Don't Send a Lion to Catch a Mouse

[John T. Fishel]

Interesting article in the Post and thanks to Jed for the full draft article. I scanned the article for a list of the cases - haven't had time to read the whole thing yet - but could not find a list. That,alone, gives mepause.When Max Manwaring and I wrote our origninal piece in Small Wars and Insurgencies, wepublished the entire list of 43 cases. So, I wonder what the cases are. For example, do the authors address every single Indian War in the US beginning with 1800? I should note that the outcome, despite some significant setbacks for the US Army such as the Little Bighorn, was victory in every case! In all the post-WWII insurgencies in Latin America, there have only been 2 victories for the insurgents - Castro in Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979). So, the definition of victory and defeat is of importance as well. The track record of insurgents is simply not very good. So, at a minimum, caution is indicated when we read the paper in its entirety.

[goesh]

Good point about the Indian wars, John T. From 1777 - 1787, in Kentucky alone, just over 1,000 settlers were killed or captured. The Shawnee were one of the main opponents in this phase of expansion yet by 1800, their power was pretty much negated. The likes of George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, experts in COIN at the time, saw to it. To give an example of their daring and ability, in 1789, Clark sent 3 scouts deep into Shawnee territory, Chillocothe to be exact, their principal village. That would be the equivilant of sending 3 men up to Fallujah during the initial invasion of Iraq to do some scouting/recon. They were that confident of their ability and that willing to take necessary, unexpected risks. Boonesborough and Franks Fort had been repeatedly hit in force and there was considerable marauding and Boone and Clark got wind of another force massing to the north and sent 3 men on a recon mission. Now that's classic, affective COIN doing the unexpected, high risk with the potential for real success. What Shawnee war leader would expect 3 white men to come snoopin' and poopin' deep into their turf? The mission was both a success and failure as Clark didn't expect his scouts to disobey ROE. They got up there, did their recon then took some Shawnee horses. Talk about balls, huh? Anyway, this apparently made the Shawnees more angry than the simple fact of scouting them. They gave chase, captured Kenton and killed my ancestrol Grandfather, Alexander Montgomery, at the Ohio river but the third man, whose name slips my mind, got away and returnd to his CO with the Intel. Typical of the asymentrical warfare our nation has had to engage in and the opponents we have had to face, the Shawnees repeatedly slapped Kenton's face with Grandpa's scalp ( at least they didn't put Grandpa's underwear on his head) held Kenton captive and frequently tortured him before he was able to escape. He ran the gauntlet 3 times. They didn't do beheadings back then, they burned people at the stake instead.


There are lots of details and particulars left out in reports such as this that essentially claim failure of our Nation but there is an accumulation of lessons learned, there is collective imprinting that becomes self-sustaining, creative and proactive in and of itself from lessons learned. It endures the test of time and that's what counts. Reports such as this may well cite the battle of the Rosebud and Little Bighorn as failures, but do they address the change of tactics needed for successful COIN? Following the defeats in the summer of 1876, the hostile were finally pursued in the winter. The troops were issued buffalo coats and winter logistics were put in place. In the spring of 77', Crazy Horse and Gall were done fighting and only Sitting Bull held out but was spending most of his time in Grandmother's Land (Canada). Some of the world's best light cavalry were done fighting by the summer of 1877, one year after two major defeats.

[Tom Odom]

Interesting article in the Post and thanks to Jed for the full draft article. I scanned the article for a list of the cases - haven't had time to read the whole thing yet - but could not find a list. That,alone, gives mepause.When Max Manwaring and I wrote our origninal piece in Small Wars and Insurgencies, wepublished the entire list of 43 cases. So, I wonder what the cases are. For example, do the authors address every single Indian War in the US beginning with 1800? I should note that the outcome, despite some significant setbacks for the US Army such as the Little Bighorn, was victory in every case! In all the post-WWII insurgencies in Latin America, there have only been 2 victories for the insurgents - Castro in Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979). So, the definition of victory and defeat is of importance as well. The track record of insurgents is simply not very good. So, at a minimum, caution is indicated when we read the paper in its entirety.

John

Can you provide a list of your 43 cases? I wonder how many of the Africa cold wars show up?

