The Other Side of the COIN
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Gen. Amos on Reinventing the Marines, Owning Sequester and Why COIN Is More Relevant Than Ever
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The Other Side of the COIN
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The article is Colin Gray's Concept Failure? COIN, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Theory (working link to pdf); the following original link doesn't work for me:from Dayuhan
That article really deserves a discussion thread of its own, and could serve as an example to many who write on these subjects. The argument and supporting reasoning are impressive, and it is truly refreshing to see someone match intellectual rigor with a presentation that is clear, precise, and completely devoid of the dense and convoluted jargon that has become so fashionable in so many quarters.
http://www.ndu.edu/press/concept-failure.html
What I've done below is to pick off his key statements (as I see what is key) and put them into a framework for discussion - of whatever statement anybody wants to talk about. I'm not the local help desk on this topic and want to be the listener.
I see two major areas. The first one has a very important general statement (one sentence), with three subtopics (the headings and one comment are mine; the rest are Gray's words):
The second major area is COIN. I find some statements clear and some muddy.1. Formal education in strategy is not an adequate substitute for experience or talent and aptitude, but it should help.
Subtopic 1 - Philip Crowl's Strategic Questions
What is it all about?
What are the political stakes, and how much do they matter to us?
So what?
What will be the strategic effect of the sundry characters of behavior that we choose to conduct?
Is the strategy selected tailored well enough to meet our political objectives?
What are the probable limits of our (military) power as a basket of complementary agencies to influence and endeavor to control the enemy’s will?
How could the enemy strive to thwart us?
What are our alternative courses of action/inaction?
What are their prospective costs and benefits?
How robust is our home front?
Does the strategy we prefer today draw prudently and honestly upon the strategic education that history can provide?
What have we overlooked?Subtopic 2 - Principles of Warfare
...
[JMM's Principles of Warfare: e.g, the classical, as slightly reformulated; MOOSEMUSS: momentum (mass x velocity; replacing mass), objective, offensive, security (including the "defensive"), economy of force, maneuver, unity of command, surprise, and simplicity].My second list is designed to complement the longstanding wisdom in the Principles of War (mass, objective, offensive, surprise, economy of force, maneuver, unity of command, security, and simplicity)—which actually are principles of warfare—with some “new,” though hardly novel, principles that are more fit for their purpose.Subtopic 3 - Principles of War
War is a political act conducted for political reasons.
There is more to war than warfare.
There is more to strategy than military strategy.
War is about peace, and sometimes vice versa.
Style in warfighting has political consequences.
War is caused, shaped, and driven by its contexts.
War is a contest of political wills.
“War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale”: take the enemy into account.
War is a cultural undertaking.
War requires the ability to adapt to failure and to cope well enough with the consequences of chaos, friction, and the unintended consequences of actions.
This is a request for other peoples' viewpoints - this thread has had 2435 views as of this post.2. The merit in COIN cannot sensibly be posed as a general question.
3. In COIN, all war and its warfare are about politics no more or less than in strategic behavior applied to other missions.
4. It is not sensible to categorize wars according to the believed predominant combat style of one of the belligerents.
5. Counterinsurgency is not a subject that has integrity in and of itself.
6. Insurgents can lose the warfare, but still win the war. In contrast, if the political incumbents lose the warfare, they lose the war.
7. Population-centric COIN will not succeed if the politics are weak, but neither is it likely to succeed if the insurgents can retreat to repair, rally, and recover in a cross-border sanctuary.
8. COIN requires tactical competence, but it is hugely subordinate to politics, policy, and strategy.
9. If success in COIN requires prior, or at least temporally parallel, success in nationbuilding, it is foredoomed to failure.
Regards
Mike
Last edited by jmm99; 10-01-2013 at 04:43 AM.
Mike,
Not sure what happened to the original link I provided, but this one is working:
http://indianstrategicknowledgeonlin...17-32_gray.pdf
Which statements did you find to be muddy?
Now we have two good links to a good article.
