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Thread: COIN Counterinsurgency (merged thread)

  1. #821
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    The Americans still lost in Vietnam, and the French still lost in Algeria. The Philippine conflict was a war of colonial conquest; it belongs to another era and has little or no relevance to today's conflicts.

    Would more application of force have "won" in Afghanistan? Maybe, in some places, for a little while. It wouldn't have made the GIRoA any more able to govern, and it wouldn't have made "nation-building" a viable construct.

    First step to winning any war, small or large, is a clear, practical, achievable goal. Not sure we ever had one of those in Afghanistan.
    All very interesting, but of course none of it has anything to do with the point made in my paragraph that generated it.

    Perhaps you are right that our efforts in the Philippines so long ago are not relevant, but I disagree. I think military history most always has things that are relevant and there are things to be learned, especially small wars. I am probably wrong but this is because small wars seem to be more matters of people than weapons and tech. Steve Blair (I think) has a quote from Fahrenbach about the frontier Army knowing all there was to know about small war fighting. That surely was another era but things learned then are still relevant I think too.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    Worse it is rhetoric not tied to any strategic end, and lieu of a strategy we confuse our COIN doctrine and its social engineering tactics as strategy.
    I haven't read the paper yet but will. In the meantime, people always talk about strategy, but I don't know what they mean in the sense of doing. What, in your view, is a strategy that should be applied to South Asia? What should we do or have done and how? That is a big question but I am not looking for a big answer. But I am sincerely at a loss about actual actions when people talk about strategy.
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    All very interesting, but of course none of it has anything to do with the point made in my paragraph that generated it.
    Perhaps I failed to express the point clearly. Actually two points. First, in the absence of clear, consistent, and achievable goals, "getting it right" on the military level will at best earn transient and localized success. You may win some battles, but you won't win the war. Second, the tactical passivity you decry seems to me largely a consequence of the policy wreckage that I decry. In the absence of clear, consistent, achievable purpose, is it not natural to some extent for those charged with pursuing that purpose to resort to passivity and to focus on protecting their own?

    Not that the US military is perfect, but I actually have considerable confidence in their ability to get a job done, provided that the goal is clearly defined and suitable for accomplishment by a military force. If those conditions are absent, we don't need to change the military, we need a better set of goals and we need to choose the right tool for accomplishing the goals.

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    Perhaps you are right that our efforts in the Philippines so long ago are not relevant, but I disagree. I think military history most always has things that are relevant and there are things to be learned, especially small wars. I am probably wrong but this is because small wars seem to be more matters of people than weapons and tech. Steve Blair (I think) has a quote from Fahrenbach about the frontier Army knowing all there was to know about small war fighting. That surely was another era but things learned then are still relevant I think too.
    In the unlikely and unwelcome event that we ever embark on a war of colonial conquest, the lessons of past wars of colonial conquest might be relevant... though I have doubts. Those lessons would point in directions that cannot be pursued today due to domestic and global political constraints, and they would be employed against a rather different class of antagonist. The world does change.

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    I haven't read the paper yet but will. In the meantime, people always talk about strategy, but I don't know what they mean in the sense of doing. What, in your view, is a strategy that should be applied to South Asia? What should we do or have done and how? That is a big question but I am not looking for a big answer. But I am sincerely at a loss about actual actions when people talk about strategy.
    Before you can have a strategy, you need a policy. Policy defines the goals. Strategy defines the broad plan for achieving those goals. Assuring that AQ and similar groups will not be able to find refuge in Afghanistan is a policy goal. The decision to achieve that goal by transforming Afghanistan into a western-style democracy is, IMO, where we went wrong: that goal was not and is not realistically achievable by any means available to us.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    Perhaps I failed to express the point clearly. Actually two points. First, in the absence of clear, consistent, and achievable goals, "getting it right" on the military level will at best earn transient and localized success. You may win some battles, but you won't win the war. Second, the tactical passivity you decry seems to me largely a consequence of the policy wreckage that I decry. In the absence of clear, consistent, achievable purpose, is it not natural to some extent for those charged with pursuing that purpose to resort to passivity and to focus on protecting their own?

