The Colonels and 'The Matrix'
The Colonels and 'The Matrix' (SWJ link).
In what is billed as the First in a Series: The Rise of the Counterinsurgents, Spencer Ackerman of Washington Independent profiles the current debate concerning COIN in The Colonels and 'The Matrix'. The 'colonels' are LTC's Gian Gentile and Paul Yingling...
Quote:
... Ultimately, the answer to that question will probably be endlessly debated. But the counterinsurgency community—they call it "COIN"—has perhaps the most organized answer. Counterinsurgency is a much-disputed concept, but it refers to methods of warfare used to divide a civilian population’s political and sentimental allegiance away from a guerrilla force. From the start of the Iraq war, a cadre of warrior-thinkers in the military has questioned the use of tactics that focus more on killing enemies than giving the Iraqi population reasons not to support terrorists, insurgents and militias. "We don’t just talk about the enemy, we talk about the environment," explained Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, until two weeks ago the corps commander in Iraq, in a lecture Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation. Not all of them assert that the early use of a counterinsurgency strategy could have won the war. But most contend, after the decline in violence in Iraq during the last half of 2007, that a counterinsurgency strategy would have allowed the war to have been less deadly than it is.
This small but dedicated group includes, most prominently, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. military forces in Iraq and Marine Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command. Other luminaries are Petraeus COIN braintrusters like David Kilcullen, a gregarious former Australian Army officer and State Department adviser; Army Col. Peter Mansoor, who will soon teach military history at the Ohio State University; and Army Lt. Col. John Nagl, who helped craft Petraeus and Mattis’ much-praised Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, a seminal text for the COIN community known as FM 3-24.
Less visible but highly influential members—many are lieutenants, captains and enlisted soldiers and Marines who came of age in Iraq and Afghanistan—include Janine Davidson, who works in the Pentagon’s directorate of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict; cultural anthropologist Montgomery McFate; Harvard human-rights expert Sarah Sewall (an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign); and Marine Corps University Professor Erin M. Simpson. The Democratic-aligned Center for a New American Security think tank plays host to many emerging counterinsurgency figures, like Colin Kahl, Nate Fick, Roger Carstens, Shawn Brimley, and, starting in the fall, Nagl. During moments of downtime, the community obsessively reads and comments on the Small Wars Journal and Abu Muqawama blogs...
...the next major debate over U.S. defense policy can be gleaned. Yingling speaks for an ascending cadre of young defense intellectuals, most of whom are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, who assert that the U.S. military must embrace principles of counterinsurgency if it is to triumph in the multifaceted fight against global terrorism. Gentile, formerly one of those theorist-practitioners, believes the military has already moved too far in the direction of counterinsurgency, which he contends allows analysts to ignore the limits of U.S. military power. Both arguments represent an attempt to answer a searing question: What are the lessons of Iraq?
Charlie at Abu Muqawama has more commentary on The Colonels and 'The Matrix'.
Also see Gian's latest op-ed, Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army's Conventional Capabilities, at World Politics Review.
A (Slightly) Better War: A Narrative and Its Defects
A (Slightly) Better War: A Narrative and Its Defects - LTC Gian Gentile, World Affairs.
Quote:
The U.S. Army’s new strategy in Iraq—launched in February 2007, along with a surge of 25,000 additional American troops—qualifies neither as particularly new nor even as a strategy. Better to call it, instead, an enhanced reliance on tactics and operational concepts previously in use. Or, put less charitably, an over-hyped shift in emphasis that, on the one hand, will not necessarily yield an American victory in Iraq but, on the other, might well leave the United States Army crippled in future wars.
Properly understood, the surge narrative is really not about Iraq at all. It is about the past and future of the U.S. Army. It resurrects dubious battlefield lessons from the past—Vietnam, principally—applies them to Iraq, and extrapolates from there into an unknown future. On all three counts—past, present, and future—the narrative suffers from numerous and irreparable defects. Its reading of the past, grounded in the cliché that General Creighton Abrams’s “hearts and minds” program “won” the war in Vietnam, is a self-serving fiction. Its version of the more recent past and even the present is contrived and largely fanciful, relying on a distorted version of both to tell a tale in which U.S. forces triumphed in Iraq in 2007 and did so despite the misguided efforts of their predecessors even a year before. More than anything else, the surge narrative stakes a claim on the future, instructing us that its methods of counterinsurgency will be uniquely suited to the next war and to the one after that.
