The formula for determing % of kinetic versus non kinetic
AB x X(s + r) - 100 = desired percentage of kinetic operations.
There are no clear cut formulas for figuring out the correct percentages of effort, and if you look at it objectively kinetic operations are partly political.
In situations like El Salvador, Algeria, Greece, etc. where there were established governments that required assistance to defeat the insurgency, I concur that the primary effort is political, and that military operations are limited to setting conditions for political success. This is what most of our legacy COIN doctrine makes reference to, but that isn't the fight we're fighting today.
In a situation like Iraq (and to some extent Afghanistan) where the government is rejected by large portions of the population, and where the insurgents are targeting the Iraqi people and the economic infrastructure (which is our primary political line of operation to create legitmacy for the government), we're in a situation where focusing our efforts on the political and softer activities will not achieve the desired effect.
I'm not interested in your schools if I can't provide for my family, or even provide some degree of security for them. I'll start looking for non-state entities that promise something a little more. Hey, I can put in an IED for $200.00, and my family won't be targeted by insurgents. Not a bad deal.
In parts of Iraq we need to be more aggressive, not less. In other parts of Iraq we need to focus on nation building type tasks and to create a graviational pull of the population to the government. Security must come first, you can't open schools when kids can't go to school closely. You can't be legitimate if you can't protect the population. Aggressive doesn't mean burning down cities, but robust presence and security patrols 24/7 denying freedom of movement to the insurgents. Once an area is semi-secured you can attempt to interject government control.
Our officers need to stop looking for formula type answers in doctrine and start thinking on their feet, they need to open their eyes to their reality, because they are the only ones that will know what is happening in their sector. The situation in your AO is different than it was in mine, figure it out listening to your strategic corporals and the locals, then develop your strategy and adjust it as needed. Read Nagel and Galula for context and ideas, not a how to manual.
Not directed at you SWJED...
Sarah Baxter typifies why some journalists need to simply shut up and only be allowed to write for travel magazines. That article had absolutely no context, and I can't believ her editor let it hit print.
Exceptional Strategist is Our Man in Washington
14 December The Australian - Exceptional Strategist is Our Man in Washington by Patrick Walters.
Quote:
A few weeks ago a highly unusual ceremony took place at the Pentagon.
David Kilcullen, one of Australia's leading counter-terrorism experts, had come to receive a medal awarded by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Defence Department's Medal for Exceptional Public Service cited Dr Kilcullen's "exceptional service" as special adviser for irregular warfare and counter-terrorism during the 2005 Quadrennial Defence Review.
For Kilcullen, 40, one of the Australian army's most brilliant graduates, it was another milestone in a career that has catapulted him into the highest corridors of power in Washington.
Uniquely, for an Australian citizen, Kilcullen has emerged as a key adviser to US President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld in the war on terror. His influence in Washington arguably oustrips that of the only other Australian to reach high office in the US, Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel.
Over the past year, working out of the US State Department, Kilcullen has flown on secret assignments into the world's terrorist hot-spots from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa, Indonesia and The Philippines.
A primer he wrote on fighting counter-insurgency warfare for junior officers now forms part of the US army's basic war doctrine, and has been translated into Russian, Arabic, Pashtu and Spanish.
"It's unprecedented," Hank Crumpton, the State Department's counter-terrorism chief, told The Australian in reference to Kilcullen's special role in his office.
"I am the adviser to Secretary Rice on counter-terrorism, and David is my principal strategist."
Leading US strategic thinker Eliot A. Cohen, from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies said: "I cannot think of a non-American who has had so much influence in the US national security establishment - and from within, noless."
Working closely with the Pentagon and the CIA, Kilcullen has led counter-insurgency teams in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan, observing at close quarters the US-led efforts to stabilise the two countries and Washington's battle against al-Qa'ida and its affiliates.
He has stalked around the Arabian Gulf and Pakistan's North-west Frontier studying counter-insurgency warfare and learning new insights into the culture of Islamist terror groups.
A fortnight ago, Kilcullen returned to Washington from Kabul, where he helped teach counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism techniques to officers and NCOs of the fledgling Afghan army, as well as soldiers in the NATO-led coalition.
Combining his Australian army experience with a PHD on the political anthropology of the Indonesian post-1945 Islamist insurgent movement, Darul Islam, Kilcullen first took leave from Australia's Defence Department in 2004 to help the Pentagon with the drafting of last year's Quadrennial Defence Review, which determines the US's global defence strategy.
Working inside the Pentagon in 2004, Kilcullen founded and led the US Government's inter-agency Irregular Warfare Working Group....
Link to the New Yorker Commentary...
The New Yorker has placed Knowing the Enemy in their free to view section.
Quote:
In 1993, a young captain in the Australian Army named David Kilcullen was living among villagers in West Java, as part of an immersion program in the Indonesian language. One day, he visited a local military museum that contained a display about Indonesia’s war, during the nineteen-fifties and sixties, against a separatist Muslim insurgency movement called Darul Islam. “I had never heard of this conflict,” Kilcullen told me recently. “It’s hardly known in the West. The Indonesian government won, hands down. And I was fascinated by how it managed to pull off such a successful counterinsurgency campaign.”...