COIN Counterinsurgency (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

The problem with using our experiences and actions in Afghanistan to derive lessons or conclusions about much of anything is that everything is/was severely distorted by the lack of strategic clarity Mr. Ucko spoke of. We never did figure out who the most important enemy was, the Pak Army/ISI, so consequently we never did anything about them. It is almost as if the Royal Navy was trying to judge after losing the war which was better, independent sailings or convoy without ever having acknowledged that the U-boats were Kreigsmarine and Germany was using them to war with.

If you refuse to recognize and confront an actual enemy nothing will work.

Identifying the enemy is a targeting issue. It is not strategy.

I agree that failing to address the Pak Army/ISI support proved problematic. But I would argue that, had you invaded Pakistan it would not have have changed the dynamics. You would just be fighting to maintain control in two countries. It would not have provided a strategic solution. It would have created a larger battlespace and spread your limited resources. It would bring you no closer to your objective.

Which brings up the other question that COIN dances around, what happens when you have chosen a strategic objective that is not achievable?

[carl]

Identifying the enemy is a targeting issue. It is not strategy.

I agree that failing to address the Pak Army/ISI support proved problematic. But I would argue that, had you invaded Pakistan it would not have have changed the dynamics. You would just be fighting to maintain control in two countries. It would not have provided a strategic solution. It would have created a larger battlespace and spread your limited resources. It would bring you no closer to your objective.

Which brings up the other question that COIN dances around, what happens when you have chosen a strategic objective that is not achievable?

That is why I don't like using the word 'strategy'. People tend to start arguing whether this or that is actually strategy or something else. The question is what do we want and what do we have to do to get it? Recognition of the Pak Army/ISI as the enemy should flow from that. It never did. I am perfectly serious when I use the Battle of the Atlantic analogy. The magnitude of our failure is that great, greater even. It is as if there were Kreigsmarine liaison officers working with Western Approaches Command because Dudley Pound was buddies with Doenitz.

In order to effectively contest the Pak Army/ISI there was never any need to invade Pakistan, which is one reason I almost always say Pak Army/ISI and not Pakistan. There were many things that could have been done, things like not giving them any aid of any kind, not providing any technical or spare parts support for equipment, publicizing from the start that we knew what they were up to, attacking the finances of the Army/ISI and the generals etc. There were other things to ranging up to the ultimate, reducing our use of or even abandoning the use of the Karachi supply line. All of these things would have hit the Army/ISI and the feudal elites with whom they are allied. The goal was not Pakistan per se, the goal was the actions of the Pak Army/ISI. But we never did any of that in a serious way because we wouldn't see who the enemy was.

You're right. What if you try to do something that can't be done? We tried to beat Taliban & Co in Afghanistan without dealing with the support and sanctuary provided them by the Pak Army/ISI. About the only thing to be learned from that is not to be so blindingly stupid in the future. But that brings us to the question of why we were/are so blindingly stupid and why for so long? I've never seen that question answered anywhere.

[Bob's World]

Yes, we declared we were implenting a "COIN Strategy" - but what we called COIN, really was not; and what we called strategy, really was not either.

Like so many of the things that have driven us mad with frustration over the past 12 years, we place labels on things to suit our own sensibilites more than to accurately understand and label them for what they actually are; then we work dilligently to achieve success in the context of what we have declared something to be, rather than what it actually is.

If this was a land navigation exercise we plotted the point we wanted to get to far outside of the training area; we plotted a course based upon the way we we wanted to go, rather than the way that was most logical given the terrain, vegetation and other obstacles, then we picked up a rock and declared it to be a compass and moved out at a high rate of speed in the wrong direction.

We then assess how well we progressed in the ensuing journey to measure our "success"; and have captured our troubles during that journey as our "lessons learned" to guide doctrinal re-writes to ensure we have a better journey next time.

What we really need to do is step back and re-think how we understand and have framed the entire problem from the outset; and also gain a better sense of what we actually need to accomplish and how to best do so. But instead we ignore all of that and debate vigorously the relative merits of our fundamentally doomed journey. Most senior leaders seem quite happy with that. As to those below those seniors, to paraphrase a 3-star general leading a conference I had to attend a couple years ago, "and if the boss is happy, I am ecstatic!"

