I loved the paper by a team of guys trying to tackle a thorny issue - Irregular Warfare: Everything yet Nothing by Lieutenant Colonel (P) William Stevenson, Major Marshall Ecklund, Major Hun Soo Kim and Major Robert Billings.

In over a year of effort, and two separate meetings of OSD's most senior officers; we failed to come up with a good solid definition for Irregular Warfare (IW). It’s like porn, we know IW when we see it. I do take exception to the unfounded statement made about historical research. The IW JOC (Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept) may not show it, but there is a lot of good history referenced by both the IW team and counterinsurgency guys, with lots of cross fertilization and common members. We may not have gotten it right, but it wasn’t due to a lack of intellectualism. I'll be a bit blunter, people who live in glass houses, need to be careful where they throw their rocks. That said, I agree with the conclusion that we could use a better definition.

To continue, let me decompose the proffered new definition and raise some points:

Combat operations conducted by the overt element of an insurgency in enemy-held territory,

Not clear why IW is limited to combat ops, nor limited to only the overt element rather than the insurgency at large. No explanation is offered. Nor is it clear or useful to make "insurgency" synonymous with IW rather than the subset it should be. I agree that the IW JOC is overtly insurgency oriented and limiting. But equally limiting is constraining our grasp to only the physical dimension of IW – this is very limiting and historically erroneous. I am also unclear why only the overt element is addressed rather than whole of insurgency. It is completely ambiguous to discuss "enemy held" territory. Is this needed? Meaningful? Extraneous words are killing this definition.

…by predominantly indigenous and irregular forces organized on a military or paramilitary basis,

It is not evident why only "a predominantly indigenous" nature is useful. The global jihad is a movable feast. Irregular forces in IW? No kidding, but organized on a military or paramilitary basis means not terrorist or networked or transnational? How is this relevant today? Taking a backward look at my limited glance – I have to ask - are we saying that they have to look like us, organize like us, and fight irregularly but conduct combat operations and be overt? This part of the definition is most important and gets us past just COIN, as it could be relevant to Fedeyeen and future jihadist opponents who will target us in future interventions.

…characterized by the extensive use of unorthodox tactics to reduce the combat effectiveness, industrial capacity, and morale of an enemy, usually an established civil and military authority.

Unorthodox is vague but acceptable - but culturally dependent. "Reduce" is okay, but the goals are limited by two physical - conditions and morale - not overthrow of state - or one of Bard O’Neill’s or Steve Metz's categories. The ending is a bit odd, "an enemy" helps me figure out the meaning of the "enemy held territory" in opening phrase, but its utility in both places is not clear and it seems to only muddy things.

All in all - the beginnings of a good debate. Yes, we need a definition better than what we have. Yes, concur with the point about populations (very COIN centric). But out of a dozen or so definitions that exist in the foreign literature, and the six or so developed by OSD, Army, Booze Allen etc, this is not an improvement. Sorry about that – so it’s back to the white board. I will put up a bottle of scotch to the best definition.

Continue reading "An IW “Bottle of Scotch” Challenge" »

Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq - Peter R. Mansoor, Yale University Press, 2008, 376 pgs, $28.00.

It is hard to objectively evaluate a book that is “blurbed” on the back by the likes of General David Petraeus (now Commander, U.S. Central Command), Dr. Conrad Crane (chief editor of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency), H.R. McMaster, Tom Ricks and Wick Murray. They have all endorsed the book as a masterful memoir of the post-conflict period in Iraq’s capital from a commander’s viewpoint. What can anyone else find to say that this suite of insightful soldiers and scholars have not?

Even worse, the book includes a brief foreword from Donald and Fred Kagan, about as powerful a father-son pairing as one will ever find among historians and public intellectuals today. The former is a highly respected historian of classics who teaches at Yale, from which the latter also graduated. Fred Kagan, after a decade at West Point, is now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. They supervise a series for that school’s university press which is intended to “present the keenest analyses of war in its different aspects, the sharpest evaluations of political and military decision making, and descriptive accounts of military activity that illuminate its human elements.”

