Hearts and Minds?
I have been researching the origins of Hearts and minds theory (hereafter H&M). So far the best I have found is an early 50's reference to Chairman Mao's little red book, sort of a take off on this;
"The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."
- Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse-tung)
I started this because I cannot find any place or time in history where H&M has worked as a counter-insurgancy strategy.
It's easy to see why the theory gained acceptance, since the Guerrilla MUST win the hearts and minds of the population to swim in the sea, so to speak. So to deny that sea by fighting for hearts and minds seems logical.
I question it's effectivness.
Historically, Guerrillas have two uses, to deny the enemy use of captured terrority (defensive) and bleeding a stronger enemy until they are weak enough to take thru main force (offensive). Where one stops and the other starts depends on many variables.
There are many ways to defeat the guerrilla, the oldest being the Roman way. The Romans killed 10% of the population at the first sign of trouble. If that didn't work, they would do it again. After about 3 rounds, they would take those left as slaves and relocate them to the farthest corner of the Empire, and replace them with Romans from the interior. Since the Romans knew all about sticks and carrots, they would build up the infastructure, and establish LAW. Law that applied the same to the recent conquest as to the Romans. The Same Law that applied thruout the Empire.
Stalin use an abbreviated version of this same strategy. Stalin was a little lighter on the slaughter and a little heavier on relocating them to Siberia.
Technological advances work both sides of the table today. Everybody is more lethal, which helps the side that is more bloody minded.
The French and English experiences with guerrillas in third world nations ('3rd world' hadn't entered the lexicon yet, so they were colonies), were that two conditions were needed to beat the guerrillas.
You HAVE to cut them off from outside support and then pry them away from their internal support. Hearts and Minds will ONLY work against the internal supporters. External supporters require extreme political pressure, with military action being the most sucessful option.
Gen. LeMay had it right when he pointed out that if you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will fallow.
There is a Chinese saying that predates Mao's fish story by centuries;
'Kill one man, intimidate a thousand'.
Vietnam was lost because the political class was unwilling to kill enough Vietnamese to win. The Military was unwilling to explain this to the politicians, which made the pols think we could win on the cheap. When the pols foiund out the Military Commanders had lied to them, they pulled the plug. The current generation of Military Leaders is making the same mistake. Lack of Moral Courage.
Pace needs to Explain to President Bush that winning in Iraq means war against Iran, Syria and maybe the KSA. It also means killing Iraqi's until they say they have had enough, and one. If that is too high a price to pay, then we need to get out. Bring everybody back home and start memorizing the Koran.
My peraonal sign that the Presidnt is willing to pay the price will be a change of ROE's. when the ROE is 'If it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't move blow it up.', then we will be on track for winning. We can play H&M with the survivors
The best H&M approach would have been for Congress to declare Iraq a Territory. Then the FBI could take over and do what the Army is trying to do today, with no training and the wrong tools. It is too late for that now.
"In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it."
- Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
I believe Saddam Hussein endorsed the same type of counterinsurgency methods you are encouraging us to use here. If so, what exactly made him such a bad guy?
What counterinsurgency did Gen. LeMay ever win?
If the USMC ever adopts a doctrine similar to what you are talking about here, I will go to jail rather than follow it. I did not enlist to become a cowardly murderer of civilians or a war criminal.
No single COIN theory or method is effective in stand-alone mode. Every insurgency is unique in its own context, while at the same time, there are very many fundamental principles of insurgency and COIN that are shared across the spectrum.Originally Posted by typos-R-us
The difficulty of COIN is in applying the tried and true principles in the appropriate context. Methods that were effective in other COIN efforts cannot be applied in a cookie cutter manner in Iraq - but there are certainly methods that should be emulated, and modified appropriately for the Iraqi context.
As referred to in a recent thread, there is a good RAND study that discusses the Hearts & Minds vs Cost/Benefit theories of COIN, and does a pretty decent job of putting them in context. I recommend giving it a read.
However, hearts and minds or carrot and stick, there is no context in today's world where you can just kill people until the violence ends. To use the statement Lack of Moral Courage to describe our refusal to initiate Nazi-style retaliatory killings to demoralize the guerrillas is repulsive. It would take a complete lack of morals to implement such a policy, and, as tequila stated, I want no part of a military or a nation that follows such a path.
