U.S. Army / Marine COIN Doctrine
9 July Washington Post commentary - Fighting Insurgents, By the Book by Fred Kaplan.
And on the Secrecy News (FAS) Blog - U.S. Marine Corps on Counterinsurgency.Two messages flutter between the lines of the Army's new field manual on counterinsurgency wars, its first document on the subject in 20 years.
One is that Pentagon planning for the Iraq war's aftermath was at least as crass, inattentive to the lessons of history, and contrary to basic political and military principles as the war's harshest critics have charged.
The other is that as a nation we may simply be ill-suited to fighting these kinds of wars.
The field manual's chief authors -- Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus and retired Lt. Col. Conrad C. Crane -- would never make these points explicitly. When Petraeus was commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, he combined combat power and community-building more astutely than any other officer. Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, is one of the leading scholars of "irregular warfare." They both support the war's aims. And they outline their new doctrine -- or, rather, their revival of a very old doctrine -- thoughtfully and thoroughly.
Yet the undertone of this 241-page guidebook -- not yet publicly released, but obtained by Steven Aftergood and posted last week on Secrecy News , his online newsletter -- is one of grim caution.
Counterinsurgency involves rebuilding a society, keeping the population safe, boosting the local government's legitimacy, training a national army and fighting off insurgents who are trying to topple the government -- all at the same time. As the manual puts it, "The insurgent succeeds by sowing chaos and disorder anywhere; the government fails unless it maintains order everywhere."
From the first page to the last, the authors stress that these kinds of wars are "protracted by nature." They require "firm political will and extreme patience," "considerable expenditure of time and resources," and a large deployment of troops ready to greet "hand shakes or hand grenades" without mistaking one for the other.
"Successful . . . operations require Soldiers and Marines at every echelon to possess the following," the authors write. They then list a daunting set of traits: "A clear, nuanced, and empathetic appreciation of the essential nature of the conflict. . . . An understanding of the motivation, strengths, and weaknesses of the insurgent," as well as rudimentary knowledge of the local culture, behavioral norms and leadership structures. In addition, there must be "adaptive, self-aware, and intelligent leaders."
Meanwhile, one high-profile infraction can undo 100 successes. "Lose moral legitimacy, lose the war," the authors warn, noting that the French lost Algeria in part because their commanders condoned torture...
The U.S. Marine Corps has recently published a series of documents on counterinsurgency:
Small-Unit Leaders' Guide to Counterinsurgency, June 2006 (4.7 MB PDF file).
Countering Irregular Threats: A Comprehensive Approach, 14 June 2006 (3.2 MB PDF file).
Tentative Manual for Countering Irregular Threats: An Updated Approach to Counterinsurgency Operations, 7 June 2006.
Great documents, but...
SWJED,
The links to the Marine Corps COIN documents are a great find. Sadly, the fact that I am seeing them first via the SWJ and the FAS blog, highlights a concern. These publications appear to be at least a month old, and a cursory search of the MC doctrine (using the term "COIN") page did not produce results beyond MCRP 3-33A (FM 90-8).
I fear that this highlights where we are on the power curve.
How does this happen?
How is it that a draft copy of FM 3-24 can pop up on the internet? I know it isn't classified but I'm just kind of surprised that it can be found open source already? What website did you bump into it on?
Don't taze me bro!
Secrecy News....
The webpage that posted it is Secrecy News AKA Federation of American Scientists. They will post any DoD document they get their hands on. So does Global Security. Global Security's John Pike broke away from FAS to start up GS...Originally Posted by SSG Rock
All it takes is one person to e-mail them a document or have it posted on an offical site, no matter how remote as they scour the Internet daily for such material.
For example: Need the updated version of the USMC Iraqi Culture Smart Card? It was posted yesterday at Secrecy News.
Okay.....
Okay, thanks, I'll have to get the Secrecy News on my favorites.
Don't taze me bro!
London Times Chimes in....
Hug an Insurgent: U.S.’s New Plan to Win in Iraq - 16 July.
The US Army has turned years of conventional military thinking on its head in a new field manual for soldiers on counter-insurgency operations in Iraq.
