Does it make a difference that the insurgents almost always think of insurgency as war?
Does it make a difference that the insurgents almost always think of insurgency as war?
They mostly come at night. Mostly.
- university webpage: McGill University
- conflict simulations webpage: PaxSims
Not to me it doesn't. Defining something as war implies a specific set of actions and permissible responses. I don't want someone else deciding that for my nation. There are probably dozens of organizations in the world today that consider themselves "at war" with the United States. It would be lunacy for us to treat it as such.
Originally Posted by Rex Brynen
Naw we don't let them vote
COIN like insurgency is war, especially to those doing the killing or suffering the casualties. Otherwise we do end up in an intellectual rabbit hole
What if the fundamental definition of war is wrong or rather only half right? What if we said war is the use of force or fraud to achieve your ends. What if war was viewed as a crime?
Disagree Tom (despite the fact that Dan gushed over you when I was in his office a couple of weeks ago). We're talking about something with strategy, policy, and legal implications. We dont define those from the foxhole perspective.
I agree to disagree, Steve, because if you ever try and forget the "foxhole" perspective, your strategy, your policy, and very often your legality go astray. War is not a bloodless exercise; witness the end of "combat operations" in Iraq.
Not allowing the foxhole perspective to define a policy and strategy issue is not the same as forgetting it. It would be totally unrealistic to say the United States is at war every time a soldier gets shot at.
I concur with Dr. Metz
And just as all orgainized violence is not war I would add that everyone helping to deal with an insurgency is not conducting COIN either.
Sadly, confusing other peoples COIN issues for war, and our own assistance to the same for COIN has put a lot of good men in holes indeed, but they weren't rabbit holes.
(But then I also am strongly of the opinion that it is governments who cause insurgency (or at least the conditions of insurgency that others then come in and exploit to their own ends) rather than some malignant internal or external force that comes in and "radicalizes" the populace. Poor Governance is what radicalizes a populace, those malignant forces just take advantage when government lets that happen.)
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Agree with JMM and wilf: war is war, what changes is warfare
Then now if war is not war and war cannot be peace then what is war?
Or what is peace so we may assume that war is not that.
My tiny little mind tends to work through metaphors. In this case, I find a biological one useful. There are pathogens floating around all the time. But they are the most successful and do the most damage when the host is weakened by something else.
The American approach to counterinsurgency tends to be bringing the existing infection under control but, because it is very hard and expensive, we seldom eradicate the factors that weakened the host system in the first place. This means that a recurrence of the infection--a "resurgency" (which is something I intend to write about in the future)--is possible or even probable.
Again, Steve, I will agree to disagree. Forgetting that people are getting shot (whether they are soldiers or not) is a recipe for disaster. When you use the term "at war" do you hold to the legalistic terms of a declared war?
Bob,
I will disagree with you as well. The folks who put soldiers and civilians were generally those who did not get that war means killing.
Both of you draw neat lines where none exist. I went through a similar exercise in 1994 when we tried debating genocide versus acts of genocide.
Regards.
Tom
Again, no one is advocating "forgetting" about the soldier in the foxhole. But being in a state of war has very specific legal, policy, and strategy implications. For instance, it clearly implies that the solution is at least largely military.
It's simply infeasible to inact those whenever anyone is shot at. This would obliterate the distinction between war and not-war.
Tom, not looking for neat lines, only logical ones
To call COIN "War" is illogical once one appreciates what actually causes insurgency. If one firmly believes that insurgency is caused by the insurgent warring against them, and that by defeating that insurgent they win the insurgency, then yes, COIN is war. But as Dr. Metz points out, this typically just suppresses the effects for some period of time, followed by "resurgency."
When we begin to hold governments accountable for their actions we begin to get in front of the current conditions of insurgency that are being exploited by AQ's UW campaign.
When we stop trying to control outcomes in terms of who or how other states are governed as well, we begin to get in front of those same nationalist insurgents buying into the idea that they need to break the support of the US to their government in order to prevail.
