Is Irregular Warfare Really "Irregular" Anymore?
This is obviously a loaded question. Like most who contribute to this site, I’ve spent the better part of my career studying and occasionally participating in actions that many would classify as “irregular” warfare, yet I've never been able to quite put my finger on what defines a particular conflict or action as "irregular." The root of my question is that the word “irregular” implies that the alternative would be “regular.” However, in characterizing the conflicts that have occurred over just the past 20 years, it seems to me that very few actually fit the mold of what is generally considered to be “traditional” or “conventional” warfare. With the notable exceptions of the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and a scant few others, the age of Napoleonic-like formations and even traditional Westphalian state-on-state warfare seems to have devolved into the exception rather than the norm.
In other words, has what was once considered to be “regular” warfare become “irregular” itself? Likewise, have the conflicts that we once considered to be “irregular” morphed into “regular” warfare? I ask this because as we all have seen, DoD in general and specifically those of us stationed down here continue to struggle with the definition of “irregular” warfare. Does warfare itself fundamentally remain dominated by states in their role as the sponsor or target of aggression? States with democratic ideals would affirm such a notion, but those states and non-state entities with limited to no democratic leanings would surely disagree. Moreover, who actually defines a conflict as “regular” or “irregular”? Undoubtedly, there are many cases where a state has considered itself to be embroiled in an insurgency while the very insurgents or guerrillas with whom they were fighting viewed the conflict as essentially a conventional battle for their own survival.
Ultimately, and I do not intend to tread on the feet of those 4GW specialists who are far more well-versed in that topic than I ever will be, perhaps it is time to start treating “irregular” warfare as the norm rather than the exception; recent history would surely support such a supposition. Of course, if this were to occur, then true adherence would require a significant shift in resources dedicated to studying, training, equipping, and manning because as we all know, the only true way to find where priorities actually exist is to follow the money…However, back to the question at hand, I was just wondering what the members here thought of this one...Is Irregular Warfare really "irregular" anymore?
The term irregular warfare is an artifact of western culture?
Bohdi,
My take is that we in the west compartmentalize war into mental 'buckets' Regular, Irregular, MCO, COIN, etc. This leads to our inter-agency troubles among other things...
I am not so sure that this mindset is the case in other parts of the world. China's full court press across the DIME spectrum in Latin America and Africa, and Russia's internet, energy, economics play seem to provide examples worth studying.
Irregular Warfare: Everything yet Nothing
I'm transferring my post from the blog to the discussion panel, because I know most of us knuckle draggers are mo comfortable in this forum. However, please refer to the blog to see the article and some excellent posts.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/200...ng-y/index.php
Glenn, thank you for your words of wisdom. Since you already addressed my concerns about confusing reality with dated doctrinal references, I will address a couple of other areas.
I found it interesting that the authors did not address recent IW examples such as Iraq where we initially made little to no progress when our effort was focused on the so called overt guerrilla elements. Progress wasn't made until the additional troops were sent in to protect the populace to break the coercive influence link between the insurgent and the populace.
In Vietnam securing and mobilizing the populace was critical (CIDG, Phoenix, etc.), and it was effective where applied, but unfortunately it was too little too late. Of course there were numerous parallels where the populace was critical in other IW conflicts such as Malaysia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Algeria, etc. How the counterinsurgent went after the population was different in each conflict. By focusing your efforts on the populace you are setting yourself in position to defeat the entire resistance organization, not just the overt guerrillas.
While the construct of guerrilla, underground, and auxillary can be a useful model to visualize an insurgency's structure, it is not dogma, and not all insurgencies or resistence elements organize along these lines(apparently we still find it odd that other groups and countries do not feel obligated to follow our doctrine). The lines between these categories are blurred more frequently than not.
Another disconnect in logic jumped out at me when the authors identified the strategic issue as the population, but wanted to narrow IW's definition to the tactical realm. First they claim that the strategic level of IW is the underground, and that the underground is largely focused on the populace (thus strategic victory = populace), but then they argue that IW should only be focused on the overt guerrillas, or at the tactical level? We tried that a few times in our history, and I can't think of a case where it was a successful strategy.