[carl]

What we really need to do is step back and re-think how we understand and have framed the entire problem from the outset; and also gain a better sense of what we actually need to accomplish and how to best do so. But instead we ignore all of that and debate vigorously the relative merits of our fundamentally doomed journey. Most senior leaders seem quite happy with that. As to those below those seniors, to paraphrase a 3-star general leading a conference I had to attend a couple years ago, "and if the boss is happy, I am ecstatic!"

Just so, especially well illustrated by your last two sentences. But that leads us to the point Lind was driving at and the one well articulated by Muth in Command Culture, the professional US military may not be capable of honestly looking and acknowledging what is seen. Will it ever be unless there are some great changes in the command culture? I am skeptical the needed change can be made short of a defeat in a really big war and that scares me.

With this in mind as a civilian out of any and all loops it will be interesting to see what happens to Gen. McMaster in the future. Will he move up further? Will he be able to make changes? Will he go over to the dark side? Will the dark side try to destroy him? I say this because from my perspective the beast tried to make him go away once because it seemed to fear him and it almost took an act of Congress to keep him around.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Yes, we declared we were implenting a "COIN Strategy" - but what we called COIN, really was not; and what we called strategy, really was not either.

Like so many of the things that have driven us mad with frustration over the past 12 years, we place labels on things to suit our own sensibilites more than to accurately understand and label them for what they actually are; then we work dilligently to achieve success in the context of what we have declared something to be, rather than what it actually is.

If this was a land navigation exercise we plotted the point we wanted to get to far outside of the training area; we plotted a course based upon the way we we wanted to go, rather than the way that was most logical given the terrain, vegetation and other obstacles, then we picked up a rock and declared it to be a compass and moved out at a high rate of speed in the wrong direction.

We then assess how well we progressed in the ensuing journey to measure our "success"; and have captured our troubles during that journey as our "lessons learned" to guide doctrinal re-writes to ensure we have a better journey next time.

What we really need to do is step back and re-think how we understand and have framed the entire problem from the outset; and also gain a better sense of what we actually need to accomplish and how to best do so. But instead we ignore all of that and debate vigorously the relative merits of our fundamentally doomed journey. Most senior leaders seem quite happy with that. As to those below those seniors, to paraphrase a 3-star general leading a conference I had to attend a couple years ago, "and if the boss is happy, I am ecstatic!"

I agree with you, I am just frustrated with how we are re-thinking the problem. It is as if, using your analogy, in the AAR the trainer told us that the mistake was made was picking up the wrong rock to use as a compass – it gets us no closer to a solution.

Actually, I would take it one step further. We are given a land navigation problem where one of the points does not exist and we are told we failed to reach that point because we were using the wrong rock as a compass and holding our map with our left hand when we should have been holding it with our right hand.

I was thinking about the Ukraine. Assuming Putin used military and paramilitary forces to enter into Eastern Ukraine, create a separatist movement, take control of key infrastructure, gain limited credibility with the ethnic minority, and then hold an election that grants them legitimacy, are they not implementing a pop-centric insurgency strategy with political legitimacy of the population as the ultimate goal? And if that was his strategy, would not the counter to that strategy be to degrade the separatists’ claims of legitimacy and gain the backing of the population for the government in Kiev? Isn’t that pop-centric COIN used as strategy to defeat the separatists?

[slapout9]

Identifying the enemy is a targeting issue. It is not strategy.

This is one thing that just drive me nuts. IMO It is the very essence of Strategy! People cause crimes and wars and you must decide which person or group of persons you are going to apply energy against. Its is the very essance of Policy and Generalship....which is probabaly why we keep loosing


Your statement reminds me of that saying ready,fire,Aim!

[Bill Moore]

Slapout, every time we used targeting as a strategy we ultimately failed. Targeting is nothing more and nothing less and nothing more than one of several contributing ways to achieve our strategic end. If we simply conduct targeting without doing so in a strategic context we end up with Vietnam, OIF, OEF-A, etc. That doesn't mean it isn't important, but sure has heck isn't the essence of strategy.

[Compost]

This is a bit of a preemptive strike, as I have not been privy to the new 5-34, but this phrase originally tossed around by COL Gentile that COIN is not Strategy has gotten me to wondering. The more I think about it, the more I think it is wrong. In Iraq and Afghanistan, COIN was the ONLY connection we had to the political strategic objective of a free, democratic country. No other doctrine contained anything about democracy or democratic legitimacy. And while I agree that the doctrine is flawed, that connection is not the flaw.

