Out here in Frontier 6 Land
DOIM says that GEN McCrystal's giuidance falls into these categories:
Adult/Mature Content, Alternative Sexuality/Lifestyles, Auctions, Chat/Instant Messaging,
Extreme, Gambling, Hacking, Illegal Drugs, Illegal/Questionable, LGBT, Nudity, Online Storage,
Pay to Surf, Peer-to-Peer (P2P), Phishing, Pornography, Proxy Avoidance,
Spyware/Malware Sources, Streaming Media/MP3s, Violence/Hate/Racism.
Lots to reply to
I am currently at a training exercise so I will quickly try and reply to all.
First, towards the UK folks, I am trying to get it downloaded. As soon as it is I will post again and I will email it to you if you have an email.
Second, to Mike F. You don't really say anything with which I disagree. I believe security operations have a precise place and I believe counter-force operations have a place. The correct thing is analyzing the percentages. In a given insurgent population maybe only five percent are irreconcilables: those who have to be killed or captured. You also mention turning the population which I think is always better than killing the enemy.
You also made some great points on IO which is how it should be conducted. The only thing I would add is that once you live in the population and eliminate armed propaganda in the villages, then conduct regular shuras, eventually you will ask the people to turn in the bad guys so they can reconcile. Surprisingly they will and the violence will lower dramatically. The key is not killing the right people, its securing and living with the right people. This is also much easier when partnered with local units, not conducting solo operations.
When it comes to comparing population-centric COIN with other theories, people frequently say like what? Well, my first answer is fire-power reliant theories that the US Army used in the beginning of the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war until now, and throughout the Vietnam war. Firepower and vague concepts of maneuver replaced interaction and intelligence gathering. Above all, though, US army might say they do not advocate that, in practice that is the majority of their actions.
To William F. Owen: I don't think we see eye to eye but I don't think small little forum posts will change that. The problem with "correctly applied combat power as the essential element of irregular warfare" is defining correctly applied power. Is it fire power? Is it living with the population? Is it partnering with the local security forces? Is it gathering more accurate intelligence?
It seems like correctly applied power is a euphimism for conducting kinetic operations on the insurgent or irregular forces. And, frankly, I don't think we can shoot our way out of this operation.
Well you may yet be surprised.Originally Posted by Michael C
- Is it fire power? - Yes, but 5.56mm and 7.62mm applied against armed targets, clearly identified and engaged within ROE.
It is not 454kg JDAMS, Hellfire, or 155mm, unless very clear criteria are satisfied- Is it living with the population? Yes, as and when it merits benefit.
- Is it partnering with the local security forces? Yes, especially if they can trained to operate in ways that acknowledge both their limits and strengths and not just as less capable mirrors of yourselves.
- Is it gathering more accurate intelligence? Absolutely! That is about the most important thing you can do!
It's not a euphemism. It is exactly what I mean.It seems like correctly applied power is a euphimism for conducting kinetic operations on the insurgent or irregular forces. And, frankly, I don't think we can shoot our way out of this operation.
If I can find 30 armed insurgents on the move, away from any population, why should I not attempt to engage and kill all of them? Are you seriously suggesting we should not do this?
If however, I risk killing civilians, or I am not sure as to the identity of those 30 armed men, then I'll seek to conduct operations to clarify their identity, till I can successfully engage them, or consider them not a threat.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Changing one word highlights the sillyness of dividing war simply on what clothes one side decides to wear to battle....
Yup,
That and half the DOD public information sites
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
Too late tonight
but in the mean time, maybe I posted this LINK in the wrong thread.
Everyone with all the stastical data, metrics, whatever the flavor of the month is I have one question. What percentage of the Afghan populace supports US prescence?
Some may remember my rant some months ago on some PSYOPS guys here LINK, well let's just say our I/O does not exist.....or in others words it is pure bureaucratic horsesh*t; at least in the other theatre it is that way. Maybe, just maybe someone has it right in Afghanistan......anyone, anyone, anyone?
I really need to stop all this ranting.....sorry
ODB
Exchange with an Iraqi soldier during FID:
Why did you not clear your corner?
Because we are on a base and it is secure.
ODB- Knowing what percentage of the population supports the government of Afghanistan is the most important metric. That being said, we don't know it. Finding it out would involve daily conversations with locals and rigorous searching for that answer. The result would be operations very much like population-centric COIN.
In short, that is the most important metric but in Afghanistan and Iraq the US Army's most important metric is friendly KIA.
Wilf- I guess the only thing we disagree on is that it is much better to flip a known insurgent to supporting the government than killing him. Otherwise, I agree with everyone of your points except that violence is the last resort in a counter-insurgency.
The very fact an insurgency exists, shows that the insurgent was very happy to resort to violence. Before the insurgency occurs, violence should indeed be a last resort.
