COIN Counterinsurgency (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

We had this discussion earlier and I'm thinking along the lines of this post.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...22&postcount=9

Thanks Bill, all I could find was Gentile's piece, I knew there was a better article out there that made the argument.

I will review this before I read the new 3-24. I doubt it will change my mind.

I do believe that the military never understood or implemented pop-centric COIN. I certainly believe that, even if applied properly, it would not have changed the outcome in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

It was not possible to create a “free, democratic, and stable Iraq.” This was well-known almost from the onset and certainly not in the timeframe America was willing to spend supporting this venture. The process of democratization has been studied for some time. Some of the requisites for democracy — economic wealth distributed across the society, political participation, urbanization, and literacy — were identified by Seymour Lipset as early as 1959. Since that time, additional factors have been identified and the originals refined. Based on these well-known factors, it was clear in 2004 that Iraq was not prepared for democracy. As one professor put it:

Iraq lacks any of the preconditions academics generally accept as being necessary for democratization to succeed. It has no middle class to speak of independent from the state; oil revenues, the life-line of any Iraqi regime, are notorious for their ability to centralize rather than democratize power; the country has no tradition of limited or responsible government; national identity is weak in the face of rival religious or ethnic loyalties; regional neighbors will do what they can to undermine whatever democratizing movements exist; and the democrats themselves lack a figure such as Nelson Mandela or Kim Dae Jung who could give them leadership.

Iraq was possibly the worst place on the planet to attempt to create a democracy. One researcher, taking into account the conditions in Iraq at the time of the invasion, estimated the odds of success at 1,725 to 1. In addition to these social factors, a significant portion of the population of Iraq embraced a tribal value system that was antithetical to democratic legitimacy. The values necessary to embrace power sharing and individual rights were largely absent. Values can change, but that takes time. Given enough time it might have been possible to help the Iraqis build a democratic Iraq. How much time? Twenty years at a minimum for successful democratic consolidation. With all the issues Iraq had to deal with, the researcher estimated it would take 50 years to create a free, democratic and stable government. Even Larry Diamond, one of the more ardent supporters of the Bush administration’s attempt to democratize Iraq, had come to the conclusion in late 2004 that due to the conditions in Iraq and the lack of resources committed to the occupation democracy in Iraq would be a long term project.

Even worse, what the military was able to accomplish, a partial democracy, is the most volatile and least predictable form of government known. When all the factors that can be associated with political instability are ranked, being a partial democracy is number one. Certainly elections in Iraq were a triumph of democracy, but elections alone don’t create democracy. Iraqis have voted in large numbers in the past and will certainly do so again in the near future, but as Professor Bruce E Moon observes “… history shows that it has never been the unwillingness to vote that prevented democracy, but rather the failure to honor the results of those elections.” This is particularly true when factionalism — a political system dominated by ethnic or parochial groups that regularly compete for influence — is present. Factionalism tends to limit an interest in power-sharing. You might think that factionalism in any system would be divisive, but it is not necessarily destabilizing. As Professor Jack A. Goldstone and his associates noted in their research on political instability “It is only when factionalism is combined with a relatively high level of open competition for office … that extremely high vulnerability to instability results …”

By holding elections and attempting to create a democratic system in an ethnic and religiously factionalized society, we were creating the very instability we were seeking to suppress. But this was inherent in the mission, and since we had no doctrine on creating or consolidating a democracy, we integrated those tasks into our counterinsurgency and stability doctrine almost ensuring a self-defeating situation.

http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/dem...obayashi-maru/

But that has little to do with the basic argument. Gray admits as much. But his attack was not that Pop-centric COIN was not "a" strategy, only that it was the "wrong" strategy. If you read your last two quotes you will see that was where Gray was headed.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Nothing, repeat, nothing will work if you refuse to recognize and take action against the prime enemy. We never did that. In fact we supported financially the prime enemy, the Pak Army/ISI. Pop centric, enemy centric, CT or whatever is useless unless you identify and contest the prime enemy.

OK, who was the prime enemy in Iraq?

[carl]

OK, who was the prime enemy in Iraq?