    Not that the US military is perfect, but I actually have considerable confidence in their ability to get a job done, provided that the goal is clearly defined and suitable for accomplishment by a military force. If those conditions are absent, we don't need to change the military, we need a better set of goals and we need to choose the right tool for accomplishing the goals.
    Nope. Missed the point again.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    In the unlikely and unwelcome event that we ever embark on a war of colonial conquest, the lessons of past wars of colonial conquest might be relevant... though I have doubts. Those lessons would point in directions that cannot be pursued today due to domestic and global political constraints, and they would be employed against a rather different class of antagonist. The world does change.
    If you insist on every jot and tittle lining up there are no lessons from history. I think there are plenty of lessons even is there are jittles and tots; especially in small wars which to me are more matters of humans than machines. The world may change, humans, not so much.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    Before you can have a strategy, you need a policy. Policy defines the goals. Strategy defines the broad plan for achieving those goals. Assuring that AQ and similar groups will not be able to find refuge in Afghanistan is a policy goal. The decision to achieve that goal by transforming Afghanistan into a western-style democracy is, IMO, where we went wrong: that goal was not and is not realistically achievable by any means available to us.
    All very interesting again, but not an answer to the question I asked Bill.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    Nope. Missed the point again.
    I see. What was the point, then?

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    If you insist on every jot and tittle lining up there are no lessons from history. I think there are plenty of lessons even is there are jittles and tots; especially in small wars which to me are more matters of humans than machines. The world may change, humans, not so much.
    If you dismiss historical context as jots and tittles, you're likely to extract lessons that do you more harm than good. I suspect that efforts to apply lessons from 19th century colonial conquest to the problems of 21st century 3rd party intervention would be in deep trouble.

    Humans change a good deal. Freedom changes people. In terms of people's ability to effectively prosecute conflict, I can think of few things that change people as much, or as fast, as believing, even knowing, that they can win. Sometimes the genie doesn't go back in the bottle.

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    All very interesting again, but not an answer to the question I asked Bill.
    Just pointing out that you can't have a realistic discussion of strategy in South Asia (or anywhere else) without first agreeing on the policy goals.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    I haven't read the paper yet but will. In the meantime, people always talk about strategy, but I don't know what they mean in the sense of doing. What, in your view, is a strategy that should be applied to South Asia? What should we do or have done and how? That is a big question but I am not looking for a big answer. But I am sincerely at a loss about actual actions when people talk about strategy.
    Carl,

    Getting to this kind of late, so initial response will be short, but I think Colin Gray captured why our efforts are floundering and it because our senior leadership is too focused on an array of tactical activities that we collectively call COIN focused on winning over the population, but that approach is not moving us towards our strategic ends. In fact our current approach IMO is undermining our effort to achieve our ends. This is what happens when we confuse the tactics of countering an insurgency with our strategy aims. What were/are our strategic aims in Afghanistan and the region (since you pointed out S. Asia)? Those would be the ends. How did/do we intend to accomplish them? The ways. What were/are the resources we will employ to achieve the ends? The means. If we agree that strategy consists of the ends, ways, and means we can start here.

    The principal and driving issues for the United States with respect to counterinsurgency are when to do it and when not, and how to attempt to do it strategically. Policy and strategy choices are literally critical and determinative.
    The above quote is critical to my overall argument. If we pursue unrealistic ends, and/or pursue our ends via a strategy that either won't work, or achieve our ends at an acceptable cost (many factors to consider such as time, money, casualties, and other less tangibles), then we already reached strategic failure (despite our tactical successes), but unfortunately it may take us many years to realize it, and by that time there is a lot of blood and money under the bridge. I'm not making this claim from a position I told you so, like many others I didn't see the mess in Afghanistan coming, but I am critical of two aspects. One we didn't change course when we realized (or should have realized) we got it wrong, and perhaps worse the lessons that the Army is drawing from the past 10 years of fighting is we need more Cow Bell (I think you get my point). This gets at Dayuhan's comment,
    Not that the US military is perfect, but I actually have considerable confidence in their ability to get a job done, provided that the goal is clearly defined and suitable for accomplishment by a military force. If those conditions are absent, we don't need to change the military, we need a better set of goals and we need to choose the right tool for accomplishing the goals.
    In most cases the military is doing superbly at the tactical level, especially SOF. One thing we learned way to slowly that hurt us was not to act like a jerk. It is true that turning the population against us through brutality or rudeness will hurt us at both the strategic and tactical levels (I'm surprised it took us a few years to really learn that, even in some elements of SOF), but it also true in my opinion that simply winning over the population will not achieve our goals which I expand upon below a little. So despite my sometimes excessive criticism of our COIN doctrine, at the tactical level there are many things in it that are valuable that I hope we don't lose, but of course tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat (hopefully that comes across as balanced, I criticize harshly because the COINdista mentality that pervades our force needs some provocative comments to actually get them to think independently and not recite doctrine line by line and confuse it with strategy).