As the authors probably know, there may be several relevant population groups that the competitors may want to influence, to include external actors. This also applies to conventional war, but more so in IW, where the opponent's primary objective may be influencing the populace versus defeating the oppoent's military forces. The Vietnamese didn't intend to defeat us by defeating our military, most of their activities directed against us were focused on influencing our home population, which effectively led to political paralysis in the end. The take away is that the violence is ultimately directed at relevant population group, not defeating the opposing military directly, and that is the difference between IW and conventional war.
The terrorists who conducted the Madrid bombings were not focused on Spain's economy or security forces, but rather influencing the voting population, which in this case effectively resulted in the anti-war candidate being elected and the withdrawal of their military from Iraq. AQ's focus on various external population groups is plain to see, and they are trying to isolate their opponents by cutting off external support. War is war, but the strategy (not just the tactics) varies considerably between conventional and irregular warfare.
Furthermore it is hard to kill the bad guys you can't see, and since we can't win by only defeating the overt forces we need to be able to find the underground. If you want to find and defeat the underground then you have to control the populace to get the human intelligence necessary to purge the threat. Drive by COIN and targeting only overt guerrillas is clearly a recipe for failure.
Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance
Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance by Colonel David Maxwell, Small Wars Journal
Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance (Full PDF Article)
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As we continue the debate on how we are going to organize our forces for operations in the Irregular Warfare and we think about enabling other forces would like to think a couple of things before we chase new “shiny things” as in new “designer organizations.”
First we need to look at ourselves critically and ask if we have been able to develop effective strategies and campaign plans and then support and execute them, respectively. I think that most all of our challenges can be attributed to our strategies and campaign plans (and I will caveat this and say we need to understand that in this world of irregular warfare, complex operations and hybrid warfare there is no cookie cutter strategy or campaign plan template that will work the first time, every time. We need to be agile and flexible and be able to adapt to constantly morphing conditions). But I would say that this is where we need to focus most of all because our forces at the tactical level from all Services have proven very adept and capable and have demonstrated that they are truly learning organizations.
The second point that no one talks about are authorities and processes. If we are going to truly be effective in the Security Force Assistance, Building Partner Capacity, Train, Advise and Assist, COIN, Foreign Internal Defense areas (or whatever we what to call these types of operations – what is the flavor of the month right now?? J But I digress with my sarcasm). Our security assistance processes are broken and not supportive of whatever strategies and campaign plans we may develop. We do not have agile processes that allow us to rapidly and effectively support our friends, partners, or allies. We have Congressional constraints and limitations placed on us for political reasons that are sometimes (and perhaps often) counter to objectives or end states we are trying to achieve from a security perspective. But all the talk of an Advisory Corps whether in the military or a combined civilian-military one will be moot if we do not update, simplify, streamline, and make effective our security assistance processes and redesign them so they can support national and regional and Country Team strategies and campaign plans...
Some scatter gun comments
1. Use of human shields took place in the Korean War, Vietnam, and now today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan.
2. Today I think intel does a good enough job to target insurgent leadership who have/use human schields, to include members of their own families.
3. If we are good enough to target insurgents off the so-called battlefield, at rest or at their "office" then the ways and means we target them suggests to me that we are doing much better at this war (irregular or whatever anyone wants to label it) than the media gives us credit for.
4. Finally, winning "Hearts and minds" of often blood kin Pakhtuns, some of whom are belligerant Taliban, some of whom are not belligerants but grew up with those who have become belligerants...then the so called winning of hearts and minds gets "muddled" and ethnic loyalties, in common religion and such makes specific actions in specific places a matter of deciding to kill off enemy terrorist leadership and forgetting about the so-called hearts and minds aspect.
5. The upside of such irregular actions by us against them is that the vast majority, over 85% of the Pakistan population (this is not true of course in Afghanistan) are not Pukhtuns, did not grow up and play with as children the terrorists, and would be glad to be rid of as many Puhtun terrorists as possible.
My two cents. We have developed sufficient tools, ways and means, but are hindered by the difference in populations between and among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the large "other areas" of Paksitan which are non-Pukhtun to repeat myself and shut down now.
