Applying the lessons of late 19th/early 20th century asymmetrical warfare

[John Grenier]

A lot of professional historians have said that the proper model for understanding at least US actions in the current messes is the Phil. insurrection, but that is even an overdrawn historical parallel IMHO.

The real problem with trying to "use" history for these issues is the cherry picking that goes on. Looking at any "small war" in history can lead one to find the Eureka! moment: "We should do X because Y did it and they won in Z." One of the great tropes is that history repeats itself. People repeat themselves, often to inimical effect. Remember, history not an exercise in lessons learned and case studies like the military's pathetic attempts at PME suggest (remember, PME is to education what air guitar is to music).

I just had a student in the Norwich MA in Mil Hist program write his end-of-program (we don't call it a thesis because it is not) on why the US military continues to conflate the terms UW, FID, revolutionary, guerrilla, COIN, LIC, IW, spec ops, etc. His argument fell partly on the point that the people responsible for writing the doctrine for those operations do not have the proper training in history. Instead, they cherry pick and think reading some stuff on the web will do the trick. Alas, it ain't so.

[William F. Owen]

I just had a student in the Norwich MA in Mil Hist program write his end-of-program (we don't call it a thesis because it is not) on why the US military continues to conflate the terms UW, FID, revolutionary, guerrilla, COIN, LIC, IW, spec ops, etc. His argument fell partly on the point that the people responsible for writing the doctrine for those operations do not have the proper training in history. Instead, they cherry pick and think reading some stuff on the web will do the trick. Alas, it ain't so.

IMO, Doctrine writers tend not to write Doctrine. They write sales documents for concepts.
Doctrine writers and also Military Theorists, tend to be very bad at military history. Indeed we keep confusing "military historians" with "military theorists." Selective use of sources and simplistic narratives as to events are a huge problem.
My beef with most military history is it's failure to provide insight, and instead to provide narrative. When have almost no "Operational historians" bar the likes of Paddy Griffiths.

[John Grenier]

IMO, Doctrine writers tend not to write Doctrine. They write sales documents for concepts.
Doctrine writers and also Military Theorists, tend to be very bad at military history. Indeed we keep confusing "military historians" with "military theorists." Selective use of sources and simplistic narratives as to events are a huge problem.
My beef with most military history is it's failure to provide insight, and instead to provide narrative. When have almost no "Operational historians" bar the likes of Paddy Griffiths.

Doctrine is indeed a political football. Most of it is not worth the paper it is printed on.

Are you a member of SMH? I think you'll find that operational historians are a dying breed because they don't get at the important issues of history. A few places like CMH and CSI write operational histories, but they are really bad. Again, more just reports and lessons learned, but without the proper historic and historiographic context, they become useless. There are a lot of really outstanding military historians out there writing some really good stuff, but on the whole, folks in the military don't listen to them because of the anti-intellectual bias of the military. The good stuff is out there, but it takes a long time to master it.

[Ken White]

... but on the whole, folks in the military don't listen to them because of the anti-intellectual bias of the military. The good stuff is out there, but it takes a long time to master it.

I think rather than bias, your last clause better explains the failure to listen...

[Dayuhan]

A lot of professional historians have said that the proper model for understanding at least US actions in the current messes is the Phil. insurrection, but that is even an overdrawn historical parallel IMHO.

What professional historian has said that, and where? Quite a bizarre contention, really.

"Philippine Insurrection" is in the first place a peculiar and ahistoric construct. Filipinos call it the Philippine-American War, probably more realistic. It was a conquest, not an insurrection, and despite some familiarity with it I can't see anything even vaguely resembling a useful parallel to the current conflicts. Certainly many of the methods employed would be neither acceptable nor useful today: can you imagine an American commander in Helmand or Kandahar pulling a Howlin' Jake Smith and ordering his men to kill every Afghan male over the age of 11? The times they have a'changed.

[John Grenier]

Brian Linn for one.

[Dayuhan]

Brian Linn for one.

I liked Linn's book on the Philippine War, but the alleged similarities to Iraq leave me unmoved. The parallels do seem superficially compelling, especially to an audience with little knowledge of the Philippine conflict, but each is slightly stretched, and the cumulative stretch approaches the breaking point. The lessons to be deduced, IMO, go rather beyond the breaking point, and the rather more compelling differences between the conflicts don't seem to get much attention.

For example, there's a huge difference in the fundamental objective of the wars being looked at. The Philippine War was an outright war of conquest; the objective was to annex the Philippines and govern it directly as a colony. The objective in Iraq and Afghanistan is quite different: we're trying to develop an indigenous governing capacity, not to govern these states ourselves. This policies Linn cites as things the Americans did right in the Philippines generally involved the effective exercise of direct governance functions by Americans. This makes perfect sense in an environment we propose to directly govern. If the objective is to develop indigenous government, it makes no sense at all: if Americans directly exercise governance functions they are competing with and undermining the governance structure we are trying to create. Experience with imposing direct governance simply doesn't translate to an effort to cultivate independent governance.