    Denying safe haven in Afghanistan was one of the stated ends (I believe our primary end after the initial combat operations to kill the core of AQ), and our proposed strategic approach for achieving that was installing a centralized and democratic government, and getting the population to support it. That approach may reform a country, but in itself wouldn't deny safe haven, but we ignored that fact. We also ignored the fact we can't transform a country like Afghanistan at an acceptable cost. I don't know we decided to do this based on neocon hubris (the end of history outlook), perception that it was an inherent responsibility (you break it you fix it), but we clearly didn't understand the culture and history which would have indicated this approach wouldn't work without a significant investment in resources and implementing severe population control measures that we can't do by law and custom. This policy end (transforming the nation) and our strategic approach to do so was probably fatal to our ability to achieve our policy end of denying safe haven. It required building a nation from a state composed of tribes with a long history of intertribal warfare. In recent decades the Taliban was the only force that was able to impose some limited degree of stability through tactics we would never employ.

    I'm not prepared to argue in detail alternative approaches to achieving our policy end, but will quickly summarize some potential courses of action (that surely are not less realistic than the ones we're pursuing now). In all courses of action I think we started off right with SOF and air power to conduct aggressive combat operations against AQ and their friends (but leaving the door open for their friends to become our friends). Continue pressure on the Taliban/ruling party, and negotiate a settlement with them from a position of power under the table so they can save face and all sides can declare victory except AQ. They agree to deny AQ safe haven in turn for the U.S. not interfering with them. It may be unpleasant to allow these thugs back in power (assuming they regained control, we could have continued covert support to the Northern Alliance), but we live in a tough world.

    Another option is no deal, we hit AQ and their friends hard, to include pursuing AQ into Pakistan while we had the global political support to do so shortly after 9/11. That would be a punitive raiding expedition for a couple of months, and then we leave with the promise of returning (based on our recent action we demonstrated we have the means to execute our will, so it wouldn't be hollow threat) if AQ returns. We turn it over to whoever and let them work it out (yes it will be bloody, but not unlike our 10 plus years in country, or the 10 years prior to our raiding expedition). We have every right to conduct a punitive expedition, it didn't need to turn into a humanitarian one. I suspect there are multiple other options that could have been explored related to options with Pakistan, India, Iran and even China at the beginning based on realpolitik opportunities for all concerned that would have got to denying safe haven much more effectively than we have done.

    Instead we decided we wanted to install a democratic and central government (which is actually undemocratic in Afghanistan). Not surprisingly the government is opposed by different insurgent groups and our presence is opposed by resistance groups. Our misdiagnosis of the situation led us to naively assume that if we win over the population with economic incentives that insurgents will be defeated and peace will fall upon us and AQ will be denied a safe haven because people have jobs and the kiddies are going to school. Of course the Afghans aren't fighting for our vision of Pleasantville, but for wide range of deep seated hatreds between groups we just can't seem to apprehend. We spent billions trying this approach, and after it failed we assumed we still had the right strategic approach to achieve our end, and decided we needed more cowbell so we surged and spent billions more. Now it seems our leadership realized our current approach failed, but unfortunately the answer isn't adjusting our strategy, but simply leaving. Apparently we never seriously considered actually changing our strategy because we confused our COIN doctrine with the strategy and failed to realize it was the wrong doctrine for this conflict to achieve our end, but we were blinded by the hype that many authors made a good living promoting. This is where the danger of confusing tactics with strategy becomes readily apparent.

    The issue is not whether Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else either needs to be, or should be “improved.” Instead, the issue is whether or not the job is feasible. Even if it would be well worth doing, if it is mission impossible or highly improbable at sustainable cost to us, then it ought not to be attempted. This is Strategy 101.
    Population-centric COIN will not succeed if the politics are weak, but neither is it likely to succeed if the insurgents can retreat to repair, rally, and recover in a cross-border sanctuary.

