Edward Luttwak - Counterinsurgency as Military Malpractice

[marct]

Hi Mark,

Luttwak's article is weak in terms of justification of his position. The inaccurate and selective citation of historical example is an old rogues trick in any such polemical piece.

I should point out that selective citation is also standard practice in all forms of writing, whether academic or not. Sometimes it is done from "malice" (i.e. trying to "prove" a point) and sometimes it is just a factor of space restrictions - usually it's a combination of both (it's really a scale). In the case of Luttwak's article, I think he is a little to far for my taste towards the "malice" pole...

Increasingly I am getting tired of 'expert' advice from 'Terrorism' and 'COIN' experts from academia and the media who are not burdened by any practical experience.

Not many academics have that type of practical experience outside of various war colleges. A few cross over well from academia to the Terrorism and/or COIN areas; Montgomery McFate and Teri Wonder are good examples of this. Sometimes you get the cross from the military into academia; Dave Kilcullen and Brian Selmeski being good examples. Most of the time, however, the best you can hope for is that the academics will expertise in cognate areas and will be smart enough to ask for advice from people who actually do have the practical experience.

I am also finding that these people are increasingly 'blood thirsty' in their recommendations. It is amazing how easy it is for these people to be profligate with others lives.

I ran across an interesting phenomenon years ago when I was running my game design company. I would have people over to try out new games, or sometimes just play old ones for pleasure, and I was constantly amazed and disgusted with the casualty levels that ideologues would accept. I remember one large scale Napoleonic miniatures game I ran. One of the players (a "peace activist") commanding a wing of British troops, suffered nearly 80% casualties because he insisted on conducting wave front assaults on entrenched infantry and artillery batteries!

I've seen the same "mental shift" time and time again amongst ideological fanatics. Once they accept that violence is necessary to achieve their ideological goals, casualties are totally unimportant amongst "the People" as long as they live to implement "the Vision" .

If they just want to be windbags they should stick to monday morning quarterbacking in their own small circle of acolytes, undergrads and interns, all of whom can assuage their egos as to their true genius.....

Unfortunately, that's not how the academic game is played. Influencing policy makers translates out to increased grant money which, in turn, leads to increased status, more graduate students and professional honours .

Personally, I don't like that system, but that is the way it operates and you operate outside of it at your own peril.

Marc

[Tom Odom]

Not many academics have that type of practical experience outside of various war colleges. A few cross over well from academia to the Terrorism and/or COIN areas; Montgomery McFate and Teri Wonder are good examples of this. Sometimes you get the cross from the military into academia; Dave Kilcullen and Brian Selmeski being good examples. Most of the time, however, the best you can hope for is that the academics will expertise in cognate areas and will be smart enough to ask for advice from people who actually do have the practical experience.

I would add retired SF Lieutenant Colonel now Dr. Kalev "Gunner" Sepp to that list. He teaches at the NPS and was another of the COIN brain trust after his experiences in El Salvador. His COIN Best Practices is to my mind very much the operational and strategic companion to Kilcullen's 28 at the tactical level.

To hear Dr. Luttwak at his best (or worst) see Bill and Dave's interview as played on ABC (Aussie Broadcast Co).


Best

Tom

[marct]

Hi Tom,

I would add retired SF Lieutenant Colonel now Dr. Kalev "Gunner" Sepp to that list. He teaches at the NPS and was another of the COIN brain trust after his experiences in El Salvador. His COIN Best Practices is to my mind very much the operational and strategic companion to Kilcullen's 28 at the tactical level.

Good call! I'm sure there are others as well.

To hear Dr. Luttwak at his best (or worst) see Bill and Dave's interview as played on ABC (Aussie Broadcast Co).

I've listened to it twice, now, and I have to say that Bill and Dave's Excellent Adventure is quite cool. You're right about hearing Dr. Luttwak on the program - as with you, I'm not sure if it's best or worst .

Marc

[Steve Blair]

Luttwak on the broadcast sounds like a mid-grade actor trying to play Henry Kissinger. Not very good.

In response to the academia versus military stuff, the more I see it the more I'm convinced that you need BOTH, in decent balance. Academics may lack experience, while military people may lack distance. The trick is to find the balance between the two.