I think if you can get an insurgent to give up or change sides, you should. Point being he is only likley to do that, once you have subjected him to some harm or threat.
My real concern being that POP-COIN is either very poorly explained, or actually suffers from profound failure to understand the nature or irregular warfare, - as I think my answer to your questions would seem to indicate.
The central tenet of POP-COIN is "protecting the population." My reasoning, based on history, is that if you defeat the insurgency (kill, capture, coerce) then you fulfil your aim, axiomatically. My reasoning also being that I want to protect the Government, because the Government, not the Population make the Policies, we wish to benefit from - Clausewitz!
POP-COIN is essentially a poor reasoning of END-WAYS-MEANS.
POP-COIN reasons that killing the enemy means killing the population - which is essentially assuming folks are stupid and changing the means to account for it.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
No Wilf, you have it all wrong on this statement.POP-COIN reasons that killing the enemy means killing the population - which is essentially assuming folks are stupid and changing the means to account for it.
If you spend all your time trying to kill the enemy, you stand to lose sight of many things concerning the population, like whether or not the enemy is slipping into his villages and towns at night to deliver mischief and mayhem.
We should do our best to avoid killing civilians...and that's about the gist of it. You talk a lot about concepts and ideas standing up to rigor. Please show the council where anyone advocating a effort that focuses on the population (or even just looks to pay attention to the population), actually said that killing the enemy mens kills the population.
That is not an equation I have seen anyone make.
I think he aimed at the accidental guerrilla aspect that insurgents are a part of the population and linked to it.
.
How does any intelligent application of force against the enemy, allow them to freely move in and out of villages? That is precisely what focussing on the enemy would aim to prevent. 1st Core Function is FIND.
I have long said that the application of force should be intelligently applied. - EG - not killing civilians. The New ROE for A'STAN explicitly talk about restricting the use of force to prevent civilian casualties, as part of POP CENTRIC COIN do they not.We should do our best to avoid killing civilians...and that's about the gist of it. You talk a lot about concepts and ideas standing up to rigor. Please show the council where anyone advocating a effort that focuses on the population (or even just looks to pay attention to the population), actually said that killing the enemy mens kills the population.
My reasoning is same, if not tighter ROE, should be applied as part of going after the enemy.
Now COMISAF COIN Guidance states claims 8 years of successful kinetic actions have made the problem worse. Essentially in that killing the enemy alienates the population. So does that mean the population all support the Taliban and don't like seeing them get killed or does it mean that negligent use of fire power risks killing the population?
In fact the document explicitly states that large operations risk killing civilians.
To logically extrapolate from the COMISAF, it basically says that you can't kill the Taliban because it will make them want to kill you. This logic does not seem to extend to what happens when you have to kill them, when they try and attack the civilians you are trying to protect.
Last edited by William F. Owen; 08-28-2009 at 05:13 PM.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
This tact didn't work in the 60s; and definitely fails today
Focusing on crushing the insurgent has never done more than create, in effect, a "cease fire" until such time as the populace can generate whatever part of the equation (leaders, ideology, fighters, resources) you have taken out. History is rife with examples of locations where there have been COIN "victory" after "victory." If it keeps coming back, you never resolved anything.
This is the problem with the Colonial mentality. It rationalizes that the outside presence is proper, and that governments supported by that outside presence are therefore proper as well. Most populaces disagree, though most will also tend to put up with it as well. As Thomas Jefferson said:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
In today's information environment it provides more advantages to the insurgent than it does to the government. Tactics like those practiced successfully in Malaysia would be far less likely to succeed today. One Dinosaur of the new info age is the "Friendly Dictator." No longer can a Colonial power (or a pseudo-"I'm not really a colonial power, I'm the U.S.") strike a deal with some Dictator that is mutually beneficial for those parties, but that rides on the back of the Dictator's populace, for one simple reason: Other than perhaps N. Korea, there is nowhere on earth where the populace, and the information available to the populace, can be fully controlled.
Now, I am not a big fan of the CNAS-promoted form of COIN that is based in tackling "effectiveness" of government and controlling populaces. What Kilcullen calls "Population-Centric" COIN.
I am, however, a fan of my own theory which is based in tackling "poorness" of governance (targeted on the specific issues by region/community that are at the core of causation; while also targeting the aspects of the governance that deny those same populaces the ability to address these issues through legitimate means) and supporting the populace (governments come and go, as do threats. The populace is what endures. Ultimately, all governments are expendable, and threats transient. Focus on what's really important). What I call "Populace-Centric" COIN.
WILF is pretty savvy on conventional warfare, both between states and with irregular forces as well; but my opinion, in his refusal to recognize that warfare within a state is unique and must be handled differently than by the rules derived from Napoleonic warfare; is dangerously off track when discussing insurgency.
