Use of Vignettes in COMISAF COIN Guidance
I suggest COMISAF's guidance for COIN is a good example of tight writing and appropriate use of vignettes to drive home a point. Alarmingly the current trend in draft revisions of Army doctrinal manuals is not to include such vignettes (see the posts on Army Doctrine Reengineering on the TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference thread). As you well know by now I think this is a mistake. In writing doctrine we should follow GEN McC's lead rather than sacrificing the inclusion of any historical perspective in doctrinal manuals on the altar of brevity (as we are apparently about to do).
Tactical debate hinders strategic thought
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Michael C
There is no simple if this then that, but changing the bulk of our patrols will lead to a more empowered government.
Maybe it will; maybe it won't. Empowered, better governance is up to the host nation. We can secure areas, build infrastructure, advise the government and military apparatus forever, but in the end, it is up to the populace and governing bodies to determine how they are going to live. I believe that this never-ending tactical debate on kinetic versus non-kinetic actions in war distracts our thinking on the real debate.
I would suggest, as currently constructed, a population-centric COIN model applied to the coalition efforts in Afghanistan may allow the Governent of Afghanistan to secure large portions of territory. That is it. It will not solve the illiteracy problem, the unemployment problem, the drug problem, the ethnic divisions, nor will it end radical Islamic terrorism. So, what should we be doing? This answer is something that has been perculating for a while...Maybe this thread is a good place to explore.
I think we need to relook our assumptions. Here's some that I've started.
1. We don't do COIN outside US borders. Ken White restated this again earlier this morning, but it is true. COIN is something that a Host Nation (HN) does. When we conduct operations inside someone elses borders, we are playing the role of a partisan force or International Community. Some examples of intervention include:
A. Occupation. We take over. Germany and Japan after WWII.
B. Security Force Assistance. Combination of military and political ASSISTANCE throughout the world. (Phillipines, Colombia).
C. Peace-keeping. Bosnia/Kosovo.
D. Regime Change (For lack of a better term.) Iraq (2003), Afghanistan (2001).
2. The military is best equipped to conduct security operations. We have several approaches to accompish security. It appears that a combination is currently being used in Afghanistan.
A. Mentoring. Typical MiTT teams. Small groups of advisors focus on training military staffs.
B. Advice/Assist. Traditional Foreign Internal Defense. Small groups of advisors work directly with a larger combat unit.
C. Partnering. GPF forces pair up with HN companies on a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio.
D. Unilateral. We do it ourselves, and hope that the HN military catches up.
3. There are other alternatives to nation/state-building than military options.
A. One understudied approach is the use of non-state actors to tackle non-state symptoms. Greg Mortenson's work in building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a great example of a social entrepeneur creating real progress WITHOUT security.
B. Another approach is soft-power or indirect approach. Plan Colombia is a great example where State Department leads the effort to assist the government with a small military presence as advisors.
Long post, but a culmination of my thoughts for the week. Looking foward to hearing others comments/criticisms.
v/r
Mike
This tact didn't work in the 60s; and definitely fails today
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
The very fact an insurgency exists, shows that the insurgent was very happy to resort to violence. Before the insurgency occurs, violence should indeed be a last resort.
I think if you can get an insurgent to
give up or change sides, you should. Point being he is only likely to do that, once you have subjected him to some harm or threat.
My real concern being that POP-COIN is either very poorly explained, or actually suffers from profound failure to understand the nature or irregular warfare, - as I think my answer to your questions would seem to indicate.
The central tenet of POP-COIN is "protecting the population." My reasoning, based on history, is that if you defeat the insurgency (kill, capture, coerce) then you fulfil your aim, axiomatically. My reasoning also being that I want to protect the Government, because the Government, not the Population make the Policies, we wish to benefit from - Clausewitz!
POP-COIN is essentially a poor reasoning of END-WAYS-MEANS.
POP-COIN reasons that killing the enemy means killing the population - which is essentially assuming folks are stupid and changing the means to account for it.
