The new 2014 FM 3-24 Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies

[TheCurmudgeon]

I have some issues with the way the JP describes an insurgency. My particular issue may be a bit tangential, but it appears that the JP implies that the narrative can control the people.

Compelling Narrative.
It takes dynamic and intelligent leadership to build a compelling narrative that links grievances to a political agenda and mobilizes the population to support an unlawful subversive and violent social movement. That narrative explains who is to blame for the grievances, how the grieances will be addressed, how the population will benefit under the insurgent’s ideology, and how the population and insurgency should work together to accomplish that goal. The compelling aspect of the narrative is not only in its content, but how it is presented (i.e., promoted and publicized) to the target audience, which normally requires ideological leaders. It is consistently reinforced through communication and through propaganda of the deed. Insurgents often frame grievances in terms of local identities, such as religious, ethno-sectarian, or regional groupings. A compelling narrative is often spun around the marginalization of a particular community, region, or class by the government.

Page II-4

First, it creates the impression that insurgency is a rational action and that the participants are rational actors. It is my opinion that passion rules the population when it comes to insurgencies (or at least has a greater influence than rationality). War requires the passion of the people.

Second, identity does matter, but it is complex. To raise the passion of the people you must be able to create a level of hatred that is based on more than a simple narrative. There are plenty of different identities in many countries. They are not all in a state of civil war. The difference is the level or hatred, the need for retribution; for revenge. That is what makes the blood boil. So it is more than just a difference in identity - it is an injustice so sever that only retribution in kind will make up for it.

Third, the narrative seems to be used to create legitimacy in the insurgents. It creates the impression that all it takes to create legitimacy is a good public relations campaign. I have written against this view elsewhere.

Max Weber created a problem for many people when he defined legitimacy as a belief. While a belief is an internal motivator beliefs can be transitory. One can believe in one thing one moment and another thing the next. Beliefs are subject to change based on the influence of others. A powerful speaker or a well-crafted public relations campaign can change what people believe about a topic. This creates the false impression that all a government has to do to be legitimate is to convince its people to believe that it is legitimate. As David Beetham put it in The Legitimation of Power when describing the problem created by defining legitimacy as a simple belief: “[t]aken to their logical conclusion, such definitions would imply that the reason for the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 lay in a deficiency of public relations, rather than anything actually wrong with the system of rule itself.”[43] While this statement may just be an ad absurdum argument for the proposition the idea that legitimacy can be created is alive and well. It is the foundation of America’s nation building and democratization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.[44] Beliefs can be changed easily. Beliefs vary with the situation. Values are beliefs but they are enduring beliefs. They can remain engrained in a culture for centuries[45]. Values are a component of belief that forms the basis of Weber’s “legitimitätsglaube”. Barker recognized this when he identified values as a fourth form of Weberian legitimacy.

You cannot create legitimacy with a good story. Here is the failure of the way the narrative is described.

The JP makes the point that for an insurgency to be created there must be an opportunity. I would argue that that opportunity must have three components. The first is that a section of the population who can clearly identify themselves as somehow being different from, or separate to, the ruling elements of the government. The identity is a preexisting or can be created based on ideological differences. Second, the portion of the population already perceives the government as either being having weak legitimacy or being illegitimate AT LEAST in reference to their group. Third, that there is some recent or historical "wrong" committed by the government that is so severe that it requires retribution. This can be an actual act of the government (shooting protestors), a promise not kept (greater political freedom), or a historical difference (Shia'h versus Sunni).

Again, I am thinking out loud, but I don't believe that a good PR campaign is enough to start a civil war. It has to be tied to passion about an injustice that must be corrected.

[Bill Moore]

Newguy,

As much as I have criticized the COINdista doctrine and what I believe to be a misdirected focus on nation-building I should be fair and read the new version. Lots of reading backlogged, so it may take a month or so to get to it, but in the meantime you may find this report interesting and want to compare it to the doctrine to see if there are similar of different findings.

Bill


http://www.usip.org/publications/cou...-afghanistan#!

•Post-2001 Afghanistan exemplifies the deleterious effects of exogenous, militarized statebuilding, which has undermined peacebuilding and statebuilding at many levels.
•The paradox of counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan is that its success depends on a high-capacity regime to put it into practice but that exogenous statebuilding prevents the emergence of such a regime in the first place.

[Newguy]

Newguy,

As much as I have criticized the COINdista doctrine and what I believe to be a misdirected focus on nation-building I should be fair and read the new version. Lots of reading backlogged, so it may take a month or so to get to it, but in the meantime you may find this report interesting and want to compare it to the doctrine to see if there are similar of different findings.

