Strategy begins with empathy: Netflix series "Colony"

[Bob's World]

Yes, TV shows are TV shows. One can fixate on tactical facts and miss the larger picture, or one can step back a bit and consider the nature, rather than the character of a conflict from a different perspective.

Northern Ireland was Britain's first modern colony. The resistance insurgency (warfare) against the English occupiers, and the revolutionary insurgency (illegal democracy) against those who collaborate with the occupiers are two separate conflicts, each very unique in nature, while often very similar in character. More accurately they are two distinct lines of motivation. One insurgent may be 20% motivated by the occupation, and 80% motivated by the fundamental illegitimacy of his government. Another may be the opposite in his motivations. They both may look the same, adhere to the same ideology, and apply the same tactics. That is why the distinction must be made and accounted for at the strategic level, because at the tactical level the distinctions are largely moot.

Likewise Algeria. Galula commented in his classic on COIN how most of the insurgency was against the largely local government of Algeria, and not against the French themselves. Like many colonial powers, he rationalized this as a sign of the relative goodness of what the French brought to Algeria, and the frustrations of the population with the ineffectiveness of the Algerian government. A less biased perspective recognizing the different nature of the two forms of insurgency and recognizing the presumptive drivers of resistance against any foreign occupation (again, physical or by policy); and against any local government deriving its legitimacy more from some foreign power than from the population it claims to serve, would have made his book a more strategic guide.

And yes, the same is indeed true of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Azor]

Yes, TV shows are TV shows. One can fixate on tactical facts and miss the larger picture, or one can step back a bit and consider the nature, rather than the character of a conflict from a different perspective.

Well, earlier you said that Colony was “an analogy for the US occupations of places like Afghanistan and Iraq”. On the contrary, it is an analogy for popular American perceptions of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly in the minds of those that never participated and who know the occupation only through what they saw and read in the mainstream media.

You also noted that the fact that the audience is meant to identify with and build empathy for the resistance is a “twist”, and yet it is a well-worn one, from the various film and television about German-occupied Europe (actual and alternative such as An Englishman’s Castle) to those about the Troubles (Crying Game, In the Name of the Father), and to similar ones involving aliens such as Star Wars (1977) and V (1983). Colony is treading old ground, and even the references to the US military aesthetic of the War on Terror can be found in 2009’s Avatar.

If your “larger picture” is that the “invader” is “fundamentally illegitimate”, then that applies as much to the Union soldiers in Confederate territory and Allied soldiers in the ruins of Germany, as it does to the Soviets in eastern Poland, the French in Indochina or the Americans in Afghanistan.

If one has no legitimacy on the territory of an other on the basis of not being an other, than a simple solution presents itself: use standoff weapons to pulverize any threatening person or object on that territory, without occupying it. It would have been far easier for the United States to turn North Vietnam into a wasteland and prevent the orderly unification of Vietnam under the North, than it was to preserve South Vietnam. It would have been far easier for the United States to wipe out the Taliban from the air in 2001, let the Northern Alliance do what they could, and come back if new terrorist camps spring up

Where the United States went wrong with its interventions, was when it wasn't prepared to do what was necessary to accomplish its objectives. It had all sorts of preferences, but the efforts were on the whole half-hearted, and this is true of Vietnam on. Note that all of the successes I listed earlier involved these countries being fully integrated into American economic and defense relationships.

US COIN or FID then became a fluid blend of cynical kinetic operations combined with disinterested attempts to "win hearts and minds". The US then tried to remake Iraqi state and society on the cheap, which meant cannibalizing resources in Afghanistan that were being used to build that country's first viable state in over 30 years.

Nevertheless, all of these insurgencies required massive foreign support in order to make life difficult for the United States.

[Bob's World]

You are crossing your streams again.

None of these insurgencies "required" massive foreign support - but if we create an insurgency and dedicate ourselves to grappling with it, our opponents will certainly leverage our stupidity to their advantage. Be it to advance their own interests, or simply to cause us pain the pursuit of what we believe to be ours. No different than what we have done to dozens of other when the roles are reversed.

First, the US Civil War example. The strategic brilliance of Gen Grant's strategy was that he recognized in warfare between nations was new and different than warfare between kingdoms. He could not simply impose costs on the South by defeating Lee's army, or capture the capital and "win." He had to do three other things to mitigate the resultant resistance insurgency against our presence following the war, and to mitigate the revolutionary insurgency against the governance in those occupied former Confederate territories.

