LOLOL. Well, all I can say is that this would be a great podcastOriginally Posted by jcustis
. Barring that, I'd definitely agree to buy a couple of rounds to hear that discussion!
Marc
Brilliant, useful
Interesting, perhaps useful
Of little utility, not practical
Delusional
Errr....just...errrr.
LOLOL. Well, all I can say is that this would be a great podcast
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Not bad
I just finished Fabius's article, not bad, although I don't agree with much of it, I do understand his position now.
Fabius states the obvious, which is that the home team has the advantage. This has always been true in every war we fought, so it is illogical to assume to this advantage always equates to victory. The fact is that it is not always possible to find indigenous personnel to do your dirty work (surrogate or unconventional warfare), and even when it is possible, it isn’t always desirable. We were doing a regime change, and while the Kurds and Shi’a supported seeing Saddam disposed, only the Kurds were willing to work with the U.S.. The Kurds are great warriors, but they are also a political liability, so their utility was limited. Non Kurds didn’t like seeing armed Kurds in their neighborhood. If our objective is a unified Iraq, then the perception we’re siding with one ethnic group has more disadvantages than advantages. The same can be said about using the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. We simply flipped the coin (NA on top, Taliban on the bottom); we didn’t really change the underlying conflict conditions. In my opinion we have lofty ideals that are not achievable (e.g. “imposing” democracy on a society that clearly isn’t ready for it), but that doesn’t mean our military strategy is flawed, it means our political strategy is. Yes they go hand in hand, but they are two different hands, and in this case the left hand is dysfunctional, because it doesn’t understand the limitations of the right hand.
Another point on so called home turf advantage is that it is very much localized, as there are cultural sub-states within most nations. I don’t fit in well in Latino or Black neighborhoods, and nor do I fit in well in a fundamentalist Baptist town in Alabama. You can be a foreigner within your own nation, so achieving true home turf advantage using an indigenous army is normally a bridge too far.
Furthermore, we're not losing in Iraq because we don't have home turf advantage, we're losing because we had no plan to transition from combat operations to stability operations (it was supposed to happen magically according to Wolfowitz), so we created a big gap where there was little or no control (remember we liberated Kuwait, we didn’t liberate Iraq, the difference is crucial), and that gap allowed chaos to grow to the tipping point. Several actors emerged in this gap quickly pushing the situation into a state of anarchy in many regions.
This wasn’t a preplanned insurgency, because the regime didn’t plan on losing, and many Iraqi Military leaders were waiting to join the coalition (as promised), so this was an emerging crisis that could have been mitigated with martial law, enforced by the U.S. military in parallel with the Iraqi Army (which was the original plan, until Bremer made the biggest strategic mistake in U.S. history when he disbanded them). Then to add fuel to our incompetence fire, we denied the nature of the conflict (we don’t have an insurgency), and we didn’t have enough troops to react with.
The reason I'm revisiting all of this is to point out that even if our COIN doctrine fails us in Iraq at “this time”, it isn't because our doctrine isn't valid (it may or may not be), but rather that we applied it too late. We're in a different type of conflict now, and more U.S. troops, more advisors, and more jobs more jobs may help (they definitely would have helped in 2003), it may also be too late for this approach, since Humpty Dumpty already fell off the wall.
We failed originally because we refused to recognize the insurgency, now we’re failing to recognize the Civil War, so we still seem to be behind the power curve. Will our COIN doctrine work in the midst of a Civil War, I don't think it will. What we need now is a peace enforcement strategy with zones of separation, agreements between the belligerents, and then strive for political agreement (compromise, so hard to come by in the ME). It is a complex playing field with tribes, religion wars, freedom fighters (those trying to eject the coalition), organized criminals, transnational terrorists, foreign players (Iran, Syria, Turkey, others), etc. We need our best minds at the strategic level (realists, not idealists) to come up with workable solutions.
Fabius from my perspective as a participant in 2003, I would argue that if every Company Commander and his Bn and BDE Cdrs had Kilcullen's 28 articles (and understood the intent) we would have created some breathing space, perhaps enough to allow for a functional political strategy to develop. You look at other divisions compared to the 101st in Mosul at that time, you can see the disparity. The 101st applied COIN doctrine and achieved a remarkable degree of stability (it was still a tough fight), while others simply made the situation much worse. Operations at the tactical level have strategic impact.
