Daniel Pipes on COIN

[patmc]

As the movers have packed my tv, I find myself surfing the net a little more, and came across a SEP 08 article from Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes. "Must Counterinsurgency Wars Fail?" http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5893 Not sure if the article has popped on the site yet or not.

Pipes is a Middle East scholar, and Islamist critic (accurate description?). He is not a military man, but he argues that COIN can be won, citing US turnaround in Iraq, British experience in Ireland, and Malaya to name a few. He disputes the argument that COIN will always be lengthy and unwinable. Basis for his argument comes from his reading of an Israeli IDF Officer COIN paper that he links in the article. I have not read it yet, but plan to this week.

Victory over insurgencies is possible, Amidror argues, but it does not come easily. Unlike the emphasis on size of forces and arsenals in traditional wars, he postulates four conditions of a mostly political nature required to defeat insurgencies. Two of them concern the state, where the national leadership must:

o Understand and accept the political and public relations challenge involved in battling insurgents.
o Appreciate the vital role of intelligence, invest in it, and require the military to use it effectively.

Another two conditions concern counterterrorist operations, which must:

o Isolate terrorists from the non-terrorist civilian population.
o Control and isolate the territories where terrorists live and fight.

Different perspective of the defense debate from a social scientist. Interesting read.

[William F. Owen]

Basis for his argument comes from his reading of an Israeli IDF Officer COIN paper that he links in the article. I have not read it yet, but plan to this week.

I know the paper concerned. While I say there is much some armies can learn from close study of the old IDF (- and hopefully the soon to be IDF), their COIN is not the COIN that others could or should do. If New Mexico was a sovereign nation and faced Mexican Insurgency, then OK.

A point often missed, is that 90% of IDF "COIN" - not a word they use - is standard 1930-50's British Army Doctrine. Extremely brutal, and focussed on reprisals. What worked in 1937, and 46-47, may not work in 2007.

[JamesM]

"Victory over insurgencies is possible"

NO, A truce with insurgences is possible. The 'victories' listed are more appropratly called truces, where the insurgents find that there is more to be gained working with the people they are opposing rather than continuing to fight.
Northern Ireland is a good example of a negotiated truce and disarmament. It came about after the British had relized that winning a millatary 'victory' was inpossible.
The solution came after the British gave up on the idea of a 'victory' over he IRA and sat down to figure an alternative way to end the fighting, other than winning a 'victory'.

In COIN you can win tactical victory in a series of encounters, or in protection of residents, but you can't get an overall military 'victory' in the conflict. To end the conflict like this you have to talk to the other side, then work with the other side, and build a trust and collaborative working relationship with your enemy.
To do that, you first have to change your own brain, and the first word you have to remove is 'victory'.

[tequila]

JamesM - Not quite as simple as that. Malaya was an insurgency which explicitly sought Malayan independence from the UK under Communist Party leadership. The British successfully defeated this insurgency, partly by granting Malaya independence under non-Communist leadership.

[Ken White]

there is no 'victory' unless you're going to use the G.Khan /J. Caesar model of annihilation; all you can do nowadays is achieve an acceptable outcome.

As are the Brits doing in Northern Ireland and as they did in Malaya. They did not defeat the insurgency there, they achieved a reasonably acceptable outcome only through considerable repression and some very tough tactics but there were CTs still in business long after Malaya became independent; the Malaysians and the MNLA finally signed a Treaty in 1989, 29 years after the Malaysians declared the 'Emergency' over and 32 years after the British effectively departed. The last fairly large organized fighting remnants of the MNLA only surrendered about a year after the British had moved on...

[tequila]

Note that Caesar really didn't do all that much annihilating - the conquest of Gaul was far less genocidal than typically is assumed. Most of the time Caesar was all about negotiating tribal alliances, and often a near-majority of his armies were made up of either Gallic allies, mercenaries, or locally-raised Gallic troops trained in the Roman model.

The only Gallic tribes which you could characterize as being "annihilated" were maybe the Helvetii confederation, which Caesar destroyed as a political entity, and the Veneti, who were enslaved en masse.

[Ken White]

Probably true in broad measure but I submit it was the thought that counted.

I'm sure Genghis also spared a batch here and there, he also expanded his forces with some locals occasionally.

Subatai probably did not spare many if any, old soldiers are notoriously testy...