Here's the first query: ""The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved. *
Last edited by Ken White; 1 Week Ago at 12:32 AM. Reason: Removed an extraneous 'not' and added 'to be a net' at the *""
Here's the second:""The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved."
Note the wording. My contention is that no major power obtained a net benefit (outcome versus all costs) from participating in a COIN action.""
Involved was used twice, once in the initial question, once in the follow-on -- participating only once in my explanation of why the question was asked. Not in the question(s), no intent to move goal posts.
Your list essentially made the point I was trying to make, to wit: ""Perhaps. My point is that if the participation is limited, there may be a net benefit (Philippines post 45, El Salvador, Greece [?], Oman). If it is a large commitment, it is not (Malaysia)."" You can substitute 'involvement' for 'participation' there with no change in meaning or result.Yes, it will -- plus it would be difficult to determine the total costs. That will always be true and the answer will most often lie in the mind of the beholder. My overall point was and is that such involvement is costly, rarely produces a measurable benefit in relation to costs and thus, simply, such involvement should be very carefully weighed.I would also submit that a Malaysia 50 years on that is a relatively peaceful and stable state with a fairly good economy is of net benefit to Great Britain, though the word "net" will make for endless argument.I obviously didn't see it a false alternative, merely trying to point out that your Forrest quote didn't so much trump my Sherman quote as it did your own desire for more 'COIN centric' effort as if -- you did not say this but I, perhaps wrongly, inferred it -- that would result in less mayhem; a nicer war, so to speak. Any idea of making war nice is, IMO, dangerous. Even thinking that the right techniques can make it a little better is fallacious all too often....is pretty close to being a fallacy of the false alternative...But the way it is presented it is almost a pacifism vs. mass murder kind of thing.True -- and my points have been that the 'COIN' thing is overblown on that score, that our failure to train adequately is not going to be rectified by applying training to fix that aspect of military behavior and that belief in 'COIN' efforts is a dangerous fallacy. Every Army needs to know how to do them; no country should seek them.I don't believe anybody has advocated being "excessively nice" to a Talib group moving down a valley...That isn't being "excessively nice" to the Talibs, that is being decent to the civilians, which is sensible.Probably true. What set me off was this:I think also we are going to the same place, by the same path even, but without seeing each other. All your parenthetical statements in this thread, when taken together, make a pretty good outline of how a small war should be fought.That statement of the obvious disregards two things; many nineteen year old Americans are poorly raised and tend to diss anyone they can and you can't believe the fun in trying to control that if you haven't done so. Still that's a leadership problem and it doesn't occur in good units; all units will never be good, by definition half are good and half are not.The best intel to weed out the bad guys comes from the people in the village or the neighborhood. They are not likely provide intel if they are pissed off at having been dissed by troops, had their fields ruined by a tank or having some of their relatives, friends and neighbors, near or distant, killed or maimed by an airstrike. Another disadvantage of the above listed events is their excitable teenage sons might go off and join a war band to get some revenge.
The second factor is that killing relative friends and neighbors is a fact of war; again, good units try to avoid that.
In both cases, the good unit factor is true and 'COIN' training in large measures is no indicator of improvement. Thus, your paragraph that followed the above:Shows the flaw that I was probably outsmarting myself by trying to get to in a roundabout way:The advantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to highlight the disadvantages of making the locals mad at you.
-- Excessively COIN centric thinking does far more harm than good. --
Aside from lulling national policymakers into believing they can ignore problem nations to concentrate on domestic priorities because the Army can fix it if it blows up, in the Armed Forces it covers other more significant training shortfalls and lulls people who should know better into thinking "this will all work out okay if we just do it right..."
Teaching COIN centric TTP will not make those bad to mediocre units better. Better training in the basics of the trade will make them a little better and improved selection of combat leaders versus 'whoever's turn it happens to be' will make them a lot better. COIN centric thinking only masks deeper problems and for that reason, it merits far more skepticism than it draws.The COIN lovers, civilian and military, believe that war can be made to accomplish social change -- it will but rarely in the way the arbiters of such change want or expect.
I can paraphrase you: The disadvantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to hide the advantages of not making the locals mad at you -- by staying out of their country. It almost never does work out right...
Because, ala Billy Sherman, Nathan B. and Ken White, you surely will hack off and kill a bunch of the locals -- no matter how nice you are.
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