"Hearts and Minds" seem to me to be essentially an IO campaign, and you're right, I've never heard of an H&M, or for that matter, any IO campaign to be successful in termination of a conflict.
On the other hand, I've never heard an aviation, or fires, or for that matter, IPB, campaign being successful in victory and conflict termination. Through a lens of combined arms, I can see how IO campaigns, and H&M campaigns being successful and useful. I think it goes back to something that someone said to the effect of "Fires without maneuver is wasteful. Maneuver without fires is suicide." COIN is a combined arms fight.
And one minor correction. You speak of Decimation...the Roman practice of killing 10% of population in succession to gain compliance. Such was not a COIN campaign...rather, it was a method of ensuring unit discipline. Roman units would be Decimated until rebellions/mutinies stopped. Just unit punishment on steroids.
Semper Fidelis,
Let us not forget as well that the LeMay style of COIN has never really worked, either. The Germans tried it in Yugoslavia and the Soviets tried in Afghanistan. Both were abject failures.
Think More Clearly
Overall I would respond that your initial post lacks the clarity of communication that you claim a purely attrition based strategy would achieve. Guerillas may or may not be insurgents. The guerilla forces you allude to fall more into the category of irregulars rather than an indigenous insurgency.
As others have indicated a "hearts and minds" approach is more than the simplistic formula as you seem to see it. It is a combined arms strategy usng both lethal and non-lethal means.
Succesful counter-insurgent campaigns are a matter of record. Those most often looked at include Malaysia and El Salvador. I woud also offer Rwanda in the post-genocide era. And in counter to your kill enough (or kill all) vein of thinking, I would submit that the Rwandan government that executed the genocide intially won a political victory as they lost militarily; they took the population with them into exile. When the new government took action to remove the external threat AND combined it with an internal campaign to promote reconciliation based on accountabilty, they won their COIN campaign.
Tom
Hearts and minds
The enemy in Iraq is not trying to get the population to like him. He is trying to get compliance through fear and intimidation. Polling demonstrates that the enemy has lost the hearts and minds battle, yet he still persist.
To defeat him we still have to find him and destroy his ability to make war. The combined arms approach presents him with dilemmas that make his defeat most likely. That is the approach that has been the most successful over time. However, what remains of Yugoslavia was essentially defeated by a NATO air campaign, which included on a minor threat of a boots on the ground campaign.
Ultimately, not only combined arms, but a combination of other operations are needed. You need to cut through the intimidation efforts and get the cooperation of the people to get intelligence on the enemy. You need a high force to space ratio in the enemy's area of operation to cut off his ability to move to contact. You have to deny sanctuaries to keep him in motion where he is more vulnerable to being killed or captured at a check point or by a patrol. It requires political and kinetic components. The political portion also needs to focus not just on the Iraqis but on support for the war at home. That has been the primary target of enemy propaganda and attacks in Iraq, and the US has no one in charge of responding to this propaganda campaign.
That is a really sad comment. It shows a lack of understanding of the situation, and brings to mind the Russians 2nd attack of Grozny. Its not what we are about, and its not what we need to be modeling for our ISF and other partners.My personal sign that the Presidnt is willing to pay the price will be a change of ROE's. when the ROE is 'If it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't move blow it up.', then we will be on track for winning. We can play H&M with the survivors
Consider for a moment that Iraq is more then just an isolated incident. Consider that the way we conduct ourselves tell the whole world what we're about. You may have, you might think this is the answer for anywhere we get involved in. But I think you'll find the vast majority of us don't buy into indiscriminate ROE where we dump our UBL between SP and RP. It shows emotional immaturity and 0 discipline.
Most of the folks killed here are civilians. They are innocent. For some reason it seems the car near to a SVBIED that goes up is always a family with multiple kids. There is enough of that without adding to the innocent loss of life because somebody gets can't hold their water and decides to crank off a belt in response to an IED where the triggerman is long gone and the majority of the people injured are civilians.
Its one thing to shoot at somebody because they are shooting at you, or fixing to shoot at you, its another to shoot at someone because you don't like the way they looked, the way they drive, or because you heard gunfire and thought the shot came from a general direction.
This COIN stuff is hard work - but its the task that's been given us. One thing I've noticed is that we often fall back on what is most comfortable - KO is most comfortable for many, and that is why most units spend the first part of their tour here trying to do KO almost exclusively; then get frustrated when it doesn't work. Eventually toward the end of their tour, they start to get it, but by then they are getting ready to rotate out and a new unit comes in and it starts all over again.
