1 Attachment(s)
The Insurgent View vs. US Military View
All,
Attached is a slide I use during my presentations that usually engenders quite a bit of discussion (which Is why I use it - to stir the pot).
This is why (in my view) we have hard times with COIN/SO/etc. Failure to understand the nature of the beast.
Like all slides there is a heavy dose of generalization. Obviously Ahmed the RPG gunner in AQI isn't necessarily consumed with the political strategy, but his leaders are.
A simple application of this slide is the ongoing debate over the Predator strikes in AfPak and ongoing collateral damage issues. There are many more examples.
Again, slide is meant to provoke discussion, pro and con. So discuss! :cool:
Niel
Two thoughts, slightly related
1. I wonder just how much thinking our opponents do on any level. Those who rise to the top ranks of the current crop of insurgents seem to me to be consummate politicians. They excel at fund-raising, deal-making, patronage, and intimidation - the same skill set you find in Congress or mafioso. Like many successful politicians, they do not seem to have much strategic sense, and their operational skills seem aimed at achieving personal rather than 'organizational' goals. Look how long it took the bad guys in Afghanistan to attack one of the coalition's true vulnerabilities: its supply lines. Moreover, they don't seem to recognize that both their tactics and operational styles are typically self-defeating; terrorism, especially, rarely works and most often creates the very conditions that will lead to its defeat (or abandonment as a tactic). Finally, they don't have the C2 to either implement or sustain a coherent strategy or operational style. In Afghanistan, we often spent long hours trying to impose a pattern on events to figure out what the bad guys were trying to do; I came to the conclusion that they weren't entirely sure either.
2. Some of the reason for the inversion pictured may be structural. I believe that the ratio of leaders/thinkers/decision-makers to foot soldiers in your typical insurgency is much higher than in conventional forces. This may not seem the case due to the hordes of staff officers and subordinate commanders in western armies, but they are not really setting policy or operating independently. Guys in caves with twenty hard-cores and a hundred stringers or part-timers are making their own tactical, operational, and sometimes strategic decisions in a way our battalion/brigade/regional commanders are not.
Marc's right, that is a great slide and I also agree with American Pride;
Quote:
"...because the militant/insurgent/terrorist is, in essence, a political-soldier (whereas in contrast the American soldier is just that, a soldier)."
I agree with his entire comment but that senetence is key. It's true and we should never, ever forget that -- as we sometimes try to do...
It is also unlikely to change. His comments concerning conventional versus COIN thinking are correct with respect to most but not all US Forces and I suspect that will always be true; we are probably not as a collective psychologically willing to adapt to the political and public face / relations efforts needed for us to essentially fight the Insurgent on his own terms.
I believe that efforts to attempt such adaptation for most of the force will actually be very counterproductive. One should also remember that not all fights against non-state actors or seeming insurgents are actually counterinsurgencies...
The Slide itself illustrates a conundrum that is not at likely to be addressed in the near term. I do not say rectified because I do not think that the dichotomy is really a problem or that we need to adapt our action to mirror the Insurgent model. We absolutely need to be aware of the difference and to develop counters for it but aside from Special Forces (not SOF in their entirety) no significant 'adaptation' is required of most units. What's required is simply acknowledgment of the difference and the development of strategic and operational flexibility to counter that. What we lack at this time is that flexibility and that is difficult to develop in a large bureaucracy. Difficult is not impossible.
Best way to fight a fire is with a suppressive agent, a different compound or process that deprives the fire of the oxygen it requires. Another fire, a backfire will sometimes allow a temporary gain but it will rarely extinguish the original fire.
Of course, good firebreaks and fire prevention are vastly superior to and easier than fire fighting.
The actor doesn't need to understand or even know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Entropy
Interesting graphic, but I'm not sure how useful it is. For example, a significant portion of insurgents in Afghanistan are part-timers who join in for a variety of reasons where do they fit in? Are they really at the political/strategic level of thinking? The point being that insurgents are hardly homogenous and I think at the end of the day the differences between "us" and "them" are not as great as the graphic makes them out to be.
Perhaps an easier way to describe the differences are that insurgents usually have the "home field advantage." Is fighting on and for the "home field" inherently more political/strategic?
Mao named the three phases of Insurgency:
“strategic defensive,” “strategic stalemate,” and “strategic offensive.”