Iraq? I was speaking of Afghanistan and have been, if I remember correctly, throughout this entire series of posts.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Iraq? I was speaking of Afghanistan and have been, if I remember correctly, throughout this entire series of posts.

Agreed, but you infer that targeting is strategy, and that the failure in targeting in Afghanistan was the cause of our failure.

It would then follow that our failure in Iraq was a lack of targeting. Who should we have been targeting in Iraq?

Or do you concede that targeting was not the cause of our failure to create a democratic Afghanistan?

[TheCurmudgeon]

If PSmith is right, this entire venture may have been for naught ... but any intellectual exercise examining the nature of our successes and our failures is never an exercise for naught.

[Bill Moore]

Their comments are known. But the way you phrased it it was if they planned on our reaction to 9-11 being what it was. I don't think they are that smart. They killed a lot of people because they like to and anything else was a bonus.

Nothing, repeat, nothing will work if you refuse to recognize and take action against the prime enemy. We never did that. In fact we supported financially the prime enemy, the Pak Army/ISI. Pop centric, enemy centric, CT or whatever is useless unless you identify and contest the prime enemy.

Carl

You interpreted my intent correctly. Al-Qaeda leadership is not amoral, and doesn't engage in killing just for the sake of killing. To state that they do is about as simplistic as it gets, and is it is type of American arrogance that regarding our adversaries that puts us at a disadvantage. If we fail to recognize their strategy we risk actually supporting it, which in fact we have none. Their strategy is both sophisticated and complex, and they understand us better than we understand them or ourselves.

Do they recruit a bunch of foot soldiers that are little more than psychopath killers? Of course, some are so bad AQ rejects them. That doesn't mean they don't have a strategy. The Management f Savagery is worth reading, as are a number of UBL and other senior AQ leader statements.

We'll lose in Afghanistan because our objective of a stable democratic government that respects human rights isn't achievable within the next decade (on top of the last one) with or without military force no matter how much killing we do or even if we go into Pakistan and deny that safe haven. The problem we should have been focused on is Al-Qaeda, instead we focused on a condition (Islamic culture) that we can't nor necessarily should change.

[Bill Moore]

TheCurmudgeon

But that has little to do with the basic argument. Gray admits as much. But his attack was not that Pop-centric COIN was not "a" strategy, only that it was the "wrong" strategy. If you read your last two quotes you will see that was where Gray was headed.

I think the relevant quotes actually paint a somewhat different picture.

There are no such historical phenomena as guerrilla wars. To define a war according to a tactical style is about as foolish as definition according to weaponry.

Tank warfare, lawfare, terrorism, insurgency, unconventional warfare, info warfare, and many others fall under this advise. All are viable operational concepts, but none are strategies. This is why most of us tend to hate the label "global war on terror" because it implies we're doing little than countering a tactic. That description isn't about a war or warfare, it is void any strategic guidance or insight other than attempting to avoid another attack on the homeland by conducting countering operations globally which we can do for another 100 years and still watch AQism expand globally. Our adversaries are adapting and becoming more dangerous, while we advocate for doing more of the same even though all indications clearly point what we're doing is not effective. Why?

To be blunt, the most effective strategy to counter an insurgency may be one that makes little use of COIN tactics. It will depend upon the circumstance (context).

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.

Population-centric COIN tactics have and will continue to fail in both Iraq and Afghanistan for the reasons pointed out in the quote above and others. That doesn't mean they won't work in other circumstances, but it worries me when we default to: well we have an insurgency so we have to do counterinsurgency (do we?) and it must be pop-centric COIN regardless of how bad the government, the safe haven the insurgents enjoy, or the internal sociopolitical divides in the country (the true underlying drivers) that we can't change.

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.

Emphasis is mine, I think we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan before we started due to policy decisions that never changed even when most realized they were unreasonable. If the policy was to militarily cripple Al-Qaeda and we were allowed to go into Pakistan we probably could have done that, but it would have been a temporary and potentially pyrrhic victory. A punitive military operation to hammer AQ in Afghanistan of limited duration to demonstrate U.S. resolve and deter other countries from hosting AQSL (like Sudan learned) may have had some value for both hurting AQ and appeasing the home front after 9/11. That would have to be following up with more FID, unilateral Special Operations, and other activities meant to dismantle AQ without derailing our overall national defense strategy and standing in the world. Conducting two major occupation operations where we attempting to transform cultures was certainly bold, but ultimately I think it has put us in a worse position. Hard for me to agree with Rumsfeld on much, but I do agree with him comment there were known unknowns. What worries me is that once we determined our assumptions were not valid we continued with the same plan.