Bill


http://www.usip.org/publications/cou...-afghanistan#!

Yeah, there is a little subgroup that is very very interested. What I think will be interesting is when the new FM 3-24 hits the street. It's much different then the last and it will interesting how it is thought of in comparison to the 2006 version and to the JP that just hit the street.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I am four chapters in and have been impressed by the author’s efforts to not box the JFC into a specific political solution. So far it does not appear to be a document expressly designed to promote democracy.

I have a couple of issues that are still fermenting in my mind. One has to do with the way the document connects identity based groups with insurgents. The other is what appears to be a failure to identify which grievances are likely to result in deadly conflict and which will simply be an annoyance.

There are other structural issues that can be corrected in other manuals. For instance, there should be a manual that specifically deals with Transitional Military Governance instead of making it a subsection of this document. I believe that it is a unique enough to warrant a more in-depth analysis. Plus it seems to assume that a political insurgency will result in the wake of an invasion. Although that has been recent experience, I am not sure that it has to be that way.

Of course, it could be like Steve McQueen (Vin) said in the original “Magnificent Seven”

Vin: Reminds me of that fellow back home that fell off a ten story building.
Chris: What about him?
Vin: Well, as he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good." Tch... So far, so good!

[Compost]

Several recent and earlier items in Small Wars Journal have apparently been stimulated by the re-issue of JP 3-24 in November 2013. After skimming through it and also reading some entire pages my first attempt to describe that new JP 3-24 was satisfied by one word: ‘ turbid ‘: defined in Macquarie Dictionary as “ 3. disturbed; confused; muddled. “ and first-up in Chambers as “ disordered; muddy; thick. “

But that description was facile and did not do justice to the people responsible for preparation and issue of JP 3-24. They would surely have been alert to defects and aware that a small editorial group could reduce any bulky committee draft to a more instructive and readily assimilated version.

The conclusion to the Executive Summary is carefully worded. It consists of one sentence: “ This publication provides joint doctrine for the planning, execution, and assessment of COIN operations. “

The purpose of JP 3-24 could be clarified by modifying that conclusion. It might then commence with a sentence such as “ This publication provides joint doctrine for theatre-level command and staff elements, and to assist command issue of doctrine in a format suitable for use by units in a particular military theatre.” It might also mention that the publication is not itself intended for purposeful use by tactical units.

Nowhere in JP 3-24 is it mentioned that subliminal but major goals are to demonstrate scholarship, and achieve a wide span of socio-political acceptance at home and abroad.

JP 3-24 is unlikely to be modified to include any of the above for that would make it less generally acceptable. Nor is it likely to be revised in the near term to become less turbid or to include anything suggested in the streams of comment that continue in SWJ and elsewhere. Nevertheless ‘ useful ‘ could be an appropriate descriptor for the new JP 3-24.

That applies particularly because external comment may result in some useful input to other publications and instructions that are classified military-eyes-only. Hence, SWJ and suchlike even though some of their content will be or will seem to be turbid.

There are, however, two fundamental defects in the new JP 3-24. One: it fails to address the nature, distinction and prosecution of the concept or concepts of operation that is/are currently known as COIN as a component of PO, FID and anti-guerilla operations. Two, it endorses the employment of SOF for strike/DA away from population centres and hence promotes under-use of linguistic and pop-centric training and skills which are routinely concentrated in SOF, and alternately available (to a lesser extent) in intelligence elements.

[BrentWilliams]

Paper on the differences between the 2006 version and the 2014 version.

http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conference...cb4079f07b.pdf

Throughout the two versions of the counterinsurgency manual, three main obligations are consistently associated with U.S. forces and the process of bolstering legitimacy in the host nation: suppressing the insurgency, building host nation agency and capabilities, and ensuring the pro- tection of host citizens throughout this process. These obligations are conceptualized as highly interdependent and entwined, and the degree to which U.S. forces are perceived to fulfill these obligations is believed to influence the overall process of bolstering the legitimacy of the host government and its partnership with U.S. forces. Interestingly, in the new manual the notion of legitimacy has changed in ways that impose new limitations on the scope of U.S. forces’ positive influence over the legitimacy process. Based on analytical findings, I argue that this loss of positive influence, and greater recognition of a plausible negative impact of U.S. forces, follows from a new way of thinking about local legitimacy and, in particular, its place as a military end state for U.S. forces. Ultimately, the new manual clarifies that the scope of U.S. forces’ positive influence on the quest for legitimacy is beyond the control of U.S. Armed Forces: mission objectives are at the hands of U.S. policymakers, while principal responsibility for bolstering legitimacy resides with host- nation authorities, not U.S. forces.