So is that a failure to adapt to doctrine or a failure of those concerned to develop effective and useful doctrine? Teaching that works is rarely, if ever, rejected if it is seen to work. I fully agree that the community has got to gain the required level of confidence, but that is never going to happen if the evidence does not appear or remains elusive. Writing a COIN manual does not a COIN doctrine make.Originally Posted by pakphile
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Not sure precisely what Pakphile meant but
I am sure that his statement is correct. "...the time it takes for social incentive structures to change in any organization so that doctrine can be consistently translated into strategy and tactics (human behavior)." is always a problem -- and that really amounts to "failure to adapt to a doctrine." In this particular case it is because the 'doctrine' has to overcome more than 30 years of inertia, fight a bureaucracy that is inimical to that doctrine, force change to deeply embedded training and education practices and is not accepted as totally correct by many in the institution to whom the doctrine nominally belongs.
In other words, there are a lot of people fighting the problem instead of the supposed enemy...
We need to get over the myth that COIN and allied efforts are exotic efforts requiring special training, education, practices or people. It is simply a part of the job. A part we elected to ignore for years because it's dirty work; more importantly to that neglect, it's also tedious work and does not provide instant feedback (bad ju-ju for impatient Americans who like quick results...). Effective training will produce people competent -- and willing -- to do what the job requires.
I actually don't mind parts of the myth IF it actually spurs changes in the way we train and (more importantly, IMO) retain the results of that training. From what I've seen of the American military historically, I remain (sadly) very skeptical of their ability to do that without major changes in a number of areas (starting with the personnel system). I also (sadly) don't see those changes coming from within.
Vietnam is only the most recent example of the Army shedding knowledge and experience as soon as they were done. If the 'myth of COIN' forces them to retain knowledge, improve training, and fix a personnel system that hasn't worked properly for at least 50 years (and I'm being generous there), it's worth it in my view.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
incentives redux
COIN is fully embedded within the 'Full Spectrum' concept which is now the US Army capstone doctrine. If the Sec DoD and CentCom are pushing the COIN (population centric vs. enemy centric) angle then it seems to me that it is more than 'a manual', but there are many layers of implementers for that doctrine to filter through, so there are many opportunities for outcomes to be different from what the designers intended. (That also leaves room for feedback, innovations and improvements, which is what (IMHO) 3.24 and 3.24.2 are to 3.0)
With public policy (which I understand better) you always have a number of possible implementation outcomes. Although the policy may come out as a single message, implementers who receive the guidance may:
understand and implement correctly (and even innovate)
misunderstand and implement incorrectly
understand, but, for many reasons, not fully implement
The less than satisfactory outcomes are often brushed aside, in civilian life, as 'unintended consequences'.
However, it is the right incentives, not 'effective training', that will get people 'to do what the job requires' (Ken White). I am sure some of you watched The Wire on HBO. This was essentially a 5 year TV study in the power of incentives to undermine doctrine. Each social group in the show became increasingly disfunctional as its members were influenced by the wrong incentives created by the wrong metrics: cops counted arrest stats, not public satisfaction; the heroin dealers counted corners not profits; the politicians counted contributions not progress; the educators ‘taught to the test’ not the pupil and the journalist leadership pursued Pulitzers rather than the truth.
The Vietnam-era penchant for body counts is one of the best examples of the wrong metric creating the wrong incentives that ultimately led to a colossal failure. What are the right metrics for COIN to improve its outcomes? That is probably the subject of some other thread on in the SWC.
While that may be the intention, I'd dispute this as being the fact. I think their is something poorly defined as "COIN" that the US Army has arbitrarily bolted on to what could be an essentially sound process. JFCOM talks about security and combat operations, as well as regular and irregular threats. These are essentially historically and doctrinally sound.
.... then out of nowhere you have "COIN doctrine." So you now have created a box, containing the "solution to the problem" which is pretty indicative of a "paint by numbers" approach.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
COIN vs conventional. It's a lot like woodland versus urban terrain. The same principles apply, the same tactics, etc. What changes is only at the level of technique and procedure. But I guess that I would never be able to sell any books or write any lengthy papers with a thought that is so simple.
Ah... but... you see ... um... actually I don't think there is COIN v Conventional.
There are combat and security operations against regular and irregular threats and you might have to conduct combat and security operations against regular and irregular threats at the same time. Counter-insurgency could be an entirely false construct, and a misleading one as well.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I agree. It is a false construct. My point was simply that many have a tendency to see a "type" (for lack of a better word) of combat and to name it. We fight in urban terrain and call it MOUT. We fight in mountains and call it Mountain Warfare. The name is just something that we throw around because it is combat occuring under conditions where we tend to use more of some techniques and procedures and fewer of others. The doctrine and tactics apply equally to both. People see the type of war that we're fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and call it COIN. No problem - MOUT, COIN, Mountain, Desert, Woodland - whatever. Last I checked, we still use movement formations to ensure security, control, and flexibility, whether operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Balkans. It looks different in each - technique - but that's it. Whether entering rooms in Bosnia or Iraq, we took up points of domination, but it looked a lot different than in Iraq, in terms speed and posture. We altered formations according to the perceived enemy situation. It's all the same doctrine. In Iraq, we modified our techniques and procedures for theater-specific threats.
