“’Dishonest Doctrine:’ Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coin Doctrine”
If you are a true believer in the American Army’s new counterinsurgency doctrine then don’t read Ralph Peters’s critique of it in the most recent edition of Armed Forces Journal because your mind won’t be changed.
However, if you believe it is the duty of the intellectual, as Carl Becker once said, “to think otherwise,” then you should. In this piece Peters questions the underlying premises of the new doctrine by pointing out its hyper-reliance and very selective use of certain historical “lessons” while not considering others. Although he does not mention him explicitly, the pen of Peters implicitly lacerates LTC John Nagl and his role in the writing of the new doctrine. According to Peters, certain individuals have used their position as primary writers of the new doctrine to “validate” their own personal theories…at the expense of our men and women in uniform.” In his most strident remark Peters states that “doctrine should be written by successful battlefield commanders, not by doctors of philosophy playing soldier.”
I am not a true believer in the things that Ralph Peters writes. Some of his stuff is quite good but if you follow his writings there are huge inconsistencies and contradictions that he never comes close to trying to resolve. Although in this piece he makes a valiant try at it but he fails miserably. On the one hand he criticizes the American new Coin doctrine but on the other hand he lavishes praise on General Patraeus for moving beyond it and fighting the war in Iraq the way Peters thinks it should be fought. Arguably General Patraeus and his team have been following the new Coin doctrine to a “T.” As I see it Peters’s problem is that he really does believe there are serious problems with the new Coin doctrine but his political interests as a hard-line conservative who writes for a conservative New York City newspaper forces him to write about the successes of the Coin doctrine inspired Surge. You can judge but in my mind in this piece he did not come close to resolving this contradiction.
I am not a true believer in Peters or in FM 3-24 so if you too are not then I commend his article to you.
gentile
Mr. Peters Article Contains The Crucial Flaw
This article contains the same fatal flaw as a great deal of writings on this subject, and it needs to be challenged if others are not to be infected with the same silliness, that will prevent them succeeding in their mission or worse, get people killed.
Here is what Peters wrote:
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Although Petraeus has, indeed, concentrated many assets on helping those who need help, he grasped that, without providing durable security — which requires killing those who need killing — none of the reconstruction or reconciliation was going to stick. On the ground, Petraeus has supplied the missing kinetic half of the manual.
This is just plain wrong. What is required for security is an unwillingness on the part of insurgents to provide insecurity (ie violence and crime). Of course, one way to do this is to kill insurgents, but it completely misses the point which is this.
Not every insurgent is an insurgent all the time. As was taught to me, insurgents come in all shapes and sizes, backgrounds and professions. They may never handle a weapon at all, they may be a farmer by day and plant IED's by night, they may simply store gear for others, provide intelligence, medical assistance, money, food, shelter. These people make up the bulk of any insurgency, and they do their work from choice. They can be almost impossible to identify, unless caught in the act, because we can't see whats in their heads.
The key therefore is firstly to give people the choice of supporting you rather than the insurgency, then making it a more attractive choice, and since martyrdom is a feature of the current Islamic insurgency just offering them the chance of getting killed by us is not necessarily an effective option, and I suspect, far less cost effective than the political alternatives.
My limited understanding is that this has been what Dr. Kilcullen has been advocating.
Of course there is always the Roman option as Steve Metz puts it, but lets examine that a little further. After their initial invasions the Romans tried to "Romanise " the ruling elites - the carrot rather than the stick. It was only if that failed or their was rebellion that more drastic methods were used - and these are now precluded by International laws against genocide and the precedents set by the Nuremberg trials.
It's also worth remembering that that the Romans generally intended to settle the land it conquered (or at least extract tribute) and I'm not sure that many Americans would like to settle permanently in Iraq.
As for Mr. Peters reference to Mao, its worthless, but I can't remember where my copy of the Little Red Book is to look up the reference to "The Guerrillas are like fish swimming in the sea of the peasantry" which is, I guess, a more poetic way of stating the true situation rather than this long winded post.
Ralph is Ralph, he deals in hyperbole
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Originally Posted by
Rank amateur
I believe this statement from the article is flat out wrong:
"Given the responsibility of command, he recognized that, when all the frills are stripped away, counterinsurgency warfare is about killing those who need killing,"
I believe we are bribing, negotiating with and even training people who used to attacks us.
We are doing both those things at the same time, the message is "You can get some bucks by chilling or you can be dead -- your choice." Works for me and sounds like a plan. The Byzantines developed it into an art form; the Brits do it well. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, not at all. In fact, they're all part of the effort. The object is to get them to stop attacking; whatever works. Google Chieu Hoi for just one example.
So Ralph is hyperbolic and can be annoying but he isn't wrong in that case.
The key is defining "who needs to be
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Originally Posted by
Rank amateur
To me "killing those who need to be killed" doesn't imply, "unless they'd rather have a check," but I fully admit that I don't understand a lot of the technical military jargon.;)
killed." Everyone, particularly in Iraq, who shoots at us is not a die hard enemy (who does need to be killed); if those of light conviction can be turned, everyone is better off. It makes no sense to kill people just because they shot at you -- particularly when, after all, you shot at them. Just nail the ones who aren't willing to quit shooting while turning the others...
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If I needed to make a list of people who insisted that we keep repeating things that didn't work in Iraq, it would be a long list, but none of the COIN doctrine writers would be on it.
Actually, there aren't that many people who insisted we keep repeating things that didn't work, less than a half dozen who mattered and could actually make what they wanted happen. You also need to wrestle with the military problem of 'command prerogative' -- he who is in command gets to decide how he (or she) will operate and the system gives them latitude to do that. Thus, Franks (later Abizaid) would not get too dictatorial with Sanchez (later Casey) nor would the CJCS get too rigid with either Franks or Abizaid. While that creates some occasional problems, it is sensible and shouldn't be changed.
What does need to be changed is dumping the foolish idea that all Commanders are equal; they are not. Congress has tied the hands of every Administration since 1980 by making Generals virtually untouchable by the Civilian leadership and by insisting that everyone take their turn at jobs. The Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) was an effort to correct some ills and to be fair -- as is usual for products of inside the Beltway kneejerk experts, they overdid it. DOPMA makes it difficult to put the right senior person in the right job; DOPMA and some systemic over caution.
I'd also suggest the COIN doctrine writers are not error free; FM 3-24 is far from being the best FM I've seen. They produced a philosophy, not a manual -- and that philosophy had essentially been created in the early 60s -- it just got buried and forgotten in the interim. They just regurgitated most of it...
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I do, however, think that it's not very productive to argue over tactics. Even I know that the best tactic is whatever works, the more tactics you master, the more likely that you'll be able to handle every situation, an unexpected tactic may work better than a more "textbook" response and repeating tactics makes you predictable and therefore defeatable. Like you said: if killing works great. If writing checks works great too.
Arguing may not be all that productive but discussion can be informative.
Textbook responses should always be avoided at all costs, Doctrine can be a strait jacket that way -- that's why Gian is worried (as are some others of us) that we will go overboard on the COIN mantra to the detriment of our ability to do other things. That really needs to be avoided...