks for the comment too, Stan.
I tend to paint with too broad a brush in order to make a point. It's not a good habit. That's one reason I want to read more academic works. I need to break this habit. If I read more, I would have already known your point....
At least we all agree on one thing, we need more study and to keep the study alive, current and vibrant. I think one area that I have a kind of cultural disconnect from the military (or maybe the blogs I read?) is that I'm not really looking for quick "lessons learned" in the sense of "oh, look at what those guys did."
I have certain curiosities or questions about conflicts and want to read up on the questions because I think that current COIN doctrine oversimplifies the history of some campaigns used as a model. Gian Gentile in his book says that the models are too rigid and prevent a kind of grand improvisation (not minor tactical improvisations) or tailoring of a counterinsurgency campaign toward a specific conflict in all its peculiarities.
I have such a different narrative of colonial small wars in my head because of my ethnic background that sometimes it's like I'm from Venus and you all are from Mars.
Well, naturally that, given that I'm posting on a site about small wars....
Lost Lessons & Fresh Thinking: a challenge for SWC
The catalyst for this thread's creation comes from the discussion in the re-opened thread 'Recruiting for SWC members because....':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3837
A couple of relevant posts have been edited and copied over.
Perhaps this challenge has appeared before in discussions and maybe even a thread, for as one recent poster noted:
Quote:
Groundhog Day. I felt like I was making the same arguments over and over.
Bill Moore's 4 points and one other
Bill's four points/challenges are at the heart of the issue. Let me tak a stab at each:
1. The shift toward Asia was, in fact, made for perfectly valid strategic reasons. But it also has the effect of reemphasizing the "big one". The issue here is whether the legitimate concern over a potential peer competitor is at the expense of the more constant small wars threats and capabilities. It is an issue of balance and one we have not done well with over time.
2. It is not the fact that there are more small wars than big ones but rather that the history of the military of the US (and the colonies before we were a country) saw much more engagement in both numbers of cases and longer periods than big war engagements. If past is prologue, then we need to keep studying the small wars along with the big ones and be prepared to fight them.
3. The Army as an institution did turn its institutional back on small wars after Vietnam. Although there were pockets where an institutional memory was retained - LTC Don Vought at CGSC (Fort Leavenworth) salvaged all the stuff on COIN in the 70s and stored the documents under the heading of "Terrorism" (which was then in vogue). In the 93 I had a student there who on his deployment to Haiti the next year lamented that he had not paid more attention to what we were giving him with regard to small wars - and he was a good one. My big army counterparts in the 80s did not pay much attention to anything that was going on in SOUTHCOM because it really was not career enhancing. Yet, if that was the whole picture, we would never have had David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster (who was in the CGSC class during my tenure and published his well received book that year),or some of the other leaders of the COIN resurgence. Again, I would argue that the issue os one of balance.
4. Bill, I don't think that you can avoid addressing policy and strategy in any discussion of the application of military power. Saint Carl (aka CvC) made the point that "war is the extension of politik (translates as both politic and policy depending on constext) with the addition of other means." That, to me, means that the "strategic corporal" is not confined to the USMC. What we do at the tactical and operational levels have profound impacts on the strategic and higher levels. A Salvadoran student of mine at Leavenworth stated in class that the decision taken during the FMLN 89 offensive to murder the Jesuit leadership of the U of Central America (and their housekeeper and her daughter) very nearly defeated the Salvadoran government and armed forces. It was a decision taken by a Colonel who happened to command the military academy (not functioning at the time) but gained command of the city because of the attack Clear case of tactical stupidity resulting in strategic and political disaster.
Last point: In my recent review essay in the Journal (w/Amb Ed Corr) we noted the difference between assisting a funtitoning government and military and having to create one because we have destroyed what previously existed and are now the occupying power. We noted that this situation was analogous to what Callwell called Imperial Policing or what the Marines later practiced in the Banana Wars. We agree with Neustadt and May (Madhu, see their THINKING IN TIME) that analogies must be used with great care but we also cannot escape their use. If we are the occupying power then WE must nation build - an obligation under the laws of war. If we are a supporting power then the host government must nation build if it does not want to see an insurgency return. How we and our allies undertake those tasks is a question that is always frought with peril. I would simply add that we did reasonably well in these tasks in both set of circumstances in Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, and Peru between 1983 and 1995. All 4 are reasonably well functioing democracies two or more decades later.
Cheers
JohnT