A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army
I have been waiting and hoping that he would put his thoughts into a well-developed article, rather than the distilled versions that he was forced into by editorial constraints of newspaper op-eds. Behold...
A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army
by COL Gian P. Gentile
Population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) has become the American Army’s new way of war. The principles and ideas that emerged out of the Army’s counterinsurgency field manual (FM), FM 3-24, published in late 2006, have become transcendent. The field manual has moved beyond simple Army doctrine for countering insurgencies to become the defining characteristic of the Army’s new way of war. In the American Army today, everyone is a counterinsurgent. It is easy to find examples of FM 3-24’s permeating effect in other Army doctrinal manuals such as FM 3-0, Operations, and FM 3-07, Stability Operations. Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV, the American Army general charged with writing the Army’s doctrine, recently stated:
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The future is not one of major battles and engagements fought by armies on battlefields devoid of population; instead, the course of conflict will be decided by forces operating among the people of the world. Here, the margin of victory will be measured in far different terms than the wars of our past. The allegiance, trust, and confidence of populations will be the final arbiters of success.
The idea of populations as the prize in war, that they are the focus, is drawn directly from the pages of FM 3-24.2
In a sense, population-centric counterinsurgency has perverted a better way of American war which has primarily been one of improvisation and practicality. Over the course of American history there have been strategic shifts in terms of the threats and enemies that the United States had faced. With each of these shifts came a different approach, or way, to fighting wars or preparing for them in peacetime. For example, in the American Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant carried out a strategy of exhausting the southern armies through large-scale combat. A quarter of a century later in the Philippines, the American Army improvised and adapted to fight and ultimately defeat an insurgency against the US colonial government. As historian Brian Linn has shown in criticism of Russell Weigley’s classic The American Way of War, the US military’s approach has not been an ideological one of only wanting to fight wars consisting of big battles. A close reading of Linn’s work shows that the true American way of war has been one of adaptation and flexibility, and not a rigid ideological attachment to seeking out the next Napoleonic battle of Austerlitz.
Regrettably, the American Army’s new way of war, otherwise called population-centric counterinsurgency, has become the only operational tool in the Army’s repertoire to deal with problems of insurgency and instability throughout the world. Population-centric COIN may be a reasonable operational method to use in certain circumstances, but it is not a strategy. There are flaws and limitations that need to be exposed and considered.
Read the rest at Parameters
Good find, Schmedlap and excellent post, Rob
Particularly these four thoughts which all merit repetition:
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A second thing I disagree with is that COIN has become the issue which will define us as a military or an an army.
For those not in uniform, (Think tanks and journalists) may appear they have significant influence, but most of the ideas I've read from them I can trace back to some man or woman in uniform...
"Hard" is a relative term.
The greatest danger may be that we get to comfortable with the status quo, and get intellectually lazy.
All totally correct. The first item will not occur; simply look at how quickly the hard learned lessons of WW II, Korea and Viet Nam were discarded... :wry:
The Intellectual Straight Jacket
I liked the article, I experienced the full range of emotion while reading it, during one paragraph I was cheering, during another I was shaking my fist, during another I was calllng the author a fool, then on another I said he was brilliant. If you haven't read it, I recommend it.
All quotes are from COL Gentile's article.
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Good strategy, however, demands the consideration of alternatives, yet the American Army's fixation on population-centric COIN precludes choice.
I couldn't agree more, and our attempt to frame this conflict as a global insurgency that in turn requires us to re-build the globe so every country will allow us to operate through, by and with their forces is a deeply flawed approach that can't be supported by our means or our diminishing diplomatic power in a multi-polar world. This approach is doomed, yet we're fixated on it and not exploring alternatives.
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Second, history has shown that insurgencies can be defeated by means other than the population-centric approach. Consider the recent defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan military.
Yes and no, actually there was a considerable amount of population-centric supporting activities, and equally important what COL Gentile may not know is that the LTTE were largely a peer conventional force to the Sri Lankan Army as they had a large maneuver army, their own navy and few lame airplanes that they could throw grenades out of. The Chinese invested heavily in Sri Lanka and this funding enabled the Sri Lankan Army to sustain their fight against the LTTE this time around (they were successful many times in the past, but simply ran out of money and political will to drive the stake in the LTTE's heart). This was far from a classical COIN effort, it was more along the lines of mini American Civil War.
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The term itself "counterinsurgency" is so heavily loaded with historical context, assumptions, myths, and aburdities that it has become almost meaningless.
Three cheers! Now every problem is an insurgency, and we apply the same template blindly to solve it. We don't really bother figuring out what is really going on.
He talks about the number of articles challenging Army doctrine approximately 30 years ago compared to now when there is relatively little challenge and debate over the new COIN doctrine.
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What has appeared is a series of articles touting the triumph of the Surge, a narrative that has steamrolled the American Army into accepting this new way of war.
I find his repeated assertions that the surge wasn't effective to be the larger distractor from his otherwise good arguments. GEN Petraeus got it right with the surge. It isn't hubris to believe that a large security presence suppressed the level of violence and facilitated some political maneuvering. Thumbs down on these repeated unsubstantiated attacks on the surge, it was appropriate for the situation in Iraq. Give it its due and move on.
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In fact, COIN is arguably less complex precisely because it is less "kinetic."
I hate it when some fat guy who can't make it in combat arms loves to gloat about how smart he is because he read a book on COIN. On the other hand, COIN isn't less complex than conventional war. The level of complexity perhaps switches, for senior officers the complexity level for large scale war fighting such as WWII is more complex than COIN, while at the lower levels COIN is more complex for the foot soldier. Don't confuse complex with easier or harder, that isn't my point. The author misses the point when he claims the degree of politics is the same for the PLT Sgt talking to a village chief today as it was for a PLT Sgt charging the beach in Normandy. The complexity in COIN is the political and social aspects at the tactical level combined with the kinetic piece, so no the platoon sgt bravely storming the beach in Normandy isn't conducting political warfare, he is maneuvering to kill German conventional forces. The political aspect of the war is largely above his level (he has enough to deal with). The Platoon Sgt talking to a tribal chief in Afghanistan or Iraq is engaged in political-warfare at the tactical level. Both are hard, but they're not the same.
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The COIN experts seem to believe that they are the "young Turks" who figured out the true political nature of war compared to the old,
Well the Young Turks who actually shifted from a largely ineffective conventional strategy to a COIN strategy did figure out a better approach to fighting the war in Iraq. I like to know where the author thnks we would be if we didn't make the transition?
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Intead of American Army officers reading the so-called COIN classic texts of Galula, Thompson, Kitson, and Nagl, they should be reading the history of the British Empire in the latter half of the 19th century.
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the British Army and government did understand the value of strategy They understood the essence of linking means to ends.
I agree, in "addition" to reading the classic COIN texts, they should read about the demise of the British Empire. No doubt there are many relevant lessons.
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The new American way of war has eclipsed the execution of sound strategy, producing never-ending campaigns to nation-building and attempts to change entire societies in places like Afghanistan.
I know Rob and Ken didn't concur with this, but from where I sit, I tend to agree that DoD is getting pushed into this model, and it is now a blind assumption that it is the right approach globally without a lot of intellectual rigor being applied. I support his comment about the "new" COIN doctrine being an intellectual straight jacket to a large degree.