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    Default continued

    Seriously, if our goal was to deny safe haven, and stabilize Pakistan (a related regional goal) because they're a nuclear weapons state, our ways and means certainly worked contrary to our ends. Killing AQ's core was/is certainly in our interest and should have been pursued even more aggressively. Instead we were distracted by COINdista platitudes that were completely disconnected from our strategic ends. Somewhere along the line the platitudes became the ways even if they were disconnected from our ends. We quit learning/adapting somewhere along the way, and now we have a non-coherent arrangement of tactical efforts working towards no collective end. In some cases our PRTs become the supported effort which gave the insurgents, terrorists, and criminals a great opportunity to make money and freedom of movement, because we forgot we still had to fight. Instead we confused an illogical platitude "we can't shoot our way to victory" with focus on the population, when it should mean that war is more than warfare.

    A lack of coherent strategy equated to a VSO program that undermines the our effort to develop a viable central state. A corrupt central state that undermines our efforts to win over the population, and neither have much to do with denying AQ safe haven long term. Our massive nation building efforts floods money into both Pakistan and Afghanistan. That money reinforces corrupt politicians which undermines the nation building, which is irrelevant to begin with. However, that money is diverted to our adversaries empowering them to continue fighting why we are trying to win over the population. Finally we announce our desire to reach a political settlement from a position of weakness, because we announced we're finished and pulling out. We should have had the political settlement as our end to begin with a strategy to get to it. Not strive for it after we are tired. The list goes on and on. It all comes down to having disjointed ends, ways, and means. If we spent more time on developing realistic ends and viable ways (a realistic strategic approach to those ends) we would probably be in a different place now. Our military adapts quickly to the tactical situation if you remove the micromanagers. If those micromanaging were more focused on strategy than tactics maybe we would be somewhere else today?

    Coming from a Special Forces background I know this sounds self-serving, but there were a number of options for SOF and especially SF, the intelligence community, and law enforcement to maintain steady pressure on AQ at an acceptable cost, well below the stage lights, that would have ultimately been more effective. You can counter hindsight is 20/20, but we should use that hindsight to help shape future decisions. We need our General Purpose Forces to be combat ready for whatever threat emerges on the scene, and quit confusing our fixation with irregular warfare as we it now as the way of the future. The world is trending towards to some state on state conflicts, transforming our Army into a giant PRT will not ensure our security

    Such winning can be understood to mean that the victorious side largely dictates the terms that it prefers for an armistice and then a peace settlement, and is in a position to police and enforce a postwar order that in the main reflects its values and choices. History tells us that it can be as hard, if not harder, to make peace than it is to make war successfully.

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    Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
    Moderator's Note - for Bill M.

    On request I'm copying some recent posts from the thread on "Porch shines a torch on COIN to expand the discussion beyond his promising book to discuss whether or not we have confused our COIN doctrine with strategy, and if so what are the risks to our national security if we don't fix this? (Ends).


    Professor Douglas Porch, of NPS, has a new book due out at the end of July 'Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War', which is likely to arouse interest, if not controversy.

    From the summary:

    Link:http://www.amazon.com/Counterinsurge...=douglas+porch and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Counterinsur...=Douglas+Porch

    A very partial review by a Guardian journalist, which includes this:

    Link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...oad?CMP=twt_gu

    Professor Porch's NPS entry:http://www.nps.edu/Academics/Schools...lty/porch.html

    I have read and enjoyed two of his books on French military history.

    Came back to check and see if anyone answered by thread on the new draft FM. Saw this, and I thought it was interesting. The new draft of FM 3-24 says it clearly isn't a strategy. It states:

    Counterinsurgency is neither a concept nor a strategy. It is simply a descriptor of a range of diverse activities intended to counter an insurgency. The U.S. can use a range of activities to aid a host nation in defeating an insurgency. The various combinations of these activities with different levels of resourcing provide the U.S. with a wide range of strategic options to defeat an insurgency. The strategy to counter an insurgency is determined by the ends the U.S. wishes to achieve, the ways it wishes to achieve those ends, and the resources or means it uses the enable those ways.
    It makes this statement in the very beginning of the new draft, in the first chapter titled, "Understanding the Strategic Context".

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    Default Vindication of Gian's view ?

    Gian P. Gentile, A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army (2009):

    But the most damaging consequence to the American Army from the new zeitgeist of COIN is that it has taken the Army’s focus off of strategy.

    Currently, US military strategy is really nothing more than a bunch of COIN principles, massaged into catchy commander’s talking points for the media, emphasizing winning the hearts and minds and shielding civilians. The result is a strategy of tactics and principles.