What you're saying is true now because we failed to follow our doctrine, not because of our doctrine.
Bill
Links
Can we get links to the Kilcullen articles mentioned in his reply to Fabius?
BTW: Thanks to the SWJ crew for setting up this dialog. I would like to see these guys meet and work the problem together.
The majority are in the first post of this thread. Not certain about Countering Global Insurgency. I probably have it on my work maching.
Here is the "official" citation for ‘Countering Global Insurgency’:
The Journal of Strategic Studies
Vol. 28, No. 4, August 2005, p. 608.
(Subscription only site)
There are articles by him with this title around the web. Not sure if they are identical to the above.
Here is the version I used,from this site (no details as to source or date).
http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen.pdf
Kilcullen has also written some excellent articles in the Australian Army Journal. Easy to find via google (citations available via Google).
Bill goes directly to what are, I suspect, the two key points in this debate.
First, the strategic question about "home court advantages." I will discuss this at some length (as usual, probably too great length!) in my next article. Briefly, this concerns the degree of advantage in 4GW of defense over offense.
There is little agreement in military theory on the superiority of defense over offense, or even if these are useful terms. I believe that they are useful, if imprecise, and that in 4GW defense is decisive.
Second, was our defeat in Iraq inevitable (assuming we do "lose")? Lind and van Creveld, among others, said yes to this -- before our invasion. I agree, and in a dozen articles have explained why I believe so. In my article under discussion I give 1950 as a "red line" date after which 4GW is decisive over previous forms of warfare.
Needless, it is an important question to resolve, essential before we craft a new geo-pol strategy for America.
As Kilcullen and I both say earlier in this thread, the current state of the art only allows us to guess at such things -- and (as we both do) state them clearly to facilitate debate.
Answers will only come with time.
F2f
I'll second that. Personally, I'd love to be at that meeting since I think that there are some similar thoughts floating on the horizon.
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
John Robb (Global Guerrillas) 'Chimes In'..
... but not here - so go here - Strategy wars: Lots of discussion of Kilcullen.
Council member ZenPundit also addresses this thread here - Debating Counterinsurgency.
On Edit - Robb takes more than a few liberties in "claiming" intellectual property rights on COIN related issues. Looks like a hurt ego is the crux of his post. Kilcullen on the other hand has a genuine interest in our "boots on the ground".
Two points
I would like to mention two points that have bearing but are overlooked often.
1-We are "not" a democracy we are a Constitutional Republic. If we were a democracy "Al Gore" would have been president (he had the most votes). Then we go public and invade a country to give them democracy which we don't even have in this country. I went all the way through school and not once did I ever pledge allegiance to the democracy for which it stands! But to the Republic for which it stands! Don't you think the rest of the world sees the hypocrisy of this? We have lost the moral high ground through our own stupidity.
2-The types of enemies we are fighting are very different. Rob Thornton of SWC has talked about Mosul and the fact that generations of children have been raised in war, that is all they know. That is very different than a traditional insurgent or even gang motives. It is closer to tribal conditioned serial murders and that is a poor description. When the FBI originally began to profile what we now call serial killers they wanted to call them "Recreational Killers" they did it because they liked it or had simply grown used to it. The name was changed because it was not PC but it is more descriptive. What does this forecast? You are not going to win the hearts and minds of these groups they will take at a sign of weakness and just become more ruthless and brutal. Your only options are to kill them or imprison them for life.
Fabius may be right when he says we should concentrate on the defense because it is surely lacking in our country.
response to Kilcullen's email posted earlier (edited version)
I agree with many of the points you raise. For example, those observations about the current state of counterinsurgency theory and practice.
Similar comments from the "Conclusions" of Countering Global Insurgency and Three Pillars of Counterinsurgency expressed this so well I will use them prominently in my next article.I'm still yet to be convinced that 4GW as currently expressed, or indeed any other paradigm including COIN, contains all the answers we seek for the present round of conflicts.
I disagree with you regarding a few points.
You are obviously both. Anybody reading all 72 pages of Countering Global Insurgency – esp. Appendix C, CASE STUDY – SYSTEMS ASSESSMENT OF INSURGENCY IN IRAQ -- will mark you as a theoretician of the first water.I'm fundamentally a practitioner rather than a theorist ...