We then renamed these phases U.S. doctrine calls them “latent and incipient,” “guerrilla warfare,” and “war of movement.”
This probably goes to why Neil needed the slide. To our "task-based" way of thinking this was all tactical stuff. Mao was thinking about effects at all three phases.
Look at the Tet Offensive for example. Most NVA and VC were most likely focused on the tactical objectives that they had been assigned. Senior leaders in S. Vietnam were probably most focused on the coordination of the overall offensive on the ground.
But the true impact of this "failed" offensive was a tremendous N. Vietnamese stategic victory back in the US. Did Giap have this as his primary purpose in planning the attack? I don't know. Certainly he hoped for operational success, but I suspect he understood the strategic potential of the offensive as well.
How many battles in the American Revolution were fought with the primary goal not of defeating British forces on the battlefield, so much as to sustain the requisite moral and support of the American populace for the fight, and to garner the support of the French to come to our assistance?
At the end of the day, the tactical scorecard in both wars was largely irrelevant to the final outcome. The insurgent does not have to win the fight to win the war. This is the basis behind Niel's diagram. We have to do both.
symbols in targetland (or through the lava lamp)
This has doubtless been proposed more cogently elsewhere, but would it add needless complexity to suggest that insurgencies in particular may be operating in a culture-specific, symbolic realm that subsumes the political? The symbolic field may be opaque, inaccessible or even inimical to manipulation by outsiders, as much of its cultural resonance may occur offstage from the theatre of operations. Local insurgent leaders may have varying degrees of symbolic coup d'oeil, but even then struggle to maintain control over a feedback loop which operates largely within a cultural unconscious approaching the mythical.:confused:
We talked about two yesterday...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
... but that is not the point. Tactical failure, can still have enough effect to break enemy will (Pyrrihic victory). That is completely different from trying to suggest that actual tactical success can be counter-productive.
OK, so show me one successful insurgency that did not grow from tactical success, eroding or corrupting the Goverments will to fight.
I can only think of one, (Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) - and that was an externally force treaty because the Rhodesian's realised they couldn't win, and faced a serious threat of a conventional invasion.
Again this was because the strategy was flawed. At no point was German tactical success "counter-productive."
Dr. King and Mr. Ghandi. But these were leader's so savvy that they realized that all operations needed to remain non-violent and focus on the strategic end.
I guess we can go with the US phase of the Vietnamese insurgency as one that has that classic line of "you know, we never lost a battle..." as an example of a kinetic insurgency that succeeded in defeating the most powerful nation in the world without tactical success. The US was able to keep them in the Phase 2 "strategic stalemate" stage, but it wore us down. After we left they were able to surge up to a successful Phase 3 "strategic offense" stage and finish off the S. Vietnamese government as well. But the main victory was achieved thru tactical defeats and strategic victories. Rope a dope.
Reminds me of a story within a Louis L'amour Sackett novel. A determined young man goes to the saturday night dance where the biggest, toughest man in the area takes him outside and publicly and decisively beats him to a pulp. The beaten man goes home, and is told to never return if he knows what's good for him and the large man returns to the dance.
The next Saturday the young man returns and is severly beaten again.
The next Saturday the young man returns and is severly beaten again, but puts up a better fight, and the county tough is less enthusiastic about the fight.
This continues, defeat after defeat, Saturday after Saturday, until finally, the tough man grows so weary of having to fight this persistent little man every single Saturday that he stops coming to the dance himself, leaving the other victorious.
Just a story, but for one who is so determined to achieve their goal that they will keep coming back no matter what, the tale of the tape in the end will be who has the most will, not who has the most might.
Think about the maoist insurgency model target list..
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Eden
The idea that insurgents can win without tactical victories is wrong. In Afghanistan, Vietnam, Algeria, etc., the insurgents enjoyed (or are enjoying) considerable tactical success. Every government offical assassinated, every schoolteacher intimidated, every bomb that wrecks a market, is a tactical success. Every police post overrun, every rocket that hits its target, every helicopter shot down, is a tactical success.
In Vietnam, the VC and NVA quite often scored victories over conventional SVN forces, sometimes quite considerable, and instances of successful ambushes or skirmishes with US forces were numerous. It is hard for me to understand how anyone who has read any history about Vietnam would buy into the tired old saw the 'we never lost a battle'.