From the surge, its most fervent advocates have extracted a single maxim: that they and only they have uncovered the secret to defeating insurgencies. Prior to the surge, in this telling, only a few exceptional units were engaged in proper counterinsurgent operations...
Much more at the link.
Gian is about to turn into that one
trick pony people go on about.
Having agreed with him that the force is out of balance -- but disagreed on how far and how dangerous that is at this time; having agreed with him that good units in Iraq were doing the right things prior to the surge -- but disagreed on how many were doing it well; having agreed with him that conventional warfare and major combat operations are really the graduate level of war -- but disagreed that COIN is totally unimportant; having agreed, I thought, that we must have a balanced force with some elements able to excel at each of the spectrums of warfare, I've said about all I have to say on the topic (as I hear Gian breathe a sigh of relief... :D ).
I did note his final words in that well written article:
Quote:
More than that, Iraq bids to transform the entire force into a “dead army walking.” We who believe this to be the case may be in error on some counts. Preparing to fight the last war will not be one of them.
Those words cause me to note what I believe is an astounding lack of faith in the Army and to ask; then those who believe that to be the case are preparing for precisely what?
Abrams choice had little or nothing to do with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
patmc
...
From the article:
"Critics of this decision ought to ask themselves: If Abrams had chosen otherwise, would the ground phase of the 1991 Gulf War have been completed in four days? Would the 2003 drive to Baghdad have been accomplished in three weeks?"
Just some Monday morning quarterbacking, and in no way an insult to any of those Soldiers who fought in the invasion, but would we now trade a longer invasion for a shorter occupation? If Abrams had chosen otherwise, would there have been a plan B for after capturing Baghdad?
Abrams made the logical decision to put the main effort into ability to deter a peer competitor as he should have done. He did not take COIN or FID off the table; that was done later by Donn Starry at TRADOC and affirmed by Bernie Rogers as CofSA. The Army kept some semblance of effort at LIC until John Wickham left the job. Then it got almost totally wiped out by a series of Artillerymen and Tankers with a lot of European experience.
To put the principal effort into Europe post Viet Nam made all the sense in the world. To downplay COIN and FID made sense. That was true in 1972 and it remained true until the late 80s. However, to later eliminate anything to do with LIC, particularly after 1991 was simply wrong. Still, even that and the foolish Weinberger and Powell doctrines -- abrogation of which by both Clinton and Bush 43 prove that DoD cannot influence US Foreign policy to the extent they'd like to believe -- were not the real problem.
The problem that created the lack of planning for the post attack phase was poor training; specifically BCTP. In that training regimen, the war was played by the Generals and Colonels, active on one side and retired on the other and it was good solid and very effective training. However, it had a flaw. After the last big US attack, the victory was won -- then they turned off the computers and the lights and left the room...
The problem in Iraq was no one had trained on what to do so they effectively did nothing for a year and a half. That's been fixed. The even better news is that BCTP has also been fixed in current iterations.
What is worrying is that Eurocentricity still seems to be with us... :rolleyes:
That's not the last war, it was three wars ago... :D
An Alternative title for this piece might have
been Attack of the strawman. I think that even a casual review of posting history on this site reveals that Gian has several deeply entrenched positions on this issue. Nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of us who have similarly strongly held views on a wide range of issues.
The problem I perceive with some of the argument presented is that a false dilemma is being postulated . No one - from Secretary Gates through to Nagl is on record as advocating abandonment of US conventional abilities and the US' obvious superiority in this field. You only have to look at where the rubber hits the road in terms of planned expenditure on capital equipment and systems over the next decades to find further proof of this point. And yet, it only takes one or two (or a dozen...) folks to speculate openly and in an logical fashion about the last five years of 'unconventionality' 'might mean' and the cry goes up that the conventional sky is falling in.
