Counterinsurgency Education Request
Would appreciate any thoughts on the following RFI from a Marine:
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... I've done a good deal of COIN study and a little practical application in Iraq. As I was thinking through how to design a regimental HQ's PME program for an upcoming deployment, it became clear to me that I have no idea how to teach COIN.
I can teach TTP's (VCP, counter IED, etc.), but HQ's personnel above the company don't really do TTP's except as personal protective measures while traveling about. We can also train COC battle drills, but using MERC Chat to pass word of a TIC or downed aircraft isn't COIN either. We need to do these types of events, but what I am aiming at for this project is education rather than training.
Power point classes that I've seen are also only marginally useful. Because each situation is so different, there are few enduring principles that always apply. Slides with LOO's and pillars are so abstract that I don't think Marines internalize much from them.
I think reading is the key, but that reading needs to be reinforced by action to generate vicarious experience. Therefore I want to explore some sort of case study method which allows us to analyze situations in their historical context and then use that experience to reach some group synthesis about how to do COIN at the Regt. Level. My hope was that there were some ready made games out there that could be used as a training tool to facilitate this. For instance, read a book about Algeria. Play a game about Algeria. Something along those lines. I am open to any ideas that anyone may have.
Thanks in advance...
Navy: Let's Play "Sim Iraq"
From Wired
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The Navy, it turns out, has a "Sim Iraq" in mind, too. A literal one. The service has issued a call for a developers to build "a highly interactive, PC-based Human, Social and Culture Behavioral Modeling (HSCB) simulation tool to support training for military planners for handling insurgencies, small wars, and/or emergent conflicts."
On the 'evil' of simplicity and other soapbox issues...
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Originally Posted by
Cavguy
Not necessairly disagreeing with you, but what short books matching the above themes (and simplicity) would you recommend instead?
Galula and Trinquier are oft mentioned because they are short, practical, and still mostly relevant.
I can think of a few insightful more recent articles, but no books with a digestable tactical/operational summary of approaching COIN.
Niel,
I am wondering why the need or fascination we all seem to have for 'short' and 'simplicity'. There is simply no correlation between the fact that these attributes make a text more digestable to 'average' folks and the utility, accuracy, validity and worth of the thoughts that the texts contain.
Someone shared an excellent powerpoint presentation with me yesterday that contained a prescient quote from LTGEN (UK) Graeme Lamb whilst in Baghdad in the middle of last year:
“The reality is that what we about here in Iraq is multidimensional, and it cannot be simplified if none of it fits easily into in nice neat terms. Any search for the neat and tidy allows those who don’t really understand it, even in the simplest terms, to get us into dangerous situations ”
To my mind this precisely highlights the problem with 'short and simple'. These problems are anything but 'short and simple' and reductionism to make them such is a flawed idea. You end up with the perception of understanding, but actually have something quite different, which is dangerous. No one has ever promised that COIN is intellectually egalitarian. Nor that it can be 'dumbed down' to suit the Army training system's resolute belief that it could even train monkeys to write Shakespeare if only given enough typewriters and time...
I share some of Steve's concerns with many of the so called 'cold war' texts, but not because of their age. After all, Callwell and Gwynne are far older, but still have considerable utility in aiding understanding in many areas.
My concern, and with Galula in particular, is that simple advice is taken way out of the context it was derived and them slavishly applied at levels and in places where it clearly has little or no practical utility.
Time and time again I have seen people take simple blandishments, derived from observations of a finite tactical level problem over one year in a specific AO (with unique culture, terrain, political history etc), and try and extrapolate meaning at the high operational and low strategic end of the present conflict spectrum. It is ludicrous and it simply does not work. Yes, Galula can offer some pointers to a company commander owning a piece of dirt at the tactical level. But I believe he has very little of practical use beyond motherhood statements after that.
In order to address our current set of problems (particulalry within the ITO), I believe that is well past time for people to look beyond the deification of Saint Robert. It is time to seek wider readings from people who have actually engaged in dealing with issues akin to our current problem set. And this must mean at levels other than the tactical. As an example Robert Kromer is one who springs to mind off the top of my head. (NB, I am not sanctioning / endorsing everything that Kromer wrote, merely pointing out that he worked at a level of the Vietnam war more akin to where most of our current problems lie).
The fact is that we can lose this war at the tactical, operational and strategic levels, but we can only 'win' it at the strategic (think back to the apocryphal story with the Vietnamese General cited by Summers). I do not have any sense that we are in danger of 'losing' the tactical fight anytime soon- particularly given the learning and improvement over the last three years. From what I have seen and learnt in theatre Galula's utility starts to wane considerably as we move up to where we must win - the high operational and strategic. Time then to start looking at other people, perhaps like Liddell-Hart and Beaufre as starters (and even Chainsaw Bob on how to get CMO happening at high levels..).
