A 'Digger' writes The Rise and Fall of Western COIN

[Bill Moore]

Bill, I need one example. Sure, insurgencies have been suppressed for a decade or two quite often by a government that remains uncoerced and set on sustaining its oppressive ways, but those insurgencies always come roaring back. Perhaps with different leaders, different organizational names or ideologies - but the insurgent is only the tip of the iceberg of the insurgency. The insurgency is a condition of grievance residing deep within a population.

Too easy, I'll give you three. Sri Lanka's recent defeat of the LTTE, Saddam's defeat of the Kurds and Shia in 1991, and Assad's father defeated an Islamist insurgency in 1982.

For me legitimacy is a side issue that desired, but not always possible. Furthermore, winning has a legitimacy of its own, the side that can most effectively wield force. From a strategy perspective, I'm principally interested in achieving strategic objectives. There are few government leaders or governments willing to step aside because a segment of their constituency doesn't approve of them, and if they engage in armed conflict to replace that government they are now engaged in war. Both sides, or the multiple sides, have interests that they consider legitimate. Clearly it wasn't in Saddam's, Assad's, or the Government of Sri Lanka's interest to acquiesce to insurgent demands, all were seen as legitimate by segments of their population, so the legitimacy argument loses steam when we try to apply an U.S. melting pot onto other countries.

I'm not arguing whether it was morally right, or that peace would be sustained (is it ever?, we had a civil war after defeating the British), or anything other than the power that be achieved its objective and has legitimacy with a segment of its population. If you want to argue there is a better way, that may or may not be a valid argument. To dismiss that force works is simply wrong. To say it isn't the U.S. way of war (or COIN), is true (unless we need to suppress a separatist group like we did during the Civil War, where we used brutal force). The South didn't see the North as legitimate, instead they were coerced with force. A rough peace endured for decades after, and really the political objectives weren't achieved until well after the Civil Rights Movement, but the war (or insurgency) was won well before then.

Taking it a step further, outside actors like the U.S. have their interests, and they'll often intervene on the side that best represents their interests. This has been a historical truth that I don't see changing anytime soon.

[Bob's World]

Bill,

Your three examples make my point. In each of those cases the government defeated the insurgent, but in so doing only served to suppress the symptoms of insurgency for a short time, while at the same time making the conditions of insurgency within the populations those insurgent groups emerged from worse.


I realize we call that "COIN" but it really isn't. It is counterinsurgent, not counterinsurgency. We could more accurately call it "SOIN" - suppression of insurgency. There are times and places and situations where SOIN makes sense. If you are a colonial power whose primary concern is extraction of resources at lowest possible cost, and the population is resisting your presence, and in revolution against your client regime, then by all means, suppress the symptoms and get on with your colonial profit making.

This is not what the US's mission is these days, but yet the SOIN that so many think of as COIN is derived from the lessons learned from those type of operations.

How would the US benefit in the long term from helping some client regime suppress the symptoms of insurgency in their country?? This is what creates and thickens the vectors of transnational terrorism back to the US. This is what validates and enhances the UW operations of AQ and now ISIL as well.

We have to stop thinking about insurgency as if we were still a colonial power. Until we can do that we are doomed to fail. It is not the fault of our tactics, though bad tactics do not help. It is the fault of our poor strategic understanding of the problem and our poor strategy for approaching these problems in general.


Once one shifts to thinking about these types of conflicts in the proper framework it becomes clear why legitimacy is the central issue, not a side issue. A side issue for SOIN, but central for COIN. One cannot create legitimacy in some other government, and one cannot grant legitimacy to some other government. The more one interferes between a population and their government, the less legitimacy that government has. SOIN operations are typically a deathblow to legitimacy.

The reality for the US is that our interests are better served the less we interfere in these foreign revolutions. I was at a meeting with several successful business executives and a couple members of the state department. For state all corruption is bad. One exec commented that for many places, corruption is how taxation occurs where there is no effective legal taxation. The State reps had a fit. Likewise, insurgency is often how democracy occurs where there is no effective legal means to shape governance. That truth makes people have a fit as well. But still truth all the same.

