As someone with no background of military service my intuition regarding the three would be something along the lines of the following. During my Reagan Era childhood, Delta/1st SFOD-D/CAG was described as a/the counter-terrorism unit, so in my head I associate hostage rescue, snatch and grab, and assassination with CT. Having first learned of the concept of counterinsurgency as a 20–year–old living in Guatemala in the early ‘90s my reflexive thought when I read or hear discussion of COIN is in line with W. George Lovell’s statement that “[k]illing Maya Indians and laying their communities to waste does not solve the problem of reluctant native labor. But it has served effectively to traumatize survivors into submission.” I sort of take the adoption of the abbreviation to be a rebranding while having a vague notion that what used to be a bludgeon is now more like a stick and that some substantial carrots have been added into the mix. As for FID, I happen to have known a fellow who was with the Special Forces in Vietnam (he walked away from a football scholarship at Marshall en route—some guys have all the luck!) so when I see reference to that term I think of some version of my friend out in the bush/hills/jungle running drills with some version of the Montagnards. So I did a quick search for the doctrinal definitions to see if I was anywhere in the neighborhood and I turned up the following:
- CT Operations that include the offensive measures taken to prevent, deter, preempt, and respond to terrorism. (JP 1–02)
- COIN Counterinsurgency is military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency. (JP 1–02)
- FID FID programs encompass the total political, economic, informational, and military support provided to another nation to assist its fight against subversion and insurgency. (JP 3–07)
Am I accurate here? I kind of hope I am not, because given the amount of overlap amongst them it is almost as if the definitions were created to engender confusion…![]()
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