So, the insurgencies being riled up by AQ begin to fade when all of those respective governments realize that they need to get their sh$& all in one sock; and the terrorism levied against the US begins to fade once we stop enabling bad behavior in our allied governments. Currently we are enabling bad behavior to the Nth degree in Afghanistan. We enable it in many other countries in much more subtle ways every day as well.
Some choose to blame Islam, or ideology in general, or evil people who don't like us or any number of bogeymen. I prefer to hold governments to task. But that is just me. I don't think the U.S. should be a victim or a bully either one, but that is current strategy "We are a victim, so we have the right to be a bully." We're better than that. We're smarter than that.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
I smell a rabbit hole...
Personally I think there's a difference between war (the physical act of conflict and killing...Tom's foxhole level) and being at war (which is more of a political/legal position). None of our Indian Wars were declared, and Congress repeatedly refused to allow any sort of recognition (brevets, mainly) for officers involved in those conflicts (at the time the Medal of Honor was restricted to enlisted men...and before anyone argues, look at the award dates for medals given to officers...they are all after 1891 or so). Yet these were clearly wars...low intensity from the POV of the US, but major conflicts from the Native side.
To carry Slap's point out, trade wars provide another example. I also tend to find that the statement "war is war" is often shorthand for intellectual laziness or an unwillingness to examine certain points or areas of discussion. War may indeed be war, but it has shadings and meanings that give it an almost infinite amount of complexity. It may be about killing, but the amount of killing (and those killed) can vary greatly depending on the context and the existence of an "at war" sentiment (or lack thereof). It might also exist in another realm to gain economic advantage, where killing is limited or nonexistent.
Can't say I'm fully in either major "camp" as they have appeared so far in this thread, but I'm probably closer to Tom's position.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
But by that measure (i.e., violence settles the issue in dispute once and for all), few armed conflicts would qualify as war.
In many cases this is true. In some cases it is not, and the existence of those exceptions is very relevant to our current situation.
We're now fighting in conflicts that we choose to call "insurgencies" in Iraq and Afghanistan. To the extent that we are trying to counter insurgency, we are thus involved in COIN, though we may choose to call it FID if it suits our purposes to do so. In both cases, the conflict existed before the government existed, so in both cases it's hard to say the "insurgency" was caused by the government. We could of course claim that once a government existed it was then the responsibility of that government to generate governance good enough to magically resolve these conflicts, but that is an extremely unrealistic expectation.
We need to face reality, and the reality is that these "insurgencies" do not exist because of the governments they are fighting. They exist because we chose to remove governments we didn't like and replace them with governments that we like. This may mean by your definition that these conflicts are not actually insurgency, but that is neither here not there: whatever we call these conflicts, we caused them.
The nice thing about that realization is that if our choices result in unfavorable outcomes, we can make different choices in the future. We are in no way condemned to a future of COIN: we may be stuck in the fights we're in now, but we won't be there forever and there is absolutely nothing requiring us to make similar choices in the future. The COIN community, which is heavily invested in the assumption that COIN is an unavoidable feature of our future, may not want to face up to this, but it is nonetheless true. If we don't want COIN to be our future, all we have to do is stop creating insurgencies.
Certainly there are many insurgencies on the planet that we did not create, but these are for the most part not our problem, and none of them require anything beyond a limited FID presence on our part. The only "insurgencies" existing where we are actually doing the fighting are the ones we created.
I think you're imposing a causative relationship here that is not really supportable. The way that governments relate to their populaces in these countries is not a consequence of US support, it's just the way it's always been in that part of the world. I think you vastly overestimate the extent of our support and the degree to which it has enabled the status quo.A whole lot of governments around the world became emboldened by the support of the US and have come to act with impunity toward their own populaces. Many of those places are predominantly Muslim.
In any event these countries are not really a problem for us, since AQ's attempts to generate insurgency in these environments have generally been abject failures. AQ flourishes when they fight foreign intervention that can be pitched as infidel aggression against the lands of Islam. They draw their support from the "expel the infidel from the land of the faithful" narrative. When they oppose Muslim governments they generally fail. That's something we need to remember.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 10-06-2010 at 12:09 AM.
Defining war (armed conflict) for what purposes ?