    Conclusion

    Instead of American Army officers reading the so-called COIN classic texts of Galula, Thompson, Kitson, and Nagl, they should be reading the history of the British Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is in this period that if they did nothing else right the British Army and government did understand the value of strategy. They understood the essence of linking means to ends. In other words, they did not see military operations as ends in themselves but instead as a means to achieve policy objectives. And they realized that there were costs that had to be paid.
    Regards

    Mike

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    JMM99, thanks for posting a very relevant article.

    Newguy, agreed, but there is doctrine and there is practice and often they don't meet in the middle. You can do a quick Google search for COIN strategy and find an indefinite number of articles where "experts" are quoted discussing COIN strategy. This unfortunately has influenced the strategic thinking (or lack of) for a generation of junior officers, policy makers, and politicians. Some are capable of seeing through the BS, but others recommend remaking our military to support our global COIN strategy which may be borderline suicidal for the security of our nation.

    I have opinions on the topic, but none are locked in stone, but I do hope to be provocative as a forcing function to generate ideas on the topic. For the most part we have to live the results of our COIN efforts over the past decade, what is most important now is the lessons we draw from these engagements. That is why I want to explore it in more detail with the SWJ community.

    IMO I think we lost the bubble in Afghanistan when we thought we could achieve our strategic of defeating AQ by denying safe haven in Afghanistan. Then we took it a step further and our strategic approach to denying safe haven was COIN. Other options were readily dismissed, and we saw the rise of the COINdista and their influence on policy and strategy. I think an argument can be made the COIN effort failed, but even if did work it was the wrong strategic approach to defeat AQ. Should we really remake our Army a COIN force? I found this comment in line with my thinking:

    http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...he_us_military

    No matter how good our tactics, cultural training, language ability, etc., we will never get out of the dilemma that the harder we try, the worse it gets. More money for AID and development = more corruption. More troops = accidental guerrillas and al Qaeda in Iraq type organizations. Joe Meyers and UBL call it defensive jihad, but whatever. Our very presence delegitimizes the government we are trying to prop up. It's a failed model and one that Galula said was the worst of all possible worlds.
    The most important factors for success against irregulars -- partner nation governance and the local military's will -- are out of our hands. Those two issues are not discussed by people who want to rearrange the military and create all kinds of nonsense. If eliminating safe havens and supporting stable governments is our policy, then what kind of military deployments maximize the host nation's ability to create legitimacy and find their will to win? I argue that Max's concepts minimize them.
    The following is somewhat in line with Gian's argument, and something we all need to be aware of is how the super star mentality has biased our perception on the issue. We couldn't focus on the issue of strategy, because the debate too often came down to whether or not you were pro or anti GEN Petraeus, which added an unhealthy level of emotion to the debate.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ge-afghanistan

    In an age in which military officers are practically above public reproach – glorified and exalted by politicians and the media – the repeated failures of our military leaders consistently escape analysis and inquiry. This can have serious national security implications. As Joshua Rovner, associate professor of strategy and policy, US Naval War College, said to me in an email conversation, this lack of scrutiny has had grave consequences:

    "[W]e have misunderstood our recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan; we have created new myths about strategy that will persist for many years despite their manifest flaws; and we may make bad decisions about intervening in other civil wars based on these myths."

    The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were more than just bad strategy; they reflected poor military tactics and generalship. Self-interested and incomplete interpretations of what happened in Iraq led to predictably disastrous results in Afghanistan.
    Back to my focus, what lessons do we draw from the past decade of warfare (some would argue warfare without strategy)?

    http://nationalinterest.org/commenta...an-7409?page=1

    COIN’s greatest tragedy was that it gave policy makers—who were facing difficult choices in Iraq and Afghanistan—the illusion that “victory” (or some sort of political resolution) was possible; that military power applied in a specific manner against an insurgency can lead to specific political outcomes.

    Henry Kissinger once wrote that “each generation is permitted only one effort of abstraction; it can attempt only one interpretation and a single experiment, for it is its own subject. This is the challenge of history and its tragedy.” Five years ago, COIN seemed like the right strategy. The empirical results on this experiment are now in, and they are not looking good.

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    Default Lectures In History US Marines In The Banana Wars

    I watched this whole lecture last night, it is an hour and 15 minutes. The link below is a Short preview of the lecture from the Naval Academy in Annapolis and the Professor Aaron O' Connel is a Lt. Col. in the USMC reserve. It covers the history of Small Wars and how it has shaped present COIN doctrine and does work or not! Excellent lecture and very eye opening at times compared the regular hop la about COIN theory in general.

    http://www.c-span.org/History/Events...10737440212-1/

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    Default First things first

    1. HT and thanks to Slap for the USNA lecture. After looking at the preview, I tried Cspan3 - and lo, the lecture was being live streamed. The complete lecture is here. Since I was looking at snips from the Small Wars Manual to prepare this post, the lecture was helpful in providing different views on my topic.