When "Jargon" becomes policy, you need to get it right
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Entropy
I learned a long time ago that using "guild" terminology with people who aren't in your "guild" is going to breed misunderstanding despite one's best intentions. I would submit that the Ambassador doesn't need to know about your doctrine or the specific terminology you use and isn't likely to understand CIW any better than another term. This is a case where knowing your audience is important (actually, when is it not important?). Therefore, I think a SoF team in the example you give needs to explain it to the ambassador without jargon in a way that he/she will clearly understand. Maybe that SoF team needs to learn DoS jargon so they can effectively communicate what they want to do. Once that is done, THEN you can add at the end, "btw, if you hear us mention CIW/IW amongst ourselves, that term is our short hand for what I just explained to you."
My point in all this is that I don't think it ultimately matters what term is used in your doctrine as long as there is a consensus of meaning among the stakeholders of that doctrine. To relay those concepts in concise terms to outside groups and organizations has always been problematic and probably always will be. In such cases, jargon should be minimized or eliminated to facilitate understanding. On the other hand, perhaps what really needs to happen is to get a bunch of DOS, DOD, academics, NGO's and others together to hash out a common taxonomy that everyone understands.
"Irregular Warfare is the term the Pentagon is running with, and not particularly concerned with how a world-wide audiance with no access or inclination to check the joint pub definition will interpret it. They will judge through all of their own respective national or institutional lenses applying lay definitions of "irregular" and "warfare"
We changed the name of the "War Department" to the Department of Defense because we apparently felt the old name sent the wrong message. Now we adopt a term that says we are coming to town once again to conduct "war." Probably still not a good idea. I stand by my contention that tossing a "counter" in front of it improves the narrative, regardless of the audiance.
Then we're back to conventional warfare
Posted by Bob's World,
Quote:
The Malaysian model of isolating the populace from the Insurgent is largely obsolete as it simply is not feasible anymore. It is also harder to simply suppress the military arm for the same reasons. Now more than ever populace-based conflict must be addressed by identifying and repairing the underlying casuation (not to be confused with the most recent motivation) for conflict.
Why is it unfeasible? Furthermore, if you think you can reduce war to a debate over ideas you're wrong. I can sit in my castle and espouse the grand values of democracy and free markets, while my opponent can espouse the values of Sharia Law, by the way my opponent is holding a knife to the neck of the audience, while we sit back and dismiss the most basic rule of COIN which is protecting the populace. If you can't protect the populace from coercive elements within the society, then you can't win. This is exactly what population centric means. Of course we're not going to completely drain the swamp, or provide 100% protection (we don't do that in the U.S.), but our set backs in Afghanistan were largely due to our inability to separate the insurgent from the populace. We made empty promises, and the insurgent delivered upon his threats. We are talking about a war, not an election.
Wilf,
What's the purpose of IW? Once again it is a forcing mechanism to expand our concept of war. Unfortunately our professional military education institutions have intentionally or unintentionally failed to address IW, and we habitually perform in a substandard manner when we are in an IW conflict. It is unexcusable that we fail to learn and apply the lessons of the past. You're right, IW is just warfare, but it a slice of the whole we are not good at. We need this concept to get past our traditional mindsets.
BW,
I think the idea of organizing our doctrine around C-IW our C-UW is useful on many levels. Hopefully it will gain some traction.
Information can be shaped, but not controlled
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
Posted by Bob's World,
Why is it unfeasible? Furthermore, if you think you can reduce war to a debate over ideas you're wrong. I can sit in my castle and espouse the grand values of democracy and free markets, while my opponent can espouse the values of Sharia Law, by the way my opponent is holding a knife to the neck of the audience, while we sit back and dismiss the most basic rule of COIN which is protecting the populace. If you can't protect the populace from coercive elements within the society, then you can't win. This is exactly what population centric means. Of course we're not going to completely drain the swamp, or provide 100% protection (we don't do that in the U.S.), but our set backs in Afghanistan were largely due to our inability to separate the insurgent from the populace. We made empty promises, and the insurgent delivered upon his threats. We are talking about a war, not an election.
