Rural to Urban setting: FID doctrine
My reply to Bill Moore's question (Post 37):
Quote:
what significant change and challenges do you think we would face with our FID doctrine if the focus shifted from the rural to the urban?
I was not thinking of just the USA intervening and my SWC reading does not make me familiar with US FID doctrine. Caveats aside here goes.
An urban setting for an insurgency / terrorist campaign absorbs manpower like a sponge, so using and adapting a local security element to the 'sepoy model' makes a lot of sense. You referred to 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland (1969-1998), at one stage the UK had 30k soldiers there - Operation Motorman, when police primacy had not been reached. Nearly all of them in two cities, Belfast & Londonderry.
Secondly by time FID is deployed the host nation will have lost considerable control and governance will be weakened. Think of the favelas in Rio and some "no go" areas elsewhere. Citizen involvement in providing information to the state will be low, especially if intimidation is prevalent - not necessarily violent nor observable. In one period in 'The Troubles' Loyalists used cameras without film to intimidate; imagine the impact today of mobile-phones.
F3EA will be problematic until many other factors act as enablers: informants, intelligence, surveillance etc. Enough time may not be given.
Pinpoint accuracy of weapons systems, especially the use of explosives, will be limited in densely occupied spaces. They might not even be allowed by the host.
Finally image is important, even crucial. Not for the 'armchair" observers, but the people affected by the presence of FID-users. It simply is a very different image if the security forces appear similar, even if with a few expatriate officers & NCOs.
Rural to Urban setting: NIC & others predict
Abu M has a comment on urban operations today, prompted by a David Kilcullen article and the footnotes point to a SWJ article.
So first the link to AbuM:http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawam....html#comments
Then the Kilcullen piece:http://gt2030.com/2012/07/18/the-cit...an-resilience/
The SWJ article 'Command of the Cities: Towards a Theory of Urban Strategy':http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...urban-strategy
Reply to Bill Moore's of 22 July
1) The 1964 episode received wide publicity through National Geographic Mag, which featured it in the January 1965 issue of the magazine. The story focused on successful US Army SF efforts to defuse the situation, without which events would likely have spun out of control.
2) Re: those we're arming and training being opposed to the government we're trying to keep in power: Sounds like Sunni Sons of Iraq and their relationship with the Maliki government....
Cheers,
Mike.
The flaws of through, by, and with
The following article challenges our baseless assumption that through, by, and with others is always the best approach. History indicates otherwise, and recent history simply reinforces that this approach has its limitations and only works in select situations. Where it does work, the results are fantastic. I suspect it is our desire to replicate those fantastic results in situations where the conditions don't exist for it to work that compel us to generally view this as the approach of choice. That is wrong headed, proven to be wrong headed, and this blind assumption causes Congressional leadership to threaten to pull money from all UW/FID programs. Not all are wrong headed, but since we fail to honestly assess what works and what doesn't we are simply going kill the approach across the board.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...eac_story.html
Why foreign troops can’t fight our fights
Quote:
The programs rest on a theory embraced across the U.S. government: Sometimes direct military interventions do more harm than good, and indirect approaches get us further. The theory briefs well as a way to achieve U.S. goals without great expenditure of U.S. blood and treasure. Unfortunately, decades of experience (including the current messes in Iraq and Syria) suggest that the theory works only in incredibly narrow situations in which states need just a little assistance. In the most unstable places and in the largest conflagrations, where we tend to feel the greatest urge to do something, the strategy crumbles.
Quote:
It fails first and most basically because it hinges upon an alignment of interests that rarely exists between Washington and its proxies.
Quote:
Second, the security-assistance strategy gives too much weight to the efficacy of U.S. war-fighting systems and capabilities, assuming that they alone are enough to produce desired outcomes for both our foreign proxies and ourselves.
Quote:
The third problem with security assistance is that it risks further destabilizing already unstable situations and actually countering U.S. interests.
Quote:
A more humble approach is needed. We must think about security assistance the same way we think about long-term alliances, looking for alignments of interests, not convenience.
This author's critique is valid, yet it doesn't invalidate FID and UW, it simply points to the fact, that for it to work, it is bigger than train and equip. Train and equip is a small subset of a greater whole that must be congruent. For example, diplomats must set realistic goals/expectations agreed upon by our partner. These goals need to focus it on mutually agreed ends. Once this hard task is out of the way, the assistance should be tailored to support those ends. It is worth revisiting the IDAD concept, and ensure our efforts are properly aligned and sustainable by the partner. More and more, both FID and UW is getting dumbed down to train and equip programs with no associated strategy on our end, and all to often no strategy mutually agreed upon with our partner.
