How about instead of Jesus we ask "WWCS"?
Clauswitz made a good point when he proposed that the longer a war continues the greater role chance plays (paraphrased).
War expectations have allot to do with this.
Until you can get the public to accept that chance is going to play an increasing role in long term conflicts where political solutions weigh heavily, its going to be a hard sell. That is not to say it can't be done, just that politicians must articulate the threat as so it is self evident. That does not mean they should mis-represent the threat, to do that is to erode trust, once trust is gone its not easily recovered. In today's info age, there are many wiki-ists who will go out of their way to find the truth.
Is time really on the side of Insurgents?
Many COIN theorists discuss how the guerilla or insurgent has time on their side, and that often they only need to survive to win. However, in Iraq, time (or lack there of) has always been a concern of key leaders of the Iraqi insurgency. There have been many incidents where insurgent leaders demanded an insurgent "surge" such as during elections and other milestone events. The insurgents do not want to just sit around and wait for the government to collapse, they feel pressure to increase instability before the government does have an effective counter-insurgent force, and before the people truly grow tired of insurgent presence. This is what I believe happened in al Anbar (specifically Ar Ramadhi). The Iraqi people just got tired of the AQ types, joined up and kicked them out. AQI moved elsewhere. Eventually AQI will be forced out of that province as well. It is a matter of time. But how long?
I posit that time is not solely in favor of the insurgent, as much COIN study suggests, and the counterinsurgent can use time to his advantage after proper analysis. Everyone is worried about time. Everyone wants to see change. A counter argument might be that the insurgent, a soccer fan, may see a stalemate against a stronger opponent, similar to a tie, as a victory. But eventually people want to see real gains and real wins. Just as we ask how much time the US has before our strategic CoG, the will of the American people, is broken, we should give serious thought and discussion to just how long AQI and other Iraqi insurgents have until their popular support recedes due to a lack of any tangible gains.
Recommendations for analysis:
1. Determine an estimate of how long insurgent organizations can sustain the fight. How long will the population tolerate them, how long will their local and foreign support last in a particular region? We can use these estimates to help determine time frames for troop levels and goals for security force training. We can focus efforts where we feel insurgents have the least amount of time remaining.
2. What are the “deal breakers” with the population that might end passive or active support for the insurgents? What events might influence foreign entities to cut ties to the insurgents? We can use “deal breaker” events to decrease the time insurgents have left before losing popular support. (Many of the deal breakers would be actions taken by the insurgent, however, if we know what they are, when they happen we can be better prepared to exploit them).
3. Perhaps we should demand a timetable for AQI's withdrawal. When they refuse to give one as we have refused, it may have an effect on their local support, just as our refusal to submit a time table affects our support. We have to stop thinking of the insurgent guerilla as this mythical entity that cannot be beaten and use their own strategies against them.
In COIN how do we describe the relationship of the levels of war?
This is something I've been trying to work through for about a month since I got back from the Overland Campaign staff ride. There I finally thought I understood, by virtue of physically having gone over it, where Operational Art, Campaign Design, and the Operational Level fit in the relationship between the Tactical and Strategic levels of war.
I understood that tactical engagements could be a means to achieve an operational advantage, and the goal of that advantage is to translate it into a strategic gain - say against an operational or strategic center of gravity, then you could win the war. It also struck me as important that you could win tactically, but lose on the operational and strategic level - and conversely, you could lose tactically (at least relatively), but win on the operational and strategic level by taking away and retaining the initiative at the Operational Level.
Since then the question of Operational Art in COIN has continually bothered me as I look and consider what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You can see that there are many different types of Lines of Operation - doctrinally some of these are logical lines of operation - going on in Iraq. There are Diplomatic, Economic, Informational, Military, Financial, Intelligence & Legal LOOs. Some seem to be having better success then others within the PMESII - Political, Military, Economic, Social, Intelligence & Infrastructure framework then others - but how do you tie all this together in a COIN campaign plan to achieve a strategic objective?
It seems to me MNF-I is on to something. At first it did not register to me what I thought was the significance of Kilcullen saying they were "hardwiring the social environment" to prevent AIF from getting back in once they were separated. I also did not infer a connection between that (rightly or wrongly) and the "tribal revolt" against the AQ in Iraq, and the thought of enlisting sheiks toward achieving a secure environment in areas where ISF and the central government have little authority.
I feel like these are elements of "Operational Design" to achieve a broader strategy of securing the population so that some political progress can be made, but its not exactly the same thing as Grant continually stealing the move on Lee and extending him from Richmond to Petersburg while cutting his LOCs to the South and exhausting his means & will - its different.
I think this is a good question to consider - given the discussion on likely threats, and the debate on military force structure and adaptability here on the Council.