Bill,
In no way am I suggesting that there is not a requirement for military operations against the insurgent both to defeat his military capacity and to secure the populace. My point is two fold: first, that defeating the insurgent alone has never been sufficient to actually defeat an insurgency; and second that in today's information environment tactics of isolation and control are ineffective due to the speed and availability of global information to virtually any person, any where, any time.
Fact is that historically the counterinsurgent has rarely even wanted to truly address the underlying causation for the insurgency and has simply wanted to make the insurgent stop conducting a disruptive level of violence so that they can keep on with business as usual. The reason for this is simple, it’s because insurgency happens when governments fail, and rare is the government that wants to even admit its failures, let alone be forced to change their mode of conduct simply because some aspect of the populace doesn't like it. Crush the squeaky wheel, and the rest of the populace will typically fall back into line; particularly when the government can largely shape and control the information available to that populace.
So my theory is that in today's world governments no longer have the luxury of this time proven tactic, and that today they must actually listen to their populace and truly attempt to address legitimate grievances in addition to crushing the squeaky wheel if necessary (adding oil may be all that is required if addressed soon enough).
Where Wilf and I appear to depart is that he sees insurgency as just the conflict portion of this disagreement between a populace and its governance. I believe that it is more constructive to take a more holistic view and see insurgency and counterinsurgency as a continuous spectrum of friction between every populace and every governance every day. Most are bumping along happily down in what the 1980 State Department COIN manual calls "Phase 1 Pre-insurgency" (with phase 2-4 being Mao's 3 phases). Call it that or call it "Phase 0 Peace," the concept is the same. Populaces will always have grievances, needs, and wants; and governments must always be working to address them. As governments fall behind in this mission the tension rises into more active and more organized dissent, ultimately, if unchecked, resulting in violence. The goal of good governance and good counterinsurgency (the same thing in this view), is to work to stay as low in Phase 0 as possible. The military is only called in to assist in COIN when the governmental failures become so great that they require the added capacity of the military to create conditions that allow the civil elements to regain sufficient control to be able to implement the changes required to address the populaces concerns.
The military should not be a hammer brought in to punish the populace for being dissatisfied, which makes "problems" go away so that the civil government can continue merrily along with its family of failed conduct that gave rise to the insurgency in the first place. This is why governments tend to blame insurgency on the insurgent leadership or on "radicalism" or some "ideology." Total BS.
All of those are critical enablers of the violent movement, but the causation of insurgency is always some real or perceived failure of the government in the eyes of the governed, that the populace feels they have no recourse to resolve through peaceful means.
America's, and perhaps the world's, most successful COIN campaign ever was the passing and enacting of the Civil Rights Act. Certainly it is the most successful of all the widely touted COIN efforts of the 1960s. The government recognized that it was wrong and made major concessions and changes to address the legitimate grievances of a major segment of its populace. That is good COIN. I personally thought that operation was over until I saw how the African American populace reacted to President Obama's election, and I realized that it was low into "Phase 0," but not nearly as low as most of us thought it was. COIN operations are never over. They are continuous, and are usually done in Peace.
(As to our challenges in Afghanistan, that is a whole other chapter, but think about this theory presented here, and how it might apply to what has happened there to date, and how it could inform what we do as we move forward)
This is taking that Welsh stuff too far...
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Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
If the leek is very small, then a normal plumber, ( a policeman) might suffice.
:D I too can kill me too...
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Exactly. That's my point. I would submit "Combat Operations" and "Security Operations" - nothing to do with any supposed nature of conflict. Your/our conduct is what matters, not what the other clown is up to, or where or how he is up to it, because that will differ vastly.
However, on a serious note, I think you and Slapout are on to something. Add to that my Son's advisory that any Manual over 100 pages is likely full of garbage and, regardless of worth, is unlikely to be read and / or used by most...
The two-manual process would work. Apply it to echelon, two for individuals, two for Platoon / Company, two for Bn / Bde, etc. Seriously.
ADDED:
Quote:
"...always strive to maintain the initiative. If we do this we will find that situations will not be perfect but they will be better than before and that will be rather pleasant if we give it a chance to work."
True dat, Slap...
Bill, good points all, I'll try to clarify.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
BW, I don't disagree with many of your points, but I don't think they apply as widely as you apparently do. I offer the following to see how your theory stands up against these criticisms.
1. Defeating the insurgent requires defeating the insurgency, which in the West is usually more than military in nature, but in some parts of the world they are effective at suppressing an insurgency with a repressive military approach. Syria and Iraq both put down insurgencies with brutal military operations. You can argue that the underlying motivation of the insurgents still exists, but they were effectively defeated and could not act on their desire to force political change. There were no effective insurgencies within the USSR, PRC, Cuba or North Korea. Brutality and total control may not be politically correct, but it works. We ignore it because it isn't the Western way of waging war (nor should it be), but I offer these examples to simply challenge your theory that such an approach doesn't work.
2. As for information being available worldwide 24/7 at the speed of light or sound, I think this is a critical consideration, but it is over hyped. India probably has more information techs than any other country, but I read that less than 15% of the population had access to the internet. What information is available to the people in Burma, DROC, etc.? In many places information is spread the old fashion way, at the grass roots level, face to face.
In some cases, and maybe most, there is some truth to this argument, but more accurately it is the perception of the insurgents that the government has failed. Therefore, those key "leaders" that fan the flames of discontent are critical, and the fact remains that some insurgencies are based on personality cults. Populations are not prone to raise up against their government without leadership to motivate it to do so. Someone(s) must provide a plan that convinces the population they can force change effectively, otherwise why assume the risk? Frustration in many countries is simply not acted upon.
I'm going to narrow my counter argument to Islamist insurgencies. It "appears" to me that the majority of people in Muslim countries have no desire to live under Taliban like rule. Most Islamist insurgencies have failed over the years because they do not have a viable political plan (unlike the communists who were very good in this respect). The real underlying issue in many of these cases is that the government fails at the most basic level, and that is providing security for its people. I think the way you phrased your arguments points at the government always being at fault, and too easily dismisses the power of coercion (terrorism at the village level, join us or suffer dearly). While the government may not be ideal, that isn't always the issue, the issue is much more immediate (safety). That is why our find, fix, finish approach is deeply flawed. The first line of operation "must" be providing security to the population, then as you state establishing or re-establishing legitimacy between the gov and the governed, THEN the find and destroy the enemy piece is relatively easy. We let some individuals in the SOF community shape this fight the wrong way (focus on capture/kill), defeating an Islamist insurgency should have been relatively easy. We got it right in Iraq late, and Afghanistan we don't have it right.
In some cases this is correct, but in a place in Afghanistan where the people are begging to live in relative peace (the term relative is important), the insertion of security forces is critical. I think we tend to rely too much on our dated UW and COIN doctrine which was designed to counter communist insurgencies, what we're facing now in "some" parts of the world is different, and our approach needs to be modified accordingly.
Food for thought, eager to see your responses.
First, while I do believe there are fundamental underlying principles rooted in the relationship between the governed and the government; every case is different based on the "environmentals": terrain, weather, culture, nature of the government, dissident leadership, effective ideologies, outside influence to either side, etc.
So, yes, if you run a dictatorship form of governance you can simply keep crushing the opposition every time it raises its head. But when you lose the wherewithal to do this look out, because if never went away, and ever act of repression intensified the brew. We often are the ones who take that lid off and look inside. Yugoslavia and Iraq both come to mind. All that released pressure blew up in our faces. Number one country we should be looking at today is Saudi Arabia. The King plays us like a fiddle and crushes rebellion at home under our conveniently provided label of "terrorists." He also doesn't do much to stem these nationalist dissidents from acting on their belief that they must break the support of the US to the King in order to have success at home. Thus why 15 of 19 9/11 attackers and 40% of foreign fighters in Iraq being Saudis. We make it all about us. Typical American hubris. We're just in the way.
Next on key leaders and ideology. I chalk this up to the difference between "causation" and "motivation." The American Revolution is a good case study for this. Causation was largely the British belief that a British citizen born in the Colonies was a lower class than one born in England. Certainly this rubbed the upper class in the colonies harder than it did the average working Joe, and without the efforts of men like Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry to stir up the emotions; or men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to provide the intellect that designed a new form of governance; or men like George Washington, denied the opportunity to serve in the Regular Army due solely to his place of birth, to lead a long fight; we would have most likely been like the rest of the commonwealth. Acts like the Stamp Tax, the Boston Massacre, and Concord Square served as catalysts and also aided the words in providing motivation to the masses. When everything comes together things flare up quicker and perhaps with more violence, but when the underlying conditions persist, populace driven change is inevitable.
Perception is in fact key. Facts and truth are early casualties, and it is perception that drives such conflicts. Today's communications accelerate this tremendously, and where computers are rare, cell phones are often quite common. Still some dark spots out there, Burma is a good example, and North Korea a better one. But they are exceptions.
Ignorance leads to confusion, confusion leads to uncertainty
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Entropy
I understand your point, and concede its possible, maybe even likely, that the narrative will improve for some, but I think it's equally possible/likely that you'll lose people on the way as well. We're in our 8th year of fighting an "irregular" opponent and I don't see how changing terminology does much at this point for us unless CIW represents something much more than a name change.
This is a bit of a soap-box topic for me, and upon rereading what I wrote earlier, I see that I probably came across more harshly than I intended - so my apologies for that. For me, changing terminology is a big pet peeve of mine that causes all sorts of problems and confusion. The best example I can think of is the various acronyms for the people we're fighting. In Afghanistan specifically, I've seen the following used as general terms for the violent opponents to the government of Afghanistan and the coalition: Taliban, ACF, ACM, AOG, AQAM, OF, OMF, TB, Militants, Insurgents, Terrorists. I think there are some I'm forgetting. Why do we need so many terms? Why do can't we pick a term and stick with it? What is the functional difference between anti-coalition militants, anti-coalition force, armed opposition groups and opposing militant forces, for example? There isn't any.
FOB names are another example. I know of a couple of FOB's that have changed names a few times over the years in Afghanistan. A lot of people still use the "old" names, which creates a lot of confusion. "Kamp Holland," FOB Ripley and Tarin Kowt are all the same thing and people regularly use all three to represent the same grids. Some places have "unofficial" names as well. Eventually, everyone who deploys to Afghanistan figures out what all the names mean.
And that gets to my point - changing IW to CIW risks creating more confusion, not less since a lot of people (being creatures of habit) will probably keep using IW regardless, or will make false assumptions about what the new terminology means. IOW, what may be clearer terminology to me and you may only confuse things for others.
Finally, I think there's a lot of wisdom in your last comment to Bill Moore. Good food for thought there.
The past several years have been a run up a tremendous learning curve for everyone. Even within the SOF community there are several divergent perspectives as to what exactly we are dealing with and how to best do so. For the conventional community even more so; with Iraq being one tough school of hard knocks, but with the lessons being largely attributed to "CT" and "COIN", when if fact we have been through a wide range of operations against multiple opponents with an even broader range of motivations in that conflict.
As the guys at the very top attempt to sort this out, and to create a classification of operation that allows them to adjust budget priorities the concept that stuck was "Irregular Warfare." While it will probably serve that purpose well enough, it is the second and third order effects that concern me. How those outside DoD perceive IW; how those outside the US perceive IW, etc.
The main concept driving this is the belief that while we must always be prepared for conventional, state on state conflict, we expect that the majority of operations in the forseeable future will be dealing with some aspect of other peoples insurgencies: dealing with non-state actors conducting unconventional warfare like AQN; and dealing with quasi-state actors like Hezbollah that happily takes advantage of new form of "status sanctuary" that we grant them because we haven't figured out what to do with them yet. All of this is bundled as "irregular."
So, my take upon seeing the 'Counterirregular warfare' term this past week was that it was a good compromise between the proponents for IW and those who have grave, and legitimate concerns. Better to make it as good as possible now, to avoid another messy name change a couple years from now when those higher order negative effects begin to manifest.