I guess we've gotten lucky in that we live with a bunch of folks who never rotate out, they'll be here after I go home, and they were here before I arrived. Their families are here, and will remain here. Their kids will go to the schools that remain intact, taught by the teachers who don't get killed, and grow up with the neighbor's kids who make it. I admire them, they have far more stamina and courage then we do - name me someone who has been here who'd trade places with an Iraqi soldier - you won't find many takers I suspect. So my perspective may be a bit different then others.
Everywhere here is a little different and a little the same with grey in between. Me personally, I would not consider myself much of a soldier if I subscribed to trying to "out intimidate" the populace; I guess that would make me terrorist if all I was worried about was scaring the folks I came here to help.
As for describing the approach, I have not heard a good all round word yet, maybe there should not be one though because too many people would latch onto it and use it without thinking about what it meant. We're doing good work here, its working better then many people know (or believe). I don't compare what we're doing here to what is going on in Baghdad too much, but I'm closer to Baghdad then if I were not in Iraq.
There is no one approach. The application of resources (bullets, beans, bandaids, benzine, flus ($$) etc) based on understanding the problem in time to make a difference is the best approach I've seen. It requires people who can consider the problem they have vs. the one they wish they had.
Last edited by Rob Thornton; 01-03-2007 at 05:35 PM.
Not factual. The Unit disipline myth was started by Gibbon. It was disproven by Omen, among others. That was over 100 years ago, which proves that myths and legends die hard. Gibbon got his errornous information from events happening in or about the 5th century AD, which was after the classical Legion had been replaced with mercenaries (auxiliaries), which were mostly made up of germanic tribes and lacked the disipline of the native Romans. It was a case of the Romans applying to their auxiliary units the methods used to control unrulely populations. The Monk that Gibbon sourced from was unaware of the practice being applied to civil populations several centuries earlier and shocked by it's use against Roman allies. Gibbon didn't have the resources available to later scholars and didn't research any farther.
TQ, you havn't figured out what your choices are. You either end up in the ditch, or you put people in the ditch. There is no middle ground in guerrilla warfare, which is why both Osama and President Bush said 'you are either with us or against us'. They weren't being polemical, but stating a simple fact. Think about it, If the Terr's run by your house and hide in your barn, you have 3 choices. Say they went someplace else, say where they are, say nothing. Two of those choices aid the Terrs. There is no choice that is neutral.
For those that lack the stomach to fight to win, go home and read your Koran. The Enemy has no such weakness and because of that, they will win, at which point you and your loved ones will end up in the ditch, along with arcane theories of 'conflict terminiation' and notions that war can be made subject to Law or killing can be avoided while winning.
Unlce Sam And I parted ways in 1975, to our mutual relief. So I'm not current on the buzz words of today. Wot de 'ell is IO (Input-Output)?
I have often thought the best sources of the 50,000 troops that Kagan wants would be the Pentagon. Give a Colonel a rifle and a street corner to guard. We DON'T need a Pentagon for an irregular war. The Pentagon is for logistics and in the war we have now, UPS will do it better faster and cheaper. Stick the guys that write the ROE's on a coner in Sadar City with a M-16 and 4 Magazines and see what they think about those ROE's.
With the Pentagon out of the loop, there would be a chance to get timely (actionable? Another bit'o Jargon) intelligence. Billions spent on overhead survailance and the troops get theirs from Google Earth, just like the enemy does!
It wasn't the media that lost Vietnam, but the Military Commanders. The Media did it's job by reporting on the mistakes made by Military Commanders. Instead of fixing those mistakes, the Military Commanders did a CYA while blaming the Media. The rift that created has grown greater today.
Media is the Military's commo link to America. If the Military doesn't use that link, others can and are.
The Military Command structure is to the Media as Arabs are to Israel.
How can you H&M of the enemy if you can't H&M of the people you sprang from, your brothers, sisters, motherrs and fathers?
He LOST! That is the ultimate war crime. For EVEY german convicted at Nuringberg, there were Americans and Englanders that did the same 'crime' and didn't face trial. Dontez was found guilty of war crimes for passing on Hitlers order for U-Boats to Machinr gun survivors of sunken ships. He got a life sentance, IIRC. Google 'Battle of the Bismark Sea'. Kenny ( I think) ordered Americans to machine gun Japanese survivors of sunken ships. He got a medal, not life in prison.