The manual, the first for 20 years, emphasises that it is far more important to secure moral legitimacy and the support of the community than to kill insurgents and win battles.
It has been drawn up by General David Petraeus, who is known as one of America’s more culturally sensitive commanders. He led the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, into Iraq and set up training for the Iraqi forces before returning to the US last year to head the army staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The manual’s conclusions are stark. “Lose moral legitimacy, lose the war,” it warns. In what could prove to be uncomfortable reading for Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, it emphasises that “efforts to build a legitimate government through illegitimate action — including unjustified or excessive use of force, unlawful detention, torture or punishment without trial — are self-defeating, even against insurgents who conceal themselves amid non-combatants”.
The 241-page report, to be published in September, has gone in “final draft” form to General Peter Schoomaker, the army chief of staff, for approval and was obtained by Secrecy News, an intelligence gathering website. A Fort Leavenworth spokesman said it was “not thrilled” the report had been leaked but was proud of its conclusions.
Petraeus’s thinking has been influenced by Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British brigadier who caused a storm by writing in Military Review, an official army journal produced at Fort Leavenworth, that American officers displayed “cultural insensitivity” in Iraq that bordered on “institutional racism”.
Yet in the light of the Abu Ghraib scandal, an apparent massacre by marines at Haditha and the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family, Petraeus’s conclusions are unlikely to be dismissed.
The report is co-signed by James Mattis, a lieutenant-general with the marines who provoked outrage last year for saying it was “a hell of a lot of fun” to shoot Afghans who “slapped women around”.
The rethinking has been going on at Leavenworth’s “lessons learnt” centre, where long-forgotten doctrines have been revived. “We threw away all our lessons after Vietnam because it was a war we didn’t want to remember,” said an army lecturer.
The field manual warns that “the more force is used, the less effective it is” and says the “best weapon is do not shoot”. It points out that “sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction” to provocation by insurgents.
Under the heading Unsuccessful Practices, it lists placing “priority on killing and capturing the enemy, not on engaging the population” and concentrating forces in large bases for protection rather than risking American casualties. It claims that “amnesty and rehabilitation” are tried and tested methods of winning over insurgents.
A US officer involved in compiling the manual said it represented much more than just a new doctrine. “It is the big idea,” he said. America is expected to face counter-insurgency wars in future rather than straightforward combat. “The idea is that you end the day with fewer enemies than when you started,” the officer said.
That has not been the experience of Iraq, where those who greeted the Americans as liberators have become terrified by the collapse of security.
Andrew Krepinevich, of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defence think tank, said it was essential for the government to secure Baghdad: “There’s a saying in counter-insurgency warfare: if the government can’t protect itself, how can it protect you?”...
Coin Draft
Having read the new COIN pub (and not from FAS) I was alarmed at the lack of thought put into the intelligence portion of it. Purported to be the newest doctrine on COIN in 20 years the intelligence chapter (Chapter 3) does nothing to show a change in thinking to match the threat. Where is the new way of thinking of analysis to match the "new" doctrine?
BCKS COIN Forum
For those with access, I just loaded a brief on the BCKS Forum on COIN I did 20 times last week.
I had not seen the new FM until after the series of briefing. Much similarity there.
Best
Tom
New COIN is Progress, Not Perfection
Posted yesterday on the Thomas P.M. Barnett Blog - New COIN is Progress, Not Perfection.
OP-ED: "Counterinsurgency, by the Book: The Pentagon's new manual won't solve our Iraq problems," by Richard H. Shultz Jr. And Andrea J. Dew, New York Times, 7 August 2006, p. A21.
Two academics who've studied insurgencies take Dave Petraeus' and Jim Mattis' draft Counter-Insurgency field manual to task for not having enough operational and tactical models for identifying and working the fractured landscape of bad actors we're likely to meet in Gap states afflicted by civil strife.
Despite declaring the FM an "encyclopedic 241-page review of insurgencies that took place in the 20th century and an alphabetical list of the tools of counterinsurgency," they dismiss it somewhat as merely "an introductory course in the history of insurgency and counterinsurgency."
