Can I add onto what SLAP said and state they need a better write up on corrections and jails for all phases?
Can I add onto what SLAP said and state they need a better write up on corrections and jails for all phases?
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
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The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
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Top Level Issues
I would say that COIN intelligence needs some expansion in the update and a good section on religious influencers should be added.
I don't know if you saw this on AM, but the PDF had some excellent points:
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
FM 3-24 Roundtable
One of Charlie's favorite members of the Sosh Mafia emailed this morning to say that the recent Perspectives on Politics roundtable on FM 3-24 is now available to the huddled masses. Steve Biddle, LTC Doug Ollivant, Stathis Kalyvas, and Wendy Brown all weigh in (that, btw, is a serious murder's row of COIN commentary).
The PDF
Originally Posted by SteveMetz
Yes, it was posted to the SWJ Blog - thanks for adding it here.
Summary of parallel, earlier discussion?
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.
L2I is "Lessons-Learned Integration."
-- A lesson is knowledge gained through experience.
-- A lesson is not "learned" until it results in organizational or behavioral change.
-- A lesson-learned is not "integrated" until shared successfully with others.
The Sympoosium
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
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.
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