The muddy statements are all in the COIN section - they're bolded in the following:
The unbolded statements are understood by me; I don't get the three bolded items; or perhaps, my mind doesn't buy them as stated.2. The merit in COIN cannot sensibly be posed as a general question. p.6 pdf
3. In COIN, all war and its warfare are about politics no more or less than in strategic behavior applied to other missions. p.7 pdf
4. It is not sensible to categorize wars according to the believed predominant combat style of one of the belligerents.
5. Counterinsurgency is not a subject that has integrity in and of itself. p.9 pdf
6. Insurgents can lose the warfare, but still win the war. In contrast, if the political incumbents lose the warfare, they lose the war.
7. Population-centric COIN will not succeed if the politics are weak, but neither is it likely to succeed if the insurgents can retreat to repair, rally, and recover in a cross-border sanctuary.
8. COIN requires tactical competence, but it is hugely subordinate to politics, policy, and strategy.
9. If success in COIN requires prior, or at least temporally parallel, success in nationbuilding, it is foredoomed to failure.
Regards
Mike
Mike,
I'll try to shed light on the three unclear statements, at least as far as I understand them. But, I am not Gray, so my understanding is not going to be his.
Anyway, I think the underlying point is that each insurgency is likely sui generis. Identifying insurgencies is somewhat like ordering a multicourse meal from a menu. One diner doesn't order an appetizer or a dessert, another orders two apps and no dessert, a third chooses an entree with a salad while a fourth chooses a soup to go with the entree. When you consider the number of sald dressings, soups, appetizers, entrees, and sides, the number of possible combinations becomes rather amazing. It probably exceeds the number of possible combinations that come from drawing playing cards from a standard deck: 52! (factorial), which is something like 8X10 to the 67th power. For context,
If the possible combinations are that huge, each insurgency to date has been unique and the insurgencies of the future will continue to be so for a long time. We deceive ourselves into thinking that counter insurgencies are relatively simple affairs when we try to lump the issues into broader categories in order to simplify our ability to discuss/comprehend them. But to simplify is to falsify.Originally Posted by http://EzineArticles.com/4689328
So,
because the merit of each opportunity to conduct COIN must be judged on the insurgency being considered for counter operations.Originally Posted by JMM
And,
because counter insurgency must be indexed to each insurgency which is being countered. Lessons learned an Malay apply to only those insurgencies that mimic Malaya in all relevant respects, which, I think means they must occur in another Malaya that is basically the same as the original Malaya--maybe the color of the wildlife is not treally relelvant and could be different. Regardless of the promise of big data analysis, one must be able to collect and tag correctly all the relevant data first. Deciding which data are relevant is the hard part.Originally Posted by JMM
I cannot really help with this one. It seems to me to be inconsistent with everything else about the individuality of each COIN opportunity unless he is saying you must make a strategic assessment about whether engaging war/warfare as a COIN technique, just like you would make a strategic assessment about using war/warfare as a means to some an end in some other political context (securing trade for example). If that is what is operative, then the point is that war/warfare may not be part of the means used to achieve the end of countering some insurgencies. In other words, when a probability calculus is done on the likelihood of various types of actions achieving the desired end, war/warfare may fare very poorly as an effective/efficient method/means in countering any given instance of insurgency.Originally Posted by JMM
Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught. — Sydney J. Harris
Not sure this is exclusive to COIN, but I would like to throw out some thoughts on this comment:
In that section is the addtional comment:In COIN, all war and its warfare are about politics no more or less than in strategic behavior applied to other missions
So here is my question based on a hypothetical built on the totally historically accurate movie Braveheart . The noble Scots have been downtrodden by the evil number 6 - sorry, wrong show - King Henry. After his wife is murdered Mel enters the English FOB and kill a number of English Soldiers in revenge. The suppressed anger spreads and retribution is taken across the land. At this point there is nothing political going on. It is simply revenge on a very personal level. So is this not war? if not, what is it?It is fallacy to believe that counterinsurgency is activity of a species different from interstate war in regard to its nature. Both interstate war and (counter) insurgent warfare are owned by politics. There are some important differences between interstate and intrastate war, but degree of political meaning is not among the distinctions.