Seem to remember that you argued along this line - without success - in a long-past post on another thread. Here's an opposing opinion.

Strategy is a purposeful, clearly established and agreed plan to achieve an overall objective and any auxiliary components of that objective. Part and parcel of a strategy is a means or methodology to distinguish between success and failure, and in some instances between partial success and partial failure.

COIN is just a concept of operation. It may be present within a strategy as the sole or as one of several conops. To try and employ a conop as a strategy is to avoidably risk falling disastrously short of the objective/objectives.

If you want an example just look back into recent history.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Seem to remember that you argued along this line - without success - in a long-past post on another thread. Here's an opposing opinion.

I rarely give up that easy, but am always looking for opposing opinions.

Strategy is a purposeful, clearly established and agreed plan to achieve an overall objective and any auxiliary components of that objective.

Then explain to me that the strategy is if the political objective is a "free, democratic, and stable Iraq"?

COIN is just a concept of operation. It may be present within a strategy as the sole or as one of several conops. To try and employ a conop as a strategy is to avoidably risk falling disastrously short of the objective/objectives.

seizing Berlin and forcing the surrender of the Nazi's was a concept of the operation too. Not seeing a point here.

If you want an example just look back into recent history.

I don't see anything in recent history that provides examples of COIN not being strategy.

This is what I see in recent history: http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/dem...obayashi-maru/

The failure to achieve a political objective does not change the nature of the operation, and the nature of the operation was not the cause of the failure, in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was a total lack of any concept of human nature and political psychology.

[slapout9]

Slapout, every time we used targeting as a strategy we ultimately failed. Targeting is nothing more and nothing less and nothing more than one of several contributing ways to achieve our strategic end. If we simply conduct targeting without doing so in a strategic context we end up with Vietnam, OIF, OEF-A, etc. That doesn't mean it isn't important, but sure has heck isn't the essence of strategy.

I disagree Bill. In fact I have come to the conclusion that the more we look at Targeting as something different and not an integral part of Strategy the more we get into trouble. In fact I now belive Targeting Beats Strategy! Just look at 911. A single air strike, against a single Target group and it the USA forever and largely the changes are not good!

No, we need to rethink the whole entire concept of Strategy because we have missed something and our enemies no that.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I disagree Bill. In fact I have come to the conclusion that the more we look at Targeting as something different and not an integral part of Strategy the more we get into trouble. In fact I now belive Targeting Beats Strategy! Just look at 911. A single air strike, against a single Target group and it the USA forever and largely the changes are not good!

No, we need to rethink the whole entire concept of Strategy because we have missed something and our enemies no that.

Your going to have to give me some proof. I have seen nothing that indicates that targeted killings work as a strategy. http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/017/7167.pdf

[slapout9]

Your going to have to give me some proof. I have seen nothing that indicates that targeted killings work as a strategy. http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/017/7167.pdf

1-I am the "Attack The System" guy and I always have been. I have never said just killing a few leaders and everything will be fine ( I believe Wilf is a supporter of this idea) in fact I have rather consistently pointed out that just shooting a few leaders and not attacking their supporting infrastructure and processes will not work!

2-As for Proof. Read "Killing Pablo" by Mark Bowden (page 92 if I remember correctly) is almost perfect example of a 5 rings attack on a criminal/terrorist organization.

3-I did support the Killing of Ben Ladin as soon as possible for the psychological boost needed for our side.

[slapout9]

Curmudgy,

Show me proof of something we (USA) did that was anywhere near as effective in generating the ''Desired Effect" as the attack on 911.

Like I say,we are missing something!

[TheCurmudgeon]

Curmudgy,

Show me proof of something we (USA) did that was anywhere near as effective in generating the ''Desired Effect" as the attack on 911.

Like I say,we are missing something!

Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ended the war and kept all later major world conflicts to a manageable size.

Besides, 9/11 was not a strategic victory. The US did not convert and join the Caliphate. It had a psychological impression, but it was not a strategic victory.

[carl]

I feared this would happen. People are starting to argue about whether it is strategy or conops or psychological impressions.