[Tom Odom]

Luttwak on the broadcast sounds like a mid-grade actor trying to play Henry Kissinger. Not very good.

Ouch! Say what you think, Steve

I am happy to see that I have seen a number of promising officers headed west toward Monterey, CA and the Naval Postgraduate School...

I also encourage all ILE students--especially those without a Masters--to at least seriously consider the Masters program at CGSC.

I have for years--even when on active duty--pushed for the Army to include REAL FAOs in the pot for the War College versus essentially limiting FAOs to the correspondence course as has been the case. Hopefully some day the Army will realize that FAOs can offer much to their fellow students when it comes to strategy...

Best

Tom

[Steve Blair]

Ouch! Say what you think, Steve

Sorry...but that's the first thing I thought of when I heard him talk, and it just didn't get any better.

[John T. Fishel]

Many only partly related comments:

Dave Kilcullen's blog on Luttwak is spot on, perhaps a little too kind. We should recall how the French won the tactical and operational war in Algeria but lost the strategic war because they lost their legitimacy both internationally and in France.

Of academics who are also practitioners:
Lt. Col. David Last, PhD at the Royal Military College of Canada
Ambassador Edwin Corr at the U of Oklahoma
Dr. Walter Kretchik (LTC ret) at Western Il U
Dr. John Waghelstein (COL ret) emeritus Naval War College, teaches a course at Brown as well
General Fred Woerner emeritus at Boston U
Dr. Max Manwaring at SSI/Army War College
Dr. Tom Marks at SNSEE/National Defense University
Dr. Dave Spencer at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies
Dr. Wm. J. Olson at the Near East/South Asia Center for strategic Studies

Of some smart, knowledgeable "pure" acadeics:
Dr. Dick Schultz at Fletcher
Dr. Tony Joes at St. Joseph's University
Dr. Chris Madsen at Canadian Forces College

[Old Eagle]

FAOs can offer mush...?

Don't need FAOs for that, we have faculty!!

[SWJED]

Frank Hoffman of the USMC's Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) - LtCol USMCR (Ret.) - good stuff - deep thinker.

[Mark O'Neill]

I would add Steve Metz and Conrad Crane from Carlisle to the list and Bruce Hoffman from RAND.

[Tom Odom]

FAOs can offer mush...?

Don't need FAOs for that, we have faculty!!

Thanks for the proof reading. Maybe you care to comment on the point, which by the way is that most manuever officers who attend the War College have had little if any exposure to strategy beyond what little they happened to get in CGSC. The exception is the FAO field.

Tom

[Old Eagle]

Tom:

Since the "s" key is not next to the "c" key, I have to assume that you made a Freudian slip.

As with most FAOs, I was relegated to the corresponding studies version of the War College. One of my biggest disappointments, however, occured during a resident phase when one of my maneuver colleagues interrupted a discussion of strategy with the comment, "I don't want to know about this stuff! Just give me my mission and I'll figure out how to do it."

Another classic case was a PE to plan an operation --"assume that transit and overflight rights have been obtained". Several years later, while I was trying to negotiate transit and overflights for OEF with one of our FRIENDS, there are numerous times I wanted to just assume that they had been granted.

[Tom Odom]

You could be correct...

it may have been freudian....

Your examples are exactly my point as well....

One of my own personal failures was during Desert Shield and we were doing the Christians (Intel beriefers) versus the Lions (CSA,VCSA,DCSOPS,DCSINT etc etc) and the topic was Scuds. I had already briefed the DCSOPS (then LTG Reimer) and a special briefer came in and briefed Iraq Scuds. He did so purely from the tech side, per the DCSINT and A/DCSINT guidance, both of who were sigint types not analysts. When the briefer fiinished, General Reimer asked, "So the Scuds are not militarily significant?" The briefer with the DCSINT and ADCSINT nodding confirmed that the Scud threat was not militarily significant. I knew better; I had been writing about Saddam's Scuds as a political tool --and they were quite siginficant, coming quite close to provoking an Israeli counter-response and thereby derailing the coalition. I should have said something. I did not because we were told to follow the script. Bad decision.

best

Tom

[John T. Fishel]

