An IW “Bottle of Scotch” Challenge
Quote:
Originally posted in the SWJ Blog by Frank Hoffman.
All in all - the beginnings of a good debate. Yes, we need a definition better than what we have. Yes, concur with the point about populations (very COIN centric). But out of a dozen or so definitions that exist in the foreign literature, and the six or so developed by OSD, Army, Booze Allen etc, this is not an improvement. Sorry about that – so it’s back to the white board. I will put up a bottle of scotch to the best definition.
KISS- Keep it simple stupid. I'll drink to that!!!
1. UW-us helping dudes take down a bad government. Broken down into components.
- 1a. Contact me on SIPR.
- 1b. Contact me on SIPR.
2. IW- us helping a friendly government stop dudes from taking them down. Broken down into components.
- 2a. SFA- We give them big guns, ships, and planes to help smack the dudes, and we teach them how to use the toys.
- 2b. FID- We send a small SF team or MTT team to combat advise.
- 2c. Partnership (co-located)-Army unit (the current majority of US forces in Iraq/Afghanistan)- we live with them and help them stop the bad dudes.
- 2d. Partnership (not co-located)- Army units (Iraq 2003-2006) live in their land and stop by once a week to tell them how bad they suck at stopping the bad dudes.
- 2e. Training exercises- Army units embark on temporary duty to jump outta airplanes or drive tanks with our brothers, high five, and encourage them to stop the bad dudes. Army unit leaves with foreign jump wings or gives up stetsons.
Who's next?
v/r
Mike
It sounds like someone...
...has broken into the bottle of scotch a bit early. No, this tangent doesn't have anything to do with defining IW (Britney Spears? PJ's portraying themselves as the "main effort?" Do you actually know any PJ's?). Furthermore, one wonders if you are aware of any irony at all in your rail against AF parochialism.
ginspace,
How you classify irregular forces and tactics in support of a nation state? For example, the Fedeyeen and the car and truck bombs used during the drive to Baghdad during OIF.
Oh, take your irony pill...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Entropy
Thanks for the valuable contribution to the discussion. :(
Not that bad... ;)
Mike F has a point also -- on the parochial bit -- not just dinging the Air Force; all the services, USSOCOM, branches within the Army, communities within the other services all get silly about stuff. It's wasteful and counterproductive. Really needs to stop...:(
However, and very seriously, as to Irregular Warfare.
My first point is that DoD paper is good to go for a first cut and doesn't need to be quarreled with before the ink is dry; that's pointless. Having said that:
Here's the problem as described by Hoffman:
Quote:
"In over a year of effort, and two separate meetings of OSD's most senior officers; we failed to come up with a good solid definition for Irregular Warfare (IW). It’s like porn, we know IW when we see it." (emphasis added / kw)
I'm surprised with all that ego you got as far as you did. When everyone is always right and everyone differs on comma placement, it's hard to agree. You don't ask those kinds of guys for a definition, especially not in a group. You convince them that your definition is correct and their idea. I am NOT being facetious -- nor, really, am I being disrespectful. FlagOs should be doing FlagO stuff and definitions are not FlagO stuff. If you ask them to get involved, they will (and you'll wish you had not), if you tell them their help is not required, most -- the good ones -- will accede.
Oh, and I don't drink scotch; thanks anyway. :wry:
Within our own government?
That would simply be dubbed "Change," but I like where you're headed.
v/r
Mike
Within our own government!
How can one not look at what is happening today within our own government and not see it as a hostile take over or UW if you please, only thing missing is the action arm, oh that's right 20,000 troops dedicated to NORTHCOM!!!! Sorry not to get political on here, just thinking it can be looked at as a form of UW. Which then really blurs the lines. Outta box kinda guy here, sorrry.
Is it the objective or the actor?
The definition is good enough to generate discussion on where we have gaps, but it is far from ideal, just as our definitions of unconventional warfare are far from ideal. Does it need to have a perfect definition, or is an idea or generalized concept enough?
Part of the definition addresses the actors who are non-state, and another part of the definition addresses the focus of the strategy which is a specific population.
Conventional/regular warfare is generally thought of as conventional military forces fighting other conventional military forces, so the actor is the nation state and their conventional military forces and the objective is the enemy's capability to wage conventional war.
I think we all know that war is much more complex than that, and that IW and regular warfare elements will almost always be blended.
This is a tough one, but I do like Scotch, so I may give it a try later.
Why ask about the "warfare?"
Clausewitz warned that it was extremely important to understand the "nature of the war" in that it was the "setting forth of policy." Therefore I submit that the nature of IW is defined by the nature of the Policy. It's the WHY, not the HOW or the WHO.
Personally I've totally rejected the idea of IW/RW and Small v Big War. It's not a useful distinction and responsible for much of the current confusion and avant garde BS that surrounds it.
So, in pursuit of a bottle of whiskey...
"IW is a grossly simplified way of explaining that some forms of conflict fall out side regular armies comfort zone, because of a lack of education and training."
It pains me to do this Bill, but in order to
keep you away from demon alcohol and a descent into debauchery, I gotta vote for Wilf's definition:
Quote:
"IW is a grossly simplified way of explaining that some forms of conflict fall out side regular armies comfort zone, because of a lack of education and training."
With a note that I still think the DoD version is acceptable; simply that if there must be a change, Wilf has come up with the most accurate suggestion to date. Now, if you can top that, I can change my vote... ;)
(Not that anyone pays any attention to my votes... :D )
Make it as simple as you can, but not simplier
The ongoing debate over the definition of IW and what it means to the military and the whole of government is creating much confusion, but that confusion is valuable and the debate is long overdue. Unfortunately IW will not lend itself to a simple definition due to its complexity and many shades of gray. Keep in mind that ultimately we're attempting to fix real problems based on our performance in numerous IW environments.
