Colin Gray's New Article in SSQ

[Gian P Gentile]

I just read Colin Gray’s exceptionally fine article in the recent issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly titled Irregular Warfare: One Nature, Many Characters. I highly recommend it to SWC members. It is elegantly written and easy to understand; its brilliance is that it can be read on many different levels from the simple to the complex. Now I know why Steve Metz was “giddy” when he found out Professor Gray would be writing the introduction to his new book.

Here are a few quotes taken directly from the article with some comments by me underneath. I make these comments with humility and deference to Professor Gray’s fine piece. The point here is to wet your beak a bit to give you a quick sense of his article (with some comments from me added) and then to get you to read the entire piece.

The art of war, as generally understood, must be modified to suit the circumstances of each particular case. The conduct of small wars is in certain respects an art by itself, diverging widely from what is adapted to the conditions of regular warfare, but not so widely that there are not in all its branches points which permit comparison to be established.
—Charles E. Callwell, 1906 Small Wars: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers

Great lead in quote to the article; thankfully and rightfully Gray starts off with Callwell and not Galula, and mercifully not the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual.

We think we can improve our understanding of a subject as diffuse and richly varied as irregular warfare and insurgency by hunting for the most precise definition and subdefinitions… But always remember that conceptual sophistication can be overdone. Of course, there is much more to war than warfare, but warfare is warfare, and the most core competency of soldiers is skill in inflicting pain, killing people, and breaking things. Also, just as we need to see irregular warfare in the context of COIN, or vice versa for my preference, so in addition we cannot permit ourselves to forget that insurgency is warfare.

Hence we don’t need terms like “armed politics” or “armed social science” to help us understand Coin which at its essence is still war with its basic elements of fighting, death, and destruction.

No matter, when COIN—or whatever is the challenge of the hour—is king, whatever is to hand is rushed to the front to serve. Every piece of fashionable jargon, every execrable acronym, every dodgy idea is hijacked for the bandwagon. The bandwagon now is COIN.

I would add that Coin is more than a “Bandwagon” but a steamroller that dominates the operational thinking of the American Army.

Irregular warfare does not have a distinctive nature. Warfare is warfare, and war is war, period. But it does have an often sharply distinctive character.

This is the sine quo non of Gray’s article and of Counterinsurgency war. When we call Coin something else, like “armed politics,” then we alter its fundamental nature and turn it into something that it is not.

There is no need for us to devote attention to the nature of war; that vital task has been performed more than adequately by Carl von Clausewitz. And since all war has the same nature, it matters not whether it is regular or irregular.

Rightly so Gray relies on Clausewitz for theoretical discussions on the nature of war and not, thankfully, on Galula. Why again did FM 3-24 leave Clausewitz off of the classics reading list?

…COIN was always much more likely to be successful in the Philippines, Malaya, and El Salvador than in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Not all tasks are doable, even to a gifted strategist. Iraq today bears all the hallmarks of mission improbable…Even a sound, well-tested COIN doctrine, to be implemented by a suitably coordinated civil-military effort, may stand no reasonable chance of succeeding.

Gray here points out the limits of what military force can accomplish and offers an implicit warning to a hyper-reliance on lessons-learned that are applied dogmatically to current operational problems.

Second, as problem solvers our officials and soldiers are always in the market for solutions to the question of the day…If you recall, Antoine Henri de Jomini, the Swiss theorist, promised victory to those who applied the correct doctrine...The idea has taken root that the solution to our irregular warfare nightmares is adoption of the right COIN doctrine. This is a half-truth at best. In historical practice, each case is so unique that although there are some valid principles which should govern irregular warfare, there can be no reliable template for all contexts.

Highlights the point that I have made in previous postings that the American Army’s domination by Coin doctrine has seduced us into thinking that we can win any counterinsurgency with correctly trained units using good Coin doctrine.

It follows from these concluding thoughts, and from the argument in much of this paper, that the United States should undertake little irregular warfare. It would be a political and strategic mistake to identify irregular warfare, COIN especially, as America’s dominant strategic future. If the country should make the mistake of committing itself to extensive COIN projects, it will require a much larger army. Technology will not substitute anywhere near adequately for numbers of Americans on the ground.

I would add to his last sentence that neither would the best Coin doctrine applied superbly by competent units substitute for the essential element of mass, or boots on the ground. Recommend you read the entire article.

gentile