COIN Reading Lists (merged)

[Gian P Gentile]

Wilf as usual is spot-on and has it right with the recommendation to read Clausewitz first!! Ironic though that FM 3-24 chose to leave Clausewitz off of the classics bibliography list in the back of the manual. The purpose of this action was to bludgeon the American Army out of its perceived "conventional mindset."

Also strongly suggest reading CE Callwell's "Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice." The intro in the University of Nebraska edition by historian Doug Porch is superb.

[MikeF]

Patton,

I've been given some thought to this question as of late. Specifically, we've been debating how to teach the institutional army about COIN. I learned from On the Job Training followed with my current academic pursuits. With that in mind, I'd suggest starting with the basics of how and why.

1. To answer the Why, I'd recommend two books.

A. Why Men Rebel- Ted Gurr
B. Revolutionary Change- Chalmers Johnson

Summary of Gurr...

Amazon Review
In this book, Gurr examines the psychological frustration-aggression theory which argues that the primary source of the human capacity for violence is the frustration-aggression mechanism. Frustration does not necessarily lead to violence, Gurr says, but when it is sufficiently prolonged and sharply felt, it often does result in anger and eventually violence.
Gurr explains this hypothesis with his term "relative deprivation," which is the discrepancy between what people think they deserve, and what they actually think they can get. Gurr's hypothesis, which forms the foundation of the book, is that: "The potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity."(p.24) http://www.beyondintractability.org/booksummary/10680


John T. Fischel SWJ summary- excerpt from another thread
1. The absolutely deprived/oppressed do not rebel.
2. Neither do those who are doing well.
3. Rebellion happens after a period of social/political/economic improvement is followed by a sudden and relatively steep downturn causing the government to lose its legitimacy.
Gurr calls this "perceived relative deprivation."
It's still the best theoretical explanation for insurgency out there.

COL Bob Jones adds

A couple of points worth considering:

In general, insurgency occurs when a government "fails" its populace. Failure being not meeting some issue or issues that can fall across the full range of Maslows heirarchy that a significant segment of the populace feels is important enought to fight over, and where legitimate means for addressing the failure are not available. Not the same as effective governance, as government can be effective (British governance of American Colonies) and fail; or it can be ineffective and succeed. The only metric that matters is how he populace feels about its governance.

Insurgency falls into three broad categories: Revolution, to change the governance of the entire state; Separatist, to break some segment of the state off and form a new state; and Resistance. (In Iraq you see all three forms at the same time, and each requires a tailored approach to resolve).

COIN efforts tend to be long, drawnout affairs largely because Governments (politicians) are even worse than most people at taking responsibility for their shortcomings. Far better to blame such failures on others and focus on "fixing them," rather than being introspective and adjusting your own actions as your main effort, and addressing the symptoms of that failure as a supporting effort.

Finally, outbreaks of insurgency tend to occur after any major disruption ends a period of major governmental control that has suppressed the ability of a wide range of populaces to self-determine their own governance. As Spain crumbled as a major power at the turn of the century (led to popular uprisings and also a scramble by other states to take over payments on old colonies), At the end of WWI a major disruption of the European Colonial system occured with similar effect. The end of WWII led to many African and Asian uprisings. Concept of a common ideology for distinct events occurs as many of these populaces turn to an ideology of communism to rally the populace for change. Post Coldwar the areas released from suppression were central europe, the middle east. Russia in large part opted not to resist, so change was relatively bloodless in Central Europe. In the Middle East the US led west is resisting such changes to the political structures the worked so hard to shape and sustain, so there is conflict. Most of these populaces are majority Muslim, so it makes a convenient ideology to rally the populace for change.

Summary of Johnson...

CHPT 8 PG 156-157

"by demonstrating through apparently indiscriminate violence that the existing regime cannot protect the people nominally under its authority. The effect on the individual is supposedly not only anxiety, but withdrawal from the relationships making up the established order of society. .... usually has the opposite effect of calling people's attention to the seriousness of the situation and encouraging them to support any strong reassertion of authority"

"..provoke the ruling elites into a disastrous overreaction, thereby creating widespread sentiment against them. ...transform the political situation of the country into a military situation. That will alienate the masses, who, from then on, will revolt against the army and the police and blame them for this state of things."


More to follow...

Mike

[MikeF]

To understand How men rebel, you gotta go with Chairman Mao...

Here's a quick summary with a little help from Dr. Gordon McCormick and David Kilcullen...

KEY POINTS*:

1. In this ‘game’ of IW, the goal of the state or counter-state is control of the populace. The counter-state is an organization that seeks to take over the responsibilities of the state. The counter-state can be a tribe, gang, insurgent, terrorist, or drug lord.

2. Control is dictated by the perceived security level of the populace. In this type of conflict, control is often coerced as the state and counter-state battle for the physical and psychological so-called “hearts and minds.”

3. If the government stops providing essential services, security, and governance to the populace, then the counter-state will fill the void. For example, an area in Iraq where coalition forces mass in large FOBs and the government does not govern. These areas are often dubbed “denied areas.”

4. The point at which the state cedes an area to the counter-state is defined as the break point. This break point is “achieved by establishing a local military advantage, displacing (or neutralizing) the residual presence of the old regime, and creating an alternative set of administrative and governing institutions” (McCormick, 1999, pp. 26-27).

* These key points are a portion of Dr. Gordon McCormick’s Mystic Diamond Model from his seminar on Guerilla Warfare. Dr. David Kilcullen used the model to introduce his conflict eco-system.

