LTC John Nagl: collection

[William F. Owen]

Tom Odom defends Nagl's book and that's fine -- but Wilf was correct in saying the British in Malaya did some really dicey things in Malaya and (even more so) in Kenya and Nagl is remiss in not pointing out all the advantages the Brits had there -- not least that they were the government. We did use Brit Malaya-like techniques in Viet Nam -- or tried to -- and they failed miserably, partly because we were not the government, partly because we did not want to do some of those dicey things and partly because we do not have the patience the British have. Malaya was NOT a good example for anyone to adopt in COIN.

I also have anecdotal evidence that Nagl's book is indeed discounted in the British Army.

I don't think Tom does defend the book. Without wishing to put words in his mouth, and I believe he does say this, he takes from it, what is useful.

BUT... Ken is annoyingly right again, in saying far better than I could, exactly what I was trying to get across.

What "sort of" worked in Malaya, failed miserably in RVN because of the "experts" trying to tell people how to do it, instead of studying the problem from a military point of view, and then doing what is shown to harm the enemy. - which is what COIN is about. Inflicting defeat (annihilation and/or exhaustion) on an armed enemy.

I will confess to never having read Nagl's book, because both of the British Army's foremost COIN analysts (one retired, one deployed) both said, not to bother - but that is not to say that Nagl's book is not a valuable work for the audience he intended to serve.

To sound like a stuck record, I believe the US Army's (and UK to a lesser extent) problem with COIN is that it is viewed as something difficult and distinct, instead of the bread and butter of contemporary and historic military forces. The fact that this belief persists strongly indicates a lack of understanding as concerns the nature of the enemy, that means people focus on the nature of the conflict instead.

[TT]

Ken posted

Generally I say what I mean and mean what I say

You do, and I do appreciate that you do (and I am sure everyone does as well). I was ‘reading into’ what you said, and was not sure whether I was right or not in doing so. So thank you for elaborating. Your way of thinking about what constitutes a ‘citizen army’ is helpful (my use of ‘looser’ was misconceived - my apologies), even though it may be different from the 'normal' def’n.

Ken posted:

The far more normal (in the greater historical sense) relatively small volunteer Army is not in that model and never has been.

I have noted with interest when you have made this point before on other threads, and it is an important point that I have absorbed.

In part this brings us back to Matt's question about the Army (and other services) seeing itself as a citizen army. Given the history you note, an interesting question is how being a citizen army is interpreted by the organizations. I strongly suspect that they would interpret it in much the same way you have - which is why I think your approach is helpful.

Ken posted:

I think that depends on what the concern is.

Again, thank you for your elaboration. As I mentioned, Ricks in Making Marines raises the possibility of a widening gap, and I have run across others who raise the issue by implication when they talk about the propensity of military service running in families and/or that certain regions of the US tend to be more represented in the services than others. As a consequence, while I do not have any specific concerns, these have raised in my mind a vague sense of ‘Hmmm, I wonder’.

Ken posted:

Thus I suspect that the variance in values differences are more concerns of strength of attachment than to strength of value per se….

A very interesting observation, one that is food for ongoing thought on my part given my interest in the role of self identity.

Ken posted:

that defining trait is going to be very difficult to change...

Very true.

[Rob Thornton]

Hi William,

which is what COIN is about. Inflicting defeat (annihilation and/or exhaustion) on an armed enemy.

You might make a case for exhaustion if you qualify it as changing the conditions which allow insurgents freedom of movement - in both the physical sense, and in the sense of making their ideas and influence more appealing then the HNs.

I think we have to include the latter to address the conditions that facilitated the rise of the insurgency in the first place. We could be talking about conditions that a third party aggravated, or internal domestic ones stemming from HN Government illegitimacy, or recalcitrance in progressing politically to meet the needs of its citizens.

You could also include the exhaustion of will and means - but those are tricky, and could require something akin to martial law to sustain - a good ole fashioned (non-benevolent) dictatorship that eventually creates greater instability by either ignoring the conditions changing around it, by creating conditions internally that cannot be integrated later down the road, or something that combines them all - at some point that makes for an awfully ugly baby and given our FP (not British) - we'll have to deal with it in some fashion that suits our strategic culture.