[Bill Moore]

Curmudgy,

Show me proof of something we (USA) did that was anywhere near as effective in generating the ''Desired Effect" as the attack on 911.

Like I say,we are missing something!

I didn't say we shouldn't target, as you pointed out targeting is critical to achieving our strategic objectives, but only if it is done within a strategic context. Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack on the WTC and the Pentagon was within their strategic context and it worked in that they finally drew us into Afghanistan with the intent of dragging us into a long, unwinnable conflict that weaken our economy.

Killing Pablo was a successful intelligence, military, and law enforcement operation and like many I'm glad he's dead, but in a way it undermines your argument. If it was part of the so called war on drugs strategy, then an argument can be made that targeting the cartels failed, because the cocaine output from Columbia actually increased after Pablo's death (and became more decentralized). Killing UBL needed to be done, but Al-Qaeda-ism is alive and well and spreading.

We fail because of our doctrinal approach to the war that is heavily weighted towards using the center the gravity planning concept (which the 5 rings is part of). It was designed to work against industrial nation-states, but it even failed there to include Japan and Germany. Ultimately we had to break the will of both the Germans and Japanese and there was no specific target or set of targets that would accomplish that. The atomic bomb was more about technology and strategy than targeting, it convinced some of the Japanese that we now had the capacity to completely wipe them out and that resistance was futile. It certainly didn't convince all the Japanese that was the case and their surrender was predetermined, but was partly the result of chance on how other factors played out within Japan. Anytime we attempt to get overly deterministic we tend to get it wrong.

Read Grant Martin's latest article on the Blog, it doesn't take away anything from the phenomenal targeting capacity JSOC built to find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze, but it became more a process that was disconnect from strategy and I think you have a hard time arguing we were successful in Iraq when you look at it today. If you don't think we haven't been aggressively targeting terrorist networks and their support networks you're disconnected from the fight. Just demonstrates that targeting outside a strategic context is little more than tactics, and as Sun Tzu wrote tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...ion-black-belt

A comment in response to the article:

The CIA analyst stated she supported the JSOC targeting process initially but after a certain point the intel being collected and used for follow-on missions became simply a reason to do more missions with little or no thought given to the follow-on missions---it seemed to her to be all about numbers---she then left Iraq and the CIA.

Targeting is part of strategy, it isn't the strategy itself. I personally think we didn't kill enough insurgents in Afghanistan and our economic development focus did more to serve the Taliban and its allies than our objectives, so I'm certainly not advocating against targeting, but like everything else we need to understand the reason why we're doing it and move beyond the myth of a decisive target.

[Bill Moore]

This is a bit of a preemptive strike, as I have not been privy to the new 5-34, but this phrase originally tossed around by COL Gentile that COIN is not Strategy has gotten me to wondering. The more I think about it, the more I think it is wrong. In Iraq and Afghanistan, COIN was the ONLY connection we had to the political strategic objective of a free, democratic country. No other doctrine contained anything about democracy or democratic legitimacy. And while I agree that the doctrine is flawed, that connection is not the flaw.

So I ask the question, if the strategic objective is a free, stable, democratic state, what other strategy do we have other than the population-centric government building that is found in COIN?

Simply killing insurgents does not get you any closer. In fact killing insurgents has little to do with the strategic goal. As the doctrine still notes, to stop an insurgency you must address the root causes.

Perhaps I am confusing strategy with strategic objective. I would think the two would be nested. I will wait to see how the statement is phrased in the new doctrine, but I am curious what other action the military can take that would bring the US any closer to its strategic objective.

We had this discussion earlier and I'm thinking along the lines of this post.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...22&postcount=9

Key excerpts:

COIN is neither a concept nor can it be a strategy. Instead, it is simply an acronymic descriptor of a basket of diverse activities intended to counter an insurgency.

Quote:
COIN debate would benefit if the debaters took a refresher course in the basics of strategy. Many fallacies and inadequate arguments about COIN in Afghanistan, for instance, are avoidable if their proponents were willing to seek and were able to receive help from theory.

Quote:
There are no such historical phenomena as guerrilla wars. To define a war according to a tactical style is about as foolish as definition according to weaponry.