Now, clearly it morphs into a separatist movement that has political aspirations. But the source of the conflict is not political. So how do you make a statement like all war is owned by politics. In my opinion, this is the fallacy that we have to come to grips with.
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 10-01-2013 at 01:52 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
I think the main thing in thinking about COIN is to not get too intellectually boxed in by the historic writings of current and former governmental officials who have dealt with some form of insurgnecy in some place or time; to not get trapped by what particular governmental organizations (the military, for example) do; and certainly not by the doctrine of a current era.
To understand what COIN is, the first step is to understand what insurgency is.
At the end of the day, in the purest form, insurgency is any type of activity that includes the following four components (and if any are missing it is something other than insurgency):
1. It must be internal. It has to come from a population that is directly affected by the system of govenrance that is being challenged.
2. It must be populace based. There must be an agrieved, identifiable, segment of the population behind those who are actively acting out.
3. It must be illegal. When and where effective legal means exist to express discontent with, and to drive change of, governance, insurgency is rare.
4. It must be political in primary purpose. Insurgency is ilegal politics, typically from a segment of the population denied full and effective participation in legal politics. If the primary purpose is profit, as in drug cartels that grow so powerful as to challege governance, it is not insurgency and requires a profit-focused cure rather than a political one.
Violence is merely a tactical choice. Likewise, Ideology is a tactical choice. Like most fires put off smoke and heat, most insurgencies adopt some ideology that is counter to the challeged regime and adopt violent tactics. But attacking smoke and heat is the slowest way to put out fire. Attacking ideology and violence is the slowest way to put out an insurgency.
So is COIN a "strategy"? No, it is simply what a government must do when faced with an insurgency. There are many ways to approach COIN, some that are effective in the short-term, some in the long-term, and some hardly at all. God knows the airwaves and libraries are filled with opinions on the best tactics for COIN.
Sadly, little of values exists on insurgency.
We always put the cart in front of the horse, and then wonder why we aren't getting anywhere.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Now, as to COIN. I think the number 1 fix US doctrine needs is the simple recognition that COIN is a domestic operation!!!
If one is attending a wedding, one better have a clear understanding as to if one is the Best Man or the Groom. They are both working the same wedding, but no good will come from a confusion of roles and responsibilities. That is why we have different names for each activity. We have the same thing for COIN, the "best man" is doing FID, and only the host nation/groom is doing COIN.
For many this seems a minor nuance. Well, minor nuance is typically the margin of success in dealing with insurgency. But in fact, this is not minor at all. If both are doing COIN, and the external party is far more capable, brings far more capacity, etc, it is only a matter of times until critical roles of legitimacy and sovereignty become inverted. Once that happens, no amount of good tactics are apt to overcome the strategic imposibility one has framed. We did this to ourselves in Vietnam. We did this to ourselves in Iraq, and we are doing this to ourselves in Afghanistan.
And as far as our doctrine community is concerned, this is still a lesson unnoticed, unlearned, and unaddressed. Instead we debate what from of tactics are most likely to lose the least. I think the sentiments captured by the great bard Johnny Cash address this best: "Now when I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry..."
At some point we need to hear the whistle and actually fix our doctrine.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Although I don't think it changes your criteria I do think that it matters whether the insurgency is for something or against something.
Activities by a population who are strictly against something (like Assad in Syria) may be an incoherent mass that is much more difficult to deal with than a group with an ideological goal (like the IRA).
Not sure where this fits in, just feel that it matters.
Personally I think that the overemphasis on the “political” aspects of war creates a false impression that there is always a coherent enemy – some element out there with a clear political goal. I don’t think that comports with reality.
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 10-01-2013 at 04:06 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
The IRA were against British occupation.