Certainly I believe there are some insurgents that just have to be killed, just like I believe that there are some criminals that must be hanged (or however the state administers capital punishment), but the political purposes of insurgency and counter-insurgency are not achieved solely and in a lasting manner by limiting the goals to annihilation to exhaustion - those may be the military goals in the strictest sense, but that does not realize the political objective.

To sound like a stuck record, I believe the US Army's (and UK to a lesser extent) problem with COIN is that it is viewed as something difficult and distinct, instead of the bread and butter of contemporary and historic military forces. The fact that this belief persists strongly indicates a lack of understanding as concerns the nature of the enemy, that means people focus on the nature of the conflict instead.

I'd say we do both because we have to in order to serve the political purpose . For all our similarities with our closest allies, we are still different, and our strategic culture and heritage is different, our responsibilities are different, our political system is different, and our place in world affairs is different. I'm not trying to come off as an arrogant American - but in order to determine the nature of the war you are in, you have to know yourself, know the enemy and know the terrain - in this case the latter includes how the various participants are integrated right now, and at least consider how they are integrated further down the road. It comes back to politics; war, divorced of a political purpose is not a tool to achieve anything.

Best, Rob

[William F. Owen]

, but the political purposes of insurgency and counter-insurgency are not achieved solely and in a lasting manner by limiting the goals to annihilation to exhaustion - those may be the military goals in the strictest sense, but that does not realize the political objective.

If the insurgents did not possess some kind of military means, they would be irrelevant. Insurgency is armed conflict.

You have to force an armed insurgency to cease military action by making it impossible for them to achieve their (political) aims through violence. That means breaking their will to continue. I firmly believe that the The word "Counter" in COIN can only be achieved by breaking the enemies will by military means.

I think a lot of recent/new writing on COIN has tried to be falsely "avant garde" in not focussing on the military aspect of COIN. You cannot make any political progress if you are loosing militarily.

[Hacksaw]

I have been tempted on several occasions to jump into this thread, but I resisted the urge only because sometimes these organizational culture issues seem so much like tilting at windmills. As a general rule, large bureaucratic organizations change slowly over time in response to its environment and needs of its constituency. I see the Army as no different for better or worse.

What prompted me to enter the fray was Wilf’s characterization of avante guarde COIN concepts. People-centric operations is commonly misconstrued as operations conducted solely in support of the people. This is not entirely the case, so at the great personal risk of looking silly due to over simplification…

It is fair to say that at least in the short-term – a population’s willingness to actively or passively support an insurgency comes at a price. Life does not immediately improve for the Average Joe when “Mr. Insurgent” is running around creating havoc and confusion. So why does Average Joe allow Mr. Insurgent to swim in his sea. Clearly there is some root cause/grievance that resonates with Average Joe – and he makes a bet on the come-line that his lot will improve with the removal of the current regime, and this makes the short-term “inconvenience” bearable.

If I as the counter-insurgent understand: Average Joe’s root cause/grievance; who Average Joe holds accountable and expects to fix his problem; and I understand how Mr Insurgent will leverage Average Joe’s problem; I now stand a chance of predicting in some sense what Mr. Insurgent will do. Hence my actions become proactive rather than reactive. I take the “fight” to the insurgent, Average Joe become less willing to allow Mr Insurgent to swim in his sea because I deny Mr. Insurgent the ability to portray his solution as a credible alternative.

If I view the environment through the eyes of Average Joe, the precision of both my kinetic and non-kinetic operations improves. If I foster conditions that deny Mr. Insurgent the freedom of movement and demonstrate (from Average Joe’s perspective) the folly of Mr. Insurgent’s vision of the future, I win.

Live well and row

[Steve Blair]

Actually the North Vietnamese made a fair amount of progress while they were losing militarily, but that's beside the point...

Insurgencies can certainly exist without a military element. One could reasonably argue that many of the environmental groups (especially those near the fringes) are conducting an insurgency of sorts, as are the anti-globalists. The political element of insurgencies tends to get overlooked in some accounts, so the current trend to emphasize it may be viewed as corrective (although it can go too far in the opposite direction).