IMO this turns the lame argument that COIN is the way of the future, insurgencies have always been present and likely will continue to be for the next few decades, but that hardly means it is in our interest to get engaged anymore than it is to conduct state on state warfare.


Quote:
Tactical errors or setbacks enforced by a clever enemy should be corrected or offset tactically and need not menace the integrity of policy and strategy. COIN may not be rocket science or quantum theory, but no one has ever argued that it is easy.

Quote:
If success in COIN requires prior, or at least temporally parallel, success in nationbuilding, it is foredoomed to failure. Nations cannot be built. Most especially they cannot be built by well-meaning but culturally arrogant
foreign social scientists, no matter how well intentioned and methodologically sophisticated. A nation (or community) is best defined
as a people who think of themselves as one. Nations build themselves by and through historical experience. Cultural understanding is always useful and its absence can be a lethal weakness, but some lack of comprehension is
usual in war.

Quote:
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.

[slapout9]

Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ended the war and kept all later major world conflicts to a manageable size.

Besides, 9/11 was not a strategic victory. The US did not convert and join the Caliphate. It had a psychological impression, but it was not a strategic victory.

I didn't make myself clear I asking for examples after 911. Hiroshima and Nagaski come from the days when we new what we were doing and why.

As for your second point I don't think you can make that statement since the war is not over and we do have a President who told the director of NASA that his most important mission was to make Muslims feel good about themselves. We are in deep trouble.

[slapout9]

I will just do this.

Bill,
1-Killing Pablo was not about the war on drugs per say other than he happened to be a drug dealer. It quickly moved to a destroy him and his organization problem which is why the DEA was able to get Intelligence and the Military involved. Also why they didn't really care about the cocaine increase since that was not the primary mission.

2-Hiroshima and Nagasaki were definitely targeted there is a McNamara documentary done recently that goes into some detail about that. I was surprised that he admitted he was more concerned about efficiency and it was Curtis LeMay who was more concerned about being effective.

3-I read Grants piece and liked it very much. Colonel Warden would have given Grant a gold star for finally what he has been saying for the last 10 years. You should read "The Way of The Knife" the story about the CIA involvement from the beginning to the end. On one page they make the comment that the meaning of "Targeting" was being transformed from a person, group or government that you want to collect Intel on or one you want to influence at a high (Strategic) level to list of people you want to kill.

I am trying to get permission to post a review Colonel Warden did in afterward to the book he wrote. It is a recap of the whole war situation since it began and how we have failed to essentially understand Strategy and the difference between Strategic measures vs. Tactical measures. link to the book I mentioned http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Knife-.../dp/1594204802

[Compost]

Then explain to me that the strategy is if the political objective is a "free, democratic, and stable Iraq"?

A strategy to accomplish that would have to cover Iraq and parts of Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and also the various “ Kurdistans “. That task is way too big and difficult for me.

seizing Berlin and forcing the surrender of the Nazi's was a concept of the operation too. Not seeing a point here.

Seizing Berlin and forcing the surrender of the Nazi's was a strategy aimed at speeding up the disruption and unconditional surrender of Germany. The plan was to cordon off Berlin to prevent support and escape, and to then suppress military and civil resistance. The conop for the latter was to employ composite infantry-engineer-armour forces - plus artillery fire away from prospective avenues of advance - to sequentially and in parallel overwhelm bite-sized segments of the city.

I don't see anything in recent history that provides examples of COIN not being strategy.

Then it seems you haven’t seen much at all.

[TheCurmudgeon]

First, let me say thanks to everyone for engaging in the discussion. It has helped me clarify my thoughts and realize that this discussion needs to be narrowed before it can be useful. There is also a lot of baggage regarding Iraq and Afghanistan that has to be separated out before it can be useful.