Help me think of a single significant case where what was ideologically being promoted during the struggle did not come well after the actual situation being struggled against. I can't think of any. History frames many in that context, but that is spin and perspective, not reality. I'm open, but at a loss to name one.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Syria comes to mind as does Egypt, but I guess this is the case in a lot of rebellions and revolutions. I will use the American Revoution 1775–1783. To say that the Colonists were of one mindset when the first shots were fired at Concord would be a bit of a stretch. Many Colonists felt they were being dragged into a fight they did not want by those hot heads in Boston. Some may have wanted representation in Parliament while others wanted independence but they all knew that they did not want things the way they were. Concord was April 1775, the final agreement on independence was not until July 1776.
This is different than an ideological revolution like Mao or Lenon that, from its onset, has a clear political alternative in mind.
I guess to be fair, every war is against something, but not every one starts out for a specific something else.
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 10-01-2013 at 05:25 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
No population is ever "of one mind."
Do you seriously think ideology created revolution against the governance of George, Mubarak, or Assad? There are no facts to support such a proposition. Ideology is a critical requirement for binding individuals to a cause, but is not causation. people are not brainwashed, they are simply fed up and ready to act.
Most insurgent leaders are like Mao, they "saw a parade and jumped in front."
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
No, I don't think ideology is the source of most revolts or revolutions. I think the motivation behind these acts are usually much more guttural like revenge or survival, in which case there is no realistic political component. That is my point.
Perhaps, but once there is a leader of a parade there is someone to negotiate with (and or eliminate). Tough to negotiate a political settlement with a mob. Also tough to negotiate a settlement with a group that does not really know what they want, only what they don't want.
Once things coalesce around a leader and/or an ideology then things start to look a lot more like a state v. state political war. Until that happens, an internal fight has some characteristics that are not found in more traditional wars. More violent, more intense, more personal. I will have to find the references later to back this statement, but I have seen it in more than one source. From this perspective I think it is worth looking at these conflicts as being apolitical (unless you see man as a political animal, in which case saying a war is political is the same as saying war is conducted by humans).
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 10-01-2013 at 07:08 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
Ahhh, ok. As I understand your position it brings up the same concern I have with the Rand study. Focus is too much on the insurgent, and not the insurgency.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Sorry, much of what I write seems to only make sense to me
Insurgency is conflict, as one commentator put it, on a "primordial" level. It is not the same as a clean, interstate conflict. It is not interstate war. Any attempt to claim it is the same is to miss the entire point of what is occurring.
The people who engage in this conflict are pushed passed the point of obeying the laws of the country they live in. They are not Soldiers given orders to fight a foreign enemy or outside threat. They have been pushed to the breaking point. What happens when they break is different than what happens when a Soldier goes to war.
I don't understand why people don't see that.
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 10-01-2013 at 10:11 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
I know I occupy a lonely space, but I am OK with that.
Personally, I think we think about insurgency most clearly when we think of it as a condition that comes to exist within some (or several) population groups under any particular system of governance. When these conditions exist, they may lay dormant for years. Often it is some event, or some leader, or some ideology, or some combination of these things that empowers an organization to emerge from such a population to actually act out illegally to challenge said system of governance and seek to coerce it to change in a way intended to address the drivers of said conditions of insurgency.
Seen in such a light, the conditions of insurgency are not something a state (or system of governance) can negotiate with, or that they can defeat. These conditions are something they must understand and address.
Once an insurgent organization emerges, the cat is out of the proverbial bag. At this point said system of governance typically plays the victim and calls out the military to defeat the offending insurgent. All this accomplishes is to simply press the conditions of insurgency back into a dormant state, but nothing to resolve those conditions. In fact, the efforts to defeat the insurgent typically make the underlying insurgency worse.
This is why our COIN doctrine is so dangerously flawed. It is not designed to resolve insurgency at all, but merely to drive it, or bribe it, or develop it, etc into dormancy. Then we claim victory, and the civil system of governance that created these conditions to begin with goes on about its way unreformed, unaware, unapologetic and unable to see how they created this mess in the first place.