There are other differences as well, many of them: the political and social context, the capacities and constraints of American forces, the capacities and constraints of opposing forces, and many others. In the context of the differences, the parallels, and the lessons deduced from them, grow rather pale.

I realize that academics with niche expertise have excellent reasons for drawing parallels between their niche and current conditions, but the rest of us would be well advised to crank up the skepticism before accepting the conclusions emerging from the process.

[John Grenier]

I realize that academics with niche expertise have excellent reasons for drawing parallels between their niche and current conditions, but the rest of us would be well advised to crank up the skepticism before accepting the conclusions emerging from the process.

I will let Brian defend himself (if he even cares). But I think its too easy to discount his expertise and the nuances of what he has to say as "niche expertise" ... the skepticism is often a fig leaf for anti-intellectual bias. I mean really, it's not like the "doers" have done the square root of dick to solve the problems. Perhaps we should listen to some of those pointy headed intellectuals who have spent their entire adult lives thinking about these issues.

[jmm99]

what is an intellectual ?

Serious question, so I ken whether I is or is not one - and whether I've an anti-intellectual bias.

Regards

Mike

[John Grenier]

Pretty clear: the guys who puff out their chests and say that the academics "don't know anything because they have never been there" (which often isn't the case because the academics have been there and they've decided to move on to another side of their lives), the military types who refuse to embrace any kind of real learning and education and continue to propogate the "lessons learned" joke that is PME; the promotion system that looks down upon officers with advanced degrees (as in they are wasting their time in graduate school instead of being the aide to some dull witted GO, which is the key to promotion) and makes it very difficult for them to get promoted; the guys who just discount the experts (normally it takes 12,000 to 15,000 hours of experience in anything to approach being an expert, but people who have read a dozen really bad books on this crap will consider themselves experts) because they are not in the military. It's like porn, you can't really define it (those Richard Hofstader did), but you recognize it when you see it.

[Dayuhan]

I will let Brian defend himself (if he even cares). But I think its too easy to discount his expertise and the nuances of what he has to say as "niche expertise" ... the skepticism is often a fig leaf for anti-intellectual bias. I mean really, it's not like the "doers" have done the square root of dick to solve the problems. Perhaps we should listen to some of those pointy headed intellectuals who have spent their entire adult lives thinking about these issues.

I wouldn't wish to comment on anti-academic bias in the military: the closest I've come to the military is this website, which probably does not constitute a representative sample. I recognize that the measurement of bias is necessarily imprecise, but it might be amusing to weigh the proposed anti-academic bias of the military against the frequently alleged anti-military bias in the academe.

In any event, as I stated above, I find the comparison between the Philippine-American conflict and the current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan to be strained and unpersuasive. A few reasons are hinted at above; I'm willing to expand upon those if it seems appropriate. If you disagree, you might consider telling us why... if you're finished making assumptions about other participants in the discussion.

[William F. Owen]

But I think its too easy to discount his expertise and the nuances of what he has to say as "niche expertise" ... the skepticism is often a fig leaf for anti-intellectual bias. I mean really, it's not like the "doers" have done the square root of dick to solve the problems. Perhaps we should listen to some of those pointy headed intellectuals who have spent their entire adult lives thinking about these issues.

Actually on reflection spurred by Dayuhan, I would opine that actually there is a real problem in both the UK and US with pseudo-academia or real academic issues never held to rigour.
The whole COIN debate has been characterised by poor history, sloppy thinking, and agenda pumping. None of those things speak well of a desire to be academic, if the folks concerned are not forced to be disciplined.

Just because someone got a PhD, it does not mean they can take their training wheels off.

[Kevin23]

Actually on reflection spurred by Dayuhan, I would opine that actually there is a real problem in both the UK and US with pseudo-academia or real academic issues never held to rigour.
The whole COIN debate has been characterised by poor history, sloppy thinking, and agenda pumping. None of those things speak well of a desire to be academic, if the folks concerned are not forced to be disciplined.

Just because someone got a PhD, it does not mean they can take their training wheels off.

However despite these points,

Couldn't it obviously be agreed on though that some progress within the COIN debate, has been made in terms of addressing the three issues that you just mentioned and that been alluded to earlier?

[John Grenier]

Actually on reflection spurred by Dayuhan, I would opine that actually there is a real problem in both the UK and US with pseudo-academia or real academic issues never held to rigour.
The whole COIN debate has been characterised by poor history, sloppy thinking, and agenda pumping. None of those things speak well of a desire to be academic, if the folks concerned are not forced to be disciplined.

Just because someone got a PhD, it does not mean they can take their training wheels off.

Nuff said.