ENEMY COURSE OF ACTION:

Chairman Mao set the ultimate playbook for the counter-state. The Vietcong, NVA, Hezbollah, Hamas, JAM, and Al Qaeda adapted it for their own purposes.

1) Clandestine Organization

2) Psychological Preparation of the People
(a) Propaganda
(b) Reduction of Prestige
(c) Peasant Resistance
(d) Destruction of the Opposition

3) Expansion of Control
(a) Destruction of the Oppression
(b) Land Reform as a Tactic of the Party

4) Consolidation of Power
(a) Paramilitary Forces
(b) Mutual Surveillance
(c) Movement Controls

In China, the Maoist Theory of People's War divides warfare into three phases. In Phase One, the guerrillas earn population's support by distributing propaganda and attacking the organs of government. In Phase Two, escalating attacks are launched against the government's military forces and vital institutions. In Phase Three, conventional warfare and fighting are used to seize cities, overthrow the government, and assume control of the country. Mao's doctrine anticipated that circumstances may require shifting between phases in either directions and that the phases may not be uniform and evenly paced throughout the countryside. Mao Zedong's seminal work, On Guerrilla Warfare,[4] has been widely distributed and applied most successfully in Vietnam, by military leader and theorist Vo Nguyen Giap, whose "Peoples War, Peoples Army"[5] closely follows the Maoist three-phase approach, but emphasizing flexibility in shifting between guerrilla warfare and a spontaneous "General Uprising" of the population in conjunction with guerrilla forces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerril...e_Maoist_model)

I hope this helps...

Mike

[John T. Fishel]

at self promotion, I'd recommend my own (with Max G. Manwaring) Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, OU Press, 2008 (paperback edition) which is a "reasonable" price.

Cheers

JohnT

[carl]

RAND has many many things on line, including Galula's first person account of his time in Algeria. And it's all for free.

[Hacksaw]

Gian and WILF...

While I too enjoy an occassional perusal of St Carl's treatment on war, we might consider the context of the request... Soph in College with no personal reference point for the nature of warfare.

Directing him to Carl first is akin to telling a young child to learn the history of the Jewish nation by picking up a copy of the Old
Testament and following the story.

Can it be done, yeah but....

I think its a poor place to direct a neophyte "first"...

Live well and row

[wm]

Gian and WILF...

Soph in College with no personal reference point for the nature of warfare.

Directing him to Carl first is akin to telling a young child to learn the history of the Jewish nation by picking up a copy of the Old
Testament and following the story.

Can it be done, yeah but....

I think its a poor place to direct a neophyte "first"...

Not to pile on, but to really understand St Carl, one ought to read and understand Hegel first, since On War is largely a practical application of the Hegelian dialectic to the world of human conflict, representing one instantiation in the world of human activities of the dialectic movement by which the Absolute Ideal becomes concrete--again not a task I'd recommend to your average college sophomore, especially one who may be embarking on this endeavor as a solo venture.

Have you guys read Hegel's Logic or Phenomenolgy of the Spirit ? It makes reading Carl seem like a cakewalk.

[William F. Owen]

Gian and WILF...
While I too enjoy an occassional perusal of St Carl's treatment on war, we might consider the context of the request... Soph in College with no personal reference point for the nature of warfare.

He's a Soph. Good enough. CvC is the best guide to understanding conflict in the round. COIN is War, therefore understanding it's nature is essential, to my mind.

Directing him to Carl first is akin to telling a young child to learn the history of the Jewish nation by picking up a copy of the Old Testament and following the story.

Worked for me!

I think its a poor place to direct a neophyte "first"...

There is a standard, and it' not easy. If you know a better book, that explains the roots and dynamics of conflict better than CvC, then I am all ears.

[Bob's World]

I highly recommend:

"1776" by David McCullough.
Very successful insurgents like Mao and Ho Chi Minh studied this insurgency very closely. This one year snapshot really does a great job of covering the play by play of a government making bad decisions in the face of a dissatisfied populace, and the resultant insurgency. Plus everyone needs to refresh themselves on who we are as Americans, and by studing the errors of our British "parents," we can hopefully break the cycle and not make the same mistakes they did as we find ourselves in very similar situations today.

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory & Practice David Galula's

From theory to strategy to operations to tactics. A guy who gets it does a great job of breaking it down.

Lastly, unless you are a hardcore academic, I strongly urge you not to attempt to read and understand Clausewitz. This is in no way a criticism of my Prussian friend. To understand insurgency you must first seek to understand fundamental human dynamics, and THEN to understand war. The reasons why states wage war against each other and the dynamics of that are very different than the dynamics of why a populace wages war against its own government. This is one reason why conventional military forces often start off on the wrong foot when tasked to deal with an insurgency. They do what militarys do: Defeat the Threat. So I will respectfully disagree with WILF and COL G. as to "Clausewitz first."

(By the same token, I would never recommend to a Lieutenant or even a Captain to read Clausewitz either. Read what is relevant to your success at the level you are at. Read classics like "Platoon Leader" and "Company Commander"; hell read "Devils in Baggy Pants" and other great reads on small unit actions and leadership. Then read Galula and think about how you apply those leadership skills to an insurgency).

[Ken White]

a Corporal in 1952. Who knew I'd offend so many people. To make matters worse, it was the 1940s Maude translation and not Wilf's recommended Paret edition (after my time...).