Now I want to touch on this for a moment:

To sound like a stuck record, I believe the US Army's (and UK to a lesser extent) problem with COIN is that it is viewed as something difficult and distinct, instead of the bread and butter of contemporary and historic military forces. The fact that this belief persists strongly indicates a lack of understanding as concerns the nature of the enemy, that means people focus on the nature of the conflict instead.

For the US Army, based on its own view of its history and the historical underpinnings of its existence, COIN has never been something it wanted to do. In the early days there was a fear (not necessarily justified) of any standing military force, and an equally dim view of its involvement in anything aside from defending the Republic from an exterior attack. Even when COIN was the main function (the periods after the Mexican War and the Civil War) there was little or no training for the mission at hand. It took Custer's great blunder to even shove them into open-order training and the development of both professional education beyond West Point and the first field maneuvers.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the Army was often viewed as a trained nucleus around which a mighty Volunteer force could grow in time of trouble. It was always small...almost always under 20,000 officers and men. Before the Civil War there was some focus on COIN-type operations, but once most of the officers had tasted the heady wine of a few brevet promotions and major battles, they had difficulty looking back at their actual function in the postwar world. A handful did adapt, but they were few and far between.

This also leads to the second point about the American COIN experience. I focus here on the Indian Wars because that's our COIN heritage. There was always a great deal of tension between the Army and the civilian bureaus that dealt with the friendly tribes (in other words, those not engaged in open warfare with the whites). The Army thought they could manage the process better, and often chaffed at the corruption they saw. During Grant's administration (about 1872) they were cut away from the process almost entirely, with control only coming in very limited circumstances. This forced them to focus on the battlefield aspect of COIN, but also created a subconscious awareness of the cost of inefficient political management. It's lost from time to time, but that awareness does play a role in the collective framework. The complaints you see today about poor civilian planning in Iraq find echoes in the pages of the ANJ during the Indian Wars and the official reports of many officers.

Bit of a ramble, but hopefully it does show that there is a different framework operating when the Army looks at COIN. One reason the Marines may handle it better (or at least quicker) is that their framework is substantially different. Their experiences with civilian control were different, and often confined to diplomatic experiences and representatives as opposed to corrupt or inept Indian agents.

[Rob Thornton]

Hi William,

You cannot make any political progress if you are loosing militarily.

I'd say its worthwhile to consider the flip of that as well: how useful is military progress in countering an insurgency if you cannot turn it into political progress (or maybe redress & reconciliation)?

There is a bit of a "chicken and egg" conundrum here, but if you don't address the conditions that led to and sustain the populace taking up arms, or supporting the insurgency as a means of political change, or perhaps attaching themselves to the perception of political change, then you may find yourself in a seemingly never ending conflict that self perpetuates. You could exhaust your own Will, and risk exhaustion of your military means - which may risk your options in other locations and to other policy goals.

Are there times when the Military line of operation is going to be weighted more heavily then the DIE lines of effort - yes, but conditions will drive them, and when conditions permit (opportunities arise), you should consider transitioning to more sustainable and less risky LOEs. I mean risk in the inter-active, non-linear sense.

I believe that countering an insurgency in the whole, is every bit as much a political problem as it is a military one. To try and isolate the two is at odds with achieving unity and synchronization of effort, and it does not suit our political objectives which justify our continued military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The difference in our opinions may be the context of the consequences we must live with.


Best, Rob

[William F. Owen]

?

There is a bit of a "chicken and egg" conundrum here, but if you don't address the conditions that led to and sustain the populace taking up arms, or supporting the insurgency as a means of political change, or perhaps attaching themselves to the perception of political change, then you may find yourself in a seemingly never ending conflict that self perpetuates. You could exhaust your own Will, and risk exhaustion of your military means - which may risk your options in other locations and to other policy goals.

Hey Rob,

I think we might be all violently agreeing. My point is simply that Insurgents suffer military defeat in the same way as anyone else does (a conventional army). - they die or give up.

Therefore, an Army engaged in COIN, has got to keep the focus on military means. This does not discount the importance of Politics (non-military means) - but Politics cannot function unless there is a sound security environment.

TO whit, my main point. Do not focus on the nature of the conflict. Focus on the nature of the enemies aims and the means he seeks to achieve them. If Politics defeats the AIM, then military force should defeat the MEANS.

This may sound over simplified but I am suspicious of anything more complex.