[Bill Moore]

In general agreement, and why I and others think we need a strategic context that consists foremost of desired ends. Then we can assess if suppressing an insurgency is in our interests or not based on criteria that are bigger than the local conflict.

I'm specifically speaking of U.S. interests, but clearly most of our allies and partners share many common interests that will facilitate collaboration.

While you may be right about riding a dead horse in some cases (Karzai, Maliki, Marcos, etc.), there is strategic risk to simply pulling the rug out from their feet. Beyond local repercussions, over time it sends a message that the U.S. is a fickle friend and will weaken our alliances. Based on that aspect, and I'm sure there are others since it is a tangled web, I don't think dropping someone like Maliki is as easy as you make it seem.

This is not what the US's mission is these days, but yet the SOIN that so many think of as COIN is derived from the lessons learned from those type of operations.

What is the U.S. mission today? We understand the difference between FID and COIN, so sticking specifically to COIN, our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan was to protect/defend the fledging governments that we deemed legitimate. The war in Afghanistan was tied to fighting to the al-Qaeda network, so in my view the intent was legitimate, but in practice fighting al-Qaeda became a side show at best. We started calling every low level Taliban IED producer a high value target and instead of targeting the real networks that threatened us we almost completely transformed the fight. I'm not touching Iraq at the moment, I still can't talk or write about it without spitting venom.

How would the US benefit in the long term from helping some client regime suppress the symptoms of insurgency in their country?? This is what creates and thickens the vectors of transnational terrorism back to the US. This is what validates and enhances the UW operations of AQ and now ISIL as well.

It depends, if we allowed AQI to take over Iraq it certainly wouldn't have reduced terrorism? Allowing Maliki and the Shia to dominate basically made Iraq a proxy state to Iran, so in the end allowing AQI to win would have undermined our interest, and promoting mob rule by imposing democracy to facilitate a Shia take over did undermine our interests. Obvious, maybe in only hindsight, but I don't think so, we needed to develop different options. Let's not forget, AQ attacked several time before 9/11 and then of course the tragic attacks on 9/11 long before we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Our actions made have made the threat worse, the jury is still out on that, but the threat was there before hand.

We have to stop thinking about insurgency as if we were still a colonial power. Until we can do that we are doomed to fail. It is not the fault of our tactics, though bad tactics do not help. It is the fault of our poor strategic understanding of the problem and our poor strategy for approaching these problems in general.

What makes you think we view COIN as a colonial power?

Once one shifts to thinking about these types of conflicts in the proper framework it becomes clear why legitimacy is the central issue, not a side issue. A side issue for SOIN, but central for COIN. One cannot create legitimacy in some other government, and one cannot grant legitimacy to some other government. The more one interferes between a population and their government, the less legitimacy that government has. SOIN operations are typically a deathblow to legitimacy.

Legitimacy may or may not be the central issue depending upon our strategic goals. Furthermore, I think globalization and information technology has fundamentally undermined the folk wisdom that all politics are local. The overwhelming number of foreign actors, both state and non-state, in many of these conflicts (not all) requires we reframe them. Local issues may have provided the tinder that allowed the fire to start, but once it started it took on different characteristics, meaning addressing the original underlying issues won't solve the problem.

The reality for the US is that our interests are better served the less we interfere in these foreign revolutions. I was at a meeting with several successful business executives and a couple members of the state department. For state all corruption is bad. One exec commented that for many places, corruption is how taxation occurs where there is no effective legal taxation. The State reps had a fit. Likewise, insurgency is often how democracy occurs where there is no effective legal means to shape governance. That truth makes people have a fit as well. But still truth all the same.