This post got clobbered - hitting submit by accident. See two posts down.
Cheers
Mike
Last edited by jmm99; 10-06-2010 at 01:29 AM.
global scout-
I stand by all of the positions I put up, and frankly none of your counters disprove any, they just show that you disagree. That's fine, you're entitled to your beliefs. But to be clear, I am not trying to "redefine war" I am simply trying to point out that COIN does not actually fit within the context of war; and that forcing it into that context for superficial reasons of violence, armed competitors, etc but ignoring the critical difference of the purpose of COIN and the relationship of the parties leads to long, inefficient, ineffective engagements, that may well suppress the symptoms of an insurgency, only to flash back up once those suppressive efforts let up.
I think we see insurgency more clearly when we see it as a condition that comes to exist in a populace that has come to see (in the words of our forefathers) their government as despotic. It is that condition that must be resolved to resolve the insurgency, and the causation is in the actions of the government and it is assessed in the perceptions of populace. Fact has little to do with such perceptions (Dayuhan likes to argue facts as he sees them, I merely point out that how others perceive us is often very different and it is those perceptions that drive this kind of violence, not fact). Quite often the government sees the insurgent populaces perceptions as irrational. That may be true, but it is also moot.
How the populace decides to act out when these conditions of insurgency exist varies based on culture, what leader steps up, outside UW efforts, etc. It may be violent or it may be non-violent. All of that is tactics. You have to deal with the tactics, but you have to solve the problem, and the problem is a government that has lost its way with some segment of the populace it is responsible for. If the conditions of insurgency are not addressed, if the COIN force is distracted by the tactics, if the COIN force becomes too focused on defeating the insurgent, if he COIN force thinks it is fighting a war, it detracts from the real mission. The real mission is to address the conditions of insurgency, and that requires a government to understand what the concerns of the populace are and then working to address them. The US Civil Rights movement is every bit as much an insurgency as the Taliban in Afghanistan is. They just chose different tactics. The government recognized it was wrong and made concessions it did not have to make. Such is not appeasement, such is government doing its job. We need to be focused on making GIROA do its job. If we're not willing to do that we need to go home.
Tom says I hold others to American values when I cite the Declaration of Independence. No, I hold OURSELVES to American values when I cite the Declaration of Independence. We've set that document aside in many ways, written it off as outdated now that we find the shoe on the other foot. I think we would do well to go back to our roots and hold ourselves to our own values.
The National Security Strategy proclaims that US values are "universal values." I disagree strongly. I think the principles in our founding documents may be fairly universal, but believe that a value is a principle with a judgment applied to it, and values change within cultures over time and are certainly different between cultures. A great example of this is the principle that "all men are created equal." I agree with that principle, but I also understand that Americans valued it very differently in 1776 than they do today, and that similarly other cultures we engage with around the world today will value it differently than we do today. We need to stand on our principles, we need to hold ourselves to our stated values, but we need to withhold judgment of others.
Dayuhan says we invaded Afghanistan and started the insurgency there. No. We conducted UW to assist the Northern Alliance insurgency to prevail. The current insurgency is because we then set about making a new, illegitimate government out of the Northern Alliance, and enabling their bad behavior by protecting them from the segment of their populace that they chose to exclude from participation in opportunity and governance. There was an insurgency when we got there, there is an insurgency now, we just changed the roles. If we shifted our focus to forcing GIROA to evolve rather than enabling them to stay the same we would get on a faster track to helping stabilize the country.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
What I actually said was this:
Whether we removed the government we didn't like through UW or through invasion is really quite irrelevant. What matter is that we removed a government an installed one that was shaped and designed by us to suit our purposes. That government now faces an insurgency, and we are deluding ourselves if we pretend that today's insurgent/government conflict is not a consequence of our intervention. If we hadn't intervened there would still be conflict, but the government that exists today would not exist and the conflict would be fundamentally different: we wouldn't be in it and the Northern Alliance would not have prevailed.We need to face reality, and the reality is that these "insurgencies" do not exist because of the governments they are fighting. They exist because we chose to remove governments we didn't like and replace them with governments that we like.