This paper has several implications for the study of warfare and its practice. It is clear, for example, that there is no uniform logic to warfare: states that excel at Type I war are precisely those states most at risk for suffering political defeat in so-called small wars. This points to both the need to bound our theories of conflict to specific types of conflict as well as to engage in fractal pooling to capture how variables’ significance change temporally. The results presented here do, however, point to the fact that leading explanations – both power-based realist theories and regime type accounts – are inadequate for explaining war outcomes outside of conventional conflicts. What we need now are better measures of more qualitative variables such as force employment and command climate at the unit level in order to capture how culture and economics interact to shape patterns of warfare.
33
The paper’s findings also shed some light into current debates about US force restructuring. In particular, the paper raises the question of whether the current “Revolution in Military Affairs” is not, in fact, locking the US even further into a suboptimal path of war-fighting. To be sure, modular force restructuring and other technological innovations promise to deliver devastating amounts of firepower at the tactical level. Yet such practices may simply exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the problems facing mechanized modern forces in Type II and III wars. An appreciation of how armies in the nineteenth century fared and, in particular, their use of local intelligence, foraging practices, and sustained interaction with the local populace over lengthy deployments, may lead to more successful tactics and outcomes. Interestingly, the paper suggests that the real revolution in warfare may not be RDO-type operations post-1918 but the opposite: the embrace of asymmetric tactics and methods by weaker opponents at the turn of the century. Devolution may, in fact, be the revolution in warfare. In sum, the paper’s findings, if still tentative, suggest that there is profit in rethinking the links between the political economy of war, market-based principles, and the way states (and militaries) conceptualize why and how fight.
34

What I did not see in my quick read of the paper is an adequate examination of the leap of faith made regarding common military practices in the Age of Colonial Imperialism and how those practices--foraging to pick one--might play out in the 21st Century. The closest they come to this is in lightly discussing differences between the 101st and 4thID.

Interestingly, distance is highly significant and positively correlated with victory. This is a surprising result, for it suggests that states fighting insurgencies are more likely to win the greater the distance from their home capitals. By contrast, this result disappears and turns slightly negative in the 1900-2003 era. In effect, states in the nineteenth century appear to have had better power projection capabilities – if measured in terms of victories, and not quantities of material and men – than their twentieth century counterparts.

Here too is another weakpoint: the authors came up with the factor of "distance" as a physical measure and then to my mind misinterpret their own findings: that 19th Century States had great power projection than 20th Century states. What is missed is that the key variable in the equation was communications and what Dave Dillegge has talked about on here as strategic compression.

All of that said, however, I do have great empathy for the argument that our classic warfighting is defined by our own cultural parameters and we change only incrementally--usually at great cost. We go back to what we are most comfortable with and our arguments to support that position take on "10 Commandments-like" qualities.

Tom

[John T. Fishel]

Tom and others,

The full cite is "Insurgency & counterinsurgency: Toward a New Analytical Approach" in SMALL WARS & INSURGENCIES, Vol 3 No 3 winter 1992, Frank Cass, London.

"43 Internal Conflicts Involving Western Powers 1945 -1983"
1. Chinese Revolution Ph V 1945 -49
2. Vietnamese War for Independence 1945 -54
3. Israel War for Independence 1945 - 49
4. Indonesian War for Independence 1945 - 47
5. Algerian Troubles 1945
6. Greek Civil War 1945 - 49
7. Madagascar Uprising 1947
8. Malaya 1948 - 60
9. Huk Rebellion 1948 - 54
10. Colombia (La Violencia) 1948 - 53
11. Mau Mau 1952 - 56
12. Shifta Insurgency Eritrea 1946 - 52
13. Morocco Indepandence 1952 -56
14. Cyprus 1955 -59
15. Guatemalan Coup 1954
16. Algeria 1954 - 62
17. Vietnames Reunification Ph I 1954 - 62
18. Cameroon Civil War 1960 - 61
19. Cuba 1956 - 59
20. Spanish Morocco 1957 - 58
21. Muscat-Oman 1957 -59
22. Togoland 1957
23. Jordan 1958
24. Angola 1960 - 75
25. Venezuela 1961 -64
26. Bay of Pigs 1961
27. Vietnamese Reunification Ph II 1962 - 73
28. Brunei 1962
29. Guinea Bissau Ind Ph I 1962 -66
30. Oman 1965 - 75
31. Aden 1964 -67
32. Rafdan 1964
33. Mozambique 1964 - 74
34. Aden Crisis 1966 - 67
35. Guatemala 1966 -68
36. Bolivia 1967
37. Equatorial Africa 1969
38. Argentina 1970 -80
39. Moros 1972 -83
40. Uruguay 1972 - 80
41. Namibia Ph I 1973 - 80
42. Nicaragua 1972 - 79
43. Central African Empire 1979

Although there can be some argument, my count of these has 14 cases where the Western Power was on the losing end of the conflict. 14 of 43 (33%).

[Tom Odom]

John

I would add the following to the list:

Congo 1960-1963: Belgium, US, UN: Government and UN "win"

Subset Katangan Secession: Belgium versus Congo, US, and UN: Congo win

Congo 1963-1965 US, Belgium, Congo versus Simbas with some later PRC assistance: Congo win

Angola 1975-1977(?) US, Holden Roberto (FNLA), Zaire versus MPLA, Cuba, USSR: MPLA "win"

Zaire 1977-1978 (Shaba 1 and 2) France, Belgium, US, Morocco, Zaire versus East Germany, Angola; Zaire win

That would make the total 47 with 15 cases where the Western power lost.

Best

Tom