Of course our business execs would say that, that is how they facilitate deals in many foreign countries. I don't disagree it is part of most cultures, but it is still one of the biggest drivers of conflict in many countries. A government that steals from its people is not legitimate. This is another myth, like all politics is local, that NPS COIN professors like to promote. It matters, and in many locations it matters enough to fight.

[OUTLAW 09]

Since we always seem to lack a strategy for even drinking coffee--interesting short read.

http://zenpundit.com/?p=44685

Is Strategy Dead?

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a “zen“]

[Bob's World]

Pay your taxes yet Bill?? :-)

To a few of your points:

1. Saddam, being a grand master of SOIN, there was no such thing as AQI until we took him out and attempted to replace him with an even more illegitimate, and far less effective, government of our choosing and design. Hell, I even know the American contractor, now an MG in the AF reserve I believe, who wrote their constitution for them.

2. If we put the guy "on the rug" does that mean we are then sentenced to forever working to keep him on the rug, and that if we ever stop we are then pulling the rug out from under him?? When did it stop being a fundamental right of a population to remove a leader who they believe must go? It's still right there in the US Declaration of Independence last time I checked.

3. Every society has a degree of low level corruption that is normal in the context of their respective cultures. We need to stop judging cultures different than our own as being "wrong." Worse, we will do stupid things, like turn traditional Afghan patronage into a massive centralized Ponzi scheme in the name of "centralized government," and then pour Billions of development and security dollars into that Ponzi scheme, and then have the gall to wag our fingers at the Afghan government for being corrupt when we made the whole thing and then funded it!

4. Everything makes me think we view COIN as a colonial power. Our doctrine is all derived from colonial TTPs of Europeans and our own. Everything we do when we go conduct foreign COIN is IAW those colonial perspectives as well. It would be much easier if you could point out for me the one or two things we do in COIN that are not.

The problem is that the truth about insurgency is just to awkward, embarrassing, and inconvenient for governments. It is a big "F" on their report card, and governments almost always come up with dozens of excuses for the F that are beyond their control, (ideology, evil people, bad weather, foreign influence, unemployed youth, etc), and then go out and attempt to hunt down and kill the ones who called them out and gave them that F.

The US is not bad at real COIN, but that is a domestic operation and what we do internal to the US to maintain our own stability. But we don't think of real COIN of being COIN at all, and equally believe strongly that fake COIN (SOIN) is real.

So some Jones rules on Insurgency and COIN that would make us much better:
1. Recognize that all COIN is a domestic operation, and if one is outside their own nation (even if they just took down the government there, but don't intend to stay), it is something else.

2. Resistance insurgency is a continuation of war and warfare, so it is ok to treat it as such.

3. Revolution is internal to a single system, so is not war or warfare. so should never be treated as such. It is civil emergency and an illegal form of democracy.

4. Insurgency need not be violent. The nature of the problem is not changed by the character of the tactics.

5. Any occupation will create a resistance effect by its very nature, the character of the occupation will, however, shape the character of the resistance.

6. Any government created by an occupying or foreign power is de facto illegitimate and will create a revolutionary effect among some aspects of the population by its very nature. Character of that relationship and the perceived degree of illegitimacy will shape the character of the revolution.

7. Revolutions do not happen in healthy governance ecosystems. If one occurs there is a problem in the system that must be addressed if one hopes to effect a true cure and not just suppress the symptoms.

8. Most foreign insurgency we deal with is a blend of Resistance (due to our presence) and revolution (due to the government we created or protect). Many insurgents will be motivate by both factors and they all look alike. Either govern it ourselves and wage war on the population until the suppressed survivors are ready to become Americans; or back out and let the population sort out their own governance issues.


American needs to learn that the world has changed, and that our approach to foreign policy must change also. We must accept more risk in allowing others to sort out their own governance issues, and we must become more tolerant of governance that does not meet our approval. We used to know this and follow those guidelines. We were considered odd by the Europeans for this, but were much better liked in general around the world because of this as well.