Focusing on crushing the insurgent has never done more than create, in effect, a "cease fire" until such time as the populace can generate whatever part of the equation (leaders, ideology, fighters, resources) you have taken out. History is rife with examples of locations where there have been COIN "victory" after "victory." If it keeps coming back, you never resolved anything.
This is the problem with the Colonial mentality. It rationalizes that the outside presence is proper, and that governments supported by that outside presence are therefore proper as well. Most populaces disagree, though most will also tend to put up with it as well. As Thomas Jefferson said:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
In today's information environment it provides more advantages to the insurgent than it does to the government. Tactics like those practiced successfully in Malaysia would be far less likely to succeed today. One Dinosaur of the new info age is the "Friendly Dictator." No longer can a Colonial power (or a pseudo-"I'm not really a colonial power, I'm the U.S.") strike a deal with some Dictator that is mutually beneficial for those parties, but that rides on the back of the Dictator's populace, for one simple reason: Other than perhaps N. Korea, there is nowhere on earth where the populace, and the information available to the populace, can be fully controlled.
Now, I am not a big fan of the CNAS-promoted form of COIN that is based in tackling "effectiveness" of government and controlling populaces. What Kilcullen calls "Population-Centric" COIN.
I am, however, a fan of my own theory which is based in tackling "poorness" of governance (targeted on the specific issues by region/community that are at the core of causation; while also targeting the aspects of the governance that deny those same populaces the ability to address these issues through legitimate means) and supporting the populace (governments come and go, as do threats. The populace is what endures. Ultimately, all governments are expendable, and threats transient. Focus on what's really important). What I call "Populace-Centric" COIN.
WILF is pretty savvy on conventional warfare, both between states and with irregular forces as well; but my opinion, in his refusal to recognize that warfare within a state is unique and must be handled differently than by the rules derived from Napoleonic warfare; is dangerously off track when discussing insurgency.
The Brits lost an empire "winning" insurgencies using the mindset WILF promotes. The U.S. will suffer a similar fate if we apply the same. Good news for the Brits was that they had little brother to pass the torch to. The US might want to ponder just who picks up the torch when we are forced to drop it as well...
I agree but herein lies the problem with the American Way of COIN
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
warfare within a state is unique and must be handled differently than by the rules derived from Napoleonic warfare; is dangerously off track when discussing insurgency.
Though I disagree with the backhanded slap at Clausewitz, Bob :) because passion, reason, and chance and the fact that war [all war] is a true chameleon is still applicable - he was not advocating how to fight using Napolenic warfare but like Sun Tzu (and I am convinced he read the 1789 French translation of the the great Master Sun) he admonishes us to understand the nature and character of the war, but I digress).
The problem with the American Way of COIN (as adapted from the American Way of War) is that the way we fight a war within a state presupposes US forces being in charge. We want to take the lead and we rationalize this in all kinds of ways as in when they stand up we will stand down, they are not ready, we have to provide security until they can get on their own two feet. With us in charge we undercut the very legitimacy that we seek to provide to the state. Now of course we have gotten to where we are today because we deposed two totalitarian regimes (that needed deposing) and now we have to come in and conduct armed social work.
Just for a minute if we think about what if we had used those dreaded Napoleonic rules of war and looked to take the surrender of the those regimes (a success to those criminals who were in charge) and instead of destroying the government and all its institutions (Sun Tzu: it is better to take a country in tact that to destroy it, it is better to take an Army in tact than to destroy it) we took the surrender akin to Germany and Japan and then embarked on a Marshall plan type effort to support the successor regime and allowed that successor government to develop in accordance with its own customs, traditions, and political processes rather than impose our own way on them.
To be successful in supporting a host nation in its war within in a state we must support the host nation. They must be in charge as the COIN equation is that there are only 3 main elements:
1. the insurgents
2. the population (battlefield of human terrain)
3. the counter-insurgent (and this includes as a sub-element external support to the nation conducting COIN).
Unfortunately we do not like being the sub-element and only in a support role. It is our nature to be in charge and build all institutions in our image (including the host nation security forces and their ways of governance).