Likewise I believe you are too modest regarding the conceptual foundation of “28 articles. My first draft examined the recommendations of 28 articles as expressions of your longer works, which would have been conceptually a stronger paper. Unfortunately the readers of DNI do not, I believe, respond as well to long, complex works as well as that of the professional journals which publish your work. It’s a disadvantage of writing for a wide audience. With 28 articles you appear to have had the best of both worlds, as it brought the thinking from your greater works to a general audience.
This quote goes directly to the heart of the debate:
I agree totally with the first sentence, and disagree absolutely with the second. The article was an attempt to highlight this point, expanding on similar views expressed in my previous articles. Our troops might be doing things right, but are we strategically doing the right thing? As you know, getting this wrong is an easy and oft-traveled road to defeat.I have huge confidence in the adaptability and agility of the guys in the field and have been impressed, again and again, as I have served with them in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. But even if the advice is not strictly achievable, I still think it's worth giving since it helps turn the "ship of state" in the right direction.
Equally important, I agree with the following:
The conundrum of 21st century warfare is exactly a “paradigm crisis” as described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.I would argue that this set of conflicts we are in actually breaks all our existing paradigms so that we need a fundamental re-think.
History suggests that these complex debates are resolved through exchange of papers. That is, exchange of articles and correspondence, with new ideas often coming from unlikely sources.
---
I'll addition to the last line of this response ... it could come from you, me, someone on the SWC, anyone. We need to have our minds open to recognise solutions when they appear.
What we're seeing is a classic terrorist group generational spiral. I did some research on this kind of stuff in the 1980s, and it was often discussed then. The first generation of a terr group tends to be more idealistic/ideological, and then as each generation is killed off or arrested and replaced with new members, the spiral into killing for the sake of killing becomes more marked. Ideology remained, but with each new "generation" it becomes more and more vague; distinguished by the fact that it is most likely unattainable. It's a justification and no longer a goal.
What is different now is the scale.
I would buy that
Steve, I would buy that. Especially the scale of it, which is only going to increase if we don't figure out how to stop it. The justification becomes their purpose in life, very deadly. Remember the 120mm post on what color is your AK? I think Jed posted picture of an AK that was highly decorated. When people start doing things like that, violence is becoming part of their very basis for being and they usually don't want to talk about building a great country or how can I be a good citizen.
Follow-Up...
From the John Robb - "Global Guerrillas Chimes In" post earlier...
Robb takes more than a few liberties in claiming intellectual property rights on COIN related issues. Looks like a hurt ego is the crux of his post. Kilcullen on the other hand has a genuine interest in our "boots on the ground".... but not here - so go here - Strategy wars: Lots of discussion of Kilcullen.
Council member ZenPundit also addresses this thread here - Debating Counterinsurgency.
You be the judge on what Robb has to say in his blog entry.
As an endnote - Robb has this to say about FM's continuing fixation on Dave's works:...it's interesting to see how Kilcullen is drawing from the pool of theory very similar to global guerrillas.
<snip>
Anyway, its flattering that this guy is repurposing ideas I've already explored (he is not a plagiarist by any measure!). The only problem is that since he is merely repackaging it, he seems to lack the intuitive grasp necessary to translate it into viable strategy. As a result, his counter-insurgency recommendations are bland gruel of little import.
Once again our theorists know better than our guys who are living and breathing this stuff. I would not take so much exception to Robb - except - well - he seems to be wrapped up into himself and not a player when push comes to shove.Fab, you did a great job kicking the crap out of the 28 articles. Bravo.
I am one "knuckle-dragger" that would go to war with Kilcullen.
Dave,
I don't know why John Robb is talking about plagiarism since most of his whole theory comes "Airpower and Infrastructure: Lord of the Rings" by Lt. Col. Edward J. Felker USAF.
The paper itself is combination of Chaos theory and Warden's 5 Rings, with ring #3 Infrastructure being the most important. The paper is on the INTERNET somewhere if I can still find it I will post it. Point being he does not have any original ideas, dosen't even understand a lot of his own from what I have read. Notice he is following the Mexico situation very closely now. Gee where did that come from?