1. Ensure the population of the South were as defeated as their government and their military. He sent his two best Generals on that mission, in Sheridan and Sherman.

2. Implement total and immediate reconciliation as soon as the conflict was won. That began at Appomattox, and though damaged with Lincoln's death, was still a critical component.

3. Allow self-determination of governance IAW the Constitution.

This was brilliant COIN to reduce the degree of resistance and revolution following the end of the conflict.

Where we went wrong in our interventions was in not understanding the nature of resistance and revolution. This led us to opt for far more invasive regime change approaches where punitive expectations would have been more effective. It also led us to not take steps that could have mitigated the resultant resistance and revolution once we opted for regime change as a COA. We applied war theory to non-war problems, and believed that what we brought was so good that the people would not respond to us as they would to some less good-hearted invader.

All avoidable. And to blame our troubles on ideology or the UW efforts of others, or to not appreciate the fundamental difference between WWII occupations in Germany and Japan vice our interventions onto unvanquished populations elsewhere is to keep our heads deep in our 4th points of contact and ignore the strategic lessons before us.

[Azor]

None of these insurgencies "required" massive foreign support

Firstly, the North Vietnamese war effort depended upon Soviet and Chinese support, which also involved interference in Cambodia and Laos that enabled the North Vietnamese to use those countries as lines of communication and staging areas. North Vietnam did not have an industrial base of any significance, and depended on the Soviets and Chinese for everything from small arms and ammunition, to artillery, aircraft and advanced air defense systems.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Soviet volunteers and advisors (~300,000) served in North Vietnam, operating air defense radars, SAM sites, transporting materiel, training North Vietnamese forces and even participating in combat as volunteers with the NVA (esp. pilots). By the time of Johnson's escalation, North Vietnam had developed one of the world's densest and most advanced IADS' in the world. The Soviets and Chinese competed with one another to replace North Vietnamese losses faster...

Secondly, the Afghan Taliban depended upon the support of their brethren in Northern Pakistan for logistics, staging areas, arms and ammunition. They also received the support of sympathetic members of the Pakistani government, and in particular the ISI, who kept the Durand Line porous and the weapons and fighters flowing.

Thirdly, Iraq was certainly awash in weapons and ammunition in 2003 after the fall of Hussein. However, Syria sent Islamist fighters to Iraq to join the Sunni Arab insurgency and the Iranians provided arms to the Shia militias, in addition to inserting members of the Quds force.

...but if we create an insurgency and dedicate ourselves to grappling with it, our opponents will certainly leverage our stupidity to their advantage.

This is certainly true.

An insurgency in southern Afghanistan was inevitable given the stateless Pashtun nation astride the border with Pakistan, the subversion of Pashtun nationalism into fierce Islamism and Pashtun disdain for the ethnic and religious groups of northern Afghanistan. The notion that they would accept rule from Kabul and would have greater affinity for the polyglot north rather than the Pashtun of northern Pakistan was ludicrous. The country needed to be divided at least internally, with the south having considerable autonomy bordering on independence.

Again, de-Ba'athification assured that the Sunni Arabs of Iraq would fight against the perceived threat of Shia domination and vengeance, and the Americans were considered in league with the Shias.

[Bob's World]

As I said to begin the thread, "strategy begins with empathy."

And like every journey, one is not going to get very far without taking that first step.

The attached link is to an perspective on Vietnam that closely mirrors my own assessment of the nature of that conflict. For those who buy into the uniquely American perspective that "we defeated the insurgency in South Vietnam, and it was only after we left that the state of South Vietnam was defeated in traditional combat by the state of North Vietnam," this will require taking a more empathetic perspective.

I have heard General Keane state in person, but many other "experts" as well, and certainly the dominating theme in US written histories of the conflict is the "we won but they lost after we left" perspective. That is, IMO, not being able to see the strategic forest for the tactical trees.

A good read, regardless of personal perspective:

http://discover.wooster.edu/jgates/p...ar-in-vietnam/

[Azor]

As I said to begin the thread, "strategy begins with empathy."

And like every journey, one is not going to get very far without taking that first step.

The attached link is to an perspective on Vietnam that closely mirrors my own assessment of the nature of that conflict. For those who buy into the uniquely American perspective that "we defeated the insurgency in South Vietnam, and it was only after we left that the state of South Vietnam was defeated in traditional combat by the state of North Vietnam," this will require taking a more empathetic perspective.

I have heard General Keane state in person, but many other "experts" as well, and certainly the dominating theme in US written histories of the conflict is the "we won but they lost after we left" perspective. That is, IMO, not being able to see the strategic forest for the tactical trees.