I think OIF was a wakeup call for a lot of people who finally realized that our practice of training for CTC's, rather than training for war, led us to be a military only prepared for a very narrow range of enemies and a very narrow range of conditions. Some responded by writing another doctrinal publication. I think that really appealed to the cerebral crowd that enjoys the intellectual exercise of discussing big picture issues and putting it down on paper. The end-product was not useless. It was very effective upon the political and domestic target audiences. It sent a message that we were unprepared as a military, but were learning and getting our act together. The means by which we actuallly, on the ground, got our act together had little, perhaps nothing, to do with a doctrine re-write. Rather, it was a lot of squads, platoons, and companies figuring out how to apply knowledge that they already had. We finally realized, as an institution, that our training up until that point had been garbage - not because we weren't taught the basics, but because our training never emphasized teaching leaders and Soldiers how to apply their knowledge to a wider range of conditions, how to think more creatively, be more adaptive, and be more flexible. Our training pre-OIF was characterized more by a canned training scenario whereby if the BLUEFOR did not behave as the OC expected, then the situation would deteriorate at a speed, and on a scale, that was so absurd as to remove all training value from the exercise. If the BLUEFOR did behave as the OC expected, then there were no surpises and the commander got kudos in the AAR for being completely predictable and by the book. OIF turned into the worthwhile training exercise that we never had. After a few years, we finally became an adequately trained force.
On Petraeus's dissertation
The common theme I see in Petraeus' dissertation and his recent speaking is a focus or specialization on the political aspects of military command. In seattle July 9th he spent more time reciting the names of people, relationships and their accomplishments than on Afghanistan, for example. (Time it.) The dissertation speaks frequently about *who* advised the President and political leaders, in various ways, in many conflicts, who those civilian leaders were, and who agreed or disagreed with whom.
In his Seattle, he talked about State and political leaders in fairly long passages but barely mentioned the name McCrystal or Odierno. There may have been operational reasons or relationship reasons for not focusing on his subordinates, but the extensive discussions of political and military figures was prominent.
The reason I mention this is, that it illustrates Petraeus and perhaps other general officers' excessive focus on things other than *why* we engage a particular war, or *alternatives* to the particular war, or its morality, legality under treaties, or its justness. Naturally, an officer's career is more successful if he focuses on the "How" rather than the "Why". I'm not even sure where one blends into the other. For example, you can hardly be excellent at answering the question "How", without a definition of the goal, and the goal in turn, is inevitably a part of the larger picture-- the whole picture of what we are trying to accomplish, in the world.
I don't think the compartmentalization, or professional specialization, among general officers is appropriate at their rank and scope of responsibilities, especially in this era of nation building (or "stability operations", or the"administrative force" described by Thomas PM Barnett.) It is frankly stupid, and I share Fallon's assessment of Petraeus as an ass kisser.
Disincentives abound...
You can have the best incentives in town and poor training will not allow the most-highly-incentivized persons in the world to succeed in combat. Conversely, if your training is halfway decent, you can overcome poor or no incentives -- the US Army proves that on an almost daily basis. The British and Canadian armies do even better (due to better training than ours) on even more poor 'incentives.' Both are important, in an ideal world both would be right. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.Disincentives both. Lot of that about. Those two in particular are responsible for a great many ills in the world. In fact, I'd say the educators are at fault for more poor incentives than almost any other trade or profession; the probability is that if they did their job correctly, proper incentives would be provided......educators ‘taught to the test’ not the pupil and the journalist leadership pursued Pulitzers rather than the truth.
I know, Sam, I know...Actually, while it was a totally bad idea, it had little to do with the failure -- and most decent units in Viet Nam did not fall prey to that foolishness. At least not in the 62-68 time frame, can't speak to after that.The Vietnam-era penchant for body counts is one of the best examples of the wrong metric creating the wrong incentives that ultimately led to a colossal failure.It's been argued before; should be able to use search and find the thread. Then you'll see my statement that attempts to apply metrics to war are just dumb. Engineering and other professions need metrics. Science needs metrics. War is not engineering (though engineering is used in war) and it is not a science (though science is used); it is an art and all metrics will do is delude you. Those threads will show some that agreed with me and some that did not.What are the right metrics for COIN to improve its outcomes? That is probably the subject of some other thread on in the SWC.
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