I'd offer highlights on these three points:
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Originally Posted by
PhilR
More to the point of the above comments on the difference between COIN as an internal struggle and the different “chemistry” when it involves outsiders—such as us in Afghanistan—I think that is a critical difference. Thinking back on my Clausewitz, we mostly think of Insurgents as being on the strategic offensive because the government represents the “status quo.” I would offer that when outsiders are involved the insurgents are on the strategic defensive. They have a negative aim. They do not have provide positive rule or economic benefits. They do not need to defeat or destroy the government or our security forces in the field. They just need to deny us enough success so that we go home. They will not be ultimately successful in replacing the existing government until the external forces are gone. The insurgency meets Clausewitz’s definition for a defense—it is using time in order to position itself for a counterstroke. In effect, the insurgency has a negative aim. They don’t have to “play to win” like the government and its allies—they just need to play to “not lose.”
Point 1: What you are describing here is not the insurgent vs. the Counterinsurgent; but rather the insurgent vs. the FID force. This would essentially be a branch operations for the insurgent. His goal is to win the tug of war with the COIN force for support of the populace, and ultimate governance of the same. Then in comes this external party to support the government (I.e., COIN force) just as he is starting to have success. So now he must implement this branch plan to either defeat, or simply outlast, the FID force so that he can get back to the business of winning the tug of war. Ironically, an overly aggressive FID force (like the US tends to be) actually highlights to the local populace and the world the weakness of the COIN force and also tends to rob them of their legitimacy in the eyes of the populace as they tend to look like puppets of the FID force.
This gets to successful insurgent endgame. I’d submit that most successful insurgencies end with the insurgent forces acting very much like the security forces they are facing—taking them on openly in the field, or else the threat and exhaustion results in security forces either melting away or changing sides enmasse. This is in some sense a validation of Mao’s progression of stages. For an insurgency to become what it was fighting against, the legitimate governing authority, then it will start to take on those attributes (and those vulnerabilities?).
Point 2: Mao's model, that I borrowed to shape the phases on my model, was definitely designed originally with the belief as you presribe above that one must work their way to phase three and win the conventional fight to prevail. History shows us that "perfect" Maoist insurgency is rare, but the Vietnamese and Chinese held to the model and did build to conventional capacity to end thier respective conflicts successfully. Key is that the insurgent can win, or lose, in any phase, and can flow back and forth for years in route to that end.
Looking to Afghanistan specifically, I’d say that the approaches we are seeing that recommend basing our strategy on local initiatives and tribes (One Tribe at a Time, etc.), are a form of fighting an insurgency with an insurgency. While this is attractive, in effect, we would also not be struggling to defeat the Insurgent, but just to provide a rival insurgent force that would never allow them to win. I think that the tribal approaches will just result in a steady state of chaos. If we remove our security umbrella from such a solution—a patchwork of loosely held together areas—then they will be vulnerable to being picked off, one by one, in fairly conventional manner (which is how I believe the Taliban came to power in the first place). Thus while I think the “bottom up”, or tribal, or federal, approach is also an endstate that will require us to maintain a security guarantee for a long while.
Point 3: I believe you are too focused on "government" (formal constitutional organized, centrally controlled, etc) with "governance." As Westerners my opinion is that we are just too sanitized if you will, on this point. When a state rejects our Western constructs of Westphalian-based government we quickly label them a "failed" or "failing state" This is really, sadly, Western bias at its worst. The fact is that many regions of the world have little cultural and historical connection to Western forms of governance other than the fact that a bunch of white guys forced them to adopt it at gunpoint in the name of Civilization and Colonization. Now when they reject our "gift" of Westphalian constructs we label them as failures becasue our system doesn't snap in well with other forms of governance. In Afhanistan the informal system of Governance has far greater history of acceptance and functionality than the Westphalian, centralized program we are trying to implement out of Kabul. IMO we are far more likely to create chaos trying to force a centralized system than we are by recognizing and supporting they system they already have. The key is to connect the two in such a fashion as to allow this country to hold to what works, while moving forward with new tools that ideally overcome the downsides of that historic system.
Phil Ridderhof USMC
Hopefully this helps
Terms, Doctrine, new terms, new doctrine, etc
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Originally Posted by
Firn
I'm not too happy about the definition of FID, as it has a political slant (to free and to protect) which leaves out too much. Perhaps it just a way to paint a policy in a positive colour and it sounds nicer than a more wide definition. While to helps to have a coined term to address a specific situation we should not forget that there can be many shades in the circumstances while supporting a ally (state, entity, nation, insurgent) against a foe (other state, nation, ethnic (religious, cultural) group, insurgent). We have many levels of interacting politics and differing motives, purposes and wills. The danger in creating a strict concept coupled by a specific term is that it can narrow down the vision. But if it is understood rightly as a part of the whole it can be helpful.
