Discussion of the new Iraq strategy, and General Petraeus’s recent Congressional testimony have raised the somewhat obvious point that the word “counterinsurgency” means very different things to different people. So it may be worth sketching in brief outline the two basic philosophical approaches to counterinsurgency that developed over the 20th century (a period which I have written about elsewhere as "Classical Counterinsurgency"). These two contrasting schools of thought about counterinsurgency might be labeled as “enemy-centric” and “population-centric”.

The enemy-centric approach basically understands counter-insurgency as a variant of conventional warfare. It sees counterinsurgency as a contest with an organized enemy, and believes that we must defeat that enemy as our primary task. There are many variants within this approach, including "soft line" and "hard line" approaches, kinetic and non-kinetic methods of defeating the enemy, decapitation versus marginalization strategies, and so on. Many of these strategic concepts are shared with the population-centric school of counterinsurgency, but the philosophy differs. In a nut-shell, it could be summarized as "first defeat the enemy, and all else will follow".

Continue reading "Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency" »

If I were a snooty European intellectual, I would blame the inability of many Americans to recognize the multi-sided nature of the current war in Iraq on American culture. "Americans," I would write, "can only think in terms of black and white, of absolute good and absolute evil. If you doubt this, just look at the films they watch, the games they play and the politicians they elect."

Fortunately, I'm a snooty American intellectual. As such, I realise that three-sided conflicts have been a staple plot device in American films for more than thirty years, that games like Monopoly, Risk and poker provide America with lots of people who are familiar with the dynamics of multi-sided competition, and that nobody gets very far in American politics without being able to handle more shades of grey than a high-end laser printer. Moreover, as a snooty American intellectual who has spent a lot of time studying the military history of Europe, I also realize that the chief cause of our strategic myopia is an idea that we borrowed from European intellectuals, and that is the notion that war is necessarily a two-sided affair.

Continue reading "Making Sense of Multi-Sided Conflict" »

I thought I understood something about counterinsurgency until I started doing it. In this interview conducted by the Army's Combat Studies Institute, I discuss what I learned the first time I practiced counterinsurgency, in Al Anbar province from 2003-2004. An excerpt follows:

The key to success in a counterinsurgency environment is not to create more insurgents than you capture or kill. A stray tank round that kills a family could create dozens of insurgents for a generation. Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. Always consider the long-term effects of operations in a counterinsurgency environment. Killing an insurgent today may be satisfying, but if in doing so you convince all the members of his clan to fight you to the death, you’ve actually taken three steps backwards.

Continue reading "Spilling Soup on Myself in Al Anbar" »

Two items to pass along from my day job working Joint Urban Warrior (USMC / USJFCOM wargaming program) and Emerald Express (operational insights and observations seminars). Good products if I say so myself...

The New Challenges for Military Operations in the 21st Century: Emerald Express Insights and Observations from Operation Iraqi Freedom:

This documentary video was produced as part of the annual Joint Urban Warrior (JUW) program and provides insights and observations from Emerald Express seminars in support of JUW 04, 05, and 06.

The video is divided into seven sections - Introduction, Winning the People, Strategic Compression, Filling the Gap, Becoming an Agile Force, Improving Civil-Military Unity of Effort, and Enhancing Coalition Operations. It runs 55 minutes, combines video, still images and interviews, and is professionally narrated and produced.

Continue reading "Joint Urban Warrior Video and Battlebook" »

Much discussion of the new Iraq strategy centers on the “surge” to increase forces in-theater by 21,500 troops. I offer no comment on administration policy here. But as counterinsurgency professionals, it should be clear to us that focusing on the “surge” misses what is actually new in the strategy – its population-centric approach.

Here are the two core paragraphs from the President’s speech, outlining the strategy (emphasis added):

“Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

Continue reading "Don't confuse the "Surge" with the Strategy" »

From time to time I will make a blog entry here based on a “post of note” from the Small Wars Journal’s discussion board - the Small Wars Council.

A recent and energetic discussion at the Council elicited a wide range of responses from military theorists, experienced operators and casual observers. The genesis of this discussion centered on Dave Kilcullen’s Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency.

One particular reply that caught my eye was posted by RTK – a two-tour Iraqi Freedom veteran who served as a platoon and troop commander with the 3rd Armored Regiment. In that post RTK broke down each of the 28 articles of company-level COIN (counterinsurgency) and provided a short example of its utilization and / or utility based on his personal experiences and observations.

Continue reading "28 Articles – Practical Application 101" »

One of my favorite public speaking techniques, which I probably borrowed from Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story", is to tell an obscure story as if it were a familiar one. Thus, when I want to introduce an audience to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, I start by talking about the "great civil war of the mid-nineteenth century, where the Northerners wore blue and the Southerners wore grey ..."

A couple of years ago, while giving an after-dinner talk to a group of dentists in Manhattan, I used this technique to introduce the subject of terrorism. I told the story of a man who had a career that was remarkably similar to that of Osama bin Ladin. The subject of the story, however, was not a present-day Saudi terrorist, but an English contemporary of William Shakespeare by the name of Guy Fawkes.

Continue reading "Remember, Remember, the 5th of November" »

The President’s new Iraq strategy has prompted much discussion, informed and otherwise. I’m not going to add to it here. Rather, I want to tentatively suggest a framework for thinking about Iraq, which (if you accept its underlying assumptions) might prove helpful in evaluating the new strategy and the enemy’s likely response.

I developed this framework about two years ago, while writing the October 2004 version of Countering Global Insurgency, mainly the appendix on Iraq. I have since presented it in various forums, including during the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2004-5, the Eisenhower Series in early 2006, during a series of lectures at the Naval War College and at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, and during the Irregular Warfare conference in Summer 2006. I also briefed it to the Pentagon’s “Plan B” team in November 2006.

Continue reading "A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy" »

Welcome to the SWJ Blog. The content will start to flow over the next several days from our illustrious Editor-in-Chief, and several contributing authors who we are very glad to have aboard. This is a short opening note on terrain appreciation, while we continue to clear the dust.

First, many thanks to Marvin Hutchens of ThreatsWatch and other sites, for making all of this technology insertion possible, and for putting up with us in the interest of national security and like-mindedness. S/F.

Continue reading "SWJ Blog Kick-Off" »