In Afghanistan, hardly a day went by without some form of insurgent tactical success - mostly against civilians, often against Afghan security forces, but sometimes against allied forces, and every now and then against US.
An insurgency cannot sustain itself without tactical successes. True, these do not have to come in the form of stand up fights against conventional firepower, but they have to come in some form. Neither insurgent foot soldiers nor their leaders are superhuman - like all men, they have to see some point to their sacrifices to carry on.
Every operation is "tactical" if assessed by the nature of the task. A B-29 togglling off a nuclear bomb over hiroshima is a "tactical task" But the over all nature of the operation was pure strategic. A savvy insurgent does not go out and seek targets that only offer tactical effect unless he has to inorder to get to those targets with much larger operational/strategic effect. That is why they target school teachers and other low-level government officials over shop keepers and farmers.
I have covered this before, but whether or not something is "tactical" or "strategic" is not determined by the nature of the task, the platform/weapon used, or the number of stars on the commander's collar. It is determined by the purpose for the action.
But you're right, I should slow down. I often forget that others need to catch up ;)
The insurgent/guerrilla often wins merely by not losing
As Eden points out, the old saw about Vietnam is used too often and ignores much of the reality. “Victory in battle” during an insurgency must be viewed very carefully.
A good example: Ap Bac, January 2 and 3, 1963. While Sheehan, Vann, Halberstam, and others cast aspersions upon the performance of the ARVN, the GVN and Harkins declared Ap Bac to be a “victory.” Technically, using the traditional military definition, since the ARVN initiated the attack on the hamlet and the following day were in possession of it, they get handed the “victory.” But the real win belongs to the VC. In a day of hard fighting against 4 to 1 odds they shot down or disabled five US H-21s and a UH-1B and repulsed a full on attack by an ARVN M113 company. They then successfully broke contact on their own initiative and exfiltrated the scene prior to the ARVN occupying the hamlet. The moral boost and lessons learned by the VC in that fight far out weighed the fact that the ARVN were granted the “victory.”
Even Khe Sanh has been re-evaluated. Was Giap looking for a victory, or was he engaged in a diversionary battle to pin Marine forces in northern I Corps in order to prevent them from being employed elsewhere during the Tet Offensive? If the former is true, he lost,; if the latter, he won.
The military is one small aspect of warfare
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
Utterly, utterly irrelevant! It has no bearing on the military instrument. You could say L. Ron Hubbard, has managed to creates and convert folks to new religion without resorting to violence - unlike Christianity and Islam. If they don't "do violence" they don't register on the meter.
To paraphrase Eden, constant tactical failures eroded the US will to fight? Constantly wining caused the US to believe they could never force the NVA to quit?
The US had a Strategy in Vietnam and that protecting the territorial integrity of the RSVN. Unfortunately the US forces lacked the tactical and operational skill, or choose not to perform those actions that would break the will of the NVA.
The idea that tactical action is somehow irrelevant or that tactical success can be counter-productive or less relevant than the other three levels is a post modern myth! Military history simply does not support that contention.
If you can't consistently gain tactical success, you can do nothing.
Wilf, for a man as smart and grounded in CvC as you are, I have to admit I find it very interesting your total fixation on the military aspect of warfare. The military aspect is important, certainly, and can either create or lose conditions required for the larger victory, the grander competition; but it is just one aspect of a much larger whole that has no end and no beginning and is woven into that whole in such a manner that it cannot be considered in isolation without drawing flawed conclusions, or attributing undue importance to things that may have been very important to the military aspect, but perhaps merely a supporting effect to the larger political competition.
But I place far more value on the opinions of those who I know know what they are talking about and see things differently than I do, than I do on those who lack such credentials and merely agree. So I am listening. Don't agree, of course, but I am listening. :)
One of my standard positions is that "the military neither starts wars nor ends them, it is just our lot to fight them." We focus on the fight as it is so dramatic, so horrible, so visible; but it is just one aspect of the much larger competition.
As early as Sun Tzu it was recognized that a commander who had resort to combat to accomplish his ends had largely failed to begin with. The wise State Leader, the wise insurgent leader, the wise general all seek to win through superior thinking and non-violent positioning if possible. This does not make them irrelevant, just perhaps less interesting.