I well remember advising my Leavenworth students who were FAOs in the mid 90s that their career choice was a crap shoot as far as promotion was concerned. If they played their cards right and were lucky, they might make LTC or COL. If they were very lucky they could get a star. If, however their timing was wrong, they could enjoy their assignments and retire as a Major. Then came OPMS 21 which seemed to regularize the promotion system. Now a FAO can expect to retire as a LTC or a COL. But we have seen the last of the General Officer FAOs - more than a pity, a tragedy. It was because GEN Fred Woerner was a FAO that we got post-conflict Panama right. And, it may not too far a stretch to say that we got everything after that either wrong or less than optimal because Generals Schwartzkopf, Hoar, Admiral Miller, and GEN Franks were not. (This is not to say that these Flags were either the same or got everything wrong or that they were totally responsible - they did have superiors like SECDEF Rumsfeld, after all...)

[Granite_State]

Many only partly related comments:

Dave Kilcullen's blog on Luttwak is spot on, perhaps a little too kind. We should recall how the French won the tactical and operational war in Algeria but lost the strategic war because they lost their legitimacy both internationally and in France.

Of academics who are also practitioners:
Lt. Col. David Last, PhD at the Royal Military College of Canada
Ambassador Edwin Corr at the U of Oklahoma
Dr. Walter Kretchik (LTC ret) at Western Il U
Dr. John Waghelstein (COL ret) emeritus Naval War College, teaches a course at Brown as well
General Fred Woerner emeritus at Boston U
Dr. Max Manwaring at SSI/Army War College
Dr. Tom Marks at SNSEE/National Defense University
Dr. Dave Spencer at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies
Dr. Wm. J. Olson at the Near East/South Asia Center for strategic Studies

Of some smart, knowledgeable "pure" acadeics:
Dr. Dick Schultz at Fletcher
Dr. Tony Joes at St. Joseph's University
Dr. Chris Madsen at Canadian Forces College

I think T.X. Hammes is doing a PhD at Oxford right now.

[Granite_State]

Or DPhil, whatever they call it there.

[SWJED]

At the Club Troppo blog - Kilkullen, Luttwak and Why the Troops Should Leave Iraq.

[SWJED]

By Frank Hoffman on the SWJ Blog - Luttwaks' Lament.

... A number of studies at RAND and at Harvard have attempted to come to grips with what appears to be an important cause or influence in human conflict. The literature on terrorism clearly documented a dramatic rise in the religious affiliation of terrorist organizations. A generation ago none of the eleven international terrorist organizations was religiously oriented. By 2004, nearly half of the world’s identifiable and active terrorist groups are classified as religious. Today, the vast majority of terrorist groups using suicide attacks are Islamic, displacing secular groups like the Tamil Tigers. Furthermore, religiously-oriented organizations account for a disproportionately high percentage of attacks and casualties.

History suggests that religious influences can escalate the forms, levels, and types of violence. Religion lowers inhibitions and reduces moral barriers to violence, including suicide terrorism. This results in more frequent attacks, greater and longer battles, and more casualties. Religious-based conflicts tend to made it difficult to attain any political compromise or settlements. Not surprisingly, according to a detailed analysis by Dr. Monica Duffy Toft at Harvard, religious civil wars last longer (roughly two years longer) than the average intrastate conflict, and produce four times as many total casualties...

[John T. Fishel]

Frank Hoffman's blog raises important questions about the role of religion in the current global (and Iraqi and Afghan) insurgency, and, most importantly, its place in the new COIN manual. I don't pretend to have an answer but, it seems to me, that the religious fanaticism of AQ and its ilk still do not wholly change the character of the insurgency. It is not as if we have not seen this before. There was an Islamist component to the FLN's war against the French in Algeria. The Moro Insurrection(s) in the Philippines were/are Islamist inspired, at least in part. Similarly, we have dealt with Islamists in Bosnia and Kosovo in recent years as part of the PKOs there. Finally, there is the religious component to the "Troubles" in N. Ireland. In none of these cases have the basic components of the classical approach to COIN brrrn negated. Moreover, David Galula wrote based on his experience in Algeria!
That said, I do believe that we need to look very closely at the religious base of the AQ/Jihadist/Islamist approach to war and insurgency. Although I doubt that the principles of COIN will change, I am equally certain that they will have to be adapted to fit the circumstances. As human beings we reason by analogy, but it is essential that we remember that ALL analogies are wrong - Algeria, Moros, Bosnia, Kosovo, N. Ireland are not Iraq and Iraq is not Afghanistan.