    2. What follows is very much an opinion piece; first by me and then by the authors of the SWM (snips attached). Its main parts are A. Counterinsurgency, B. Expeditionary Operations, C. Counterterrorism, and D. 1940 Small Wars Manual. Here (at SWC), I usually write about politics, policies and rules (often involving legal concepts) - suggesting an inclination toward "COINistanism". My primary interest, however, evidenced by what I mostly read at home, favors "Large Wars" ("conventional warfare"). It would be nice if we could go back to 1904 and Oppenheim's clear dichotomy between "Peace" and "War"; but WWI, WWII and the Nuclear Age put paid to that distinction. We are left with a very mixed bag.

    A. Counterinsurgency

    I look on the Civil War-Civil Rights "Era" as being the USG's only major experience in "pure" conterinsurgency - military and political action by the USG against US citizen insurgents within the confines of the not-so-united states. When that "Era" ended is not clear: 1876, 1896, 1954, 2008, or several weeks ago (when USG direct election supervision in several Southern States was curtailed).

    I'm not convinced that the Indian Wars were USG "counterinsurgency" operations; rather they were a series of Wars of Conquest, as to which the Laws of War applied. That was held by the most reasoned Federal judicial decision after Wounded Knee. BTW: it also was a very politically motivated decision. Whether specific Laws of War were properly applied is another issue.

    The Philippines War (aka Insurrection) was another War of Conquest - distinct from the Indian Wars in that American expansion was seen as temporary. The USG had no intention of colonizing the Philippines with hordes of US settlers, much less of receiving a host of "little brown brethren" as US citizens.

    Thus, I'd put the Indian Wars and the Philippines War into the class of Expeditionary Operations; specifically, where the US was an invasive belligerent.

    B. Expeditionary Operations

    I catch these in a net - broad and not definitionally rigorous. They deal with force projection (and sometimes non-force projection) by the USG in foreign countries. I believe the examples provide enough definitional input for conversational purposes.

    1. As a Adverse Belligerent

    The Indian Wars, the Philippines War, and WWII (Germany, Japan, Italy) provide examples where the USG entered the armed conflicts as an adverse belligerent to the foreign nations. The post-acute armed conflict result was occupation - permanent in the case of the Indians; temporary for greater or less periods for the other cases. All are examples of "nation building".

    An adverse belligerent has other courses of action. One is simply a "punitive expedition" to achieve a more immediate end goal - e.g., kill the existing foreign government and simply leave.

    2. As a Co-Belligerent

    Examples are Korea and Vietnam (1965 on); Iraq (once an Iraqi government was in office); and Afghanistan (arguably from the gitgo). In all these cases, the foreign governments (our co-belligerents) had both internal and external enemies - whose agitprop pitches boiled down to "US imperialists and running dog puppets".

    3. As an Advisor

    Force projection may be minimal (El Salvador) or maximal (Vietnam through 1964); in present terms, FID or SFA.

    C. Counterterrorism

    USG actions against transnational violent non-state actors - a nebulous concept as stated; e.g., the enemy must be defined as a group and its members identified as armed combatants or not. Unclear situations are the rule, not the exception. For example, is the USG operating (via drones and direct actions) as a co-belligerent with the Yemen government against its insurgents, as a belligerent against AQAP (as part of AQ) as part of a transnational armed conflict with AQ, or both.

    D. 1940 Small Wars Manual

    Attached to this post are the first four pages from Section I (" GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS"). They describe the broad scope of "Small Wars", from non-forceful actions (advice genuinely requested) up to but not including wars with major powers. In a nutshell:

    The assistance rendered in the affairs of another state may vary from a peaceful act such as the assignment of an administrative assistant, which is certainly nonmilitary and not placed under the classification of small wars, to the establishment of a complete military government supported by an active combat force. Between these extremes may be found an infinite number of forms of friendly assistance or intervention which it is almost impossible to classify under a limited number of individual types of operations.
    and:

    Most of the small wars of the United States have resulted from the obligation of the Government under the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine and have been undertaken to suppress lawlessness or insurrection, Punitive expeditions may be resorted to in some instances, but campaigns of conquest are contrary to the policy of the Government of the United States. It is the duty of our statesmen to define a policy relative to international relationships and provide the military and naval establishments with the means to carry it into execution. With this basis, the military and naval authorities may act intelligently in the preparation of their war plans in close cooperation with the statesman. There is mutual dependence and responsibility which calls for the highest, qualities of statesmanship and military leadership. The initiative devolves upon the statesmen.
    cont.
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    Last edited by jmm99; 07-14-2013 at 10:06 PM.