They certainly scored a home run with Baghdad at Sunrise. It offers a compassionate, candid and comprehensive account of a brigade commander’s tour in Iraq. The author served as the Commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division known as the Ready First Combat Team” during that confusing period after the toppling of the Bathist regime and the all too quick transfer of responsibility to an interim Iraqi governing group. The author provides a keen depiction of events on the ground, and his understanding of the decision making that was guiding his unit’s activities in the grim and grimy streets of Rusafa and Adhamiya in central and northeast Baghdad. This sector is sandwiched between the Tigris and the slums of Sadr City. Mansoor’s “Ready First” struggled to bring order out of chaos, neutralized the national insurgents, and fought the increasing influx of Islamic militants from late May of 2003 until relieved in July 2004. In an area of some 75 square miles that was once home to over 2 million Iraqis, his brigade struggled to overcome the poor planning and lack of follow through that occurred back in Washington’s policy making circles.

Mansoor’s lens is often focused on the human dimension of this conflict, especially his own soldiers. The book is dedicated to his entire brigade, but especially those that made the ultimate sacrifice. The circumstances around the loss of each soldier, including his Command Sergeant Major Eric Cooke, is carefully detailed. These soldiers “made their stand in the cradle of civilization in an effort to ensure that the progress of mankind continues, and that it will be an evolution worthy of the twenty-first century, not the seventh.”

The author is very well equipped and well positioned to evaluate the historical underpinning and decisions about the war. He is one of those unique soldier-scholars, able to apply perceptive insights from history with a rigorously trained and analytical mind, with the skills of a senior combat commander. Colonel Mansoor earned a PhD from Ohio State University in military history, and has taught at the U.S. Military Academy. He is now the Raymond Mason Chair of Military History at Ohio State University. After command in Iraq, he served as the founding director of the U.S. Army and Marine Counterinsurgency Center at Leavenworth, and was detailed to the Chairman, JCS study group of colonels that evaluated U.S. military strategy in Iraq (the dust jacket inaccurately states that this group proposed the surge strategy). From 2007-2008, he was General Petraeus’s executive officer at Multi-National Force-Iraq where he got to see the evolutionary progress he and his brigade has so relentless worked towards. The return to civilization in Mesopotamia is now within grasp, but only if the Iraqis want it.

The author concludes with a chapter titled “Reflections” that alone is worth the price of the book. This chapter synthesizes his year of command and provides battle-hardened lessons learned about insurgency. Underscoring points made by now retired LtCol John Nagl, Mansoor forcefully presents a need for greater adaptation by the U.S. Army. Its culture “must change, or the organization will be unprepared to fight and win the wars of the twenty-first century. While retaining the ability to conduct major combat operations, the Army must change its culture to embrace missions other than conventional land force combat”

Echoing concerns raised by Bing West in his highly regarded The Strongest Tribe, Mansoor worries about the relationship between the American people and its professional army. “American cannot long remain a superpower if we think that our wars can be fought solely by the small sliver of society that populates our professional military forces,” he observes. However, the author provides no recommendations on how we can best attain this closer relationship. This reviewer is of the opinion that the fault does not lie with the American people, but with our senior elected officials.

This is an exceptional memoir that decades from now will still be ranked as an insightful but especially candid history of the war. Mansoor is the rarest of commanders, willing to point out where his own decisions or judgments were flawed. It will appeal to general readers looking for intimate details and honest assessments on a daily basis from a commander’s lens. It is highly recommended for prospective military leaders as part of their preparation for higher command. Simply stated, it is an impressive account that all prospective brigade, regimental and battalion commanders should read.

Frank Hoffman is a retired Marine infantryman who serves as a research fellow at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Phila, PA.

Continue reading "Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq" »

Bing West, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq, New York: Random House, 2008, 410 pgs, $28.00.

This author needs no introduction. Francis “Bing” West is the author of The Village, the definitive depiction of the Marine Combined Action Program in Southeast Asia. He is also is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam war, a former RAND analyst, and at one time occupied the hallowed halls of the Pentagon as a political appointee during the Reagan Administration. Over the years, he has been a staunch advocate of the infantryman, that long overlooked asset in our national arsenal.

Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, West has been one of the most prolific and most respected reporters of the war. No author has matched, both in volume and in grim color, the past five years of fighting better than this author. His The March Up coauthored with MajGen Ray Smith, USMC) captured the drive of I Marine Expeditionary Force from Kuwait up to Baghdad from the grunt’s perspective. Mixing his broad grasp of national policy to the basic tactics that keeps a young Marine alert and alive, West’s battlefield narrative outshone all competitors for its tactical detail and marked sympathy for today’s young Marines and all that they endured to topple Hussein’s regime. The heat, fine sand, and fear of that campaign are captured with greater granularity and credibility because the authors lived through it at the front line, embedded with the 1st Marine Division, General Jim Mattis’ beloved “Blue Diamond.”

No True Glory came next. This book centered over the Marines again and their two fights in the caldron of the Iraqi insurgency in Fallujah. West’s masterful overview of the epic battle for Fallujah of November 2004 laid bare the tissue thin connections between American policy makers in Washington and the fearsome combat conditions of Al Anbar. I strongly recommend that our Presidential candidates and their prospective team read each page of that book as preparation for their duties in the White House.

West’s latest effort may also become required reading for future policy makers, most of which, given the demographic make up of the United States, will not have worn their country’s uniform or ever visited a combat zone.

In The Strongest Tribe West takes a step back and looks at the war in a comprehensive manner. The prose is clipped and the action concise and to the point. He briefly reviews the early “successful” military phase of 2003, and cursorily covers the planning failures and slow adaptation that allowed the insurgency to build in 2004. These four chapters serve as a useful foundation for the following section of three chapters which describe the inadequate means, contradictory goals and lack of understanding that perpetuated American actions in Iraq in 2005.

The book is centered on what the author calls the Second War, the fight against Al Qaeda in 2006. This section provides the most detailed account of the efforts by the coalition to stiffen resistance against Al Qaeda’s campaign of coercion and assassination. It also connects the dots in the Bermuda triangle between perspectives in Washington, Baghdad and Al Anbar. Here West provides some very original reporting on how the White House eventually came to the conclusion that simply “staying the course” was a losing strategy. Eventually, the President, his NSC staff, and a new team at the Pentagon came to agreement on a new strategy and a new team to implement it. In this chapter, the author proves that he can report on the machinations of the NSC bureaucracy and the even more turgid thinking of the Joint Staff with the same relentless quest for ground truth that he did in Baghdad, Ramadi and Fallujah.

West does not pull punches, and the incident in Haditha in 2006 comes in for close examination. Leadership and tactics deplorable. But West saves his strongest condemnation for politicians, including Congressman Murpha, for rushing to judgment.

The best parts of the book involve the implementation of that new strategy by Generals David Petraeus and LtGen Raymond Ordinero in 2007. Petraeus’s COIN manual, which was developed in cooperation with a team of Marines led by General James Mattis when he was the CG at Quantico comes in for some unsubstantiated criticism as an academic exercise in sociology. While FM 3-24 has imperfections, it was written with great urgency by solid professionals who provided a historically-grounded approach for Iraq in 2006. While the manual may be a bit long winded in sections, it has served its purpose well and The Strongest Tribe provides ample testimony for its utility.

There is much in this book to commend it to Marine readers. Now is the time to begin to draw lessons from Iraq. Some of the conclusions in The Strongest Tribe will not surprise you, others infuriated me. It lays bare the failings of our military leadership early in the war, as well as the faults of our political leadership who too often ignored inconvenient facts and too readily embraced news when it fit preconceptions. West is fair with his litany of mistakes, and gives credit where due to Army and Marine leaders like General Petraeus, BGen John Allen, USMC; LtCol Dale Alford, USMC; and Army Colonels H.R. McMaster and McFarland for their intellect and professional acumen. The best parts of this book depict how the U.S. military persisted in its mission and how it adapted itself to the point where success over Al Qaeda can now be claimed.

The strongest test of our profession will be how ruthlessly and objectively we can assess ourselves and move forward to best posture ourselves for the ever evolving character of conflict in the 21st century. The Strongest Tribe is a great product to start our self-assessment with.