(he listed using tank warfare as an example)


Quote:
Counterinsurgency is not a subject that has integrity in and of itself. Because war is a political, and only instrumentally a military, phenomenon, we must be careful lest we ambush ourselves by a conceptual confusion
that inflates COIN to the status of an idea and activity that purportedly has standalone, context-free merit.

Quote:
To be blunt, the most effective strategy to counter an insurgency may be one that makes little use of COIN tactics. It will depend upon the circumstance (context).

Quote:
Such winning can be understood to mean that the victorious side largely dictates the terms that it prefers for an armistice and then a peace settlement, and is in a position to police and enforce a postwar order that in the main reflects its values and choices. History tells us that it can be as hard, if not harder, to make peace than it is to make war successfully.

Quote:
Population-centric COIN will not succeed if the politics are weak, but neither is it likely to succeed if the insurgents can retreat to repair, rally, and recover in a cross-border sanctuary.

Quote:
The principal and driving issues for the United States with respect to counterinsurgency are when to do it and when not, and how to attempt to do it strategically. Policy and strategy choices are literally critical and determinative.

IMO this turns the lame argument that COIN is the way of the future, insurgencies have always been present and likely will continue to be for the next few decades, but that hardly means it is in our interest to get engaged anymore than it is to conduct state on state warfare.


Quote:
Tactical errors or setbacks enforced by a clever enemy should be corrected or offset tactically and need not menace the integrity of policy and strategy. COIN may not be rocket science or quantum theory, but no one has ever argued that it is easy.

Quote:
If success in COIN requires prior, or at least temporally parallel, success in nationbuilding, it is foredoomed to failure. Nations cannot be built. Most especially they cannot be built by well-meaning but culturally arrogant
foreign social scientists, no matter how well intentioned and methodologically sophisticated. A nation (or community) is best defined
as a people who think of themselves as one. Nations build themselves by and through historical experience. Cultural understanding is always useful and its absence can be a lethal weakness, but some lack of comprehension is
usual in war.

Quote:
The issue is not whether Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else either needs to be, or should be “improved.” Instead, the issue is whether or not the job is feasible. Even if it would be well worth doing, if it is mission impossible or highly improbable at sustainable cost to us, then it ought not to be attempted. This is Strategy 101.

[carl]

I didn't say we shouldn't target, as you pointed out targeting is critical to achieving our strategic objectives, but only if it is done within a strategic context. Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack on the WTC and the Pentagon was within their strategic context and it worked in that they finally drew us into Afghanistan with the intent of dragging us into a long, unwinnable conflict that weaken our economy.

I think you are giving them rather too much credit. I think they just wanted to kill a bunch of people in a spectacular way and did so. They have made noises I believe about how they will exhaust the West but 9-11 was just a chance to kill grabbed.

Unwinnable? Hardly. Using that word implies there was no way no man could have done it. Nonsense. We never bothered to fight the main enemy. If you don't do that you won't win. It was a failure by a group of men, us, that could have done differently but we didn't. We failed. We. It could have been done.

[Bill Moore]

I think you are giving them rather too much credit. I think they just wanted to kill a bunch of people in a spectacular way and did so. They have made noises I believe about how they will exhaust the West but 9-11 was just a chance to kill grabbed.

Unwinnable? Hardly. Using that word implies there was no way no man could have done it. Nonsense. We never bothered to fight the main enemy. If you don't do that you won't win. It was a failure by a group of men, us, that could have done differently but we didn't. We failed. We. It could have been done.

Carl, Al Qaeda's strategic comments are well known by those who study them (they're not classified), and unlike us they did have a strategy. Killing a lot of people had a purpose.

Unwinnable? The way we're fighting "pop centric" is a no win pipe dream.

[carl]

Carl, Al Qaeda's strategic comments are well known by those who study them (they're not classified), and unlike us they did have a strategy. Killing a lot of people had a purpose.

Unwinnable? The way we're fighting "pop centric" is a no win pipe dream.

Their comments are known. But the way you phrased it it was if they planned on our reaction to 9-11 being what it was. I don't think they are that smart. They killed a lot of people because they like to and anything else was a bonus.

Nothing, repeat, nothing will work if you refuse to recognize and take action against the prime enemy. We never did that. In fact we supported financially the prime enemy, the Pak Army/ISI. Pop centric, enemy centric, CT or whatever is useless unless you identify and contest the prime enemy.