Of course, there is no doubt that that some skills, conventional or otherwise, may have perished through lack of use whilst the US Defense force has been preoccupied with its tasks in Iraq and Afgahnistan. Realistically, that is to be expected. It has happened in every war before these ones and will no doubt happen during the next one as well. This is why we have the Services and Service Chiefs and charge them with 'raise, train and sustain (and reconstitute)' functions. This 'loss' of skills is really only an issue if you do not trust in either the Services or the Service Chief's abilities in this regard - but that is a different argument to the 'be aware of the COIN Bogeyman' one.
Regarding Gian's recycled point (from other posts) that folks prior to the surge were doing COIN as well - I do not detect any real disagreement from anyone who actually is in the 'know' about this point. The point (that has been stated previously) is that it (the COIN practice) was just not necessarily as coherent or effective as what has developed since. Such an observation is neither a personal attack nor a slight on the hard fought and valiant efforts of any serviceman or servicewoman (or unit) pre- surge, it is simply a statement of fact.
The point I will conclude with is that the 'dilemma' that Gian presents is not a zero sum game. National Security planning never has been - it is about the art of balancing finite resources against a world of possibilities and trying to strike an appropriate balance. Picking winners in such a game is never easy - but picking turkeys is - they stand out by a mile. And for my money, either an 'all conventional force' or an 'all COIN force' approach (or variations on similar themes) are both turkeys. Picking a 'winning approach' is not served by creating false dilemmas.
I had not previously picked up on that quote
from John Nagl that Gian cited (about the ability to change societies). I will have to go back and check the context, but I cannot conceive of this as either a practical, desirable (or for that matter realistic) task for the US military or State to aspire to - now or in the future. If nothing else the result of the neo-conservative 'project' of 02/03 should suggest the utility of such ambition.
Apportioning Resources and Sustaining Risk
A couple of points on this discussion:
1. Were we in a world that allowed the US military to have whatever it wanted, I can see the argument for ensuring that it was a full spectrum capable force. However, we are not. We are resourced constrained. And, being resource constrained means we need to prioritize how best to dispose of our resources. Folks usually seem to devote the greatest amount of resources to the problem that is most near to hand. Based on that hypothesis, it only stands to reason that the current fight gets more attention than future possibilities. Whether this phenomenon is as generalized as I propose, at least it seems to be a motivating factor for the current SECDEF. Perhaps that is a lesson that now former SECAF Wynne did not learn too well.
2. A psychologist named Gerald J.S. Wilde has written on an interesting phenomenon called risk homeostasis. In a nutshell, his theory is that we are each “hard-wired” to expect a certain level of risk in our lives. If things change so that our perceived level of risk goes down, then we will restructure what we do to bring the risk level back up. This is a link to the first edition of his book.
If Wilde is right about risk homeostasis, then Gian’s lament is as fruitless as is that of another who claims we are sacrificing too many resources needed for the current fight in order to prepare for a future conflict. Either course of action has significant risks, and each may be viewed as one way out of many for actualizing our obligatory risk seeking behavior. Instead of disagreeing about how risky the two alternatives are, perhaps we ought to be seeking a solution that maximizes our preparations for both ends of the spectrum while maintaining the current level of perceived risk through such a solution. Is this possible and if so, what would it look like?
The part that confuses me
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Entropy
Gian makes some excellent points in his last comment. It frankly astounds me how predictions about the future of US military conflict are so casually made with little analysis or justification. The idea that the future of warfare will "reside among the people" needs some serious critical examination, in my opinion. As it stands now, it seems so often repeated that it's become a kind of "fact" that proponents do not feel compelled to justify even though it forms the central foundation for their successive arguments.