Insurgents must be dealt with, they are criminals. But sometimes they are right, and often they are righteous, but always they are illegal.
We in the United States have become so paranoid and fearful of AQ and their UW efforts to tap into these conditions of insurgency across the greater Middle East that we have adopted a CT/COIN strategy that is very expensive and very counter productive to the ends we seek. We merge UW actors with foreign fighters with insurgents and treat all as targets. This does not work. It does not bring stability to the lands we bring these operations to, and it does not reduce the threat of terrorism to the US. In fact, it does the opposite.
We are hard broke at the strategic level. We attack symptoms. We help our partners and allies attack symptoms. By attacking symptoms as if they were the problem, we make the actual problem worse.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Hello,
If I tend to agree with Bob and Curmudgeon, I think that we are discussing here something very specific under the term insurgency.
From the researches I conducted in DRC, where you have countless insurgents or armed groups, I came to the conclusion that you also have to differentiate insurgency from insurgents. Let me explain
In DRC, insurgency are no more a produce of a disagreement between the State and a group of population. Rather, I witnessed insurgency as a strategic tool to gain access to power. The basic discontent between part of the population and the government described by Bob are there, in theory, but reality is much pragmatic. In fact, many politicians, who are MP or senators, use armed groups (I prefer the term rather than insurgent) to basically conduct political campaign and force government to pay them for peace.
If during the early hours of DRC independence there was real insurgencies with all the complex political claims (At the time communist against capitalist or Moscow against Washington), nowadays, this is no more the case. Part of the issue comes from the COIN/conflict settlement strategy used to end the 1998-2002 RCD and MLC insurgencies that was based on rewarding insurgents.
This was followed by the creation of countless armed groups with former insurgents not happy with the peace benefits they got from the big deal made between the State and the insurgencies leaders. Basically, what ever the deal or political settlement is offered to them, it is less beneficial than the benefits they get from being an insurgent group (black market, smuggling...). Also, to get benefits politicians pretend to have an armed group support. The armed group does not have to exist, all what is needed is to be introduce into the circles of power as an armed group delegate.
I know, this is different from the AQ affiliated insurgencies. What I would like to flag here is not the rational behind the insurgencies (real or fake) but rather the responsibility of the COIN strategy used (rewarding insurgents to buy peace).
A counter example from the same area (Uganda, the Rwenzururu mvt) shows that conceding political gains to insurgents can bring an end to the insurgency only if it is limited (Creation and recognition of the main claims, in this particular case the creation of the Rwenzururu kingdom) AND this does not ensure that all insurgents will stop their operations (Another armed group was formed, in that case the Nalu and then the ADF-Nalu). You even end up with, as in DRC, residual insurgencies that can be transformed into a normative use of violence for political gain (MPs negotiate their posts in government on the base they will not activate or will negotiate with armed groups).
In the end, my point is that you may have to differentiate between the insurgency and the insurgents motives. The root causes of the insurgency can be address without impact on the insurgents groups. And that is where I can see a loo-pol in the COIN strategy. COIN is necessary to address the core roots and griefs of an insurgency but COIN is may be not sufficient to address the core motivation of the insurgents.
(I hope I make sense )
M-A,
I understand the distinction you are making but I would like to ask a question. Are these groups, with their political leaders, only insurgents because there is a government imposed over the top of them? Let me ask this another way, if there was no central government would the dynamics you are describing exist naturally? Do these groups become criminals only because we define them that way?
I hope that makes sense.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
as portrayed by Suger, Abbot Suger: Life of King Louis the Fat; and specifically, LOUIS LE GROS ET LES CHÂTELAINS DE L'ÎLE-DE-FRANCE.
Sometimes allied to the king; sometimes revolting against the king; sometimes fighting amongst themselves; these castle-keepers always had their private armies available. They weren't really insurgents either, but definitely greedy politicians.
Regards
Mike
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