As for LeMay... Germany and Japan. More rubble, less trouble. Ever hear of Dresden? Or Hiroshima?
"If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient - at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve."
- Karl Von Clausewitz
I'd suggest you calm down, get a grip on your "facts," and then proceed accordingly, tRu. Rational, respectful discussion tends to be the order of the day here, not random drive-bys.
I don't know anyone who would classify the air campaigns over Germany or Japan as "insurgencies."
This page indicates that you are incorrect about the Roman practice of decimation. It includes cites from Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch, Suetonius, and others.
In addition to such failed counterinsurgency efforts where the more rubble/less trouble effort failed, let me add Japan in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Hello, this is my first post. (I'm Canadian, just for the record.)
I do agree with you that genocide would win the war. Dry the sea and all the fish will die. But keep in mind that war is policy by other means. Winning is not the objective, winning is the mean to achieve the objective. The mean you propose here would not achieve the objective (Democracy, War on Terror, New American Century, pick the one you like.)
Typos-,
IO = Information Operations. Depending on who you talk to, it is everything, nothing, or something major in between. Certainly a major emphasis, and an area where we can do much better.
Can you tell us where you landed when you left your Uncle's place, and how you came to advocate such an extreme position -- at least as defined by some (but not all, as you point out) value systems?
Thanks, and welcome aboard.
Extreme or factual or just plain wolf, wolf, wolf
typos-R-us views might seem a little extreme to many, and more relevant they seem undoable to most (myself included), but his heavy stick approach (total war), as he implied, was our approach during WWII, and we brought both the German and Japanese population to their knees, which resulted in only minor insurgency problems after the conflict ended. This was a view expressed by an Air Force field grade officer elsewhere in the Council as many of you will recall.
I have noted how effective the Hearts and Minds (HAM) approach worked with the Germans and Japanese after they were defeated, I’m sure that if we didn’t use the HAM approach we would have had serious problems (we would have pushed both of them into the Communist’s arms). However, I have seen little evidence where the HAM approach has worked on enemy’s who were not yet defeated (hard to define), and I would love to see some examples (if any group can find it, it will be this one).
I still don’t discount the HAM approach though, it may be we’re on the right track, but we’re simply doing it wrong? Obviously we haven’t won their hearts and minds if they’re still shooting at us (fairly obvious metric and a very functional one for every grunt out there). I think our HAM approach is frequently a checklist approach, for example, a commander was taught that in COIN he needs to win the hearts and mind of the people, the people are the center of gravity. What does he or she do? O.K. he will deliver some rice here (don't forget the camera), build a school there, deliver school books over there, and now I'm done winning heart and minds. What’s next? What we seem to miss is that the HAM strategy is actually a very complex endeavor. It requires many disciplines (security, civil affairs, psychological operations, interagency coordinated efforts, a functional understanding of the culture, funding, putting the right face on it, etc….). Yet, what do we do, build a school, deliver books, deliver rice, and then we’re done. We only made their life better for a few moments, then they have to return the real world, while we live in our fantasy world where we think we actually did something good. While I have seen little evidence that the HAM strategy has worked, I have also seen little evidence that we really know how to implement it. It is more than simple and random acts of kindness.
I agree with Francois that war is an extension of politics, of course in today’s age what does that really mean? Perhaps most importantly Clausewitz stated that a nation’s leaders’ must understand the nature of the war they are about to embark on. This is first and foremost, and if we get that wrong, the strategy we have will likely fail. We obviously got it wrong in Iraq, and I think in Afghanistan. We know this war is about defeating a radical ideology, one that can burn like a brush fire across Muslim populations world wide if it gets the fuel and wind it needs, which is exactly what would happen if we used typos-R-us approach. This war is not restricted to Iraq, every misstep in Iraq has repercussions worldwide from Lebanon, to Detroit, to Morocco, to Indonesia. It is hard to defeat a nation without borders with military might alone.
Last edited by Bill Moore; 01-04-2007 at 03:48 AM.
Bill, I would qualify that a bit. We haven't won their hearts and minds if, when they bad guys are targeting you in their vicinity, not a single indig steps up and offers info.
