Revising FM 3-24: What needs to change?

[Randy Brown]

I don't know whether Steven Metz (link to his June 2007 monograph "Rethinking Insurgency" here) has previously posted it elsewhere on SWJ, but this just crossed my desktop in one of those serendipitous L2I-net "the research gods must be happy" moments. It's a four-page summary of an October 2007 Strategic Studies Institute/Brookings Institute colloquium, a somewhat-tritely titled "COIN of the Realm: U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy." It's available in PDF.

Key insights discussed in this document include:

• Regardless of whether counterinsurgency (COIN) will be the dominant form of military activity in the future or simply one of several, the United States needs an effective national strategy which explains when, why, and how the nation should undertake it.
• The basic assumptions of the current approach need revisited, especially those dealing with the role of the state, the strategic framework for American involvement, and the whole-of-government approach.
• Given the demands placed upon the armed forces by the current campaigns, most of the effort has been on tactics, training, and doctrine. Ultimately strategic transformation is at least as important if not more so.
• Rather than thinking of counterinsurgency and warfighting as competing tasks, the military and other government agencies must pursue ways to integrate them, thus assuring that the United States can address the multidimensional threats which characterize the contemporary security environment.

I offer it here in hope of assisting backbenchers like me to frame their own questions/comments/concepts about FM 3-24 version 2.0.

[John T. Fishel]

I have just finished reading the Perspectives on Politics symposium on 3-24. Before responding to Niel's charge with regard to useful elements of the symposium for updating the manual - there are some - let me make a few general comments. Steve Biddle and Douglas Ollivant (PhD Pol Sci IU a generation after me) have some real understanding of the manual and the issues. Biddle's comments are a bit dated. Kalyvas is dead wrong in his interpretation of (a) Galula, (b) Sir Robt Thompson, and (c) the manual. He also picks one of the most obscure publications on COIN from the Vietnam era as the epitome of the best analysis from that era. "Rebellion and Authority" by Leites and Wolf is a Rand Corp economic analysis of insurgency using largely data from Vietnam. Interesting but hardly the most profound. Finally, what can one say of Wendy Brown's screed? Neo-marxist, not understanding the nature of Vietnam, Iraq, COIN, the US military, or even the chain of command as specified by the Constitution, National Security Act, and Goldwater-Nichols.

Nevertheless, Brown raises a real issue that is reinforced by Ollivant in his sole area of weakness. Brown cites David Price's critique of the manual for plagiarism and shoddy research (that we have discussed in this forum extensively led by Marc T). As a "victim" of that "plagiarism" and general lack of citation of a whole body of work (see especially my work with Max Manwaring and Max's work with others, particularly our article in Small Wars & Insurgencies Vol 3 No 3 Winter 1992 and our most recent book, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited). Max and I both think there is no issue here - we were just happy that our concepts made it into the most recent manual. But there is a substantive consequence of not acknowleging previous work - esp previous FMs. Ollivant reiterates the charge that there was nothing in doctrine or research in the years following Vietnam. Yet, there was quite a lot beginning with FM 100-20 Low Intensity Conflict 1981 (which was pure COIN) thru Max Thurman's charge to SSI in 1984 to study the correlates of success in COIN. That study produced the SWORD Model in 1986 (made available to the scholarly world in 2 books prior to its detalied publication in our 1992 article) and critical to the development of FM 100-20 Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict 1990 (but finished in 1987 and published jointly with the USAF). The Army/AF Center for Low Intensity Conflict (CLIC) was established at Langley AFB in 1986 as was the Small Wars Operations Research Directorate (SWORD) in Southcom at about the same time. SWORD proposed, and Gen. Fred Franks agreed to expand the LIC (COIN) curriculum at CGSC by a 2 day symposium called Southcom Days that ran thru 1989, at least. Much of the focus was on the insurgency in El Salvador. FM 100-5 introduced the term OOTW but maintained the doctrine from 100-20 as did the 1995 JP 3-07 (which called it MOOTW). In short, there is a long history of military and academic interaction on this subject post Vietnam. (Kalyvas, obviously, has not read the right literature. ) A long way to getting to the point: a revision should make the history of the development of the post-Vietnam doctrine clear and get it right. Practitioners on the ground like Fred Woerner, John Waghelstein, and Ambassadors Deane Hinton, Tom Pickering, and Ed Corr should get credit for their contributions in El Salvador. The anonymous doctrine writers at Leavenworth should get the respect they deserve - to remove some anonymity, they include LTCs (R) Don Vought and John Hunt and COL (R) Jerry Thompson who honchoed the 1990 FM 100-20. This would serve to expand the point that Ollivant makes that there is a continuing battle for the soul of the Army over the nature of the American Way of War.