What I am starting to realize is that the military has little to offer in strategic Pop-centric COIN.

Just to be clear, my definition of pop-centric insurgency or counterinsurgency is a battle over political legitimacy. All other interests support this fight.

The JP-1 lists two types of military strategy. The first is the traditional form, destroy the enemy's physical ability to fight. This is where targeting comes in. The second is to destroy the enemy's will to fight. The only tool either of these strategies has to offer is coercion. Coercion is the opposite of legitimacy. It would follow that coercion cannot create legitimacy. So I may have run into a wall.

[carl]

Agreed, but you infer that targeting is strategy, and that the failure in targeting in Afghanistan was the cause of our failure.

It would then follow that our failure in Iraq was a lack of targeting. Who should we have been targeting in Iraq?

Or do you concede that targeting was not the cause of our failure to create a democratic Afghanistan?

I don't do targeting and strategy. I leave that to others as well as arguing whether it is FID or CT or whatever. I stick to what should we do or not do in a given place and time. So near as I can figure I didn't infer targeting was strategy. To me targeting is making sure I hit the right one on the range.

I will concede there are a lot of different ways to fail. We seem to explore most all of them. In Afghanistan we decided to try our hand at not fighting or contesting the real enemy. In Iraq we decided to get into a fairly big fight and see how it went if the President didn't pay attention to what was going on...twice. The first time Mr. Bush finally woke up and took charge near the end of his second term and things went fairly well for awhile. Then he left office and Mr. Obama tried his hand at not paying attention and here we and Iraq be.

[slapout9]

"So I ask the question, if the strategic objective is a free, stable, democratic state, what other strategy do we have other than the population-centric government building that is found in COIN?"


I'll try to better explain why I am big on Targeting at the Strategic level.

(The part in Highlights)
First that is not a Strategic Objective it is a Political Objective. The Military job is to find the correct Targets that will create a linked Effect so the Political Objective can be achieved.

*So lets look at free. That implies there is some force or forces that is causing the Target country to not to be free.

*Second stable. That implies that there is some force or forces that are causing instability.

*Third there is either some corrupt process or a lack of some democratic process for the Target country.

From there you MUST identify these Targets in order to complete your mission. So based upon this COIN has little or nothing to do with accomplishing the original Iraq mission. But Strategic level Targeting does and we did not do that very well at all. So we have fallen into the COIN psychosis-analysis conundrum.

[TheCurmudgeon]

"So I ask the question, if the strategic objective is a free, stable, democratic state, what other strategy do we have other than the population-centric government building that is found in COIN?"


I'll try to better explain why I am big on Targeting at the Strategic level.

(The part in Highlights)
First that is not a Strategic Objective it is a Political Objective. The Military job is to find the correct Targets that will create a linked Effect so the Political Objective can be achieved.

*So lets look at free. That implies there is some force or forces that is causing the Target country to not to be free.

*Second stable. That implies that there is some force or forces that are causing instability.

*Third there is either some corrupt process or a lack of some democratic process for the Target country.

From there you MUST identify these Targets in order to complete your mission. So based upon this COIN has little or nothing to do with accomplishing the original Iraq mission. But Strategic level Targeting does and we did not do that very well at all. So we have fallen into the COIN psychosis-analysis conundrum.

I'm not leaving, just clarifying my thoughts.

First, I would disagree that there should be any difference between the political strategic goals and the military strategic goals in the long run. Now, the military strategic goals may only be able to set the conditions for the political goals, but they should not be separate from them least they take on a life of their own. From the things I have read this risk is identified in the new FM; the potential that one, both, or all parties may wish that the insurgency continue because they have more to gain through continued fighting than through an effective peace. The political goals should always act as a limit on the military goals.

I don't disagree that identifying the impediments to the political goals are important. But the question becomes how to deal with the impediment. Destruction may not yield the effect we desire. In the fight for legitimacy, I think that there is not a powerful positive correlation between destructive targeting and political legitimacy.