We are on the right track with our emphasis on cultural awareness in today's situation. It is the new buzzword phrase (along with cultural agility and other similar catch phrases). We want cultural awareness so we can derive solutions that we think will work within that culture and also because we think it will win us the hearts and minds of the people (again, us as in the U.S., winning the hearts and minds which is the wrong construct - we should not be worrying about us winning hearts and minds but support the host nation in ensuring they have the hearts and minds of their population, but I digress again) Unfortunately we use cultural awareness as a means to an end and do not strive for the two things that are really necessary - cultural understanding (e.g., the reality of that culture as it really is, was, and likely always will be) and cutlural respect (and the understanding that we cannot and should not try to change it, nor their political systems, legal systems, etc -change can only come from within and while we can nurture and support that change it is of course generational and we cannot and should not try to force that change).
Now to my bottom line. (Sorry I did not put it up front). I am afraid that the American Way of COIN presupposes future OIF and OEFs. Although it does not explicitly say it, our doctrine combined with OUR strategic culture also presupposes us being in charge always (just look at the hot debates we have had had in the past about US forces under command of a foreign commander - something many Americans will never stand for, but I continue to digress and I apologive for the rambling). We pay lip service to FID and the new fashionable term Security Force Assistance but as we look at how we are going to employ forces it is all about "shaping" the environment and this in turn can undercut our legitamacy. FID is still the best construct for what we need to do because the very nature of its definition is that it supports the host nation in its programs for internal defense and development which is critical for war within a state (FID: "Participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency.")
So in closing, I would say that war within a state has to be conducted by he state, it can have external support but that external support cannot supplant that legitmate and sovereign nation-state. If it does it is defacto an occupying power and of course one of types of traditional insurgencies is to rid a country of an occupying power. And if we would kep in mind those Napoleonic principles in the future and ensure that our military operations against a nation state result in a formal surrender we might not have to be forced back into a "you break it you buy it" situaiton.
And lastly, we must purge ourselves of the romanticization of COIN. It is this idea that we can come in and save the people by us being in charge that gets us into trouble. We need to figure out how to best help a soveriegn nation state (when it is of course in our strategic, national interest). Yes, I am a student (just a student, not a self-described expert) of TE Lawrence and all the other great COIN theorists but I do not think that we should try to fancy ourselves as Lawrences as it is so fashionable to say today. The romanticization of COIN today is going to hurt us in the long run and we need to ensure our future doctrine development understands that. Yes we are going to be faced with a myriad of threats around the world from irregular forces with hybrid capabilities. But underforunately it will be the rare case in the future when we can take them on directly and we must realize that we have to support soveriegn nations in their quest to bring security and stability to their under-governed, perhaps improperly governed and ungoverned spaces that provide sanctuary for insurgents and terrorists.
Finally, I wholeheartedly agee with Bob that war within a state requires a different way of operating. We know how to do that. We have had doctrine for it. Now we need to build strategies and campaign plans that will correctly implement that doctrine to acheive our national security objectives.
Dave
COG theory is tricky, and art (so no "right" answer)
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Originally Posted by
slapout9
Bob, I know you are tired of hearing this COG thing come up, but you just explained what I have been trying to say but could not do it. The Government is the COG....the People are the Objective/Target. I think that is critical to understand because just protecting the people or killing them is not going to solve the problem. And your populace based theory is a winning theory and people should read it more carefully and stuff:) Ask yourself why do people form governments in the first place? Understanding that and why governments fail or succeed will show you how to win.
Slap, I understand what you mean when you say the Gov't is the COG, but I also understand that you are a "Wardenphile", and that fits. I would categorize the Gov't more as both a CR and CV; and the Populace as the COG. One does not necessarily try to defeat the COG, but in these internal conflicts more aptly one is out to win the support of the COG. Every populace must have a Govt of some sort, so therefore it is a CR. Failure of Govt is what gives rise to insurgency, so therefore this CR is also a CV and must be "targeted" to fix the points of poor governance.
Even in external conflicts where the COG is likely something that must be "defeated" I rarely think it is something that should be attacked directly. Derive the CRs that make it function in the way that makes it the COG in the first place; and then derive a subset of those CRs to the ones that are also susceptible to successful engagement, and call those CVs and make them the focus of your campaign.