Operational Effectiveness and Strategic Success in Counterinsurgency
Operational Effectiveness and Strategic Success in Counterinsurgency by Dr. Steven Metz at SWJ Blog.
Quote:
When I was a young professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College I joined a small committee responsible for strategy instruction. This was all new to me: I had to learn before I could teach. One of the ideas that most impressed me then—and continues to today—is a simple, elegant, yet powerful way of thinking about strategy: it must be feasible, acceptable, and suitable. Feasibility means that there must be adequate resources to implement the strategy. Acceptability means that the "stakeholders" of the strategy have to buy in. Suitability means that the strategy had to have a reasonable chance of attaining the desired political objectives. This was the most important of all. A feasible and acceptable strategy was worthless if it did not offer a reasonable chance of attaining the desired political objectives. Reading
Major General Dunlap's essay on counterinsurgency reminded me of this. His recommendations are feasible and acceptable but short on suitability...
Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for COIN
RAND, 11 Feb 08: War By Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency
Quote:
In early 2006, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) asked RAND’s National Defense Research Institute to conduct a comprehensive study of insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN), with a view toward how the United States should improve its capabilities for such conflicts in the 21st century. This is the capstone report of that study, drawing from a dozen RAND research papers on specific cases, issues, and aspects of insurgency and COIN. The study included an examination of 89 insurgencies since World War II to learn why and how insurgencies begin, grow, and are resolved. It also analyzed the current challenge of what is becoming known as global insurgency, exemplified by the global jihadist movement, as well as lessons about both insurgency and COIN from a number of cases, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan provide the current policy context for this study. To be clear, however, the study is concerned with deficiencies in U.S. capabilities revealed in those conflicts, not with how to end them satisfactorily. Most new investments to improve U.S. COIN capabilities would not yield capabilities of immediate use. That said, to the extent that the findings can help the United States tackle the problems it faces in Iraq and Afghanistan, this would be a bonus. Regardless of how Iraq and Afghanistan turn out in the short term, the United States and its international partners will not have seen the last of this sort of challenge, and they must become better prepared than they have been for today’s insurgencies.....
As noted, numerous other products of this study are or soon will be in the public domain. These include:
Byting Back—Regaining Information Superiority Against 21st-Century Insurgents: RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Volume 1
Counterinsurgency in Iraq (2003–2006): RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Volume 2
Heads We Win—The Cognitive Side of Counterinsurgency (COIN): RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Paper 1
Subversion and Insurgency: RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Paper 2
Understanding Proto-Insurgencies: RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Paper 3
Money in the Bank—Lessons Learned from Past Counterinsurgency Operations: RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Paper 4
Rethinking Counterinsurgency—A British Perspective: RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Paper 5
Note: Most of the above are linked elsewhere on the board. I've reposted them all in one location because they support the final, and I figured many of you would find it useful to have them all together. Paper 5 has not been published yet; I will plug the link in here as soon as it becomes available.
Six points of contention?
Quote:
1) A political decision to defeat terrorism, stated explicitly and clearly to the security forces, and the willingness to bear the political cost of an offensive.
Pretty straightforward and achievable if seldom realized due to political constraints in a democracy as well as for OpSec reasons in today's rapid global communications environment.
Quote:
2) Acquiring control of the territory in and from which the terrorists operate.
Logical but can be exceedingly difficult if there's a cross border problem...
Quote:
3) Relevant intelligence.
Always helpful if sometimes far from easy.
Quote:
4) Isolating the territory within which the counterterrorist fighting takes place.
Always helpful if sometimes far from easy. Highly dependent upon troops available and terrain.
Quote:
5) Multi-dimensional cooperation between intelligence and operations.
An imperative frequently occluded by human nature...
Quote:
6) Separating the civilian population from the terrorists.
Exceedingly difficult in the best circumstances and highly likely today to be impossible due to 'human rights' considerations and public condemnation of harsh measures.
Seems to METT-TC applies; all situations are not identical to Malaya or Palestine. Being the government versus working with a host nation government colors many things quite differently.
All sounds great. Pity it isn't that simple...
Is Counterinsurgency the Graduate Level of War?
Is Counterinsurgency the Graduate Level of War? by COL Dave Maxwell, SWJ Blog.
Some Random Thoughts on COIN Today
Quote:
I have to respectfully disagree with the assertion that “counterinsurgency is the graduate level of war.”
Despite being an avid believer in and advocate of COIN (and FID and UW) for most of my nearly 30 year career I still believe that that the graduate level of war has to be full spectrum and those that are practicing the graduate level of war are those that can shift between major combat operations and stability operations and when necessary assist a friend, partner, and ally in the conduct of COIN. Now that everyone is chasing the shiny (but not really) “new” thing (COIN) and calling it the graduate level of war I it think is disparaging to our great general purpose forces out there who are still going to be required to conduct major combat operations in some form or fashion and will have to be able to combine those operations with stability operations once the battle is won.
The graduate level of war is any form of war because war is as complex in major combat operations as it is in stability operations. The real “PhDs of war” are those that are able to recognize that the actions they take in the beginning of conflict (e.g., March-May 2003) are going to have effects on the outcome and the post conflict phases (e.g., May 2003 to the present)...
This COIN is global and Religious...
One extremely important distinction between current COIN Ops and historical examples of insurgency is the central role of religion in the WoT. Wars always involve ideology and frequently contest competing theological visions. Yet this war is being waged against the west by those whose raison d'terre (sp) is 'God's will'.
In this sense, my humble opinion is not so much that COIN as a theory requires graduate level aptitude, but that COIN involving the complex dynamics of Islam (in the biblical location of the Garden of Eden, Abraham's birthplace, ancient Babylon, no less) requires a cognitive expertise exceeding previous wars because of the possibility of inflaming religious tensions that may/can instigate not only WW III, but perhaps the Apocalypse envisioned by all three Abrahamic Traditions.
See: Rand National Defense Research Institute's study: "Heads We Win: Improving Cognitive Effectiveness in Counterinsurgency".