This is the old "Utility of Force" argument, I know. I think it is a tad more complex then that simple statement that is found in the COIN paradoxes. The real question is WHY the connection fails to yield the desired effect. Is it because the destruction is via a third party (occupying force) that it fails to connect with legitimacy? Is it because it is an intrastate fight rather than an interstate fight - does that change the dynamics of the target population's perceptions of the actions? Or is it simply that coercion never produces legitimacy. Legitimacy grants the power to use violence, but violence never produces legitimacy. I don't think that last statement is correct, but I am leaning that way.

Anyway, still thinking about it.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Slap,

The question you raise about targeting in general and bin Laden in particular, brings up another interesting dynamic. The targeting and destruction of enemy combatants may be neutral or even detrimental to the political goals in theater, but they could have a huge political impact back home. Bin Laden would be a great example if we were not trying to kill him from the start. But his death had little or no effect in Afghanistan or Iraq, but a huge effect back home.

Are there cases where the destruction of a target is detrimental to the mission in theater but carried out anyway because of the positive political effect back home? Does this connection reduce the legitimacy of our activities in the country having the insurgency ("the Americans aren't here to help us, only to kill others").

Sorry for thinking out loud.

BTW, the obvious counter to this, that targets are not destroyed in theater because of the negative political consequence they had back home, was one of the problems in Vietnam.

I think this is a thread you need to start Slap - Targeting and strategic objectives - do they conflict in theater and at home and what to do about it

[TheCurmudgeon]

TheCurmudgeon

Population-centric COIN tactics have and will continue to fail in both Iraq and Afghanistan for the reasons pointed out in the quote above and others. That doesn't mean they won't work in other circumstances, but it worries me when we default to: well we have an insurgency so we have to do counterinsurgency (do we?) and it must be pop-centric COIN regardless of how bad the government, the safe haven the insurgents enjoy, or the internal sociopolitical divides in the country (the true underlying drivers) that we can't change.

Bill, I agree. The trick now is to identify those circumstances where it might work. I have researched the political end at least as far as it applies to democracy. I do believe the key to a successful pop-centric insurgency or counterinsurgency strategy is legitimacy. I think Putin's actions in the Ukraine prove that point. A popular vote may have a more long term effect than tanks crossing the boarder.

In circumstances where pop-centric is not the route to go, I have few thoughts. But I do believe that pop-centric need not be based on legitimacy derived through elections. It could be just as well to install a new leader who is seen as politically legitimate to the population but is not democratic. Mullah Al Sustaini might have been such a person in Iraq had we not been so dead set on democracy.

Emphasis is mine, I think we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan before we started due to policy decisions that never changed even when most realized they were unreasonable. If the policy was to militarily cripple Al-Qaeda and we were allowed to go into Pakistan we probably could have done that, but it would have been a temporary and potentially pyrrhic victory. A punitive military operation to hammer AQ in Afghanistan of limited duration to demonstrate U.S. resolve and deter other countries from hosting AQSL (like Sudan learned) may have had some value for both hurting AQ and appeasing the home front after 9/11. That would have to be following up with more FID, unilateral Special Operations, and other activities meant to dismantle AQ without derailing our overall national defense strategy and standing in the world. Conducting two major occupation operations where we attempting to transform cultures was certainly bold, but ultimately I think it has put us in a worse position. Hard for me to agree with Rumsfeld on much, but I do agree with him comment there were known unknowns. What worries me is that once we determined our assumptions were not valid we continued with the same plan.

IMO this turns the lame argument that COIN is the way of the future, insurgencies have always been present and likely will continue to be for the next few decades, but that hardly means it is in our interest to get engaged anymore than it is to conduct state on state warfare.

The argument that COIN is the way of the future is deeply flawed, but there is something to the idea that domestic politics have changed the acceptable military options. We can no longer use genocide as a war tactic as in the Boar Wars or even in the American West. That said, coercion alone begins to loose its appeal. But that is another argument.

[Bob's World]

What we persist in calling COIN is actually FID; and while not recognizing that causes us troubles; it is our persistence in creating fundamentally illegitimate systems of government and attempting to protect and preserve the same that is killing us.

Our COIN doctrine validates what we want to do; but it does not warn us that our want is not acceptable, suitable, or feasible. Doctrine should be smarter than that.