Personally, I'm quite skeptical that US policymakers and the US public will willingly engage in a major "war among the people" for a generation or more - a war that would require the large infantry/COIN centric force that some envision. Proponents of this particular future of warfare do not seem to address this political aspect and they remind me, actually , of the early airpower advocates who believed strategic nuclear bombing would be the truly decisive form of future warfare. Those early airpower advocates failed to consider the political aspect as well and that politicians (for good reason) would place limits on their vision of the future of warfare.
The most about this is how anyone talks about wars without people being all throughout it. Weapons don't kill people, People kill people, Wars don't fight themselves people fight them, and so on so forth. Point being big, small, short, long all wars revolve around, inbetween, and amongst the people because without them there is no war. That's a baseline I've never seen anyone get around.
Mao on mobile/guerilla warfare
You are probably all aware of a quote from Mao (in Protracted war) where he states that ALL his soldiers MUST be able to switch to mobile warfare and then back to guerilla-style. If so I aplogize for bringing it up.
Wholeheartedly agree with Wilf and UrsaMajor.
I think I agree with Mark as well but I'm not sure I understand all I know about what I think he said... :D
I think I agree with this:
Quote:
"...which essentially seems to suggest that the future does not confront us with an 'either / or' proposition by the likely requirement to be prepared to do both, proficiently."
All this froth about either / or is prompted by a lack of confidence in the capability of prediction (justified) and Soldiers or Marines (not justified).
Mired in 'Surge' Dogma- Gian Gentile
Found this article by COL Gentile in the International Herald Tribune this morning. Haven't seen it posted yet on SWJ, so here it is...
Quote:
The U.S. Army and other parts of America's defense establishment have become transfixed by the promise of counterinsurgency. Since the surge in Iraq began in February 2007, the panacea of successful counterinsurgencies has become like an all-powerful Svengali, holding hypnotic sway over the minds of many of the nation's military strategists.
The promise of counterinsurgency is to turn war into a program of social-scientific functions that will achieve victory - if performed correctly by adhering to the guidance of counterinsurgency experts. The program is simple: increase and maintain long-term American combat presence on the ground; use those combat troops to protect the local population and win their hearts and minds; and build a new nation. The program's appeal lies in its purported simplicity, perceived relative bloodlessness, and seductive ability to remove the friction from war.
The current U.S. counterinsurgency program rests on the dubious assumption that the surge in Iraq was a successful feat of arms that was the primary cause for the lowering of violence. Yet there were other reasons why violence ebbed, including the buying off of America's former Sunni insurgent enemies and a decision by the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr to cease attacks. Without those conditions in place, levels of violence would have remained high even in the face of a few more American combat brigades on the ground.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/.../edgentile.php
v/r
Mike
How many false dilemmas can one generate out of one idea?
I am increasingly sceptical of the increasingly shrill drum banging about this issue. I think it is time to move onto other issues and writing Gian.
Cheers,
Mark
When Dogma Drives Doctrine.
Since this forum is small wars/LIC/COIN centric it seems that Gian Gentile’s pontifications take a greater share of potshots from this audience for his position.
However, in many ways I feel he is right in his concerns. Why? (Allow me to take few moments to position and climb atop my soapbox).
Soldiers and Marines are trained to obey orders. (no disrespect to the Navy and Air Force but this diatribe is aimed at the footslogger). At the very basic level Soldiers and Marines are trained to mete out death and destruction with a variety of small arms. However, they typically only do so in response to orders from higher authority. Soldiers and Marines are also trained to shoot, move, and communicate at the lowest levels of tactical warfare.
In “conventional” battle there are times when Soldiers and Marines must seek assistance in the meting out death and destruction, thus they call for even more destructive weapons to assist them. These weapons are typically operated by others and are employed at the request of the Soldier or Marine. If several of these weapons are called upon (tanks/arty/CAS) to act in unison there must be discipline, synergy, and orchestration to ensure these disparate weapons systems are brought to bear upon the enemy and not on the Soldier or Marine. “Conventional” battles are usually fought in areas free of innocent bystanders, thus allowing full application of weapons with little chance of “collateral damage.” This is not an easy task to accomplish and takes precise training and exacting practice on the part of the Soldier or Marine to achieve the proper coordination and orchestration to both destroy the target and not harm our own troops.