Learning from the Italians?
This quote is from an academic conference on 'War and Peace' @ Leeds University recently and one paper appears very relevant:
Quote:
Nir Arielli (Leeds) gave a fascinating paper on the role played by Italian colonial troops in the suppression of anti-Italian colonial revolt. The key forces in the brutal repression of the revolt against Italian rule in Libya were in fact Eritrean (and Somali) Ascari. The question of the part which colonial forces have played in small wars and counter-insurgency operations is one which has been little studied and which offers the potential for new insights into social and political dynamics of empire as well as military structures...
Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2017/07/12...ds-15-16-june/
The author is a Professor @ Leeds University and his bio indicates this article contains more:
Quote:
'Colonial soldiers in Italian counter-insurgency operations in Libya, 1922-32', British Journal for Military History, 1, no. 2 (2015), pp. 47-66.
Link:https://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/profile...43/nir_arielli
The BJMH paper is available free via and will be read soon:http://bjmh.org.uk/index.php/bjmh/article/view/29/21
Note Italian recruited Ascari (Askari) also featured in the 1936 invasion of Abysinia and the opposition to the 1941 Allied invasion of Abysina (Ethiopia), Eritrea and Italian Somailand; as covered in the book reviewed in:An obscure 'small war' in WW2
There is a reverse aspect, the violent suppression in Abyssinia of opposition to Italian occupation and a new book covers that. From the publisher's summary:
Quote:
In February 1937, following an abortive attack by a handful of insurgents on Mussolini’s High Command in Italian-occupied Ethiopia, ‘repression squads’ of armed Blackshirts and Fascist civilians were unleashed on the defenceless residents of Addis Ababa. In three terror-filled days and nights of arson, murder and looting, thousands of innocent and unsuspecting men, women and children were roasted alive, shot, bludgeoned, stabbed to death, or blown to pieces with hand-grenades (est. 19k died). Meanwhile the notorious Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, infamous for his atrocities in Libya, took the opportunity to add to the carnage by eliminating the intelligentsia and nobility of the ancient Ethiopian empire in a pogrom that swept across the land.
Link:http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/...baba-massacre/
Digger's 60 tips to become a more effective advisor
Spotted via Twitter a contribution from an Australian soldier, an infantry captain, who explains near the start:
Quote:
The following tips are based on my experiences working with security forces in the South Pacific, as well as with other nations during exercises in Australia throughout my career. I can’t claim to be a skilled advisor, but I have been privileged to work with many skilled advisors and this article aims to accumulate my observations and lessons, reinforced during a recent two-year posting to the Defence Cooperation Program in Papua New Guinea, in an accessible aide-memoire. These tips should not be considered a template solution for every situation. They do however contain themes and skill sets which are universal and should be applied when working alongside foreign security forces, both within the region and globally.
The list concludes:
Quote:
Advising is a difficult business; every advisor is placed in a position of trying to influence people they have no authority over, perhaps to do things that may not be in their nature, all whilst trying to implement Australian policy and answer for Australian government decisions over which they have no control. This is all conducted in a culturally diverse, developing and potentially troubled nation. If you can adopt the skills of rapport development, build your cultural confidence and competence, communicate clearly and understand your part in the big-picture you will find success as an advisor. Embrace the opportunity that an advisor posting or deployment presents; it will be one of the most challenging, interesting, memorable and enriching missions you will complete.
Link:http://groundedcuriosity.com/aide-me...gn-militaries/
A major hole in COIN scholarship
Hat tip to WoTR for this commentary cum book review of Walter C. Ladwig III, The Forgotten Front: Patron Client Relations in Counterinsurgency (Cambridge University Press, 2017):
Quote:
The King’s College London professor takes direct aim at FM 3-24, and the West’s thinking on counterinsurgency, specifically its naiveté that the patron and client will share common political goals if the patron is doling out large sums of cash to the client.
(Later) Ladwig shines a bright light on some of the deficiencies in counterinsurgency literature and the United States’ naiveté about its relationship with its clients. His goal is to improve the West’s performance in future counterinsurgency battles.
Link:https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/ho...ency-campaign/
US$100 billion and lessons learnt?