That realization is important because it underscore the reality that we do not necessarily have to be involved in insurgencies, or in COIN. We are involved now because of our choices, choices that were in no way necessary. If we do not wish to be so involved in the future, we can make different choices. The COIN role is not something thrust on us by circumstances beyond our control. We chose it.
One could argue that the belief in our capacity to force other governments to evolve is what got us into today's mess in the first place. I'm not at all convinced that we can, or that we should try. The evolution of other people's governments is generally not our business.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 10-06-2010 at 11:44 AM.
Defining war (armed conflict) for what purposes ?
Clearly, the existence of "war" and "armed conflict" must be determined for legal purposes (triggering of Conventions and various statutes) and for many derivative purposes (e.g., ROEs, RUFs, etc.).
The question is: for what purposes, other than legal and legal derivatives, do we need to define war (armed conflict); and how do those definitions differ from the legal construct ?
This question is generated by Steve Metz's Conference Brief (post on p.2).
For legal purposes in the US, the existence of "war" and "armed conflict" can be determined easily if we have either a formal declaration of war or an AUMF. Some uncertainly can exist if Congress has not yet acted and the Executive is acting under interim CinC authority. See below under line.
Except for legal definitions and practices, this and other discussions here about "war" seem to go around in circles. Discussions of "warfare", however, seem to be much more focused, even though they may be marked by intense disageements as to strategy, tactics, etc.
--------------------------
Declarations of War & AUMFs
Formal declarations of war were going out of style when the Constitution was drafted. James Kent (a noted NY judge, as well as a scholar), in Kent's Commentaries from 1826, made it perfectly clear that the Constitution did not require a formal declaration of war; but it did require a joint act of Congress:
Thus, there must be at least an AUMF act by Congress, which may be short of a formal declaration of war.LECTURE III. OF THE DECLARATION, AND OTHER ABLY MEASURES OF A STATE OF WAR.
....
2. Declaration of War.
....
But though a solemn declaration, or previous notice to the enemy, be now laid aside, it is essential that some formal public act, proceeding directly from the competent source, should announce to the people at home their new relations and duties growing out of a state of war, and which should equally apprise neutral nations of the fact, to enable them to conform their conduct to the rights belonging to the new state of things. War, says Vattel, is at present published and declared by manifestoes. Such an official act operates from its date to legalize all hostile acts, in like manner as a treaty of peace operates from its date to annul them. As war cannot lawfully be commenced on the part of the United States without an act of Congress, such an act is, of course, a formal official notice to all the world, and equivalent to the most solemn declaration.
Kent illustrates that by examples from the times before and after the Constitution was adopted (footnotes omitted below - see full text at link above for context):
Formal declarations of war were somewhat revived by the Hague Conventions; but again fell into disuse after WWII.Since the time of Bynkershoek, it has become settled by the practice of Europe that war may lawfully exist by a declaration which is unilateral only, or without a declaration on either side. It may begin with mutual hostilities. After the peace of Versailles, in 1763, formal declarations of war of any kind seem to have been discontinued, and all the necessary and legitimate consequences of war flow at once from a state of public hostilities, duly recognized and explicitly announced by a domestic manifesto or state paper.
In the war between England and France, in 1T78, the first public act on the part of the English government was recalling its minister; and that single act was considered by France as a breach of the peace between the two countries. There was no other declaration of war, though each government afterwards published a manifesto in vindication of its claims and conduct. The same thing may be said of the war which broke out in 1793, and again in 1803; and, indeed, in the war of 1756, though a solemn and formal declaration of war, in the ancient style, was made in June, 1756, vigorous hostilities had been carried on between England and France for a year preceding.
In the war declared by the United States against England, in 1812, hostilities were immediately commenced on our part as soon as the act of Congress was passed, without waiting to communicate to the English government any notice of our intentions.
Drawing the "Armed Conflict" Line
Some problems exist in the legal arena where the President acts unilaterally. It illustrates an instance from Kosovo where the lawyer-politicians at the "highest levels" did not measure their statements according to the legal norm.