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    Default 1940 Small Wars Manual - Strategy

    Only 4 attachments are allowed per page. Here are the first two pages of the SWM's Section II ("STRATEGY"). In a nutshell:

    The military strategy of small wars is more directly associated with the political strategy of the campaign than is the case in major operations. In the latter case, war is undertaken only as a last resort after all diplomatic means of adjusting differences have failed and the military commander's objective ordinarily becomes the enemy’s armed forces.
    and:

    In small wars, either diplomacy has not been exhausted or the party that opposes the settlement of the political question cannot be reached diplomatically. Small war situations are usually a phase of, or an operation taking place concurrently with, diplomatic effort. The political authorities do not relinquish active participation in the negotiations and they ordinarily continue to exert considerable influence on the military campaign. The military leader in such operations thus finds himself limited to certain lines of action as to the strategy and even as to the tactics of the campaign.
    These are just some highlights from a 492 page book.

    Regards

    Mike
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    Council Member TheCurmudgeon's Avatar
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    Default Not sure if Coin is stragety

    Not sure if COIN is stragety but I disagree with the flipant tone and much of the content of Gray's article:

    (for example, war allegedly changing its nature;
    or human behavior suddenly, post–Cold War,
    reflecting the benign consequences of a normative
    revolution that denies repression as an
    effective domestic policy option, and suchlike
    attractive fantasies)
    That is not an "atractive fantasy", that is a political reality. The current post-cold war world actively engaging in tirals at the Hague for political leaders who commit war crimes. Yes, currently those are only the leaders of weak countries, but it is a change.

    It is a change in the political landscape that began in Britain about 400 years ago and spread to Holand and the United States and to France. Ultimately, the Western way of democratic poitics is being imposed on the rest of the world weather they like it or not. The reality remains that using "repression as an effective domestic [or military] polcy" is the fantasy.

    War has not changed but politics has. War is only now catching up. COIN is a manifestation of that reality, however you decide to classify it.
    "I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

    Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
    That is not an "atractive fantasy", that is a political reality. The current post-cold war world actively engaging in tirals at the Hague for political leaders who commit war crimes. Yes, currently those are only the leaders of weak countries, but it is a change.
    No, losing a war or power has always been risky if you had made enough enemies.

    It is a change in the political landscape that began in Britain about 400 years ago and spread to Holand and the United States and to France. Ultimately, the Western way of democratic poitics is being imposed on the rest of the world weather they like it or not.
    The anglophone world always points at the British and Americans in regard to democracy traditions, but there have been independent, citizens-ruled cities in much of Europe since the early middle ages, and others before.


    The focus on democracy as indicator is probably very ill-advised. Acemoglu/Robinson were probably right in pointing rather at the difference between patriarchal political systems (where the own supporters are rewarded with what the government extracts from the political losers) and programmatic politics (driven by ideology, technocracy, theocracy etc).

    I think programmatic politics are probably even on a withdrawal in the West since ~1980, while our democracies still maintain a shiny surface.

    Plenty "democratic" governments overseas have adopted the fashionable shiny surface of elections and on-paper division of power, but still follow patriarchal politics. Some European countries don't even maintain the shine (Hungary, Belarus) while others moved towards or maintained what Acemoglu/Robinson call "extractive" policies and the accompanying patriarchal politics (UK, Italy).

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    Default Thinking and Writing About COIN

    Thinking and Writing About COIN

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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    No, losing a war or power has always been risky if you had made enough enemies.
    Perhaps, but that does not mean that you can use genocide to stay in power. You could a hundred years ago. The Boer wars are proof that it works. I doubt you could do that again today.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    The anglophone world always points at the British and Americans in regard to democracy traditions, but there have been independent, citizens-ruled cities in much of Europe since the early middle ages, and others before.
    Fine, it started with Martin Luther and Grotius. Makes no difference in the end. There has been a shift away from duties to a central figure (king, pope, whatever) to rights of the individual citizen. Once the individual becomes supreme there is a shift in the political system from monarchy or theocracy to democracy. Yes, there were republics throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, but they were not democracies. Who was involved in political decisions was a matter of family and wealth.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    The focus on democracy as indicator is probably very ill-advised. Acemoglu/Robinson were probably right in pointing rather at the difference between patriarchal political systems (where the own supporters are rewarded with what the government extracts from the political losers) and programmatic politics (driven by ideology, technocracy, theocracy etc).
    Perhaps, but I still see our recent concern with population-centric warfare as a result of a shift in thinking away from the key leaders to whom the population owes a duty to the individual members of society who WE believe hold the real political power. It is not the world that has changed ... or war ... it is the way we think about where political power emanates has changed.

