FID or COIN? does it matter

[Dayuhan]

As to last US COIN; as I have stated on other threads I have come to believe that it is most helpful to look at COIN as Governance. COIN is a condition between a governance and its own populace. When you travel to another country to intervene in the relationship between that governance and populace you are either conducting UW or FID (in US doctrinal terms), depending on which side you are there to assist...

In either case, we removed a government, created a new one, and branded all who failed to accept the new government as "insurgents". This rather begs the question of whose government it is in the first place. If it is "ours", our creation, our dependency, and has never been accepted as legitimate by much of the population... is it really a government at all? If not, are those who fight it really "insurgents"?

I would say that the "Philippine Insurrection" was not properly an insurrection at all, but an unsuccessful resistance against an invading power. Whether or not the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately be seen the same way depends on the degree to which those governments can stop being "ours" and become "theirs". I'm not convinced that this has happened yet.

In Manila, and also at a stop along the way to Manila in Guam, as the fleet sailed from San Francisco with hastily gathered volunteer militia from several Western states, it was a handful of Oregon Volunteers who went ashore and accepted the surrender of the Spanish Garrisons that were occupying those countries. We really wanted the excellent harbors as coaling stations and safe ports for our growing navy, but then we got greedy. Greed is bad.

Some only wanted the harbors. Some wanted a good deal more, from the start. There was a significant faction in the US Government at the time who were plain and simple imperialists, believing that the US needed to break out of its shell and emerge as a great power in the European mold, complete with overseas possessions. Notable examples were Albert Beveridge in the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge in the House, and Theodore Roosevelt. There were also economic interests. Manufacturers saw the rest of the world being divvied up and were keen to establish protected export markets; the Philippines were seen as a stepping stone to China. The Sugar Trust, one of the great industrial monopolies of the day, was keen to bring a source of cane sugar inside the tariff wall that had been established to protect beet sugar producers.

The fleet that Admiral Dewey sailed into Manila Bay for his famous victory against a rather decrepit Spanish squadron sailed from Hong Kong; Roosevelt had ordered Dewey there with specific instructions to prepare for action against Manila. Of course it had to be sold to the public as a fortuitous accident that brought with it the responsibility to "civilize, Christianize, and uplift" the Filipinos (which in point of fact meant appropriating them), but it wasn't nearly as accidental as was later suggested.

The point in today's context is simply that what "we" want is never monochromatic. Different people want different things, and factions will readily try to adopt a noble (or at least salable) facade for intentions that might not be well received by the public. I'm not sure how much that has changed since 1898...