America's Asymmetric Advantage

[Bill Moore]

There were several comments on the Air Force's ability to grasp FID/COIN and nation building doctrine, yet that doctrine has left our nation with the short straw more often than not. Even most of the victories we acheived such as our efforts in the Philippines and Haiti were short lived, these nations rapidly converted back into a state of corruption, abject poverty and violence. (Admitedly the Philippines has economic zones of success, but they are very limited).

One could make arguments we failed to follow our own doctrine, or agencies outside the military didn't do their jobs, etc.. We already know the reality of what our other government agencies can achieve, and they should be listed under limitations when we do our planning. If State and other agencies can't execute the tasks in the doctrine, then the doctrine is non-functional. Another limitation that must be considered is the culture we're dealing with. You can't change cultures with COIN, and when we attempt to interject a foreign system or systems(democracy) it will almost always fail. Where have we done it successfully?

Perhaps that explains why one of our most successful COIN operations was in Greece. They obviously had a long...... history of democracy and shared other similiar values with us. Our doctrine fitted that situation like a round peg in a round hole. We were successful with nation building in Western Europe and Japan for the same reasons. Although Japan has a unique culture, they were looking west long before WWII, and were the best capitalists in Asia at the time (I think China is neck and neck with them now). In summary our COIN doctrine works if we have an achievable end state, and if we have an idealistic end state it doesn't.

Punitive raids do work in some situations, such as they have against Iraq and Libya. We have to accept the reality that we have go there every five years or so and lump them up to put them in their place. This is much, much cheaper, than attempting a regieme over throw and subsequently attempting to put a democratic government in place. Punitive raids on the other hand do not work (I can't recall any historic examples) against non-state actors.

I know many don't concur with the 4GW concept, but I tend to lean towards we're dealing with something that our legacy doctrine doesn't address. Air power is only one tool in this fight, and a limited tool at that. However, our COIN doctrine hasn't proved overly useful to date either.