A good read, regardless of personal perspective:

http://discover.wooster.edu/jgates/p...ar-in-vietnam/

Hello Bob,

Apologies for the delay in replying. I was out of town for a while.

I read Gates’ article thoroughly. I completely agree with you that the United States did not militarily defeat the NVA/NLF, and American victory in battle was as irrelevant to this outcome as German victories in 1939-1943 were to the outcome of World War II in Europe.

Here is where I agree with Gates:

1. The CPV was engaged in total war. I will not use the terms “people’s war” or “protracted people’s war”, as they are merely a variant of total war, tailored to local conditions
   
2. The CPV pursued a strategy of “long-term” or “prolonged” war against the French and Americans
   
3. The CPV fluidly used subversion, guerrilla war and mobile warfare separately and in combination
   
4. There was no “border” between North and South Vietnam, only a military demarcation line
   
5. North Vietnam was considered by the CPV as a “revolutionary base” from which to unite Vietnam rather than a sovereign state
   
6. The war was more one of some South Vietnamese fighting for autonomy and secession rather than an inter-state war

Here is where I either disagree with Gates, or where I find that he supports my views:

1. Gates notes that the NLF was “an element” of the NVA rather than a separate insurgency that received NVA support. Therefore, American forces in Vietnam were fighting both local insurgents and NVA infiltrators, and were forced to tackle combinations of subversion, guerrilla warfare and conventional warfare which they had a difficult time adapting to. NVA border infiltration and conventional warfare was crucial as American soldiers could not simply engage in light peacekeeping or policing duties in insurgent areas (against subversives and guerrillas), as they could then find themselves in heavy battles with the NVA. Nor was entering these areas with heavy armor in preparation for clashes with the NVA particularly conducive to gaining the confidence and trust of the villagers in question. Add a single booby-trapped hut to the equation, and well…
   
   
2. The use of North Vietnam as a “revolutionary base” was key to NVA operations and for supporting the NLF. The micromanagement of and restrictions on the air campaign against North Vietnam rendered it worthless, except in bodycounts. North Vietnam took advantage of this situation to establish one of the densest IADS’ then in existence, to create an inviolate staging area for infiltration of the South and for receiving Soviet and Chinese supplies, and to redistribute resources no longer necessary for defense. By the time the Nixon Administration took the gloves off, the North had had years to prepare for the onslaught. Early airstrikes against all legitimate NVA targets would have severely curbed the North’s ability to infiltrate heavily armed forces into the South, and would have allowed the South Vietnamese and American ground forces to focus almost exclusively on anti-guerrilla and anti-subversion activities. Would the NVA/NLF had won if they had had no revolutionary base?
   
   
3. The total war as practised by Mao and Ho was clearly ineffective against the Japanese occupiers of China and Vietnam. On the contrary, it was practised against weakened opponents (KMT, France, South Vietnam) and against democratic governments who had to answer for drawn-out bloody conflicts (France, United States). Germany was not deterred by the high casualties inflicted by resistance movements in Poland, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and these areas were only liberated by conventional forces practising conventional warfare. The same is true of the Japanese in China, Korea and Southeast Asia. At no point did Berlin or Tokyo envision completely defeating insurgency without killing every person capable of resistance, and both seemed to envision a future in which insurgency was reduced to a more “acceptable” level and insurgent-held areas would be similar to a “Wild West” where future soldiers could make a name for themselves. The French and Americans by comparison seemed to picture a future in which their soldiers could march from one end of Vietnam to the other unmolested.
   
   
4. The case for South Vietnam was much weaker than that for South Korea, yet I believe that it would have been possible to establish a state based upon Saigon that could have existed in a state of siege and which would have eventually been viable. Unfortunately, this would have meant an American whole-of-government effort to: (a) get the people of South Vietnam behind the project, (b) prevent the North from being used as a base and (c) develop a South Vietnamese leadership that has as much perceived legitimacy as possible.
   
   
5. Lastly, Gates cannot discount the immense support provided by the Soviet Union and China to North Vietnam, which included advanced equipment and some 300,000 advisors, trainers and regulars (pilots, SAM operators, radar operators, materiel personnel, etc.). You had might as well deprive the Red Army and Soviet partisans of the factories in the Urals and Allied aid against Germany. Without this support, it would have been possible to fight Hanoi to a stalemate and reduce the local insurgency to “acceptable” and declining levels.