Their criticisms (lack of more distinct profiles of factions typically lumped under the rubric of insurgents, model for categorizing these groups' operational tendencies, and an intell model for digging up actionable intelligence) all seem like logical next steps, none of which I think Mattis or Petraeus would deny (though I'd be interested in their opinions--as well as that of others--to this criticism).
I will confess I'm not sure of the FM's normal purview on such TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures), but I believe that such details are typically covered in TTP-specific docs.
Whether or not I'm assuming correctly on that score, I will say that I'm not surprised this new FM amounts to an intro course. The Army and Marines so purged Vietnam from their doctrine and thinking in the past 30 years, that such a re-educational tone in this first draft FM designed to reverse that long tide stikes me a rather natural progression.
Fast enough for the academics? No. But they're fine to push hard. As they note here, until well into 2005, our forces in Iraq weren't making themselves smart enough on the varied cast of characters in play (militias, jihadists, gangs, former regimers, etc.) to take advantage of possible fissures.
So the learning and growing smarter continues...
Counterinsurgency, by the Book
From another thread: 7 August New York Times commentary - Counterinsurgency, by the Book by Richard Schultz Jr. and Andrea Dew.
... The Pentagon is just starting to catch up with these changes. It is in the midst of a strategic overhaul aimed at coming up with new ways to fight new wars. This was first signaled in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, which described the “long war” America is now engaged in as “a war that is irregular in its nature” against adversaries that “are not conventional military forces.”
More recently, two of the Pentagon’s smartest and most experienced generals, David Petraeus of the Army and Jim Mattis of the Marines, have overseen the production of a new counterinsurgency manual — called the FM 3-24/FMFM 3-24 in Pentagon-speak — for fighting these irregular wars. This blueprint declares that it is primarily for “leaders and planners at the battalion level and above” who are “involved in counterinsurgency operations regardless of where these operations may occur.”
The current draft of this counterinsurgency manual, which has been shown to civilian experts and been posted on the Internet by the Federation of American Scientists, provides an encyclopedic 241-page review of insurgencies that took place in the 20th century and an alphabetical list of the tools of counterinsurgency. The manual, which is still a work in progress, amounts to an introductory course in the history of insurgency and counterinsurgency.
But to be of practical use to American troops in fierce battles in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond, the final draft of the handbook must be more than a Counterinsurgency 101 exercise. It must, at a minimum, accurately identify the types of armed groups American troops will have to fight, which include more than traditional insurgents. It must also provide a framework for profiling the organization and operational tendencies of these armed groups, to learn their strengths and weaknesses. And it has to map out an intelligence model that will dig out actionable intelligence that can be used to find and defeat armed groups.
On all these critical requirements, the current draft of the manual comes up short. Based on our research and the lessons learned from centuries of counterinsurgency efforts, we recommend three major revisions for those drafting the final version.
First, you must know your enemy. In today’s internal wars several different types of armed groups — not just traditional insurgents bent on changing a national regime — engage in unconventional combat. Iraq is illustrative. Those fighting American forces include a complex mix of Sunni tribal militias, former regime members, foreign and domestic jihadists, Shiite militias and criminal gangs. Each has different motivations and ways of fighting. Tackling them requires customized strategies...
The Pentagon’s new counterinsurgency manual suffers from similar flaws. It focuses almost exclusively on combating cohesive groups of insurgents who share the same goals. Yes, there are traditional insurgent groups in Iraq, like cells of former Baathists. But the foreign terrorists, religious militias and criminal organizations operate from very different playbooks. We have to learn to read them the way other nations faced with insurgencies have...
Second, the final manual must provide our troops with a systematic way of “profiling” each specific armed group. As it stands, the guide is a laundry list of the generic elements of insurgency movements — leadership, organization and networks, popular support, ideology, activities and foreign support...
The third problem with the manual is that it actually overstresses winning “hearts and minds” — the political, economic, civic and other “soft power” tactics aimed at winning popular support. Yes, such steps are keys to victory; they played a central part in counterinsurgency victories in the 1950’s by the Philippine government of Ramón Magsaysay and by the British in Malaya. In both places, the government invested heavily in education, local economies, public works and social welfare programs to wean their populations away from the insurgents.
