Military History and the Drafting of Doctrine

[Mark O'Neill]

There are several problems with the premise behind this paper, I will address them in what I regard as priority order:

1. The 'theory' of Global insurgency is assumed as a fact. It isn't. Furthermore, as we understand better the insurgency related fights that are occurring in the world at the moment it becomes increasingly apparent that key tenets of the 'theory' are in fact questionable. (And this is without even touching on the world of International Relations theory - where all but the most naive neo-liberals would choke on the asumptions about the nature of the international system implicit in 'Global insurgency'). Let's not even start on the requirement for 'replicability' without qualification that lies at the heart of the concept of 'theory'.

2. Regarding the assumption that the minimal (or , perhaps, non-existent) attention in FM3-24 to several historical 'theories' of insurgency somehow diminishes the utility of the doctrine:

a. The 'theories' are just that - they are not mandated 'laws' such as those that apply in physics. (You might be ignorant about gravity or think that it doesn't apply to you, but if you are operating on this planet you cannot avoid it; unfortuately for the argument in the paper, contemporary practice and history demonstrates that you can be totally ignorant of 'foco or foci' COIN theory and still be a successful counterinsurgent.
b. As someone who has taught, mentored ( and discussed ) the doctrine with / to people who have subsequently applied it in the field - it works. This is surely the ultimate test of doctrine. FM3-24 doesn't cover a whole bunch things - but it works nonetheless.

3. The paper wanders into the border of what I am increasingly regarding as the 'loony tunes' reductionist western analysis of 'Islamic' insurgency. Just because an insugent adheres to the Islamic faith does not mean that he (or she) is insurgent because of Islamic issues . (If we follow the same 'logic' in the 1980s we had a big problem with 'Catholic' or 'Papist' insurgencies because of the PIRA, ETA and numerous Latin american insurgencies). Hard analysis of the insurgencies that people conflate into 'Islamist' reveals that the majority are primarily driven by social, ethnic, economic and racial concerns, with questions of 'Islamism' often being, at best, second order issues.

Finally, I am left wondering what the point of the paper really was.

I will conclude by paraphrasing Colin S Gray, 'History is not a perfect predictor of the future, but it is all that we have got...'

Cheers,

Mark