By denizens of SWJ:

New Challenges and Old
Concepts: Understanding
21st Century Insurgency

STEVEN METZ

From the 1960s to the 1980s stopping Communist-backed insurgents was an important part of American strategy, so counterinsurgency was an important mission for the US military, particularly the Army. Even when most of the Army turned its attention to large-scale warfighting and the operational art following Vietnam, special operation forces preserved some degree of capability. In the 1980s American involvement in El Salvador and a spate of insurgencies around the world linked to the Soviets and Chinese sparked renewed interest in counterinsurgency operations (as a component of low-intensity conflict). By 1990 what could be called the El Salvador model of counterinsurgency, based on a limited US military footprint in conjunction with the strengthening of local security forces, became codified in strategy and doctrine.

Interest then faded. Policymakers, military leaders, and defense experts assumed that insurgency was a relic of the Cold War, posing little challenge in the “new world order.” With the demise of the Soviet Union and the mellowing of China, insurgency—even though it persisted in the far corners of the world—was not viewed as a strategic challenge to the world’s sole superpower. With American involvement in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, multinational peacekeeping—a previously unimportant role for the military—moved to the fore. In a burst of energy, the military revamped its peacekeeping doctrine and concepts. Professional military education and training shifted to accommodate these missions. Wargames, conferences, and seminars proliferated. Counterinsurgency was forgotten by all but a tiny handful of scholars.

Then, one clear September morning, the world turned. Al Qaeda and its affiliates adopted a strategy relying heavily on the methods of insurgency— both national insurgency and a transnational one. Insurgency was again viewed as a strategic threat and the fear grew that insurgent success would create regimes willing to support and protect organizations like al Qaeda. The global campaign against violent Islamic extremists forced the United States military to undertake counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once again, the Department of Defense was required to respond to a major strategic shift. The military services scrambled to develop new concepts and doctrine. Counterinsurgency reentered the curriculum of the professional military educational system in a big way. It became a centerpiece for Army and Marine Corps training. Classic assessments of the conflicts in Vietnam and Algeria became required reading for military leaders. Like the mythical phoenix, counterinsurgency had emerged from the ashes of its earlier death to become not just a concern of the US military but the central focus...

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US COIN Doctrine and
Practice: An Ally’s Perspective

ALEXANDER ALDERSON

Until very recently, the four and a half years of military operations in Iraq appeared to have created an obstacle in people’s minds. Rightly or wrongly, reality has subsumed theory, and because of the media coverage Iraq has received, counterinsurgency is now seen as nothing but an indescribably bloody, draining, protracted, and arduous business which makes tremendous demands on popular support, political resolve, and the resources required to sustain the fight. History shows this has always been the case, but perhaps the initial incidences of rapid, decisive, conventional operations misled the public. The fact remains: The cost of counterinsurgency is high. It always has been, depressingly so, and it is largely unrefundable. There is now more than a glimmer of hope, a detectable, increasingly palpable feeling that something may be changing, that there is now what can be best described as “a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground.”

Leadership, more troops, focused training during preparation for deployment, and the application of hard-learned lessons from four and a half years at war are playing their part. A new factor is present, one that is fundamental to overcoming many of the initial obstacles and a factor that was absent when the insurgencies started to emerge from the shadows to so bedevil the stabilization efforts in Iraq. That factor is doctrine, and the publication of US Army Field Manual 3-24 and US Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 provides American participants with a counterinsurgency doctrine applicable, as the authors intended, to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for similar operations well into the second decade of this century.

The development of FM 3-24 is notable for at least two reasons.2 First, the writing team canvassed and included a far wider range of opinion and expertise than is normally the case in developing such documents, giving the doctrine a wider applicability than simply how to win in Iraq. Second, and arguably of greater importance, the speed with which both the doctrine was produced, incorporating that wider view, and at the same time the entire education and training systems were revamped was unprecedented. The project underlines the fact that there is much more to the development and implementation of doctrine than the publication of a pamphlet. Outcomes depend on the approach that the doctrine describes being taught, understood, and executed. To be effective, doctrine must be assimilated, absorbed into the military culture, and then sensibly applied to the prevailing conditions...