[Ken White]

I have been tempted on several occasions to jump into this thread, but I resisted the urge only because sometimes these organizational culture issues seem so much like tilting at windmills...

Ain't that the truth...

It is fair to say that at least in the short-term – a population’s willingness to actively or passively support an insurgency comes at a price. Life does not immediately improve for the Average Joe when “Mr. Insurgent” is running around creating havoc and confusion. So why does Average Joe allow Mr. Insurgent to swim in his sea. Clearly there is some root cause/grievance that resonates with Average Joe – and he makes a bet on the come-line that his lot will improve with the removal of the current regime, and this makes the short-term “inconvenience” bearable.

That is correct -- in some cases -- in others (and this can and does occur in the same insurgency / nation / time) he allows him to swim because he's afraid (terrified, literally on occasion...) and so reluctantly not only allows him to swim but will and even scout, warn, feed and fetch and carry for the swimmers. Obviously, if the swimmers bring money and the local economy has need of an infusion of coins, the reluctance to help is dissipated to an extent. There are variations on all three themes. My observation has been that the fear quotient is usually a greater determinant than is the grievance factor which in turn transcends the economic aspect (with some local variations). I submit this is true today in both Afghanistan and Iraq and while I don't know enough to address the Philippines, my sensing is that it is true there as well.

If I as the counter-insurgent understand: Average Joe’s root cause/grievance; who Average Joe holds accountable and expects to fix his problem; and I understand how Mr Insurgent will leverage Average Joe’s problem; I now stand a chance of predicting in some sense what Mr. Insurgent will do. Hence my actions become proactive rather than reactive. I take the “fight” to the insurgent, Average Joe become less willing to allow Mr Insurgent to swim in his sea because I deny Mr. Insurgent the ability to portray his solution as a credible alternative.

True, more true if you add in the removal of the fear factor. Acknowledging that factor is harder to un-leverage...

If I view the environment through the eyes of Average Joe, the precision of both my kinetic and non-kinetic operations improves. If I foster conditions that deny Mr. Insurgent the freedom of movement and demonstrate (from Average Joe’s perspective) the folly of Mr. Insurgent’s vision of the future, I win.

I'd add:

"and provide good assurance or evidence that you can remove or severely constrain the fear factor and at least some assurance it will not easily return."

[Hacksaw]

Ken,

I concur with all regarding coersion, my only caveat is that I acknowledged upfront that I was going to offer an overly simple arguement...

I would note that from a counter-insurgent perspective that Mr Coersive Insurgent is probably an easier problem to solve than the charismatic insurgent with a vision, since its hard for even the most irrational mind to see a future in decapitation.

However, I would agrue that getting in front of Mr "I Cut of Heads" Insurgent is still best accomplished by viewing the situation as it is through the eyes of Average Joe, than it is through any type of shaping of the situation. If I know the enemy is using coersion, then I can best anticipate his actions and interdict/kill/capture by determining what pressure point he is using to coerse Average Joe.

Again over simplification, but...

If as a first step in the plans/ops process, we, the counterinsurgent, understand the environment - and most importantly view the environment through the eyes of other actors (both the fish and the sea) - and set aside (at least initially) our proclivity to try and shape/bend the environment through the force of our actions... The relevance of our COIN Ops to their intended purpose will improve (significantly).

My good friend Gian, and he is a good friend, usually gets stuck here. I don't want to put words in his mouth - but here I go - this is viewed as somehow a passive form of operations because we are not imposing our will on the enemy...

Reader Advisory...I'm about to go on a stream of consciousness riff...

This confuses speed/violence with OPTEMPO. OPTEMPO is getting inside the oppornents OODA loop. To do that most effectively, our actions must have a detrimental impact on the opponents ability to operate coherently. Since I love poor analogies... I equate this to toughman competitions. The brawler you see in toughmen competitions who throws haymakers by the second but connects with nothing are not forcing a skillful opponent to do anything - especially if the opponent is adaptive - rather the brawler is just wearing himself out to only his own great satisfaction. Or put another way, a not so wise GO once told me that the 101st makes decisions at 140 mph (while discussing plans for Korea) -- to which the inner dialogue inside my head said "we also get our a$$ in a crack at the same rate".

whew... talking gibberish is exhausting...

and Gian that was just to see if you have dug yourself out of the snow on the banks of the Hudson.

