Mike, my first cut at the items in bold. I actually appreciate you prompting me to go back to the article and think about further. Bill
2. The merit in COIN cannot sensibly be posed as a general question. p.6 pdf
This makes perfect sense to me, although my interpretation of Collin’s intent may be off the mark. He emphasized that "our" decision to intervene is always a political decision first, and of course that is tied to policy ends. He wrote, “Bottom line whether or not the U.S. should intervene in another nation’s insurgency is not a general question. It isn’t as clear as it could be, but he points at the strategic context, and that not all insurgencies are the same in that respect. If we first focus on the strategic context we should be able to come to a resolution on the appropriate tactics and doctrine for that particular engagement. (bold is my highlight)Whether or not it is sensible for an outside polity to intervene in other polities’ insurgencies is a question that can only be posed in the particular.”
We clearly don’t do that now, we have a generic doctrine that is not tailored to the situation (even if the doctrine plainly states it should be). Instead we respond with actions tied to buzz phrases such as good governance, winning hearts and minds, providing jobs, targeting insurgent leadership, protecting the populace, developing their security forces, etc., which in turn translate into metrics we monitor and report on that make it appear we’re winning until we lose. Understanding the policy goals and strategic context first, and then determine the tactics. This approach is so easy to grasp because it is so logical, yet so hard to do.
He makes other great points in this section, but to address them now would distract from the question at hand.
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
The statement is oddly written, and no doubt some of our members will disagree with his points to varying degrees (myself included), but overall I concur with his arguments and feel appropriately scolded :-).
He points to the conceptual confusion in our COIN discussions between two principle poles of COIN theorists. The first pole believes the political factors (and I’ll add economic since we tend to blend the two) related to legitimacy are more essential than the military ones in countering an insurgency, while the second pole believes insurgency is primarily a military challenge which includes protecting the population. He points out both poles are correct unless they’re taken to their extremes where one disregards the other. The means and methods in COIN will vary case to case, with varying degree of military effort dependent upon the situation, but the take away is all war and warfare is political (to include state on state war, terrorism, insurgency, etc.), so to claim that COIN is more political than other forms of conflict is illogical.
I like his final comment in this section,My only disagreement is that this fails to capture how insurgents superbly integrate their militant operations to principally achieve political effect instead of win battles. This doesn’t counter anything Collin said, but our military leaders often seem to miss this point after 10 years of being involved in insurgencies.“Conceptual creativity that sees the light of day in wars that allegedly are irregular, hybrid, complex, difficult, fourth generation, and the rest of the products of fertile imaginations must not be permitted to obscure the simple and usable verities that war is war and it is always about politics. Theoretical elaboration of the claimed structure of allegedly different kinds of wars is usually an example of conceptual construction on sand.”
5. Counterinsurgency is not a subject that has integrity in and of itself. p.9 pdf
Collin writes, “He advises us not to conflate COIN to a point where it has standalone, context free merit, which in my view we have already done with all the cottage industries and Think Tanks that have emerged since 9/11 focused on COIN, which was just recently reinforced with yet another RAND study on COIN that is largely focused on tactics.It is highly misleading to write about COIN as if it were a technique, a basket of operational and tactical ways and means, utterly divorced from specific historical political circumstances. There is and can be no “right way” to do COIN,”
He adds that we shouldn’t restrict ourselves to our current COIN playbook (doctrine?), and instead, we should “.” The questions we should ask are whether we should intervene? and if so how? and to what end? This is much larger than a basket full of tactics and best practices. I think this essentially captures the point that COIN is not subject that has integrity my itself, instead it must be viewed in a larger strategic context.draw upon the full range of our strategic understanding and of historical experience far beyond our own
Don't know if I just muddied the waters more or helped the mud settle.
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