But soft power tactics are not the only keys to victory. An insurgency is still war, and the key is finding and capturing or killing terrorist and militia leaders. It is an intelligence-led struggle. The Pentagon manual rightly insists that “intelligence drives operations” and that “without good intelligence, a counterinsurgent is like a blind boxer.” Yet the document provides no organizational blueprint for collecting such intelligence...
Read the little book
The reviewers evidently have not read the 3rd manual for small unit leaders. Of the three this is the most nuts and bolts type to include a way to build network charts of the enemy for intell purposes. And you don't need a computer to do it, you can do it by hand if need be, as was done by the group that caught Saddam when the computer model became to complicated.
I don't know if a group profile could be done. In general profiling is such a mis-understood topic between what people see on TV and how it is really used. the whole purpose of a profile is to separate an "individual" from a "group" not to learn about the group.
Which goes to back to my suggestion on another thread that Military forces need to learn to think motive,means,and opportunity. Which means don't waste a lot of time hunting them, stay close to the population which is their target and they will come to you!!! Then you can fight on your terms not theirs!!
Motivation
Funny that you mention motive. I was (still am) in a debate on another forum over the issue of whether analysis is true analysis if it does not look at all sides in an issue. From my perspective, limited analysis is self-limiting in its value and does not allow the analyst to understand motivations.
To my surprise, I heard that analyzing motivations is "silly" and that one is "arrogant" to even try. My response was "Motivational analysis is as basic to strategic analysis as analysis of actions. Arrogant? Perhaps but not as risky as ignoring motivation because that may help identify why things happened or more importantly what is likely to happen."
Your suggestion:
is very close to Kilgullen'sWhich goes to back to my suggestion on another thread that Military forces need to learn to think motive,means,and opportunity. Which means don't waste a lot of time hunting them, stay close to the population which is their target and they will come to you!!! Then you can fight on your terms not theirs!!
Good post!26. Build your own solution only attack the enemy when he gets in the way.. Try not to be distracted, or forced into a series of reactive moves, by a desire to kill or capture the insurgents.
Tom
Janes Defence Weekly
13 September - New US Manual Promotes 'Small War' Skills by Nathan Hodge, JDW Staff Reporter, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. (not found online)
The US Army and Marine Corps (USMC) are putting the finishing touches on a new counter-insurgency manual that is designed to fill a crucial gap in US military doctrine...
The new manual is expected to be published in mid-October. It includes thought-provoking aphorisms on counter-insurgency warfare, such as: "The more you protect your force, the less protected you are"; "The more force you use, the less effective you are"; and "Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction".
Lieutenant General David Petraeus, commanding general of the Combined Arms Center and Commandant of the US Army Command and General Staff College, told Jane's those paradoxes are meant to "provoke thought", not provide a rigid template for current or future operations.
"What we are trying to do is point out to leaders in particular - to staff officers and to leaders at all levels - that some of the conventional thinking does not necessarily translate to unconventional operations, stability operations, irregular warfare or counter-insurgency," he said.
An interim counter-insurgency manual has been available since October 2004, but the new document underscores a high-level effort to promote institutional change...
What - 19 pages in a 250 page document is not enough?
Just my opinion, but the Conflict Assessment Framework that USAID's Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation uses appears to be the most complete IPB or Intell Analysis that I have seen recently that would apply in fragile states such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
Military Hones a New Strategy on Insurgency
5 October New York Times - Military Hones a New Strategy on Insurgency by Michael Gordon.
The United States Army and Marines are finishing work on a new counterinsurgency doctrine that draws on the hard-learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy.
The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces.
The current military leadership in Iraq has already embraced many of the ideas in the doctrine. But some military experts question whether the Army and the Marines have sufficient troops to carry out the doctrine effectively while also preparing for other threats...
The new doctrine is part of a broader effort to change the culture of a military that has long promoted the virtues of using firepower and battlefield maneuvers in swift, decisive operations against a conventional enemy...
The doctrine is outlined in a new field manual on counterinsurgency that is to be published next month. But recent drafts of the unclassified documents have been made available to The New York Times, and military officials said that the major elements of final version would not change.