[marct]

I would certainly agree that the role of "religion" is a crucial component in the Long War scenario. It has also been a crucial component of most social movements in North America for the past 25 years (40 if we want to go back to the 1960's). For the moment, I would like to pick up on an observation Frank Hoffman made in is blog:

Religiously inspired or influenced conflicts may alter our usual prescriptions for counterinsurgency. Economic inducements and marginal material gains may not overcome someone’s sacred faith, grasp of life’s meaning, or strong sense of identity. School houses, soccer balls and smiles are not enough. Far too much of our theory is based within a Western mindset and assumes the existence of some cost-benefit calculation of self-interest that may not transcend all civilizations and cultures.

I would go much further and say that the fundamental role of "religion" is crucially misunderstod by most in modern, Western societies: religion is not a political ideology, although the reverse may be true. A "religion" is a symbol system that allows the believer to understand and make sense of "objective reality" which, unlike a political ideology, allows the believer to experience the "truth" of that interpretation. This is the key distinction that is often missed - religious systems start with experiential proof of their validity while ideological systems start with rational proofs.

At the heart of this system of proof lie two key components: a set of "encapsulated" experience of the "Do X and Y will happen" variety where the result ("Y") is outside of the boundaries of "normal" (defined by that culture) and a "teacher" / interpretor figure (who may be a living person, a discarnate being or a book). One "teaches" A "student", then induces an experience, and then interprets that experience in light of the symbol system. This act of interpretation is crucial since it gives the experience "meaning" and places it as part of a coherent "whole". The ability to induce such a experience within the student validates other statements made by the teacher.

A part of this further validation is the, at times, unconscious adoption of the metaphysical assumptions underlying the symbol system that may or may not be overtly stated. For example, if I can induce a past life regression in you, you will, in all probability, start to consider that re-incarnation and karma may be valid. If I can induce a vision of people suffering in Hell, then you may start to consider that a) you only have one life, b) Hell is to be avoided at all costs, and c) that I can tell you how to avoid ending up there. Any competent symbolic Anthropologist who has specialized in studying ritual can induce either of these experiences in about 70-80% of people.

What we have at play here is what scholars of comparative religion call the dynamic between exoteric ("outer") and esoteric ("inner" or "hidden") knowledge. Sometimes, depending on how the religion is structured, some of the "esoteric" knowledge is out in plain sight: prophesying, possession state trances, speaking in tongues (aka glossolalia) are some of the more common examples of "esoteric" knowledge. Sometimes esoteric knowledge is fully hidden, although here are always symbolic indicators of it available in the exoteric form.

What, you are probably asking by now, does this have to do with COIN? The answer is simple: the entire concept behind winning Hearts and Minds is to generate "experiences" in the local populace that will be interpreted as supporting the "government". In effect, Hearts and Minds operations are an attempt to apply an "esoteric ritual" to a local population to support a political ideology. Ultimately, they will fail if the political ideology is not at least partially resonant with the religious system of the local population. By "resonant", I mean that the political ideology must have certain core concepts that are "proven" by the Hearts and Minds activities that are also "proven" by religious "rituals".

To take one simple, and current, example, let us consider the current situation in Al Anbar. In Islam, "wisdom" resides in certain lineages and people within those lineages (loosely the sheiks) and also within a certain non-lineage based class of "teachers" (imams, etc.; actually, this is a case of para-kinship where "students" take on their teachers' "lineage"). The "reality" of this is grounded in centuries (millenia in some cases!) of experience. Take advantage of it by working with it and you prosper. Spreading a totally alien ideology of absolute individual equality, something that is "proven" to be "false", and you will fail. I think that today's example of Al Anbar is a good example of how to succeed, in part because AQ started targeting sheiks while the coalition started supporting them.

Is this "religious"? Yes,it is. Look deeply enough into the culture and you will find that sheiks and Imams have certain "powers" and "abilities" that are sanctioned and interpreted by the religious tradition.

Marc