Time for a FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency Update

[Dayuhan]

I believe much of the GWOT violence aimed at the US is due to perceptions of populaces in primarily Muslim countries where such insurgent movements are active or growing is that the blame for much of their current grievances with their governments lies with the US.

AQ has very little to do with populaces or nationalist insurgency. It is not a populace based movement and has only very tenuous connection to nationalist insurgency. It's good to remember that AQ's initial prominence and much of its residual legitimacy emerged from a struggle against the Soviet Union, not the US, and that it has only achieved meaningful popular support for struggles against direct foreign intervention. To declare a linear causative relationship among US policy, nationalist insurgency, and AQ terrorism is to assume what has yet to be demonstrated, and to excessively simplify a very complex causative environment.

For the US to go from insurgent spot fire to insurgent spot fire and assist the government there suppress the insurgent element of their populace through military force, while at the same time enabling those same governments to avoid engaging in meaningful talks with their own people and addressing the very real issues fueling these insurgencies primarily serves to make these GWOT-feeding perceptions WORSE.

Are we doing this? If so, where? Certainly not in Iraq or Afghansitan... we didn't go to those places to assist governments threatened by insurgency, we went there to replace governments we dislike, and the insurgencies we now face grew from that process. We didn't go there because of insurgency, the insurgency is there because we went there.

Where exactly do we "assist the government there suppress the insurgent element of their populace through military force, while at the same time enabling those same governments to avoid engaging in meaningful talks with their own people and addressing the very real issues fueling these insurgencies"? Is there any government out there that we support that would talk to its own people and address issues if we ceased to support it? I can't think of any, offhand. In most cases a withdrawal of US support and associated conditionalities would simply generate more vigorous suppression.

I think you're vastly overestimating our assistance, and the degree to which we enable anything.

Bringing this back to my two points: The conventional wisdom (of governments, btw) is that insurgency is "caused" by insurgents, ideology, or some external actor drives our current approaches. I simply suggest considering, just for a moment, what if that planning assumption is wrong, and in fact that causation is something that comes from governmental domestic policy for nationalist insurgencies; and for the US/GWOT, from governmental foreign policies?

Largely true, but of questionable relevance to GWOT, which is not fundamentally a fight against insurgents. Our COIN fights in Iraq and Afghanistan are collateral burdens, products of fundamentally flawed (IMO) GWOT policy decisions, not an integral part of the supposed GWOT.

Part of our problem in imposing COIN models, whether FM 3-24 or the Jones model, on GWOT is that it's not essentially a COIN fight: it's not a fight against insurgents. Aside from Iraq and Afghanistan there is no insurgency that requires US intervention in more than a limited FID role, and Iraq and Afghanistan are less the traditional insurgencies that these models are designed to confront (intervention to support an allied government threatened by insurgency) than a natural and inevitable part of the regime change process. The issue is not entirely governance,it's also about foreign intervention.

We may be looking less at a case of flawed models than at a case of models being applied to situations they were not designed to cover.

Next time you sit down to do planning for an OEF-P way ahead, have one group do a COA that:

1. Adopts the planning assumption that insurgency causation comes primarily from the government of the Philippines and their domestic policies toward the south; and that the risk of those groups supporting acts of terrorism against the US and our interests derives its causation from US foreign policy in general, but more specifically toward Muslim governments/populaces globally, and to the governments/populaces of SEA.

Certainly causation in this case comes from the Philippine government; I think that's universally recognized. Despite our long-term relationship with the Philippine government, though, these groups have not generally acted against US interests, and have acted against US citizens only in opportunistic situations that are less terrorism than criminality. To the limited extent to which anti-US rhetoric is embraced, it's little more than a nod to groups who occasionally send a little money. It's very difficult to draw any causative line between US policy and terrorist or insurgent activity in the Philippines. Both insurgent groups and their popular base in the Philippines generally approve of us; they see us as a moderating influence on their enemies.

US planners in the Philippines actually did go through a process much like that which you describe. Unfortunately it was very badly done, and considered very few of the factors and influences involved. The outcome was American support for an ill considered "peace process" that was doomed from the start and managed to make things a good deal worse.

One problem with the approach you suggest is that "diplomatic approaches in Manila" are not going to produce any meaningful change. No matter how diplomatic we are (generally not very) we can't make policy for the Philippine government, nor can we persuade or compel the Philippine government to follow our policy recommendations. It's another country, and our influence is not that great.