The spirit of the document is captured in nine paradoxes that reflect the nimbleness required to win the support of the people and isolate insurgents from their potential base of support — a task so complex that military officers refer to it as the graduate level of war...
To Win the Long War
10 October Washington Times commentary - To Win the Long War by MG Robert Scales (USA Ret.).
...War is the most perfidious of all forms of human intercourse. That truism was learned in spades after Desert Storm, when the tenets of "AirLand Battle," proven in high-tech warfare, quickly became a hindrance in the war against adaptive low-tech enemies. Experiences in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti reinforced in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon now compel us to craft a new set of words that embrace all that we have learned at great expense in today's wars against Islamic insurgencies.
The words have appeared, brilliantly albeit it late in the season, with the publication of the Army and Marine Corps Manual 3-24, "Counterinsurgency." Today's DePuy sobriquet is shared by two remarkably gifted generals, the Marines' James Mattis and the Army's David Petraeus. Their fingerprints are on every page and explain in large measure why this volume, (unlike virtually all other doctrinal tomes of the Defense Department) is written in English...and makes sense... and deserves a place on military bookshelves next to Mr. Mahan, Mr. Douhet, Gen. von Seeckt and Gen. DePuy.
The power of the manual is contained in its paradoxes: a clever literary ploy the authors use to differentiate this war from those of the past and to shock old cold warriors out of their fixation on firepower and killing. The phrase "The more you protect the force the less secure you are" warns of the danger of hiding inside fortified base camps. "The more force you use the less effective you are," and "The best weapons do not shoot," argue that counterinsurgencies are fought with ideas rather than bullets. "Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction," warns that impulsive, violent responses to enemy atrocities often play to its advantage.
The observation that in an insurgency "tactical success guarantees nothing" harkens back to Vietnam when, after the war, a retired colonel told his North Vietnamese counterpart, "you know you never defeated us on the battlefield," the reply was, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant," a warning that we and our Israeli allies might well take to heart.
When the manual warns "if a tactic works this week, it will not work next week," it is teaching us that to win the long war we must focus on the human side of war. The services must become learning as well as fighting institutions able to adapt faster than the enemy. The manual recognizes what any young soldier or Marine can verify: that success can best be achieved by empowering the Army and Marine Corps at the lowest level. Counterinsurgencies are the business of lieutenants and sergeants.
Gen. DePuy once observed that "doctrine isn't doctrine unless 51 percent of the officer corps believes in it." At last our military has a counterinsurgency blueprint worthy of its powerful antecedents. The question now is whether or not our policy-makers will read it and our military leaders will believe in it enough to put it into practical form...
It's interesting that Scales trotted out DePuy, since in Vietnam he was one of the big proponents of firepower over boots on the ground. Not to dispute DePuy's impact on the military after Vietnam, but it would be interesting to see his reaction to having his name linked to something he was opposed to during Vietnam.
Depuy?
I'm not sure I would be quoting an individual who was arguably motivated more by the need to justify new programs and large expenditures than by an institutional need for change. I think one could make a compelling argument that Gen Depuy pushed Air-Land-Battle as a way to get the Abrams MBT, Bradley IFV, and Apache Helicopter in the inventory.
DePuy was actually Active Defense. Air-Land came in when Starry was TRADOC.
Some Depuy Sources
Correct Steve on who was tied to Airland Battle. But I would disagree with minimizing DePuy's effects on the Army. He was the 1st TRADOC commander and it was a role he wanted. Having worked with Bobby Scales, I know that he sees Depuy--and rightly so--as a driving force behind realistic training and adaptive tactics. Depuy was prescriptive in his methods; he had learned the hard way in WWII that rote infantry training routinely gets infantry killed.
See Leavenworth Paper #16 on Depuy's role on the 76 version of 100-5 that proposed the Active Defense at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...rt/Herbert.asp
In tribute to GEN William DePuy at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...epuy/depuy.asp
Selected Papers of General William E. Depuy, at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...ent.asp#select
And the chapter on Depuy in Secret of Future Victories, at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...man/gorman.asp
On the "Big 5" look at Chapter 1 Certain Victory athttp://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...ntent.asp#cert
best
Tom
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