[Bill Moore]

What we persist in calling COIN is actually FID; and while not recognizing that causes us troubles; it is our persistence in creating fundamentally illegitimate systems of government and attempting to protect and preserve the same that is killing us.

Our COIN doctrine validates what we want to do; but it does not warn us that our want is not acceptable, suitable, or feasible. Doctrine should be smarter than that.

This isn't completely accurate, if we overthrew an existing government and occupied that nation-state we are in fact and by law the defacto military government. If insurgents challenge us then we're conducting COIN. We rapidly sought to put in place so called legitimate governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but that had little to do with legitimacy in the eyes of that country and much more to do with legitimacy with our coalition partners.

One could argue at that point we were conducting pseudo-FID or quasi-FID in support of that government who didn't exactly invite us to help them out, but that seems like a play on words. In most places such as Yemen, Philippines, Kenya, Uganda, Columbia we're conducting FID.

I think we're beginning to place too much emphasis on legitimacy since most governments are perceived as illegitimate by segments of their population to include ours. We need to focus on what is in our national interest, and understand legitimacy from the optic of whether it will be a supporting or opposing factor for our proposed courses of action. For example, if we included legitimacy as a factor in our course of action analysis for OIF we may have determined that our bold plan didn't have a snow ball's chance of hell in surviving. However, we cannot impose legitimacy and there are times when we may have to go to war to protect our interests and find ourselves in a similar situation again, so it is important we learn the right lessons from the previous decade of social-political engineering, I mean war.

[Bill Moore]

The Curmudgeon

Bill, I agree. The trick now is to identify those circumstances where it might work. I have researched the political end at least as far as it applies to democracy. I do believe the key to a successful pop-centric insurgency or counterinsurgency strategy is legitimacy. I think Putin's actions in the Ukraine prove that point. A popular vote may have a more long term effect than tanks crossing the boarder.

If you're saying we must impose democracy to achieve legitimacy I disagree with what I have seen and learned to date. In the Ukraine Russia didn't upset the apple cart too much, they pretty much replaced the existing government with their people, but the form of government is roughly the same so there is enough stability to hold a vote. That wasn't true in either Iraq or Afghanistan where managed to erase the existing forms of government (not governance), thus opened Pandora's box creating a situation where democracy wouldn't work. You can't transition from complete chaos into a credible democracy, the institutions to facilitate that don't exist, so as we all know context matters. I do agree that Putin's action in Ukraine will be significantly boosted if the popular vote is perceived to go his way. Whether this was just happenstance or the result of deliberate planning the Russians are taking advantage of a strategic opportunity.

In circumstances where pop-centric is not the route to go, I have few thoughts. But I do believe that pop-centric need not be based on legitimacy derived through elections. It could be just as well to install a new leader who is seen as politically legitimate to the population but is not democratic. Mullah Al Sustaini might have been such a person in Iraq had we not been so dead set on democracy.

Exactly, but he wouldn't be supported by all Iraqis (no one would), and we would be uncomfortable with that.

The argument that COIN is the way of the future is deeply flawed, but there is something to the idea that domestic politics have changed the acceptable military options. We can no longer use genocide as a war tactic as in the Boar Wars or even in the American West. That said, coercion alone begins to loose its appeal. But that is another argument.

It is important we understand ourselves as well as we understand the adversary. I think many of our plans would have worked under a different government, but not under the U.S. government. If we're going to have to depend on coercion population control is critical, but it also runs against our character to do so and it is unlikely we will have the political will to do so effectively. That limits our options, but instead of picking the wrong option (pop-centric) we should have scoped our objectives to something that was achievable. Too many times we look for enduring solutions when they don't exist, which is why we need to recognize some of the underlying drivers of conflict are not going away so at best we manage/contain it to some extent.

[TheCurmudgeon]

What we persist in calling COIN is actually FID; and while not recognizing that causes us troubles; it is our persistence in creating fundamentally illegitimate systems of government and attempting to protect and preserve the same that is killing us.

Our COIN doctrine validates what we want to do; but it does not warn us that our want is not acceptable, suitable, or feasible. Doctrine should be smarter than that.

You are right. But how do we do that? How do we warn our civilian masters that there plan is untenable?