    What tends to tick me off is the plethora of military historians who want to fight this reality tooth and nail fearing their irrelevance.

    Don't take any of this as defending COIN as laid out in the FM 5-34. While I agree with the general idea that, to fight an insurgency you must remove the support for the insurgents that exists within the population as well as their motivation to fight, I think the 5-34 is too westernized; too limited. We need to look at WHY people fight if we really want to defeat/coopt the insurgency.
    Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 07-17-2013 at 11:23 AM.
    "I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

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    Default Could it be looked at another way?

    Perhaps, but I still see our recent concern with population-centric warfare as a result of a shift in thinking away from the key leaders to whom the population owes a duty to the individual members of society who WE believe hold the real political power. It is not the world that has changed ... or war ... it is the way we think about where political power emanates has changed.
    I think our recent concern with population-centric warfare is deeply confused on this point. We want to increase the legitimacy of a government by improving governance and have used, in part, examples from imperial small wars (the perfect example of retaining a status-quo running against a certain tide of history, people didn't want to be colonized and providing better services wasn't going to change anything in the end.) So, what aspect of power are we really strengthening or thinking about? Chicken and egg, the population versus the representatives.

    So critics of pop-COIN (and you say this too in a different way) are basically saying, "you are assuming you know why people fight in every situation. They are unhappy that their current government doesn't do X, Y or Z so we will do it or teach them to do it.")

    PS: The other assumption is that the majority of people are "noncommitted" and need to be wooed, so to speak. And of course, there is the old argument about how and when to provide security while doing the governance improving.

    What troubles me is that the military seems to sometimes confuse describing historical trends with "how to think about doctrine." But I'm an outsider and often get things wrong on the first go. Small Wars! COIN! 4GW! Non-State Actors! Conventional War vs the New Way of Doing War! AirSea Battle! The buzziness of selling an idea often obscures the idea.
    Last edited by Madhu; 07-17-2013 at 01:34 PM. Reason: added PS

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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Madhu View Post
    So critics of pop-COIN (and you say this too in a different way) are basically saying, "you are assuming you know why people fight in every situation. They are unhappy that their current government doesn't do X, Y or Z so we will do it or teach them to do it.")
    Actually, I kind of see the opposite. The critics of COIN are saying "It is irrelevant why people fight. Destroy their ability to fight and you win!" That is true to a point, but it does not address the problem, it only suppresses the ability (or urge) of the aggrieved population to attempt to address the problem.

    Of course, if you kill off the entire aggrieved population or put them in reeducation camps and your problem is solved. At least that is what I see as being floated by Gray as the solution. Yeah, it works, but you are probably not going to get any western politician to publically buy off on it. Even targeted killings are lossing their luster.

    The US had a civil war. The North won. Before, during, and after each side had their own idea of why the war was fought. Even now, most Northerners will say it was to free the slaves, an act that did not occur until well after the war had started. For the last century Americans, particularly Southerners, have not put that war behind them. I am not sure simply winning solves much for either the victor of the vanquished. I believe that reality is part of human nature.

    For most warfighters, what happens after the war is really not their concern. Winning is everything. That is not a bad attitude but it is an incomplete strategy.


    Quote Originally Posted by Madhu View Post
    What troubles me is that the military seems to sometimes confuse describing historical trends with "how to think about doctrine." But I'm an outsider and often get things wrong on the first go. Small Wars! COIN! 4GW! Non-State Actors! Conventional War vs the New Way of Doing War! AirSea Battle! The buzziness of selling an idea often obscures the idea.
    To be honest, I am with you on this. We use too many buzzwords to say basically the same thing. I am not sure how to solve THAT problem.
    Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 07-17-2013 at 03:29 PM.
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    Default MCoE Playing Role in COIN Doctrine Revision

    MCoE Playing Role in COIN Doctrine Revision

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