I will continue later...
Firn
I won't argue that "FID" is a perfect construct as currently defined and employed, only that it is the best we have. We can add "IDAD" to it and it gets better. When we start adding new concepts like "SFA" and "IW" to patch gaps and bridge seams, it just starts to turn into a crazy quilt.
I told my senior leadership, that when it came to the defining and discussing of these critical concepts we were like property owners who each own 100 acres of land, but that because of a bad survey are uncertain as to exactly where the porperty line is. So, instead of enjoying the 99.99 acres we each own free and clear of any debate, we instead mortgage the same to the hilt to hire lawyers and argue over the 18" of dirt in between that we can't agree on. Sillyness.
So, I have decided to not engage in those type of Reindeer games, and instead focus on broad constructs that are more helpful.
An element of a state that acts out illegally to change or overthrow the sitting government, or break a piece of the state off as a new state is conducting insurgency. Tune up the words as you wish.
The sitting government opposing this illegal action is conducting COIN.
An outside party, state or non-state, who acts to aid the insurgent in his efforts is conducting Unconventional Warfare.
An outside party, state or non-state, who acts to aid the sitting government is conducting FID.
What do you call any actions between these two outside parties? Well, for 60-odd years between the Soviets and the West we called it a "Cold War." For the past 8-odd years between AQ and the West we call it a "Global War on Terrorism."
The key to understanding is not the nuances of the dozens of essentially similar definitions, but instead to understand these 4 primary roles in insurgency, and who is in which role, and how to best enable or frustrate their efforts depending on your interests in the whole thing.
Just how I look at it. I've participated in many of the debates over the 18" of proverbial dirt between these definitions with the best of them, and I'm done. It's just not that helpful.
Long ago and far away. Several of them. Many, even.
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
when has a military operation ever resolved an insurgency.
However, we can't use those methods nowadays...:D
Sigh.:(
Isn't that why we're there?
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My recommendation is that the onus be clearly, and completely sat upon the lap of civil leadership. That it is the failures of civil government that allows the populace to move up the curve out of phase 0 "peace" into phase 1 "insurgency"; and that the role of the military is to bring in additional capacity to assist the civil govenrment establish a degree of security while the assess and address their inadequacies; and that once the military has helped get the populace back to the phase 0 box (a mix of reducing violence and improving governance required) its job is largely done.
Your logic isn't incorrect, but it is illogical based on the following context,
We're either there because we invaded (OIF and OEF-A), and that should never be confused with FID where we were invited in by the HN government, or we're there because the HN has invited us to help (often at our urging).
In the first case your arguments don't ring true, and in the second case we're there to help because we believe it is in our national interest, and at the same time we know the problem must be resolved politically, yet we normally know (even if we don't admit it) that the HN government isn't capable or willing to that. We're trying to sail a ship that won't float.
You asked where the military solution has worked, and I can name two places right off the top of my head where the military ruthlessly supressed an insurgency, Iraq and Syria. Probably a couple in Eastern Europe also. Where has the political situation worked?
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when under our current legal constructs decisive effect can no longer be produced by the military. We stand with a foot in each camp, so to speak, in terms of how we understand and address these instances of popular discontent with governance within a state.
Is this a balanced approach, or simply dysfunctional?
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Until civil governments embrace that a populace is like a yard
I don't disagree, but is our strategy to maintain the status quo until the government gets it? The problem with this strategy is we're defaulting to a dysfunctional entity to solve the problems we volunteered to take on.
I think both of your examples fall within my statement
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Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
Really? That again calls into question the idea of qualifying something as "COIN." - Insurgents can try to take over legitimate governments. Insurgents/Irregular forces, do not always have a legitimate case. Algeria in the 1990's and Sierra Leone being good examples - and many others. War is politics. Why assume the Government or existing power structure is always at fault?
Military action can and does force "insurgents" to seek non-violent means. That is the aim, as it is in almost any conflict of that type.
That the military can only set conditions and is not the decisive component of COIN. Algeria is much like the Philippines, in that Western governments have declared it "won" several times following a military suppression of the insurgent; to my way of thinking neither will ever be resolved until the governemnts of those countries create mechanisms to extend good governance to the entire populace equitably, and with a surity of redress when it inevitably drifts, so that that those same populaces can apply course corrections short of once again taking up arms.
Reasonable minds can differ. I just personally choose not to buy into the idea that calling in the military every 20-odd years to beat down the complaining sector of the populace as either effective or good governance.