Live well and row

[Rank amateur]

I'm beginning to wonder if I don't understand basic COIN theory (I'll use the Kilcullen version - because he's really the only expert that I've read - but there are of course many flavors) which is certainly possible or if a lot of the pros doing COIN aren't committed to the simple basics. I'm starting to think that it's one or the other.

My point is simply that Insurgents suffer military defeat in the same way as anyone else does (a conventional army). - they die or give up.

My understanding is that Kilcullen would agree.

Therefore, an Army engaged in COIN, has got to keep the focus on military means.

My understanding of COIN theory is that the above is wrong. As long as the insurgent can hide in the population he can control his loss rate - ensuring that insurgents are replaced faster than they are killed/give up - eliminating the possibility of defeat or surrender.

Therefore, you must attack the insurgents' strategy. You must separate them from the population, so they can be killed or forced to surrender.

Politics, reconstruction, bribes, kinetic operations etc. are all tactics. (Like all tactics, they'll work in some cases, not others, a specific combination that works in a specific place and time, won't necessarily work again anywhere else.) The strategic objective, however, doesn't change: separate the insurgents from the population.

(The Nazis killing 100 civilians for every soldier killed by what they considered an "insurgent" achieved the objective. So did the Romans' tactic of crucifying every person in a town where there was an "insurgent" attack. We're trying to accomplish the same objectives without using tactics that are considered crimes against humanity.) At least that's how I understand the theory.

[Rank amateur]

Hacksaw:

Trust me: looking silly because of oversimplification isn't that bad.

– a population’s willingness to actively or passively support an insurgency comes at a price.

But, supporting COIN forces also comes at a price. One of the highest being that people get killed as soon as the COIN forces leave: often in very painful ways. The highest being that their entire family gets killed.

Which is why the population's natural instinct is to do a SGt Schultz - I see nothing, I know nothing - to both sides. But as long as the population doesn't rat out the insurgents, the insurgents can control their loss rate.

Therefore, step one is forcing the population to choose sides. (One of the things that's unsaid - but true - is some of the people who rat out the insurgents will be killed, which they wouldn't have been if we'd allowed them to stay on the sidelines, but its still strategically necessary to make them choose.)

Our long term vision isn't automatically stronger than their "I'll be back and I'll kill you."

[TT]

Hacksaw posted:

but I resisted the urge only because sometimes these organizational culture issues seem so much like tilting at windmills.

LOL! Not at you, but at how true your observation is. Within the academic community there are those who denigrate the study of culture because its impact can be very hard to pin down, particularly in a nice, neat empirical manner. And as one of those academics who do try to discern the effect of military organizational culture on behaviour, I can vouchsafe that it often is not easy do, for just as sometimes the impact can appear to be fairly obvious, in other cases it can be fairly ambiguous.

Hacksaw posted:

As a general rule, large bureaucratic organizations change slowly over time in response to its environment and needs of its constituency. I see the Army as no different for better or worse.

I fully agree. I would add that this holds even when there is a serious, concerted effort to alter an aspect of organizational culture. Once the central cultural traits have become deeply ingrained, as they are in most military organizations, they tend to be resistant to even incremental change, such that further experience tends to be - and pardon my use of this term - ‘socially constructed’ to conform, more or less, to those traits. This is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, for the ‘personality’ traits of any particular military organization exist generally for good reasons. The only time the persistence of self identity traits is problematic is when this results in dysfunctional behaviour, such as failure on the battle field stemming from an unwillingness to adopt change appropriate to the changing character of warfare. Which is why academic studies normally focus on the role of culture as an obstacle to appropriate change. And why I personally continue to tilt at this particular windmill.

[Ken White]

...I would note that from a counter-insurgent perspective that Mr Coersive Insurgent is probably an easier problem to solve than the charismatic insurgent with a vision, since its hard for even the most irrational mind to see a future in decapitation.

I think that's rather situation dependent. In many cases, it's true, in some societies it will not be. The vast majority of people in any case will always really just want to be left alone and thus will hew to a vision only as far as it suits for the moment. Head Chopping is more durable and leaves a more lasting impression so the degree of force and method of application will be the determinant.

However, I would agrue that getting in front of Mr "I Cut of Heads" Insurgent is still best accomplished by viewing the situation as it is through the eyes of Average Joe, than it is through any type of shaping of the situation. If I know the enemy is using coersion, then I can best anticipate his actions and interdict/kill/capture by determining what pressure point he is using to coerse Average Joe.

Agree -- but would point out that the pressure point determination is the wild card.

If as a first step in the plans/ops process, we, the counterinsurgent, understand the environment - and most importantly view the environment through the eyes of other actors (both the fish and the sea) - and set aside (at least initially) our proclivity to try and shape/bend the environment through the force of our actions... The relevance of our COIN Ops to their intended purpose will improve (significantly).

Totally agree. Now, about that proclivity -- and the one year tour with successive tours in different AOs...

My good friend Gian, and he is a good friend, usually gets stuck here. I don't want to put words in his mouth - but here I go - this is viewed as somehow a passive form of operations because we are not imposing our will on the enemy...

Gian is a good guy and I agree with him on many things but sometimes in order to impose your will on the enemy you have to know where he is and what he's doing and in some cases, particularly in COIN, that's not as readily apparent as it is in more conventional combat. I agree with the structured application of violence, I just think one has to know where to apply how much with some exactitude.

Reader Advisory...I'm about to go on a stream of consciousness riff...

That's always a good thing...

This confuses speed/violence with OPTEMPO. OPTEMPO is getting inside the oppornents OODA loop. To do that most effectively, our actions must have a detrimental impact on the opponents ability to operate coherently. Since I love poor analogies... I equate this to toughman competitions. The brawler you see in toughmen competitions who throws haymakers by the second but connects with nothing are not forcing a skillful opponent to do anything - especially if the opponent is adaptive - rather the brawler is just wearing himself out to only his own great satisfaction. Or put another way, a not so wise GO once told me that the 101st makes decisions at 140 mph (while discussing plans for Korea) -- to which the inner dialogue inside my head said "we also get our a$$ in a crack at the same rate".

whew... talking gibberish is exhausting...

Not gibberish; makes total sense to me and I very much agree -- and I'm not a Gibber. Er, well, I don't think I am. We need not ask my family or friends their opinions...

[Ken White]

I'm beginning to wonder if I don't understand basic COIN theory (I'll use the Kilcullen version - because he's really the only expert that I've read - but there are of course many flavors) which is certainly possible or if a lot of the pros doing COIN aren't committed to the simple basics. I'm starting to think that it's one or the other.

Or is it that those who have to do it as opposed to theorizing about it know that the application of the basics is not nearly as easy as writing about them?

My understanding of COIN theory is that the above is wrong. As long as the insurgent can hide in the population he can control his loss rate - ensuring that insurgents are replaced faster than they are killed/give up - eliminating the possibility of defeat or surrender.

Interesting statement. What is your basis for it?

Therefore, you must attack the insurgents' strategy. You must separate them from the population, so they can be killed or forced to surrender.

I'd ask how you do that but you provided an answer in a later post; you said:

"Therefore, step one is forcing the population to choose sides. (One of the things that's unsaid - but true - is some of the people who rat out the insurgents will be killed, which they wouldn't have been if we'd allowed them to stay on the sidelines, but its still strategically necessary to make them choose.)"

So I'll ask how you do that? I'll also ask how you tell the true insurgents from people who have just annoyed others and get their name turned in just to be ornery? Oh, and once you identify the real insurgents, what do you do with them?

That doesn't even get into the fact that local criminals will intrude in the process as will various groups with an ax to grind in some way. Nor does it discuss the attitudes of the local or host nation government -- which may disagree strongly with some of your ideas. Or, for that matter, the attitudes of your own government which may disallow some of your initiatives. How do you factor in those things...

[William F. Owen]

My understanding of COIN theory is that the above is wrong. As long as the insurgent can hide in the population he can control his loss rate - ensuring that insurgents are replaced faster than they are killed/give up - eliminating the possibility of defeat or surrender.

Well I am not sure there is any solid COIN theory. I do see a lot of opinions though. As an aside, when I worked in TV News, I had a stand-up argument with some old guy who said he was an "Counter-terrorism expert." I pointed out that such a title was a intellectually valid as saying "colour co-ordinator," or Stylist. IMO, COIN, as a body of theory can only exist as a sub-set of military thought and science.

a.) I don't think an insurgency cannot control their loss rate, as an absolute matter of choice. They can choose not to risk losses, but that often means not acting. If you can suppress an insurgency by making them fear loss, then job done.

b.) Military means are not merely "kinetic." Anything the military force can do, to harm the insurgent, and not alienate the civil population in the process is good. The list of things that can be done is almost endless, once military force is focussed on the means the insurgency uses. - The AIMS of the insurgency are defeated/ameliorated, by political means.

[Ski]

This thread has been making my eyes bleed. Which is good.

Some random thoughts:

1. The Army of today is too professional and too narrowly focused. It's changing, of course, at the lower levels, but the 06 level and above is still all about fighting big wars, securing resources and combat force structure, and waiting for the war they want to fight. When I say too professional and too narrow, I compare todays Army (really the military) against the military of WWI and WWII. These were two draftee Armies, with civilian skills and expertise throughout the entire force. It's relatively easy to turn a civilian into an infantrymen, it's been going on since the birth of armies. It's harder to take an infantrymen who's been one since age 18, and then ask him to also be a mayor, a plumber, a mason, police officer, etc...all skills that existed in some form or another within the draftee militaries of WWI and WWII. We've been so focused on teaching combined arms tactics to our combat arms officers, and preparing for the "big fight" (Can I trademark that?) that we have been trying to play catch up for 30 years of ignoring counterinsurgency (minus SF).

2. The organizational culture changes quickly at the tactical level, and the bureaucracy may never catch up. I've harped on this before, but it took 6 years to get a new Operations manual to the field...that's the best we can do? Come on. I'd say using officer and NCO retention rates are the best indicator of culture...

3. The personnel system is a mess. Again, this is the best we can do? Having an indifferent personnel system (at best) that treats people like cogs in the machine also is an indication of organizational culture.

4. I look at two other factors to see if the culture is changing - procurement and MTOE development. Neither of these have significantly changed since Modularity was introduced, and the Army leadership is still focused on big ticket items (FCS) as a panacea for all todays problems. Once the procurement focus switches, and MTOE's start to really change to what the Deployment Manning Documents of today look like, then we are still preparing for the "Big Fight" against mechanized and heavy forces.

5. COIN would be taken seriously if we were in an existential fight, and I honestly do not believe we are. I think all these processes would be wiped clean, resisters in the bureaucracy would be fired or reassigned to a combat posting, and the focus within the Army would change.

6. I am just about done with the fear mongering and threat inflation involved with future procurement systems designed to fight a non-existent enemy. This goes across the board. We have a ####ty track record of predicting who we are going to fight next, and we concentrated a lot on Iraq from 91-03...just sayin'.

[Ron Humphrey]

a.) I don't think an insurgency cannot control their loss rate, as an absolute matter of choice. They can choose not to risk losses, but that often means not acting. If you can suppress an insurgency by making them fear loss, then job done.

.

Anybody come to mind right off

I do like peanut butter and jelly sanwiches

[William F. Owen]

Anybody come to mind right off

I do like peanut butter and jelly sanwiches

The IRA. Eventually they became extremely careful about operations and abandoned far more than they performed.

The Shining Path in Peru was also a group unable to compensate for losses and thus shrivelled to nothing.

All I am talking about is the logic of suppression. - to not act because you fear harm. IMO, there are very few pure insurgencies with a bottomless recruiting pit. What is more this applies just as well to the leaderships.

[marct]

Anybody come to mind right off

I do like peanut butter and jelly sanwiches

The IRA. Eventually they became extremely careful about operations and abandoned far more than they performed.

The Shining Path in Peru was also a group unable to compensate for losses and thus shrivelled to nothing.

All I am talking about is the logic of suppression. - to not act because you fear harm. IMO, there are very few pure insurgencies with a bottomless recruiting pit. What is more this applies just as well to the leaderships.

Good examples, Wilf. A couple of lesser known ones would be the Cathars, the Fraticelli and the Luddites. I agree with you on the logic of suppression, but I think it is worth noting that it isn't only fear that can be the motivator - it can also be recognition that the time isn't right.