I am currently working on the initial stages of my thesis for a masters in international relations and I am in the process of forming my research problem. Below is a statement of a research problem I am thinking about pursuing, I was wondering if any one had any thoughts:

The problem of modern warfare begins and ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The failure of the Soviet Union created chaos and confusion for a US military establishment that had spent forty four years preparing to fight a peer power. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the traditional Westphalian State System has been thrown into chaos. The emergence of rogue states, failed states, ungoverned spaces, transnational actors and super-empowered individuals has created a security environment in which conflict has become significantly more complex.(1)

In this new and complex security environment it appears as if irregular warfare(2) has become the dominant form of conflict. The US response to such a perceived shift has been the wholesale retooling of the military to confront the challenges faced by the irregular/asymmetric threat specifically insurgencies.(3) This retooling is best characterized by the much discussed U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (U.S. Army FM 3-24 and Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5)(4) and the newer U.S. Army Stability Operations Manual (U.S. Army FM 3-07). At the heart of both manuals are the related strategic and guiding assumptions that local populations are necessarily the center of gravity(5) in modern warfare and that government legitimacy is necessary for victory.(6) At issue though is the idea that these concepts are pervasive throughout insurgencies, unaffected by the geographic and cultural context of the insurgency, and not the result of the “strategic context”(7) in which they were conceived.

It would seem incorrect, for example, to assert, as several senior military advisors recently did, that: “Insurgencies are similar to snowflakes in that no two are exactly alike. However, the principles used to defeat an insurgency whether executed by the Romans in Gaul, the British in Malaya, or the U.S. in the Philippines, remain much the same.” (8) If it is indeed true that all insurgencies are different how is it possible to combat them all with the same strategic concepts, primarily the assertion of population as the center of gravity and the necessity of central government legitimacy by the population? Such an assumption is based on an all too common flaw in military doctrine, which is that it is designed to address the failures of the last conflict. These assumptions mean that FM 3-24 does not allow for the contextualization of current and future irregular conflicts in terms of conflict specific parameters such as geography and the impact of culture on the relationship between population and authority.

The aforementioned short comings of FM 3-24 are currently on display in Afghanistan, where a COIN operation, designed around the idea that the population is the center of gravity and that government legitimacy is the end goal, have failed to achieve their stated objectives (peace and reconciliation). The highly self sufficient rural population of Afghanistan has eschewed buying into the central government, and has proven a most allusive center of gravity. The context of the conflict in Afghanistan, that is to say a country with limited infrastructure, a highly rural populace and tribal leanings is at odds with the strategic parameters of population centric/development based counterinsurgency. It is not simply that geography and infrastructure make such an endeavor logistically difficult, but the fact that the geography shapes the cultural imagination of the Afghan people and their relationship to central authority.

Counterinsurgency, as described by FM 3-24, is difficult in the best of circumstances. The context of Afghanistan makes it impossible. The geography of Afghanistan makes centralized government difficult to administer. The lack of infrastructure compounds the problem of providing government services to the people. The rural nature of the afghan population makes utilizing it as the center of gravity even more difficult given its dispersed and isolated nature.

The origins of FM 3-24’s shortcomings are its bases in the analysis of both nationalist post-colonial insurgencies and Cold War era ideological insurgencies, specifically the French experience in Algeria, the British experience in Malaya and US experiences in Vietnam, the Philippines and Nicaragua. This set of cases manifests itself in the doctrine as a failure to recognize the diversity of conflict causes, the aforementioned cases being all conflicts with ideological and nationalist origins. As is suggested by Samuel Huntington though, in his seminal work The Clash of Civilization, wars of identity are ever present in the Post-Cold War era.

Modern insurgencies poses a strong identity component, and unlike ideological insurgencies, are not necessarily won by securing the hearts and the minds of the people, which is to say, that the people are not necessarily the center of gravity and that achieving the acceptance of government legitimacy by the people is not necessarily possible. There may be cultural, geographic or practical context that precludes these concepts from playing a central role in the resolution of the insurgency and thus the importance of contextualizing the conflict before applying a strategy. It is inappropriate to assume all insurgencies are the same, and dictums of FM 3-24 as a universal cure. Who fights, what they fight for, where they fight and why they fight is always changing, and so to must the strategy.(9)

Endnotes
(1) Thomas M. Nichols, Eve of Destruction: The Coming Age of Preventative War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 11.
(2) There are many terms used to describe the current conflict environment ranging from 4GW (fourth generation warfare) to asymmetric. This paper will use the term irregular most often in referring to the general nature of the national security threat faced by the United States because it is broadest in definition, and lacks the charged nature of terms such as 4GW.
(3) Interview of Colonel Gian Gentile, conducted by Octavian Manea for Small Wars Journal.
(4) Interview of Colonel Gian Gentile, conducted by Octavian Manea for Small Wars Journal.
(5) Center of Gravity is a military termed first used by Carl von Clausewitz in his work On War, and is generally understood as “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act” ( DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, JP 1-02) for either side of a conflict.
(6) Interview of Colonel Gian Gentile, conducted by Octavian Manea for Small Wars Journal & Stephen Biddle, “The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 2 (June 2008): 347
(7) “Strategic Context”: Strategic Context is one of five major elements common to all strategies and specifically refers to “the overriding military ideas or fads” of the time, it is in essence the military zeitgeist of period. Further discussion of the concept can be found George Edward Thibault’s essay “Military Strategy: A Framework for Analysis”, which is part of the National Defense University volume The Art and Practice of Military Strategy.
(8) Robert Downey, Lee Grubbs, Brian Malloy and Craig Wonson, “How Should the U.S. Execute a Surge in Aghnistan?,” SmallWarsJournal.com (2008): 2, http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...loy-wonson.pdf)
(9) Sebastian L.v. Gorka and David Kilcullen, “An Actor-centric Theory of War: Understand the Difference Between COIN and Counterinsurgency,” Joint Forces Quarterly 60 (1st Quarter, 2011): 18.