An educational trip into why politicians should often shut up.From CLAMO's, LL Kosovo (pp. 61-62 pdf) (link here):
Both prior to and during the early days of the air campaign, disagreement existed within U.S. and NATO political and legal circles over whether or not LOAC applied to Operation Allied Force.[5] Because LOAC applies to international armed conflicts,[6] the precise legal issue was whether Operation Allied Force constituted an international armed conflict. It also seems apparent that political concerns entered the calculation.[7]
The debate proved more than academic when Yugoslav forces captured three U.S. soldiers conducting a security patrol along the border between the FRY and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on 31 March 1999, one week after NATO forces had dropped the first bombs of Allied Force.[8] At issue was the soldiers' legal status: were they prisoners of war entitled to full Geneva Convention[9] protections (as would be the case if LOAC applied); were they "detainees" entitled to some lesser status;[10] were they common criminals under host nation law; or were they something else?
The immediate U.S. political response was that the soldiers had been "illegally abducted."[11] This position quickly evolved into a curious amalgam of prisoner of war language mixed in with demands for immediate return of the soldiers (although prisoner of war status affords protections under international law, it also allows the detaining power to hold the prisoner until the end of the conflict).[12]
The ultimate U.S. position was that LOAC applied to Operation Allied Force and, accordingly, that the soldiers were prisoners of war.[13] However, by not presenting an early, united front on the status of the captured soldiers, equivocation within U.S. policy channels potentially placed the soldiers in harm's way. For example, the Serbs might have agreed with early U.S. statements that made no mention of prisoner of war status, thereby concluded that the soldiers did not have combatant immunity, and then tried the soldiers for domestic crimes.[14]
5. [JMM: very long footnote on jus ad bellum omitted; cited in note 5 and below, Major Geoffrey S. Corn & Major Michael L. Smidt, "To Be or Not to Be, That is the Question:" Contemporary Military Operations and the Status of Captured Personnel, ARMY LAW., June 1999, p.1 et seq.]
6 Common Article 2 of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 states that "the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties." Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, Aug. 12, 1949, art. 2-3; Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick, and Shipwrecked Members at Sea, Aug. 12, 1949, art. 2-3; Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, art. 2-3; Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Aug. 12, 1949, art. 2-3.
7 See Kosovo AAR, supra note 5, at 257, 261.
8 For a detailed discussion of this incident and an analysis of the status of captured personnel in modern military operations, see Corn & Smidt, supra note 5, at 1.
9 Specifically, the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, supra note 6.
10 The initial NATO guidance was that "detainee" would be the appropriate term for a captured member of NATO forces. See Kosovo AAR [CLAMO, Kosovo After Action Review Conference (12-14 June 2000); Transcript, note 5 of LL Kosovo] at 265.
11 The phrase was used by both President Clinton and Secretary of Defense Cohen. See Guy Dinmore & Joan Biskupic, Yugoslavia Opens Case Against 3 American Soldiers, WASH. POST, Apr. 3, 1999, at A11.
12 Department of State Spokesman James Rubin, at a press briefing held the day after the soldiers' capture, used a confusing mixture of terms, asserting that the soldiers were at once prisoners of war entitled to Geneva protections and "illegal detainees" who should be immediately released. James P. Rubin, U.S. Dep't of State Daily Press Briefing (Apr. 1, 1999).
13 On the same day that Mr. Rubin made his confusing comments, Department of Defense Spokesman Kenneth Bacon articulated what soon became the official U.S. government position: "We consider them to be [prisoners of war]. . . . By international law the Geneva Convention applies to all periods of hostilities . . . . [T]he government has decided that the Geneva Convention applies." Kenneth H. Bacon, Off. of the Ass't Sec'y of Defense (Public Affairs), Dep't of Defense News Briefing (Apr. 1, 1999). Interestingly, despite the conclusion that the soldiers were prisoners of war and thus could be kept until repatriated at the end of the conflict, the Reverend Jesse Jackson was widely credited with securing the soldiers' 2 May 1999 release as a result of the private religious delegation that he led to Serbia. ....
14 See Corn & Smidt, supra note 5, at 14-18.
Regards
Mike
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks