“’Dishonest Doctrine:’ Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coin Doctrine”

[Ski]

Bingo! Especially when he writes for the New York Post.

Rob,

Ralph Peters panders to raw emotion and that is not a good platform for rational discussion. We can handle it here but in the larger US community Peters touches base instinct with deft fingers. That puts him firmly in the ideologue for money camp.

Best

Tom

[SWJED]

Peace, Love, COIN?

The December ’07 issue of Armed Forces Journal contains two commentary pieces that are harbingers of a debate brewing “inside and outside the beltway” concerning Counterinsurgency (COIN) / Irregular Warfare (IW) operations “after Iraq.” While the two AFJ articles focus on Army and Marine Corps COIN doctrine approved last December and its execution in Iraq, the issues the authors raise will most certainly carryover into a larger debate that will shape our National Security Strategy and military capabilities for decades to come.

The first article, Dishonest Doctrine by Ralph Peters, accuses the Army and Marine Corps of selective use of history in writing FM 3-24 / MCWP 3-33.5 Counterinsurgency. Arguably the most damning of Peters’ claims is his accusation that the primary authors took an “academic approach” – formulating conclusions up-front in the writing process and conducting biased research in search of historical examples that supported those conclusions...

[SteveMetz]

Peace, Love, COIN?

Yanno what I think the problem is? Because the U.S. has no written strategy for counterinsurgency or which encompasses counterinsurgency, the doctrine sought to fill that void and be both operational and strategic. Tactical and operational doctrine can (and should be) built bottom up, by collecting the experience and insights of those in the field. Strategic doctrine (to the extent that phrase makes sense) cannot. It is, in some ways, developed through a MORE academic methodology (although not a pure one, as our wingbat friends in anthropology remind us).

So, the doctrine was born both with top down and bottom up analysis. Anything that is that much of a polyglot is likely to provoke criticism from people more comfortable with one approach or the other. Schizophrenics like me, though, have no problem holding multiple diametric approaches and positions simultaneously. Sometimes it helps to be crazy.

[Gian P Gentile]

So, the doctrine was born both with top down and bottom up analysis. Anything that is that much of a polyglot is likely to provoke criticism from people more comfortable with one approach or the other. Schizophrenics like me, though, have no problem holding multiple diametric approaches and positions simultaneously. Sometimes it helps to be crazy.

Oh please I hope you are not telling me that I can only handle one thing at a time and that I like my doctrine simple because unlike people like you who can multi-task, I can not. If that is what you are saying and the literal meaning of your words suggests that you are, you are way off base!!

This post drips with intellectual arrogance on your part.

Maybe you dont need to be as you say "crazy," but experienced!!

gentile

[Ron Humphrey]

Oh please I hope you are not telling me that I can only handle one thing at a time and that I like my doctrine simple because unlike people like you who can multi-task, I can not. If that is what you are saying and the literal meaning of your words suggests that you are, you are way off base!!

This post drips with intellectual arrogance on your part.

Maybe you dont need to be as you say "crazy," but experienced!!

gentile

Tell us how you really feel

[Gian P Gentile]

Tell us how you really feel

That is how I really feel since his words were aimed directly at me because i had one of the two articles that he refers to in the post "Peace, Love, and Coin?"

gentile

[SteveMetz]

Oh please I hope you are not telling me that I can only handle one thing at a time and that I like my doctrine simple because unlike people like you who can multi-task, I can not. If that is what you are saying and the literal meaning of your words suggests that you are, you are way off base!!

This post drips with intellectual arrogance on your part.

Maybe you dont need to be as you say "crazy," but experienced!!

gentile

That's not what I said at all. I clearly did not express my point accurately.

I suggested that the process for developing strategy and theory is different than the process for developing operational and tactical doctrine. Because there is no other official strategy and theory, this doctrine tried to perform both functions. That created an inherent bifurcation in it.

People who are more comfortable with the bottom up process that was used to develop the operational sections of it are going to find those sections most satisfying. People who are more comfortable with the more conceptual process of developing strategy and theory are going to be more comfortable with the sections of the manual which do that.

So my point was no one is happy with every word (including the authors) because, as something that had to cover a huge amount of ground, the manual represents compromise and consensus building. It is a "sausage." Hence everyone doesn't like parts of it.

[Ron Humphrey]

if a lot of times the major issue isn't so much anyone's unwillingness to accept given doctrine so much as it may be the major discomfort associated with our ability to visualize enacting / translating it.

Most of the time individuals lead with any given directive from which ever perspective they have an experience base in.

For example how is it that a commanders intent given equally to all subordinate commands may be followed in many different ways.

Doctrine coming from a much more mixed source may represent concern for many simply because our traditional way of seeing where it is in relation to where we're coming from may be rather new territory for both sides of the field.

As such no one is really sure what others will make of it

[Tom Odom]

Peace, Love, COIN?

Dave

Great work. Write more and more often.

Best

Tom

[selil]

I would just like to state that "they took the academic’s path of first setting up their thesis, then citing only examples that supported it." said by Mr. Peters is not the "academic path" it is part and parcel the scientific method. The bedrock of which is built on the path of logic, reason and western thought. I guess refuting logic and syllogism along with the process of hypothesis and refutation is interesting but I fail to see how his thesis is supported in reality. Any well versed academic would know that an ad hominem attack on the academic (and therefore process) would be a logical fallacy.

[Ron Humphrey]

I would just like to state that "they took the academic’s path of first setting up their thesis, then citing only examples that supported it." said by Mr. Peters is not the "academic path" it is part and parcel the scientific method. The bedrock of which is built on the path of logic, reason and western thought. I guess refuting logic and syllogism along with the process of hypothesis and refutation is interesting but I fail to see how his thesis is supported in reality. Any well versed academic would know that an ad hominem attack on the academic (and therefore process) would be a logical fallacy.

[selil]

Mr. Peters is saying that the 'academic process' is invalid, and the academic process he states is actually the scientific method. Yet of all processes it is the only one that is legally recognized, it is the only one that is proven to give a valid output (agree or disagree with the result), and it is the primary method of ensuring a product that is not corrupted. Valid responses would be to go after the methods, but not after the process itself.


ETA: I actually think the process of the doctrine was more a (oracle of) Delphi study captured and their could be validity questions with that but they're not discussed.

[Norfolk]

if a lot of times the major issue isn't so much anyone's unwillingness to accept given doctrine so much as it may be the major discomfort associated with our ability to visualize enacting / translating it.

Most of the time individuals lead with any given directive from which ever perspective they have an experience base in.

For example how is it that a commanders intent given equally to all subordinate commands may be followed in many different ways.

Doctrine coming from a much more mixed source may represent concern for many simply because our traditional way of seeing where it is in relation to where we're coming from may be rather new territory for both sides of the field.

As such no one is really sure what others will make of it

Sometimes doctrine takes some time to accept; elements within the US Army took some time to come to terms with AirLand Battle for a while in the 80's, and that was after some griping over DePuy's Active Defense introduced in the mid-70's. The whole Attrition - or Manoeuvre-Warfare thing was getting going back then in the English-speaking world, but at least that was a debate between two rival camps about the general fundamentals of Operations.

This time it's about a confusion of the general fundamentals of Operations writ large, and the specific fundamentals of COIN Operations. So I don't think that it's so much a case of resistance to doctrine as just getting lost in its minutiae.

In my experience, the problem with doctrine wasn't so much ignorance of it, as it was that thinking about the doctrine, indeed thinking at all, had pretty much gone out the door in practice, and very often the commander's intent was less the mission objective than the simple, unthinking acquiesence in following a rote tactical prescription.

Ron, you bring up a good point about the problem of not being able to visualize or conceptualize putting doctrine into practice. That derives from two related things: 1. the notion that Doctrine is what to think and do; and 2. that Doctrine is a replacement for the development and use of judgement. Ski was right: Doctrine is just a guide, to be more specific, a guide to learning about a given aspect of war; it should not be what we necessarily must think about that particular aspect of war or how we should react to it. It is a guide to educating oneself and developing one's judgement on a matter. It is self-defeating when it is used as a substitute for proper judgement.

And in the absence of the development and use of that judgment, you may end up in situations like we have now, where a combination of insufficient thinking about COIN before the fact, and judging prudently in the midst of the fact, the distinctions between a doctrine intended for specific operations (in this case COIN) and a doctrine intended for operations in general, can become muddled and confused. Even to the point of the lower-level doctrine partially displacing the higher-level doctrine within whose framework the former is supposed to operate. As to commander's intent, well, that will be understood by those who have developed good judgement, and perhaps not so well understood by those whose judgement may not be so.

As to Ralph Peters: I've been reading his stuff on and off for twenty years, and he has his good points, and not so good points. Twenty years ago he was saying that NATO was something of a spoiled child taking a free ride on the back of the US; to a considerable extent he had some valid points there. Now's he's taking aim at the current COIN situation. Whether he's landing on target or not, Peters is always firing for effect, to shake people out of their complacency - he's been perhaps the most persistent Socratic gadfly buzzing around the US Army for the last 20-25 years.

Perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind with Ralph Peters is not so much what's he's saying, as why he's saying it. And he's basically trying to warn the Army against its present trend of getting lost in the PC world which he sees in the COIN forest and losing sight of the Army's larger warfighting roles; in other words, he doesn't want to see it become a politically-correct peace-building organization, which is what he sees in the doctrine, but wants the Army to drop that kind of talk and go back to the kind of thinking expressed in FM 100-5 circa 1982 - warfighting. And that's what his article is really about, and why he can castigate FM 3-24 for its PC tones while praising Petraeus' own warfighting skill.

[120mm]

I guess the problem I see with COIN is the political dimension. To win at COIN, you need to operate effectively across a bunch of non-traditionally military dimensions.

Unfortunately, this starts to approach, uncomfortably (for me) the "civil control of the military" line, where to achieve military mission accomplishment, you need "civilian" battlefield multipliers. And, what happens when military leaders seek control of the political aspect of war?

I think there is a slippery slope, here. The military shouldn't focus on what type of war, forsaking all others. They should be in the business of providing "flexible military options", but should also be in the business of saying "no" to inappropriate military missions.

[Gian P Gentile]

...I think there is a slippery slope, here. The military shouldn't focus on what type of war, forsaking all others. They should be in the business of providing "flexible military options", but should also be in the business of saying "no" to inappropriate military missions.

Unfortunately since the American Army's defacto operational doctrine (FM 3-0) has become Coin (FM 3-24) we are not in the business as you say of providing flexibility in military options to our political masters. In fact the domination in the American army by the Coin Cabal with all of its seminars, how to panels for senior statesmen, appearances on high-vis TV shows, are creating in the minds of many influential Americans that hey, Coin might not be that hard after all and if we just get some competent units practicing correct Coin doctrine then we can win in any Coin fight. Hence lets go down this path many, many more times.

Too, our consummation in the American Army with Counterinsurgency has clouded our ability to read things in Iraq now as they really are. How often do you see statements by pundits and Iraq veterans that the Surge and its concomitant use of new Coin doctrine was the fundamental reason for the lowering of violence in Iraq? The truth of the matter is that the recent lowering of violence was due to a complex mix of causes.

Where is our consummation with Coin taking the American Army in the future?

gentile

[Ski]

When was the last FM 3-0 published? I think it was June 2001.

Fix the culture and cut the gigantic levels of bureaucracy so manuals can get released just a little quicker than every six years (or longer in the case of FM 3-0) - especially since we've been fighting two wars for over 6 years - and you won't have to worry about FM 3-0 being sent to the ashcan of history by FM 3-24.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

[SteveMetz]

Unfortunately since the American Army's defacto operational doctrine (FM 3-0) has become Coin (FM 3-24) we are not in the business as you say of providing flexibility in military options to our political masters. In fact the domination in the American army by the Coin Cabal with all of its seminars, how to panels for senior statesmen, appearances on high-vis TV shows, are creating in the minds of many influential Americans that hey, Coin might not be that hard after all and if we just get some competent units practicing correct Coin doctrine then we can win in any Coin fight. Hence lets go down this path many, many more times.

Too, our consummation in the American Army with Counterinsurgency has clouded our ability to read things in Iraq now as they really are. How often do you see statements by pundits and Iraq veterans that the Surge and its concomitant use of new Coin doctrine was the fundamental reason for the lowering of violence in Iraq? The truth of the matter is that the recent lowering of violence was due to a complex mix of causes.

Where is our consummation with Coin taking the American Army in the future?

gentile

Let me suggest another point--it's important to understand the degree to which the emphasis on COIN within the Army (and, to a lesser degree, the Marines) is because that is really going to be what it takes to make the United States more secure in the future, and how much is because the revival of COIN had added force structure and budget to the ground forces. Remember that in the late 90s and early 00s, the trend was toward greater reliance on precision, standoff methods. If not for September 11, I'm convinced the Army would have undergone a significant downsizing while the Air Force and the Navy would have grown. So, from an institutional perspective, the Army benefits from a COIN focus.

[Ski]

Steve

I can confirm that the Army was going to lose a substantial chunk of it's force structure and budget pre-9/11. The Army was going to lose two divisions - down to 8 -and the ARNG was going to lose 4 Division HHC's and 8-12 Brigades (and they've lost 6 anyway - the only time in recorded history where combat power was deliberatley and voluntarily cut during wartime that I can find).

[Sargent]

This “academic process” Peters cites is not the historian's method. Ok, maybe it’s the bad historian’s method. However, if you’re interested in doing quality work what you do is start with a question (or several) -- Why did X happen, and so forth. Then you get at the source material, primary sources and accounts as well as the secondary narratives of the event in question. Your analysis of that material according to the question you have posed will lead to your thesis, which ought to pass the "So what?" test. Then you just write it up.

This has been made painfully clear to me in my dissertation. Because I am an idiot, I chose a topic that, until the point at which I wrote my proposal, was wholly new to me. This meant I'd be working with material that was unfamiliar to me. However, in order to be allowed to write a dissertation, you have to write a proposal. That proposal must include the question and the thesis. So, because I was in uncharted territory, the question and thesis I came up with then have had to evolve significantly as I have completed more of my research. (Which means that the “just write it up” part becomes a wee bit more difficult. However, I think I’ve reached the point where I can terminate major reconstruction of the thesis -- and therefore the text. Hallelujah!)

If Ralph Peters wants to say that the writers of the doctrine used bad historical processes, then he can have at it. However, to describe “the academic’s path” as “first setting up their thesis, then citing only examples that supported it” is just this side of whacky.

Best,
Jill

[Gian P Gentile]

...If Ralph Peters wants to say that the writers of the doctrine used bad historical processes, then he can have at it. However, to describe “the academic’s path” as “first setting up their thesis, then citing only examples that supported it” is just this side of whacky.

But Jill, Peters does point out the fact that FM 3-24 is hyper-reliant on two historical cases: the British in Malaya; and the French in Algeria specifically the writings of David Galula. In this regard his critique, I think, is valid. The manual turns A theory of Coin into a principle that has become law to the point of dogmatism. That is to say in any counterinsurgency operation the people must be the "center of gravity." Why does that, in theory and in practice, have to be so all of the time? When I attended the Coin Academy in Taji in December 2005 prior to assuming our battlespace we were told that very thing by the teachers of the course. When I raised my hand and asked why the people are always the center of gravity and not the enemy I was told that that is just the way it is.

I think one can envision a counterinsurgency fight where the people are not the center of gravity at all but the enemy force is. But because our Coin doctrine is so heavily focused on the Galula model it prescribes how we will understand any given Coin environment and then direct action accordingly in line with this principle; hence we become dogmatic and non-creative.

always good to be in touch with my old WP Seminarian friend.

no worries

gian