I only rarely catch Modern War Institute @ West Point articles, but this one aroused my interest. As the opening passage says:
Quote:
The United States has invested
more than $100 billion in training and equipping security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past sixteen years. The result? ISIS swiftly defeated the Iraqi Army in 2014, securing large swaths of land, and requiring international intervention. Since the US presence began decreasing in Afghanistan in 2015, the Taliban have steadily forced the Afghan Security Forces out of rural areas, gaining control of vast portions of the country. An additional 3,500 US service members will soon be en route to reverse this trend. The $100 billion spent to date is a milestone, not a final bill.
It lists five lessons:
Quote:
Lesson 1 – Effective advisory missions rely on high-caliber, well-trained, and committed individuals who demonstrate competence as advisors; furthermore, the advisory mission must endure long enough to ensure success.
Lesson 2 – The advisory force cannot be general purpose—it must be tailored for the specific environment into which it will deploy.
Lesson 3 – The highest degree of competence and effectiveness that an advised force can achieve when operating independently is better than any level of readiness that relies on US assets (to a degree).
Lesson 4 – On a larger scale, the advisory mission cannot rely solely on military and security forces.
Lesson 5 – Like all military endeavors, the advisory mission must be undertaken with a clear objective in mind, with consistent and reasonable intermediate metrics to determine effectiveness over time.
Link:https://mwi.usma.edu/fourth-time-cha...rations-right/
Elsewhere on SWJ Blog there is an article on Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) and the MWI article asks:
Quote:
The current evolution of the SFAB generally marks the fourth attempt at tackling the advise-and-assist mission set since the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Link:http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/fir...in-four-months
A pointer to The Godfather Doctrine
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JHR
The current issue (10/17) of the Marine Corps Gazette has an article pertinent to the West Point study. The Godfather Doctrine by LtCol. Douglas Luccio calls for more organized and committed security force assistance training including generating a publication similar to The Small Wars Manual, updated and focused on today's conflict locations.
The article cited in the Gazette is behind a registration / payment wall, but an earlier edition (29 pgs.) is available via:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD1037564
Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the USA
An excerpt from a book and here is a "taster":
Quote:
Yet the U.S. track record for building militaries in fragile states is uneven at best. The United States generally approaches the problem of building militaries in fragile states by emphasizing training and equipment, and by distancing itself from key political issues. This method wastes time, effort, and resources. Examples spanning Europe, Asia, and the Middle East illustrate the flaws in the traditional way of working with foreign militaries.
Link:https://taskandpurpose.com/book-exce...challenges-us/
Curious that one example is the success in Greece post-1945, which is rarely covered and IIRC there is a thread in the Historians arena. It is on the insurgency, not n the US mission:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2463
No reviews yet:https://www.amazon.com/Building-Mili...ds=mara+karlin
Lessons from Mentoring in Papua New Guinea: "Eating humble pie"
Another set of lessons and memories from an Australian team on a visit to a Papua New Guinea infantry battalion, which is not only long established they are allies and friends - so no "over watch" needed.
There is a short blog from the team IC, which ends with:
Quote:
I would follow the same principles – being a good human – and make sure I take the best possible team, but being adaptive and flexible is part of the journey. It’s the personal relationships that allowed us to be responsive. It was being humble and respectful that ensured my Team earned equal respect and allowed us to support our regional partner, to crouch down side by side, and help achieve their missions and their goals, and share their successes.
Link:https://www.cove.org.au/adaptation/a...out-mentoring/
Plus a longer report (sixteen pgs):
Quote:
with more detail about the exercise, and views from a number of members of the Mentoring Training Team. Importantly, the report includes tips and advice from some of the more junior members of the team.
Link:https://www.cove.org.au/wp-content/u...New-Guinea.pdf
Leadership in The Specialised Infantry: a new Uk brigade, an interview
Not sure what to make of this. It is a short Q&A with the brigadier that mainly concerns leadership and selection.
Link:https://thearmyleader.co.uk/speciali...ry-leadership/
Why does US military have a mixed record building up foreign armies in weak states?
Thanks to MWI @ West Point for the pointer to this article in JFQ and from MWI's pointer:
Quote:
This highlights a substantial problem with Western SFA: it is too focused on building an army in the absence of a viable state that has the institutional capacity and political willpower to sustain that army.
Link:https://mwi.usma.edu/cant-build-army...ce-assistance/
Link to JFQ:https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/...gdp0w4FR7UKGk/