The Brits lost an empire "winning" insurgencies using the mindset WILF promotes. The U.S. will suffer a similar fate if we apply the same. Good news for the Brits was that they had little brother to pass the torch to. The US might want to ponder just who picks up the torch when we are forced to drop it as well...
Last edited by Bob's World; 08-29-2009 at 11:15 AM.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Well thanks, but actually I am merely repeating the cannons and teachings of great men, in whose shadow I reside. I am not an original thinker, by any stretch.
So how exactly is war within a state different? Spanish, US, English(3) and Columbian civil wars ? The de-facto Iraqi Civil war?
a.) There are no rules derived from Napoleon's conduct of War (not warfare). He merely made enemies to create no advantage. He lost. The era in which he conducted Warfare holds relevant and timeless lessons.
b.) I merely suggest using force to gain what force has always been best at gaining. The insurgents are using force. Why the great confusion in persuading them to pursue peaceful means?
An insurgency is rarely, if ever, a legitimate expression of discontent.
If you don't take military action against an "insurgency", the "insurgency" will win, using military action against you! - as in Cuba and Nicaragua.
Actually that's not true. We did not loose an Empire. Retaining an Empire was not economically or politically viable, after 1945 - mainly thanks to the US!The Brits lost an empire "winning" insurgencies using the mindset WILF promotes. The U.S. will suffer a similar fate if we apply the same. Good news for the Brits was that they had little brother to pass the torch to. The US might want to ponder just who picks up the torch when we are forced to drop it as well...
For 180 years, we held onto our Empire and expanded it, almost exclusively using skill in irregular warfare, as an expression of the politics of the age.
Post 1945, what our ability to conduct irregular warfare achieved in most cases, (thought not all) were non-communist Governments who could be productive members of the Common Wealth, at the time of independence. -contrast and compare that to the French and Dutch!
The two insurrections we "lost" - Ireland and Palestine, were against mostly against British Army trained irregulars, - both in under 2 years and both after a major war.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I agree but herein lies the problem with the American Way of COIN
Though I disagree with the backhanded slap at Clausewitz, Bobbecause passion, reason, and chance and the fact that war [all war] is a true chameleon is still applicable - he was not advocating how to fight using Napolenic warfare but like Sun Tzu (and I am convinced he read the 1789 French translation of the the great Master Sun) he admonishes us to understand the nature and character of the war, but I digress).
The problem with the American Way of COIN (as adapted from the American Way of War) is that the way we fight a war within a state presupposes US forces being in charge. We want to take the lead and we rationalize this in all kinds of ways as in when they stand up we will stand down, they are not ready, we have to provide security until they can get on their own two feet. With us in charge we undercut the very legitimacy that we seek to provide to the state. Now of course we have gotten to where we are today because we deposed two totalitarian regimes (that needed deposing) and now we have to come in and conduct armed social work.
Just for a minute if we think about what if we had used those dreaded Napoleonic rules of war and looked to take the surrender of the those regimes (a success to those criminals who were in charge) and instead of destroying the government and all its institutions (Sun Tzu: it is better to take a country in tact that to destroy it, it is better to take an Army in tact than to destroy it) we took the surrender akin to Germany and Japan and then embarked on a Marshall plan type effort to support the successor regime and allowed that successor government to develop in accordance with its own customs, traditions, and political processes rather than impose our own way on them.
To be successful in supporting a host nation in its war within in a state we must support the host nation. They must be in charge as the COIN equation is that there are only 3 main elements:
1. the insurgents
2. the population (battlefield of human terrain)
3. the counter-insurgent (and this includes as a sub-element external support to the nation conducting COIN).
Unfortunately we do not like being the sub-element and only in a support role. It is our nature to be in charge and build all institutions in our image (including the host nation security forces and their ways of governance).
We are on the right track with our emphasis on cultural awareness in today's situation. It is the new buzzword phrase (along with cultural agility and other similar catch phrases). We want cultural awareness so we can derive solutions that we think will work within that culture and also because we think it will win us the hearts and minds of the people (again, us as in the U.S., winning the hearts and minds which is the wrong construct - we should not be worrying about us winning hearts and minds but support the host nation in ensuring they have the hearts and minds of their population, but I digress again) Unfortunately we use cultural awareness as a means to an end and do not strive for the two things that are really necessary - cultural understanding (e.g., the reality of that culture as it really is, was, and likely always will be) and cutlural respect (and the understanding that we cannot and should not try to change it, nor their political systems, legal systems, etc -change can only come from within and while we can nurture and support that change it is of course generational and we cannot and should not try to force that change).
