Voices Crying in the Wilderness ?? - Part 1
Bill, and everyone else interested:
These monographs take some digesting, but the following people are worth reading - those who don't like unconventional thinking should probably not bother.
Hazelton, Compellence and Accommodation in Counterinsurgency Warfare (2011) (full 376 pp. version; grab this freebie before it disappears; it's over $80 at Amazon). Here's the Abstract:
Hazelton, Excerpt from Compellence and Accommodation in Counterinsurgency Warfare - Chapter 3 The Case Of Dhofar, Oman, 1965-1976 (2011) (52 pp., a fair sample).Abstract:
The United States today defines its greatest security threats as insurgents and terrorists. It is trying to defeat them with a method of counterinsurgency (COIN) known as the population-centric approach. Is the conventional wisdom correct in claiming that the population-centric approach is the key to defeating insurgencies? No.
This project tests the population-centric approach to COIN through a structured, focused comparison, within-case comparison, and process tracing based on archival research and interviews. It finds that purported population-centric successes were not in fact conducted as such. It finds that population-centric COIN is exceedingly difficult to put into practice for reasons inherent to the paradigm. It further asks why states are only able to defeat insurgencies sometimes and develops an alternative theory of COIN success.
The population-centric paradigm prescribes building strong, responsive, distributive states while strictly limiting the use of force to avoid civilian casualties. This relative emphasis grows from the assumption that the key to victory is gaining broad popular allegiance to the state and thus marginalizing the insurgency.
But the population-centric approach is theoretically and empirically mistaken in its assumptions; in its relative emphasis on lots of political reform and only a little fighting; and in its mechanism of building broad popular support. State building and development are processes separate from COIN. My findings suggest that U.S. policy goals based on the population-centric model may be over-ambitious, extremely costly, and simply impossible to achieve.
I argue that COIN success since 1945 is a function of a heavy reliance on the use of force plus limited, targeted political accommodations that together degrade insurgent capabilities in an iterative process of compellence. The state succeeds by fighting, harrying, exhausting, threatening, conciliating, rewarding, and showing the other two key actors—the insurgency and the populace—that guerrilla victory is impossible. Success is not primarily about killing, although at times the counterinsurgent may kill many people. It is primarily about using force to deny victory to the insurgency.
Cases: Dhofar, Oman, 1965–1976: the Philippines-Huks, 1946–1955; Turkey-PKK, 1991–1999; US-Vietnam, 1956–1965; El Salvador, 1979–1992.
From the conclusion of the full monograph (p.324):
Hazelton, The False Promise of the Governance Model of Counterinsurgency Warfare (2012) (54 pp.):In sum, I have determined that the widely heralded population-centric approach is based on a fundamental misreading of past cases and in fact there appears to be an alternative approach, derived from my cases, that seems to work.
This alternative approach, the enemy-centric-plus model, includes four elements:
1) building and professionalizing the military arms of the state to improve targeting and reduce the routine, casual abuse of the populace;
2) providing limited, targeted accommodations to political entrepreneurs whose cooperation strengthens the state’s ability to target the insurgency;
3) targeting the insurgency directly, separately from the populace; and
4) targeting and controlling the populace to restrict the flow of resources to the insurgency.[1]
1 This fourth element is still necessary in cases where the insurgency does not have broad popular support, e.g. in cases where the insurgent-popular relationship is largely coercive and in cases where the insurgency supports itself through the extraction of lootable resources such as timber or gems. This is so because even if the populace does not provide material support to insurgents or provides them only under duress, the insurgency still requires that noncombatants not tell the state what they know about its activities, members, bases, and caches. Population and resource control measures include such things as rationing, a census, identity cards, and checkpoints.
Alach, Slowing Military Change (2008, SSI, 107 pp.). IMO: his most material point (p.64):Abstract:
What explains success in counterinsurgency (COIN)? The conventional wisdom says that COIN success requires major reforms that will remove the popular grievances fueling the insurgency. The logic is that state building and good governance will win broad popular support, marginalizing the insurgent cause and weakening the guerrillas. But this view of COIN success, what I term the “governance model,” relies on a misreading of history.
This study tests the governance approach in the very cases proponents themselves present as models -- the British campaign in Malaya, the U.S.-backed defeat of the Huks in the Philippines, the British-led success in Dhofar, Oman, and the U.S.-backed success in El Salvador -- a test it should pass easily. But the model fails. I find no empirical evidence that the governance approach defeats insurgencies. Indeed, the governance approach was not even applied in these cases.
It is very difficult to apply -- even imperfectly -- for a powerful reason: Major reforms threaten the interests of the elites expected to implement them. In addition, the elites' great power sponsor lacks the leverage to force the issue. This study shows that the governance model is theoretically and empirically mistaken in its assumptions; its emphasis on major reforms; and its mechanism of building popular support for the state as the key to defeating the insurgency.
The cases typically identified as exemplars of governance COIN contradict the governance approach in all respects. Each case included significant intentional uses of force against civilians and relatively little state development or democratization. This research suggests that policymakers and military planners relying on the governance approach base their decisions on a myth, and that employing this approach in current or future conflicts will not lead to success.
In his second monograph (next post), Alach moves away from the technology of warfighting ("RMA") to the psychology of the warfighters and of those who send them to war ("RAM").THE REVOLUTION IN ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE MILITARY
Perception leads into the “one” of the six (and one) noted earlier, and perhaps n the one theme that is truly novel; it may well be the theme that has the greatest effect on the future shape of the strategic environment.
It is closely related to both globalization and the RMA, and it is another revolution: the Revolution in Attitudes towards the Military (RAM).[238] Grossly simplified, it refers to a change in perceptions that is especially apparent in Western democracies. Populations are less willing to serve, demand greater civilian control over defense matters, and are far more casualty averse.
While there has been some alteration to those attitudes in some countries since the events of 9/11, by and large they grow continually stronger around the globe. Militaries have become more politically correct, have embraced diversity and sexual equality, and have become tagged more and more with such roles as peace operations and civil reconstruction, rather than warfighting.
Support for militaries is as high, if not higher, than was the case historically, but the character of that support has changed. Partly, the RAM has come about through the increasing reach of the media, but it is also a sign of the changing political maturity of electorates around the world. Without the overarching threat of the Cold War, the public seldom sees a military cause worth dying or killing for in any great numbers. At the same time, they are wary of the limitations that the high cost of military acquisitions impose on other domestic spending programs.
238. Black, War in the New Century, p. 9.
- to be cont.-
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