No one with much sense really has a problem with population centric COIN
if one must do or assist in the doing of counterinsurgency efforts. Nor is there any question that any competent Army must be able to do that job; or that the US Army was woefully and unforgivably not prepared to do it in the last few years.
The real question is; should one seek situations wherein to apply population centric COIN TTP or should one merely know how to do that if necessary and reserve application for those occasions when all else has failed and it absolutely cannot be avoided...
What do Tom Ricks, those wise Generals and CNAS have to say on that score?
Not over yet. Has the Fat Lady sung...
Don't think so. Was it defeated or temporarily co-opted? What about the other, non-Sunni minor insurgencies that are also now semi dormant? Then there's the Kurdish problem. What about the dissident Sadrists?
I'll grant you that it apparently comes closer to being a 'successful' operation to date than any other. We have never publicly stated the real goals -- the WMD bit was so much fluff and Saddam was just a good target -- but I believe one of about a dozen goals was long term basing of adequate size and utility in the ME. We have other bases but all have shortfalls of one kind or another; thus far it looks as though that goal may not be achieved. I don't think that's an insurmountable problem but if it was a goal, it wasn't attained. There are some strategic goals that I think were achieved and some seemingly not. Getting the British to return to the Gulf didn't fly. Keeping French, German and Russian commercial interests out or at least subordinate to American commercial interests apparently didn't work. We temporarily stopped the switch of the oil trade into Euros but it now looks as though that could happen...
Thus we cannot truly answer the real question due to unknowns and in the end, to be successful, the benefit to the US has to outweigh the cost. I suspect it will take a decade or two to fully answer that...
My point to MichaelC and all COIN fans is that it is an extremely costly way to do business, is rarely as effective as we'd like and has not really produced any glaring success stories to be held up as examples. And Malaya is a terrible example. Comparing Malaya and Viet Nam as an academic exercise may be fun -- but it avoids reality...
I take exception to this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Michael C
Also, the most commonly cited counter-insurgency experts is David Galula and he published a long time ago.
Sniff. A long time ago. A LONG time ago. Hmmmph. I bought his book, first edition, in 1964 at the Smoke Bomb Hill bookstore as a 30-something Platoon Sergeant.
Long time ago indeed... :mad:
(Ken exits left to procure another refill mumbling something about "...young whippersnappers." :D: )
P.S.
On a serious note:
Most of what Galula wrote, as is true of Clausewitz and others, is poorly understood and very poorly applied. With good reason; times change and no two wars are alike. Galula in particular applies French practice and logic primarily to North Africans and to a lesser extent to Viet Namese. Those ideas are not universally applicable. Study them all but do so critically, try not to agree with them but to pick holes in their arguments. No one has all the answers...
Why, sir, I do believe you're correct...
But look at the bright side, Boyd didn't write a book... :cool:
Some say Sun Tzu's butler or son or somebody actually wrote his... :D
Michael, that reeks of insincerity...
However, truth be told, you didn't have much to do with making me feel old. :cool:
That started long, long ago when I was a Bn CSM (who did not worry about uniforms, haircuts or police call). I was counseling a SSG * who was born the day I landed in Korea. Been downhill ever since... :wry:
(His 'crime' was a noticeable AWOL rate; found out he was not letting people go on leave "because there was a CALFEX or a DRF layout or some other foolishness coming up." There's always something coming up -- no reason to refuse people leave)
Algeria 1 (mil) - 1 (pol)
The French military in effect won in Algeria because the guerrilla forces were on the ropes. Some of the French generals felt they were stabbed in the back because of the political settlement. So, then, the generals' revolt, etc.
The reasons for the political settlement were (1) the Algerian rebels were not an existential threat to France itself, although they were a deadly nuisance; (2) continuance of the war was hurting France both diplomatically and economically; and (3) Algeria was not a prime factor in DeGaulle's plans for France's future. So, France "de-colonialized" Algeria, even though it was legally part of France proper.
The Galula monograph at Rand (free in the pdf download), Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958, is quite good because he gets down to the nuts and bolts of what he did as a company commander - and what worked and what didn't.
Putting the insurgent in the baker's oven (it worked) would not be within UCMJ bounds today. :D
Best
Mike
PS: And tis said that Caesar's scribe and ____ (we won't go there), wrote his Commentraries. Just some gossip to go with Ken's.
Serious study and thought
It seems to me, and this is just my generalized thoughts on interactions with fellow officers, that the people who study war the most and take theory and strategy the most seriously are the most strident proponents of population-centric COIN. Take McChrystal and Petraues, they are frequently regarded for how intelligent they both are and their impressive amount of reading. Look at Kilcullen and Nagl, they are some of the smartest and deeply read in the field of contemporary historians.