British COIN (merged thread)

[William F. Owen]

Just run through it once, but there are so many things wrong with this, I just do not know where to begin - Sorry to sound harsh, and if the author is out there PM me!

I know this is .ppt and not a Thesis, so I can only react to the slides.

a.) COIN principles? Why just accept they exist? They clearly do not - and there is no such thing as "COIN theory."
b.) Definitions of COIN? - If you cannot get a clear and useful definition, that may tell you something - which is why current UK "COIN" Doctrine is poor.
c.) The delineation of "Classical", ""re-classical," etc adds nothing and is without evidence. It's also highly selective. Irregular warfare has not changed! We have changed, for reasons that never get touched upon. - Context, context and context.
d.) Instead of this "Purity of the text approach," - quotes from manuals and books - why was there no analysis of why UK "COIN" has previously succeeded and why it now seems less effective? - The UK used to solve the problem and there is no evidence the problem has changed in a way that makes it tactically unfeasible to render a strategic end state.

The UK is not being operationally effective because it simply is not allocating the resources it needs to get the desired strategic end state.

If the UK is screwing up, it's far more likely to be a problem with Commanders, than Doctrine - as no one actually seems to read the doctrine anyway - because it is mostly rubbish... with the exception of Theatre Specific guidance like the CATOM - which I could find no reference to?

Yes the UK has lost it's way, because they gave up being good, not because the problem has changed.

[Bob's World]

I wouldn't be too hard on the Brits. The fact is, I can't really think of any example of effective military COIN.

The problem with applying the military to COIN is that they tend to think of it as warfare; when in fact, COIN is just internal politics gone very bad.

When the military is applied simply as additional resources and capacity to assist the civil government in regaining a handle on the situation and that same civil government takes to heart that the populace is in an uproar for a reason and seeks to address those failures, you have good COIN.

If you are a foreign army in a foreign land, you are not doing COIN.

If you are an army foreign or domestic, and you believe you have the lead for resolving an insurgency, you are not conducting smart COIN.

British "COIN", like American "COIN" are and were far more about maintaining national interests in foreign lands which creates a natural bias of perspective going in that is virually an "intellectual force field" to getting to "Good COIN."

So whether one is "threat centric" and out to kill all the insurgents to neutralize the threats to ones national interests abroad, of if one is "Populationc-centric" and out to put so much sugar on the government that you have carefully crafted to protect your interests so that the populace does not compain too much or too violently; you are still not conducting COIN in either case.

No, I just can't think of any examples of good military COIN. I can find plenty of examples of military forces being employed against foreign populaces either in support of, or opposition to, their sitting governments in order to either preserve or create opportnities for the national interests of the nations that provided that force. But that is not COIN.

At least not in Bob's World.

[William F. Owen]

I wouldn't be too hard on the Brits. The fact is, I can't really think of any example of effective military COIN.

So why say COIN? Thanks to incredibly sloppy thinking the word has lost any merit it may have ever once had.
Irregular Warfare works in exactly the same way as regular does. Defeating the enemy's armed wing denies him the ability to set forth policy using violence and returns to issue to politics and diplomacy. That is what force does. You use it against their force.

The problem with applying the military to COIN is that they tend to think of it as warfare; when in fact, COIN is just internal politics gone very bad.

If it's not Warfare then why is the US Army involved?

But that is not COIN.
At least not in Bob's World.

OK, so how in "Bob's World" are people using violence to set forth "political ideas" countered?

[Bob's World]

So why say COIN? Thanks to incredibly sloppy thinking the word has lost any merit it may have ever once had.
Irregular Warfare works in exactly the same way as regular does. Defeating the enemy's armed wing denies him the ability to set forth policy using violence and returns to issue to politics and diplomacy. That is what force does. You use it against their force.

If it's not Warfare then why is the US Army involved?

OK, so how in "Bob's World" are people using violence to set forth "political ideas" countered?

...but I was just doing a quick scan of SWJ as I got back into uniform after a little PT. I currently am extremely fortunate to be supporting US SOF in a British led NATO HQ that is armpit deep at the moment in these very matters, so while I am learning a great deal from my front row seat, it is a seat I need to get back to! As my current boss is apt to say ""in a dull moment" I will get back to you!

[Woland]

Well.

The slides for one are more or less incomprehensible, but as for the overall content I really think this 'if only we could do what we did in Northern Ireland' implication is very unhelpful. Between Northern Ireland and Helmand Province there are scant significant parallels which ought to be guiding our practices.

No-one reads the doctrine. If my official capacity I have never even seen the doctrine, and would make a tentative estimate that no-one on the ground has either, or if they have, they've dismissed it as overly complicated, completely unreadable and largely irrelevant at the ground level in a Helmand village. It is hardly revelatory that a fundamental part of a COIN campaign is good J2, but perhaps another complicated Powerpoint presentation could set about explaining the UK's J2 shortfalls.

The whole implication of the slides is that the doctrine is sound but the carrying out of it is not. But there is nothing to say why not - bugger the doctrine, why are we not as good at it as we used to be? Resources? Complicated command structures? Bureaucracy? Poor use of J2? Inadequate funding or CIVMIL relations? Inadequate traning in the first place? Too kinetically minded? Mission creep? Poor quality commanders? All of the above and more, most likely. Yet identifying these things is not at the crux of this presentation. It more looks at what mistakes have been made, rather than a proper introspective look at why. I very much doubt that the answer is in the official doctrine.

[Bob's World]

I assure you, "the answer" is indeed not in official doctrine.

That said, there is a great deal of tremendous concepts, TTPs, thoughts, etc in official doctrine. The problem is one of context. Military doctrine on COIN is written in the context of how military forces conduct COIN warfare.

Change the context, and re-read the same doctrine, and you find that 70% of it is definitely worth hanging onto, it just needs to be rearranged into a new context regarding how military forces properly engage to shape and support foreign policy abroad in lands consumed in insurgency.

[William F. Owen]

It is hardly revelatory that a fundamental part of a COIN campaign is good J2, but perhaps another complicated Powerpoint presentation could set about explaining the UK's J2 shortfalls.

Concur.