Ollivant's other point is that COIN needs to be placed in the larger context of many "wars amongst peoples". Here, I would note that the research and pubs that Max and I have been involved with could help give context since we used the SWORD Model with respect to CD, CT, PKO, and now Max is applying it to the phenomena of gangs.

Cheers

JohnT

[Old Eagle]

Excellent recap, John. I, too, was surprised by the commentary of the participants.

Both Max Thurman and CSA Vuono understood that as critical as deterrence was, we would never fight at the Fulda Gap. In fact, as I recall, Vuono's first OCONUS trip as CSA was not to Europe, as had been customary, but to Central America.

[slapout9]

What does SWORD stand for? Can the model be posted? Interested from the Gang aspected mentioned above.

[Steve Blair]

What does SWORD stand for? Can the model be posted? Interested from the Gang aspected mentioned above.

From John's post:

Small Wars Operations Research Directorate (SWORD)

.

No worries, Slap. I missed it the first time through, too....

[Rank amateur]

I thought Brown made two good points: in spite of her obvious bias.

She refereed to research that says political disputes aren't driven by grievance as much as greed. In more practical terms, the people who have the oil in Iraq are never going to share the money with the people who don't: regardless of how much capacity building or hearts and minds work the boots on the ground do. Big problem, if true.

Two: the manual is binary; the political situation in Iraq is multifactional. My pet bugaboo and another huge problem. Arguably, clearing and holding Sadr City gives Maliki less reason to compromise with his opponents: many have wondered if Maliki is actually more interested in using military power to weakening his political opponents than stability. An issue Biddle refers to as "Interest alignment with the host government." (I may or may not have something intelligent to say on this issue later.) But if our objective is political reconciliation, these are the issues that could lead to strategic failure in spite of tactical success.

[Bill Moore]

John I'm familiar with the SWORD model, but have yet found a concise description of it, or a graphic representation. My on-line searches led to numerous articles that talk about SWORD, but never really address the bottom line. Can you send a link, or links, to white papers or articles that accurately address the SWORD model?

The one diagram I did see was basically a triangle, and very simliar to Dr. McCormack's Diamond Model (Naval Post Graduate School), which you may be familiar with. I believe the SWORD model was the genesis of Diamond Model after researching the SWORD, but that is speculation on my part. The Diamond Model is relatively easy to interpret and apply at all levels from the tactical to the strategic level (in my opinion), and would probably be a good addition to the new 3-24.

Thanks for your help, Bill

[Ken White]

...But if our objective is political reconciliation, these are the issues that could lead to strategic failure in spite of tactical success.

strategic failure with respect to Iraq?

Follow on question; Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?

[marct]

John, I think you are absolutely right in the need for more information on the historical development of the doctrine and, IMO more importantly, the thinking behind the doctrine. That was one of the reasons why I was calling for a "scholarly" or "annotated" version (full citations, etc.) of FM 3-24.

I've been watching and reading a fair bit about the reaction to COIN doctrine (thanks, Gian !) and trying to think of ways to reduce some of the cognitive dissonance introduced by the use of pseudo-koans such as "sometimes, less is more". I think that one of the crucial ways in which this could be done is to define the universe of discourse or, at the minimum, set some decent fuzzy boundary conditions on it.

For example, you noted Wendy Brown's piece as being

Neo-marxist, not understanding the nature of Vietnam, Iraq, COIN, the US military, or even the chain of command as specified by the Constitution, National Security Act, and Goldwater-Nichols.

and I think that's a pretty fair characterization of it. But, while I do think she misses the practical point, she has hit on a much larger point. Of course, being an Anthropologist, I have to make that point by telling a story .

In February, I was listening to a talk by Tom Barnett where he's talking on about the interface zone between the global economy and the third world and how the wars of the next century will be fought to bring the Third world into the global economy. Now this actually matches the perceptual structures underlying Brown's position and is the underlying structure of the economic reconstruction inherent in COIN practice. In effect, for both of these people, COIN doctrine is the formalization of the kinetic branch of economic warfare; an ongoing, "long war", that both appear to assume is inevitable.

This assumption of inevitability, along with the shared assumption of an economic base driving the conflict, shapes and conditions the concepts that are used in FM 3-24. What is most worrisome to me is that this shaping assumes a form of "centralization" (for want to a better term) that is grounded in theory but not in reality (as a example, Kilcullen's Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt shows the dangers of assuming such a centralization).

Now, I've got nothing against grounding doctrine in theory, but I do have a real concern about grounding it in bottom-down theory that structurally and perceptually excludes many of the things that are happening in reality.

Anyway, that's my 0.198 cents...