Regarding contemporary writings, I tend to agree with the posts previously. I have not yet seen the new edited work by Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian , I have one on order and have some hope that it might be step in the right direction. Steve Metz's SSI monograph last year also springs to mind- I thought it was a good contribution.
I am increasingly thinking that many are sitting around waiting for someone else to 'do something'. I put myself somewhat in this category at the moment. The situation will only change when one of us finds the time (and courage perhaps) to go out there and try and write a book.
In the mean time we can all continue to amuse ourselves with journal articles and anodyne powerpoint presentations at conferences replete with dubious analogies....
regards,
Mark
errata regarding the errata...
:o
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Originally Posted by
Mark O'Neill
Guys, re: my typing dyslexia in the previous post, please read '"Kormer" for "Kromer" :o
Mark
OK, I give up, one of those days I guess.. lets try 'Komer'....
I've been pondering this for a couple of hours
and that's usually dangerous... :wry:
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Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
Heck it is Friday morning, so I'll kick the hornets nest once again. I can't speak for the person who made the request, but it seems he/she is getting at that gray area between education and training. Sort of like how do you implement strategy at the tactical level. Education being stragetic and training being tactical. The staff is in the middle, they have to know how to fuse both. Our operational level doctrine is outstanding for conventional warfighting, but one could make an argument that our staffs are not ideally task organized or trained to command and control COIN. We're great at responding to a troops in contact, medevac, pushing supplies out, etc., but I think we still fall short in the area of translating COIN strategic ideas into operational level plans that effect tactical operations.
Is that not a function of the facts that COIN IS the Operational level when and where implemented and, far more importantly and less arguably -- the fact that we doctrinally, educationally and training wise virtually ignored COIN and ID for almost 30 years?
Did not that neglect extend at least in part to SF who looked at, er, uh, other missions, while admittedly keeping a finger or two in the COIN / ID water?
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The simple fix, but big Army will do Cheetah flips is to put Special Forces in charge, with big Army in support. SF can form an irregular or unconventional Joint/Interagency/Combined Task Force, and provide operational guidance to the supporting units. This will allow big Army to focus primarily on conventional warfighting skills, but still make significant contributions to the COIN fight without changing their staff structure significantly.
Aside from the rather enjoyable contemplation of seeing portly Generals doing cheetah flips, I may see some practical problems.
Philosophy impeded practice. I've been retired retired for 13 years; a lot can change. However, from 1960 until 1995, there was a constant tension within SF and at the Center between proponents of emphasis on DA vs. UW vs. ID. My belief is that SOCOM has exacerbated those tensions. If that is true, then it is a potentially disruptive effect your recommendation confronts.
Size. Not everyone is equipped to be SF, only so many will have the requisite psychological profile and be able to adapt to alien cultures and languages. As currently constituted, SF could capably deal with the SEA missions as they are structured and with Afghanistan -- that is true as is OR using your approach. I submit SF isn't large enough to do those and add Iraq, or, really, to do Iraq on it's own. Obviously that's tour length and a few other things dependent but on balance, I don't think there's enough SF to do what you suggest in the current circumstances.
Increasing the size. You could do that. Having been there a long time ago in a galaxy far away when that happened, I wouldn't recommend it. Not at all...
Focus. One of the strengths of SF is the regional or area focus and specialization. More than one anecdote would seem to indicate that SF elements operating in an unfamiliar environment are just as prone to errors as are conventional units. If regional orientation is a strength, that further limits the ability to provide an adequate sized force for the C2 effort required.
C2 capability. SF is unique and has great capabilities in its designed area of expertise but the nuts and bolts of war at the operational level -- which I very strongly contend is precisely what COIN is in the country involved -- on stuff like "...responding to a troops in contact, medevac, pushing supplies out, etc." they'd be a bit out of their element and thus, the big army force they were trying to provide elegant and informed C2 for would, by default own the tempo.
At the risk of drawing ire and fire from you, UBoat, ODB and others, I have to point out that a conventional Infantry Battalion can be trained to do much -- not all -- of what SF can and would do in a COIN fight. Conversely, I do not believe SF can expand without significant loss of quality to do what a slew of those Infantry Battalions can do. I'd also ask while this grand COIN fight is going on, who would be working the missions that SF has that those Infantry Battalions cannot or should not be trained to do...
All that said, there's a valid case for integration of SF Officers and NCOs on the staffs of COIN or ID involved units -- and vice versa...
Getting the Drift ... Again
After writing/thinking out loud in my last post in this conversation, I began to remember a short text from my Officer's Basic Course. It took me a couple of hours, but I finally came up with the example of E.D. Swinton's The Defence of Duffer's Drift. Seven tactical scenarios with lessons delivered in the form of seven dreams by "LT Backsight Forethought," written after Swinton served in the Second Boer War (1899-1902).
Here it is on the Internet:
http://regimentalrogue.tripod.com/du...fers_Drift.htm
Has anyone seen anything like this--short on words, big on concepts, and that encourages readers to engage the material in an atypical manner--applied to the COIN context?