Thanks, Rob
Asymmetry, Strategy, Operations, Tactic:Through The Looking Glass
Once upon a time, we had a perfectly good English word, “act.” We had another perfectly good English word that was its contrary, “react.” Somehow or other, folks in the military needed a stronger counterpoint to being reactive. Hence, we wound up with “proactive.” I submit that the adoption of “asymmetric” is a similar construct. We used to plan for and fight wars in a relatively linear fashion. Our rear areas were safe for our folks, with the exception of the occasional H & I fire and “strategic” airstrike. The same was true for our opponents. However, the run up country into Iraq quickly broke that paradigm. We quickly became more like the US Cavalry portrayed in John Wayne movies, with our supply trains attacked by the enemy while still deep in our rear areas. Of course, the reality is that such activity was jut as common in many other wars. (Things like Grierson’s Cavalry Raid during the Civil War come to mind.). While our form of war had ceased to be linear, “non-linear” just does not quite capture the attention. So a more catchy adjective was called for—“asymmetric,” that’s the ticket! Of course, asymmetry also conveys the notion that one side in the struggle is much bigger and/or can bring much more force/combat power to bear than the other side can. So we have a turn of phrase that allows users to bend the English language to their will as they see fit.
(Remember what Humpty Dumpty said to poor Alice—It’s a question of which is to be the master (`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' `The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' `The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'—Full link here)
On the relationship of strategy, operations/operational art, and tactics, I suggest a mapping of these terms to the hierarchal taxonomy of an armed conflict. We have wars, which are made up of campaigns, which are made up of battles. Strategy maps to what we do to win the war, operational art is focused on winning a campaign, and good tactics bring victory in battles. We can of course have bigger and smaller variations of each—wars, campaigns, and battles. Nonetheless, a battle are usually focuses on direct engagements of one’s opponents in a particular geographic location in a restricted timeframe, a campaign strings together efforts to achieve a particular outcome in a geographic region over a more extended timeframe, and wars are the continuation of politics, which, as we all know, covers the gamut of human experience.
The Medium is the Message
Or something like that...
The COIN battle IS the Operational level.
I read Rob's initial post yesterday and I started thinking, always painful -- so I had some extra Bourbon to assuage the pain and then some more so I could think like a General. Massaged the whole process in my sleep last night, read all the foregoing this morning and decided that my initial reaction was correct.
Are we trying, as Americans always do, to needlessly complicate something? :wry:
Simply put, the strategy sends us to a country or countries. If an insurgency of any type (and there are many, no two will be alike) develops, the Operational level is the COIN effort.
The TTP involved in resolving that Operational task are many, varied and a number of the efforts described by many in this thread all roll into that.
We've played in a number of insurgencies since 1946; the four largest in terms of troop commitment were Korea in early 1951, 1st MarDiv, 5th RCT and three South Korean Divisions; DomRep in 1965; Viet Nam 1962-72 and the current operation (note term) in Iraq. All were quite different in every aspect.
The first two were virtually conventional operations against an irregular force (NKA left behinds in one and dissident Military types egged on by Cubans in the other), the last two were characterized by an abysmal failure to understand what was going to happen and to proceed to fight a land war in Europe in SEA or SWA. Neither was a good plan...
The Army that went into both theaters was euro-centric; as, he leered, is the Operational art :rolleyes:. Yet, in both cases there was adequate warning of what was faced and it was ignored by the Army's power structure. In fairness, Iraq was hobbled by abysmal intelligence preparation (due to many and long standing politically induced problems) but it still took 18 months to realize we'd screwed the pooch. That it took another 18 months to turn things around is progress over Viet Nam where it took a total of seven years to do that but it still is too long. I submit a part of that length of time was due to efforts to over intellectualize the need and solutions. IOW, we needlessly complicated it -- and I know the domestic and in-theater political aspects also contributed to that delay. :(
The attitude of the local populace in all four major efforts I cited varied a bit. The first two had locals that just really wanted to be left alone and who just tried to stay out of the lines of fire. The second was mostly characterized by the same thing with the addition of random terror to force assistance to the insurgents by the populace, the current one sees that to a far greater degree. Contrary to many theorists, that ain't 4G, 5G or 9G warfare; it's Third Century warfare practiced in a digital age, no more.
Viet Nam did have an advantage that Iraq did not. The first US units in Viet Nam had been training for CI work and knew what to do -- regrettably, they were told to go on search and destroy missions instead. Complaints about this were ignored. In Iraq on the other hand, the Army was hobbled by 30 years of short sighted ignorance of CI and a proscription from on high to not even talk about it, much less train for it.
Our failures to date are simply not realizing that an insurgency was a planned effort by Saddam; in inadvertently being an accelerant to that Insurgency due to lack of training; in too slowly reacting and changing to meet that challenge; and most importantly at both the Operational level (the COIN effort in Iraq) and the strategic level (the goals, policies and plans of the USG in the greater ME and the world) not appreciating or properly implementing to this day effective counters to the opponents media operations plans and efforts.
We have a bad tendency to place templates on things (rarely works, others don't play by our rules * ); attempt to sound highly professional (we are and we don't need excessive adherence to buzzwords to prove it -- even as we try to dazzle the non-serving Academics and Congroids); be too prescriptive in assigning missions and methods thus stifling initiative and innovation ( * again); not quickly ascertaining where the COG is (in the current case, worldwide public opinion has to be a contender...) and, importantly, consistently failing to apply KISS...