Many in my Special Forces community think we already have the doctrine required in our wealth of unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense doctrine. Yet we have proven time and time again that the existing doctrine is insufficient in many regards. First, it is only intended for Special Forces, and not the Army or Joint community. Since any type of UW or FID operation will fall under the command and control of Geographic Combatant Commander GCC, it is clear that joint doctrine is needed (note, Joint doctrine for FID exists) for SF to be successful. Without it, we'll continue to hear we could have done better if higher knew what they were doing. Second, the current UW doctrine is largely focused at the tactical and operational level in support of a main conventional force effort. A recent article posted to the SWJ titled "Irregular Warfare: Everything yet Nothing" argued that our old UW doctrine said UW activities were focused against the enemy's military, not a civilian populace as stated in the IW definition. What they failed to address was the context that the doctrine was developed in. It was written post WWII to address the Soviet threat. The U.S. vision of UW then was uising it to collect intelligence and to disrupt Soviet military activities in the Soviet occupied areas in case of WWIII. It was UW in support of a conventional war, thus the tactical/operational focus. On the other hand, Mao and many others used UW as a strategic instrument, and the primary focus was on influencing various population groups as stated in our current IW definition. Of course they still had to defeat the hostile military force, but maintaining the support of the populace is what enabled them to defeat the hostile military forces. Therefore, the first and foremost objective was maintaining that support base.
The argument is further blurred when it is argued that conventional or regular warfare is easy (or easier than IW) because the focus is on defeating the enemy's capacity to wage war, which we generally assume to be their conventional military forces. I can't think of one conventional war where our politicians, thus our military strategists, didn't have to focus on maintaining or winning the support of different population groups, so that requirement is hardly unique to IW.
To further muddy the waters about unconventional, irregular, and conventional warfare, the DoD dictionary defines unconventional weapons as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. If we decided to drop a nuclear weapon on one of our enemies' cities to convince their population to cease supporting their government, is that conventional, unconventional or irregular warfare? Gaining influence over a specific populace can definitely be achieved with coercion; the terrorists prove this again and again.
Who is the "irregular"? General purpose forces cut off from their units can conduct guerrilla warfare, are they irregulars? If Special Forces are supporting an insurgency in another country are those SF soldiers considered irregulars? The character of the war (to some extent) would be same whether the insurgent is a non-state warrior or a Soldier. That implies we still would have use COIN/FID to counter the threat.
There are numerous shades of gray not discussed here, and while debating them over beer may be fun, we just may have to accept the fact that there is no perfect definition. In the long run what is important is that we address our shortfalls in addressing these non-conventional threats. Our history has shown time and again that we have struggled against the irregular threat, and now that this IW threat may be more dangerous to us than at any time in the past we can't afford to neglect it any longer.
Assuming that it is true that war is war, that argument hasn't been helpful in a practical sense. We developed UW, FID/COIN, and counterterrorism doctrine to respond to new types of threats because the existing doctrine was inadequate. We have once again come to that point where our current doctrine is insufficient to address the threats we face today.
I'm not prepared to propose a new definition yet even though I find the current definition troubling, yet in many ways I think it is adequate if we fail to develop a better one.
Narrow definitions fail to account for the complexities...
From wikipedia
Quote:
A blockade is any effort to prevent supplies, troops, information or aid from reaching an opposing force. Blockades are the cornerstone to nearly all military campaigns and the tool of choice for economic warfare on an opposing nation. The International Criminal Court plans to include blockades against coasts and ports in its list of acts of war in 2009.
Blockades can take any number of forms from a simple garrison of troops along a main roadway to utilizing dozens or hundreds of surface combatant ships in securing a harbor, denying its use to the enemy, and even in cutting off or jamming broadcast signals from radio or television. As a military operation, blockades have been known to be the deciding factor in winning or losing a war.
Operational vs. Strategic
I'll grant that the Vietnam conflict was not won by the insurgency, but it certainly started as one when the VietCong communists staged uprisings against the oppressive Diem government. It then became a civil war between North and South, and the North had the political will to continue a fight that the South may have won had they been able to establish a viable government. Unfortunately, we were caught in the middle because of our policy to support anyone who was anti-communist, no matter how corrupt.
That said, I never suggested wars were won without casualties. Like you alluded, Clausewitz cautions repeatedly against strategists who believe war can be won without bloodshed. He also states the only difference between war and other great conflicts of nations is that war is settled with bloodshed. However, there are plenty of examples of "wars" between princes in the era of Machiavelli that ended when their private mercenary armies either came to a resolution on the battlefield without actual fighting, or one side capitulated after maneuvering to a severe disadvantage.
I will also grant that a moderate solution cannot be reached until one side is convinced they cannot prevail on their terms, which often involves killing a lot of people. But the Algerians didn't just kill Frenchmen and pied noirs, they killed a lot of their own Muslim population just to spread a sense of terror, which is why the French were unable to establish a legitimate government. This is a very difficult problem to solve...when your enemy is suicidal, killing them is just giving them what they want and massive reprisals against a population you aren't familiar with just creates more radicals.
Insurgencies and irregular warfare take a lot of time and energy and require intimate knowledge of the entire political, economic, cultural and military situation in order to defeat the enemy. In that way, IW is not just about killing, though I agree, you have to root out and eliminate the radical, sometimes there are people you can convince to be on your side without killing them.
I still say that the only reason war is about land is because people need to live and practice their ideas somewhere. If we could live in a bubble in the sky, people would fight over the bubbles too.