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/.../Text/mp14.pdf
Last edited by slapout9; 01-08-2007 at 03:31 AM. Reason: post paper
As I just finished watching M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, I am struck by the sentiment from SWJED's statement:
I think many who have lost some of their brethren in this fight would agree with me that we find hope in Kilcullen's works... It is that hope that is important for us, because it is born from deeds of valiant men and women who are the so called two-thirds who either get it or are trying to get it. This is a matter of life and death for us, and them. Sometimes that allows one a peculiar ability to judge character. Kilcullen's character is that he can write (and most likely speak) concisely in an Al Gray or J. M. Mattis sort of way. He was not part of the apparatus that sent us to war, but because he speaks with a voice of positive hope, he seems to be the "king of the hill" that others are trying to tear down.I am one "knuckle-dragger" that would go to war with Kilcullen.
If there was an easy button for this long war, we would have hit it long ago.
------
P.S. At the end of the day, I suppose none of this will matter, because the course of this fight will be charted by so many others who have never had to walk outside the wire.
Last edited by jcustis; 01-08-2007 at 04:40 AM.
That's a powerful observation, an application of the general effect where a war's increasing death toll requires escalation of the goals -- to justify cost in blood beyond what we originally expected. WWI starts as a battle in some rim states, escalates to a war "to end wars."
On this level it applies to us as well. We go into Iraq to find WMD's, and eventually our goals morph to bringing democracy to the Middle East.
Even more relevant, we're seeing what I call a Darwinian “ratchet”:
From: http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_forecast_7-2006_part1.htm... in which the security forces (in effect) power the insurgency. The security services cull the pack of insurgents. They eliminate the slow and stupid, clearing space for the “best” to rise in authority. That is, those most able to survive, recruit, and train new ranks of more effective insurgents. The more severe our efforts at exterminating the insurrection, the more ruthless the survivors.
Hence the familiar activity pattern of a rising sine wave, seen in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and a dozen other places: successes by the security forces, a pause in activity, followed by another wave of activity – but bigger and more effective.
Both of these dynamics tend to make insurgencies difficult to defeat.
Hope
Hi JC,
I think that this observation is actually crucial. I've been arguing on a number of threads that this is a symbolic war and, if we strip away all the verbiage, what that comes down to is "this is what we believe, this is what we have to offer, and this is why it is better than what the insurgents offer." I haven't seen that coming from many of the political leaders, but I have seen it coming from the people on he ground.
Quite true about who will end up charting the course, but why say that it doesn't matter? JC, as a suggestion, if you read through Kilcullen's Countering Global Insurgency, esp. sections 3 and 4, but change the focus from the Islamists to the West, what do you find? His suggested strategy of disaggregation is already being used against us by the Islamists. One of the reasons why I really like the SWC is that it is, whether it was intended or not, using a strategy of re-aggregation.
On the pragmatics of some of this, however, I'm moving over to the cell phone thread.
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Before we start burning all theorists...
I don't know that you can restrict input to "only those who've been there" any more than some can claim "those who've been there are too close to it." It is possible for a theorist (provided he or she is properly versed in historical method and has the background and knowledge to deal intelligently with his or her subject) to have very valid input on Small Wars. By the same token, a person with an agenda and "academic credentials" can do much damage. But the same also goes for those who've been there. I've seen any number of military talking heads who need to just shut up (remember the AF JAG general's article in AFJ, for example); just like their civilian counterparts. Not everyone who's "been there" necessarily "gets it."
The last thing we want to do is turn the exchange into an "us" (whoever "us" is) versus "them" (again, whoever "they" are) argument. The concept of Small Wars is too important for that.
The terror spiral
I think there is a correlation between the spiral of terror that Steve talks about and the similar spiral in Islamist extremism. There is a belief that they are not being successful because they are not Islamist enough so they ratchet up their religious requirements. That explains the Taliban effect of certain of the movements and al Qaeda especially. The same thing happens in their fighting where the violence is also ratcheted up. Think of it in terms of corporal punishment of the incorrigible. You keep trying to inflict pain until you get the results you want. The enemy's hearts and minds campaign seems to be based on a theory Chuck Colson espoused during Vietnam--"When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
In both the religious and fighting aspects, the spiral is based on their failure not the success of their operations. When your goal is intimidation and you are failing, the enemy's answer is to be more intimidating. Hey, it kept Saddam in power for a long time.
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