Foreign Internal Defense (Indigenous Forces)
Just added this forum and a new section to the SWJ Library - Foreign Internal Defense (Indigenous Forces). The library section concentrates on the training and advising of foreign military forces. This forum is open to all aspects of FID...
Here are the first two "new" additions to the library (with a hat tip to Council member CaptCav_CoVan).
Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador by Robert Ramsey III, US Army Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper.
Quote:
Mr. Robert Ramsey’s historical study examines three cases in which the US Army has performed this same mission in the last half of the 20th century. In Korea during the 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in El Salvador in the 1980s the Army was tasked to build and advise host nation armies during a time of war.
The author makes several key arguments about the lessons the Army thought it learned at the time. Among the key points Mr. Ramsey makes are the need for US advi*sors to have extensive language and cultural training, the lesser impor*tance for them of technical and tactical skills training, and the need to adapt US organizational concepts, training techniques, and tactics to local conditions. Accordingly, he also notes the great importance of the host nation’s leadership buying into and actively supporting the development of a performance-based selection, training, and promotion system. To its credit, the institutional Army learned these hard lessons, from successes and failures, during and after each of the cases examined in this study. However, they were often forgotten as the Army prepared for the next major conventional conflict.
Advice for Advisors: Suggestion and Observations from Lawrence to the Present by Robert Ramsey III, US Army Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper.
Quote:
CSI is publishing this occasional paper as a supplement to Occasional Paper 18, Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Viet*nam, and El Salvador. In that important study, Mr. Robert Ramsey dis*tilled the insights gained by the US Army from its advisory experiences in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador. In this anthology, Mr. Ramsey presents 14 insightful, personal accounts from those who advised foreign armies in various times and places over the last 100 years. Unlike most of the monographs in our GWOT Occasional Paper series, this volume is an anthology.
The articles are from past and present advisors, and they are presented without editing or commentary. Each one presents valuable lessons, insights, and suggestions from the authors’ firsthand experiences. Readers will thus make their own judgments and analysis in support of their unique requirements.
On Cultural Experiences and FID
To All
I have said that I am building a MiTT/ETT reader as a parallel to a handbook. As part of that effort, I am putting together an article that deals with cultural awareness and immersion.
Here is what I am looking for from those of you with extensive experience in this realm:
A short vignette type account of where you were, what you were doing, and a specific incident of where cultural understanding led to success or failure. your vignette if used would be inserted as one of a series of illustrative examples in the larger essay I am writing.
Stan: hopefully you will not send me a vignette about the cultural difficulty in dealing with a irrascible colonel from Texas:p
PM me if you have something.
best
Tom
FSF-TT's...are they identical to ETT'S?
I am attempting to find any information concerning these newly formed FSF-TT (Foreign Security Force - Training Team). I've called random contacts down at the 162nd @ Polk to little / no avail. I have the option to stay at my current unit (Light Infantry) and deploy with them as a member of this team. What I don't want to be doing is staying in the rear strictly training / organizing forces, rather than training in addition to advising the ANA whilst on patrol, forward deployed. Any information would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
G26
Bill, that is precisely what I was getting at
:)
We need to recall that Security Assistance is a DOS program enabled (or constrained) by the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961 (as amended) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976 (as amended). Any program funded and/or controlled by these acts is subject to DOS supervision at the very least. Most FID is funded as FMS/FMF(a bit under IMET and ESF) which are all FAA programs. While there is some counternarcotics funding not under the FAA and programs of Joint Exercises (JCETs for example) and Title 10 H/CA these are merely add ons to FID programs funded by FAA. And, these "add ons" are subject to the approval of the Amb whio is advised by his Country Team (only 2 members of which wear uniforms - most of the rest are DOS).
One might be able to make a distinction between FID - a normal program run by the Amb and his CT and SFA in the midst of a major military operation. Yet, i am not sure the distinction is real or valid. I would argue that the SFA mission in Iraq was relatively successful due, in large part, to the mind meld of GEN petraeus and Amb Crocker. So, who had the lead C or P or P or C? Yes! But that is what makes the situation so unusual and it was made to work by the 2 guys on the ground. There is no standard "command relationship" that can dictate such a structure and a reluctance on the part of all presidents in my lifetime to say who is in charge of such a situation.
Your point that constrained resources makes people use what they have more effectively (and efficiently) is wise.
A question on the controversy of FIDs
Statement:
In 1959, a French military mission is created in Buenos Aires where French officers--all veterans from Algeria--translate Roger Trinquier, hold classes and publish articles in military revues.
In the mid-1960s, they move on to the School of the Americas where they teach American instructors and, eventually, directly teach special forces at Fort Bragg.
Special forces then put to practice what they have learned in Foreign Internal Defense programmes, particularly in Latin America.
Given the fact that Trinquier sanctions torture in Modern Warfare (1), and in the light of atrocities perpetrated in Latin America during the same period as Foreign Internal Defense programmes where in place (e.g. in El-Salvador), my question is the following: despite that FIDs programmes evolved in the right direction, to what extend is this history known and, accordingly, to what extend are FIDs controversial in the U.S.?
.
(1)
Quote:
No lawyer is present for such an interrogation. If the prisoner gives the information requested, the examination is quickly terminated; if not, specialists must force his secret from him. Then, as a soldier, he must face the suffering, and perhaps the death, he has heretofore managed to avoid
Source: R. Trinquier, Modern Warfare (Praeger Security International, 2006), p. 19. Nota bene, it is even more explicit in the original, French, version.
Did torture plus travel to historical FID?
White Rabbit,
I think I see what you are looking for - how does the inter-nation transfer of COIN doctrine and practice work, using the application of whether torture became part of FID.
It might help to look at the field of intelligence ethics, a good starting point is here:http://intelligence-ethics.org/confe...rence_2011.pdf
Which touches upon the separate Anglo-French experience and indicates SME work to check for.