COIN is not “conventional” war; it is small war, typically absent large enemy military formations armed with “heavy” weapons (tanks, aircraft, heavy artillery). COIN is predominantly social, political, ideological warfare where the battlefields are ambiguous at best, and typically cluttered with a variety of non-combatants. In COIN the basic skill set of the Soldier and Marine isstill applicable: shoot, move, and communicate with a greater emphasis on communicate and move rather than shoot. In COIN the Soldier and Marine act more in the role of very heavily armed police officers. Police officers try to maintain the peace without resorting to firepower. In COIN the Soldier and Marine must do the same, although unlike the police officer they typically have a much greater arsenal at their disposal should they need it. The key is that, while they need the same skills to employ these weapons of greater destruction, they must be much more judicious in their employment. Collateral damage is highly counter-productive in COIN.
So where is this all leading?
After Vietnam the Army seemed to toss aside over a decade’s worth of COIN/LIC/IW lessons in favor of concentrating totally on conventional warfare with a peer competitor (the “Fulda Gap” syndrome). Despite the fact that from 1975 to 1991 all our military engagements were of the COIN/LIC/IW variety the Army was well skilled for Desert Storm. Again in 2003, despite the lessons of Somalia and Bosnia, the Army and Marine Corps conducted a conventional blitz into Iraq and defeated Saddam Hussein (again). But the Iraq campaign then changed into something very different, it became a COIN/LIC/IW campaign. The Army and Marines adopted ever so slowly but soon enough had rediscovered those lessons ignored from Vietnam and before.
I believe Gian sees this new emphasis on COIN doctrine as rapidly becoming dogma and the Army is now seemingly forsaking conventional warfare training and skills for those of COIN.
COIN is warfare as the small unit level using small arms. Every infantry Soldier and Marine knows how to use these weapons. But COIN is not a weapons system; it is a capability, one which requires a variety of often disparate tactics, dissimilar methods, and many systems to employ.
A tank is always a tank, whether an American, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or Sudanese operates it. We know what tanks are typically used for, what they are capable of, and how to defeat them. Yet an insurgent, while always a man (or woman), is not always the same. Insurgents come in different shapes, sizes, capabilities, ideologies, religious beliefs, and moral standards. Insurgencies are at once the same and different.
I feel that Gian sees the ever-increasing emphasis on a COIN centric Army as being very detrimental to the Army’s capability to wage conventional warfare with a peer competitor. He feels the pendulum is in danger of being allowed to swing too far away from center (although it certainly wasn't there pre-Iraq). A prime example is NTC. NTC was the place where Soldiers learned the various skills required of the subtle ballet that is synchronizing and orchestrating the vast array of weaponry possessed by the Army and bringing it to bear on a like enemy. Currently, however, NTC is becoming more of a COIN-training center. This is a bad precedent for the army. It will gradually lead to the deterioration of Soldiers with the requisite skills to conduct effective conventional warfare.
In many respects I agree with Gentile’s concerns and do not believe he is anti-COIN. The Army needs to have a robust capability to fight in both types of warfare. IMHO it is much easier for a Soldier who is highly trained in the complexities of employing the variety of weapons systems in conventional warfare to quickly adapt to a COIN/LIC/IW situation than it is for a Soldier who is trained predominantly in COIN to function at his optimum when thrust into the chaos of conventional war.
Soldiers, after all, are trained to obey orders, but to follow orders they need the skills. Conventional warfare requires solid skill sets, many of which that are also useful in COIN. COIN is more of an intellectual exercise requiring a common sense approach, an understanding of human behavior, and empathy with the local population, skills not necessarily taught or quantified in an FM.
The majority of posters agree with you
and with Gian -- based on what I've seen and recall. I do for one.
The issue drawing potshots is not Gian's position, it is that in the opinion of many he overstates his case, early on attacked people personally (he no longer does that) and beat his drum excessively loudly. IOW, the complaints are mostly about method, not content.