But even this is nuanced. Perhaps the indig would like to given you info, but there is no secure means. How are walk-ins handled? Or perhaps they hate the bad guys, but you have failed to protect - or even react to the murders of - past informers and the info flow has now stopped.
These things apply even if you've given medical care to family members, provided households with clean water, fixed up the local school - because survival is the fundamental need.
You really hit the nail on the head here, Bill. I've certainly seen plenty of examples of pointless "random acts of kindness", with no real op plan and little to no exploitation and/or follow up of the event.
To expand on that just a bit, I really want to emphasize that the exploitation and follow-up is critical. And this requires a structured op plan for each "act of kindness", that brings in all of the elements that you mentioned. The act itself is also a prime spotting opportunity for HUMINT. That ties into a very important part of the exploitation and follow-up aspect. But so does plain ol' intel analysis - pre-and-post "act of kindness" analysis should be conducted of patterns of threat activity in the area.
This analysis needs to be tied in with that focused on the effects of combat ops in the same area, to help in determine patterns of threat activity - this helps to figure out patterns of threat displacement vis a vis the ol' carrot and stick. This in turn should drive future planning for both types of ops. For truly effective implementation it requires the coordinated efforts you mentioned, functioning in the type of operational cycle that I have described, in continuous ops. It is difficult, it requires good, capable people in key positions, a tight focus and a strong committment to long-term effects.
HAM by itself won't work. Cost-benefit - with the benefit not being dangled like the carrot in front of the donkey, but actually provided to the indig. Cost means that we continue to hunt down, kill and capture bad guys. And this often "inconveniences" innocent indig. If we can effectively fuse the two types of ops in a focused manner, develop the intel and exploit the situation.....it can work - I've seen it work. Unfortunately, up to this point, its only been transitory...
On heart and mind, I read last summer War comes to Long An, which I found very interesting. For those who never read it, it's about the Vietnam war and how the Vietcong won the peasants support.
According to the author, if I remember correctly, peasants in Vietnam didn't own their land. They rented it from a landlord and paid for it each year. The maximal legal amount to pay was 25% of the year production, but sometimes the peasants had to pay even more. Then the communists came, kicked out the landlords, gave the land to the peasants and charged a 5% tax. This won heart and mind big time. Not only because it was nice, but more importantly because it was not permanent. If the Vietcong lost, each and every peasants knew the landlords would come back and they would have to rent the land again at a much higher price. Therefore, the peasants had a strong personal incentive to see the Vietcong win. They had a good reason to become active supporters of the communists.
The government, on the other hand, focused on economic development. They built roads, markets, etc. This was very nice and pleased the peasants, but all those things would remain after the war, regarless of who wins. It did not give the peasants any incentive to become active supporter of the government, and didn't win heart and mind.
So according to the author the key is to create what he calls contingent incentives. You need to give the people, or part of the people, something your opponent cannot give, something they cannot have if your opponent wins. This give them a reason to support you and take personal risks to make sure you win. Winning heart and mind is not about random acts of kindness.
Of course, finding the proper incentives is not easy. Or sometimes it's easy, but it's not a path you're willing to go.
I would submit to you that this approach would have been a hell of a lot easier to justify 6 years ago had the entire country been mobilized into a war footing after 9/11. Additionally, because of the nature of WWII, particularly the fact that the war was primarily a conventional force battle in the traditional sense (fire and maneuver), This was a much less difficult COA to go forward with 65 years ago.
You also didn't have certain media types filming every bloody minute of the war without government approval and censorship.
Those interested in such heavy-handed approaches that apparently lead to victory may want to take a gander at the Strategic Bombing Survery from WWII.
Its a good read because it investigates the psychological impact of attritive strategies on the enemy. A contra-positive example would be to look at what the Battle of Britain did for British resolve (it increased it, not lowered/cracked it.)
And indeed, you haven won their hearts and minds if they're still shooting at you. But lets say you're dealing with an insurgency, and by definition insurgents are few and highly-motivated. The objective isn't to win their hearts and minds, it's to win the hearts and minds of the people they rely on for support, who are weaker (psychologically) and are the means of support for the insurgent. Its my contention, and others, that the objective is not the insurgent; it's the population as a whole.
Samual Griffith, in his translation of Mao's "On Guerrilla Warfare" states that for the insurgent (Guerrilla) to decisivly affect the populace, they only need 10% of the population to actively support. Their standard for success is relatively low.
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