[Bill Moore]

Here you go again twisting statements to make them fit into your model

1. Saddam, being a grand master of SOIN, there was no such thing as AQI until we took him out and attempted to replace him with an even more illegitimate, and far less effective, government of our choosing and design. Hell, I even know the American contractor, now an MG in the AF reserve I believe, who wrote their constitution for them.

I wrote,

The war in Afghanistan was tied to fighting to the al-Qaeda network, so in my view the intent was legitimate, but in practice fighting al-Qaeda became a side show at best.

Was Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before we invaded?

As for Iraq, an AQ franchise was was in Kurdistan, it was Ansar al-Islam (AAI) before we invaded, but it was not in Iraq proper. They actually benefited from our no fly zone, because Saddam would have killed them off.

2. If we put the guy "on the rug" does that mean we are then sentenced to forever working to keep him on the rug, and that if we ever stop we are then pulling the rug out from under him?? When did it stop being a fundamental right of a population to remove a leader who they believe must go? It's still right there in the US Declaration of Independence last time I checked.

I think you're confusing your law education with foreign policy and national interests. I don't disagree with you on this, but there are other factors that shape these decisions.

3. Every society has a degree of low level corruption that is normal in the context of their respective cultures. We need to stop judging cultures different than our own as being "wrong." Worse, we will do stupid things, like turn traditional Afghan patronage into a massive centralized Ponzi scheme in the name of "centralized government," and then pour Billions of development and security dollars into that Ponzi scheme, and then have the gall to wag our fingers at the Afghan government for being corrupt when we made the whole thing and then funded it!

A government and its employees stealing from its people has nothing to do with cultural norms. Those are organizational norms, and when they are the norm then government is not serving its people. What is low level corruption? Is a police officer roughing up your relatives to get protection money, the face of government, acceptable corruption? Are government executives who take large percentage of aid or profits a minor level of corruption that strengthens the relationship between the government and its people? This myth was started by businessmen to justify how they do business in these countries. I guess pedophiles are O.K. in SE Asia, because it is normal for families to sell their children to human traffickers to have sex with Euro Trash males in their 40s and 50s? Hey it is their culture, no harm. Ask the pedophiles and that is what they'll tell you.

[Bob's World]

You wrote about AQI,

It depends, if we allowed AQI to take over Iraq it certainly wouldn't have reduced terrorism? Allowing Maliki and the Shia to dominate basically made Iraq a proxy state to Iran, so in the end allowing AQI to win would have undermined our interest, and promoting mob rule by imposing democracy to facilitate a Shia take over did undermine our interests.

That is what I responded to in regards to Iraq. We brought AQ to Iraq when we invaded. You add that we also facilitated AQ to gain an earlier toe hold with our no-fly zone. Perhaps, I'll take your word on that.

We argue "interests" to rationalize all manner of activities, like taking down the Taliban government rather than simply punishing it and leaving it in power. We then end up engaged in generation-long campaign that is absolutely counter to our interests.

Many think the US income tax is stealing. People know when their government is operating outside the cultural norms of their society. in some areas people can vote in new government. in other areas they must resort to revolution. These things are self-leveling. When we intrude to skew the results to be what we think is best for us we disrupt their governance. You would not want China to spend a Billion to get their candidate elected as our president. You'd feel that what they did legally and for their interests was a very illegitimate thing indeed. Other people in other countries feel the same way when we label their revolutionary movements as terrorists, and then conduct operations to ensure that our candidate stays in office.

We have lost our way, one step, one decision at a time over the past 70 years. it happens. We just need to shoot a new azimuth and get back on course. We also need to recognize that some approaches to securing and advancing interests that used to work reasonably well are no longer feasible in the current environment. Our archaic and flawed understanding of what insurgency is, why it happens and how to best resolve it is also a major contributor to many of our current challenges. It is why all of our great tactical actions do not produce intended strategic results. We remain drawn along by our own inertia though.