Now to my bottom line. (Sorry I did not put it up front). I am afraid that the American Way of COIN presupposes future OIF and OEFs. Although it does not explicitly say it, our doctrine combined with OUR strategic culture also presupposes us being in charge always (just look at the hot debates we have had had in the past about US forces under command of a foreign commander - something many Americans will never stand for, but I continue to digress and I apologive for the rambling). We pay lip service to FID and the new fashionable term Security Force Assistance but as we look at how we are going to employ forces it is all about "shaping" the environment and this in turn can undercut our legitamacy. FID is still the best construct for what we need to do because the very nature of its definition is that it supports the host nation in its programs for internal defense and development which is critical for war within a state (FID: "Participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency.")
So in closing, I would say that war within a state has to be conducted by he state, it can have external support but that external support cannot supplant that legitmate and sovereign nation-state. If it does it is defacto an occupying power and of course one of types of traditional insurgencies is to rid a country of an occupying power. And if we would kep in mind those Napoleonic principles in the future and ensure that our military operations against a nation state result in a formal surrender we might not have to be forced back into a "you break it you buy it" situaiton.
And lastly, we must purge ourselves of the romanticization of COIN. It is this idea that we can come in and save the people by us being in charge that gets us into trouble. We need to figure out how to best help a soveriegn nation state (when it is of course in our strategic, national interest). Yes, I am a student (just a student, not a self-described expert) of TE Lawrence and all the other great COIN theorists but I do not think that we should try to fancy ourselves as Lawrences as it is so fashionable to say today. The romanticization of COIN today is going to hurt us in the long run and we need to ensure our future doctrine development understands that. Yes we are going to be faced with a myriad of threats around the world from irregular forces with hybrid capabilities. But underforunately it will be the rare case in the future when we can take them on directly and we must realize that we have to support soveriegn nations in their quest to bring security and stability to their under-governed, perhaps improperly governed and ungoverned spaces that provide sanctuary for insurgents and terrorists.
Finally, I wholeheartedly agee with Bob that war within a state requires a different way of operating. We know how to do that. We have had doctrine for it. Now we need to build strategies and campaign plans that will correctly implement that doctrine to acheive our national security objectives.
Dave
David S. Maxwell
"Irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge." T.E. Lawrence
This is not always the case. In the Philippines in the last years of the Marcos regime, the Communist New People's Army had roughly 40k armed members and was approaching strategic parity with a poorly led and demoralized AFP. In '86 Marcos fell, and his network of local governors, mayors and village captains, many of them in place for decades and responsible for a wide variety of abuses that served as recruiting tools for the NPA, were removed and replaced. NPA numbers dropped drastically, and by the mid 90s they were down to 6-8000. The hardcore ideologues stayed with the fight, but the followers abandoned it en masse - not because they were harmed or threatened, but because the regime they perceived as their enemy was no longer there, elections were happening, and there was potential for change within the existing political framework.
Only one case of course, but it illustrates the importance of understanding why the insurgent fights - not "the insurgency", as a whole, but the individual insurgent. The insurgency may be Communist, Islamist, Separatist, what have you, but it's often the case that many of the individual insurgents are fighting not because they are devoted to those goals but because of some more immediate and often more local grievance. Addressing those grievances may not eliminate the insurgency, but it can dramatically reduce the appeal of the insurgency to the populace, reducing recruitment and increasing defections.
An excellent point. If you look at fluctuations in the strength of Hamas over the years, for example, it soon becomes clear that it has relatively little to do with IDF military activities. Rather, it grew during the first intifada (at a time when the IDF shifted from initial passive tolerance to active countermeasures--in a sense, IDF military action against it enhanced its "street cred"), waned sharply at the beginning of the Oslo process (when it fell to single digits in some polls as a consequence of optimism about the peace process), grew to over 40% by 2006 (because of a combination of collapse of the peace process and poor Fateh/PA governance), and has slowly slipped since then (largely because Hamas governance hasn't been much better, although here it could also be argued that IDF military action has had some effect).
They mostly come at night. Mostly.
- university webpage: McGill University
- conflict simulations webpage: PaxSims
What Dave said!
(And I don't rough up CvC, only those who take him a bit too literally and universally. Everything must be read within the context of its time and culture. Sun Tzu was crafted over hundreds of years of experience I believe, so has a broader base of time; but both still colored by their cultures all the same)
And when I speak to populace focused approaches, it is not to say one does not go through the government; but often it is the government that must change the most for them to regain peace with their populace. So my focus is to help the Gov't get straight with its populace, or if they refuse either leave, or help the populace get a Gov't that will (depends on how big the interest is that brought us there); but to simply take the govt as they are and assist them in subduing their populace is simply to add our names to the target list.
Often we refuse to play hardball with governments because we fear the consequences. Often these fears are based in our addictions (energy being a big one); sometimes these fears our based in concerns with other states and what happens if we lose some support or right of access from the one we are engaging. Fear is healthy. It just isn't always rational.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
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