Continue reading "Endgame???" »

I think the SWJ community will benefit from the attached essay by Dr. David Ucko, who recently completed his doctoral work at King’s College London. This well-crafted essay has just been published by Orbis, the policy journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. It’s an objective assessment of where the United States stands in our adaptation to counterinsurgency and irregular warfare, from an outsider’s perspective.

Dr. Ucko’s research is focused on how well the U.S. is absorbing the right lessons from today’s ongoing conflicts, and how well DOD is institutionalizing the necessary changes across the doctrine, structure, training and education and equipment pillars of combat development. A student of American military culture, he notes our history of adapting to counterinsurgency campaigns, but then quickly discarding the lessons learned at the close of the war to return to our preferred conventional mode.

Ucko challenges whether or not DOD has truly embraced irregular warfare. “With the eventual close of the Iraq campaign,” he asks “will counterinsurgency again be pushed off the table, leaving the military just as unprepared for these contingencies as it was when it invaded Iraq in 2003?” Thus, this essay fits into the context of the debate we have seen on these pages and in the Armed Forces Journal (Shawn Brimley and Vikram Singh’s “System Reboot”) about whether or not the American Way of War will adapt or revert to form...

Continue reading "An Outsider's Perspective" »

Frans P. B. Osinga, The Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, New York: Routledge, 2007, 313 pgs, $140 hardback, $35.95 paperback

I first met John Boyd on a very warm summer day in 1983 at Headquarters, Marine Corps. Frankly he did not make much of an impression to a then young Captain of Marines. The briefer went through an extensive set of slides extolling conflict over the ages. I recognized the various strands of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu and Liddell Hart (and thus indirectly T.E. Lawrence) weaved throughout the pitch. In the aftermath of a long run and a too large lunch, I preceded to take a somberly tour of the insides of my eyelids.

This mental rest stop did not impress my boss, a Vietnam veteran who was taken with Boyd’s ideas. As penance for my nap, he insisted I take the brief again the next day. Although I did not know it at the time, I never got a more valuable or more intellectually enriching experience over a decade in the Pentagon...

Continue reading "Unlocking the Keys to Victory" »

I'm writing to make everyone aware of an outstanding article on airpower's many crucial enabling contributions to Irregular Warfare. I think this will interest everyone given our previous exchanges on airpower and the COIN manual.

General Peck's article is a balanced, even restrained, articulation of what airpower can and has brought to today's ongoing irregular campaigns, and I highly recommend it. Gen Peck is the Commander of the Air Force Doctrine Center and Vice Commander of Air University. He brings impressive operational and academic credentials to bear on the subject, including his 300 combat hours in the F-15.

Continue on to find out more about Airpower’s Crucial Role in Irregular Warfare...

Continue reading "Airpower’s Crucial Role in Irregular Warfare" »

The purpose of this posting is to alert the Small Wars Journal community about an excellent new book by Dr. Jeff Record of the Air War College faculty. Professor Record is no dilettante in this arena; he served in Vietnam as a province advisor before embarking on an academic career, which has been distinguished by a steady stream of short but potent books. His Dark Victory about the 2003 invasion into Iraq is a powerful indictment of the Bush Doctrine and the Administration’s conduct of the Global War on Terrorism. It is must reading, as is his The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam which the readership would find fascinating in light of Operation Iraqi Freedom due to the similar delusions in our decision making and weak partners in both wars...

Continue reading "The Proverbial Contest" »

4GW as a Model of Future Conflict
Boyd 2007 Conference, 13 July 2007
Warfare Since Boyd Panel Presentation

F. G. Hoffman

I have been asked to be the token diversity candidate from outside the 4GW “church” today, and am honored just by the chance to appear at an event that preserves John Boyd’s deep intellectual contributions, and to be on stage with my fellow panelists and Col Eric Walters. My assigned task is to explain why academics and historians have problems with the 4GW construct. My remarks will draw up upon my work on an alternative concept called Hybrid Warfare which I have presented at Oxford University this past winter. My comments will also draw upon unpublished work about to be released in a book titled Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict, edited by Dr. Terry Terriff, of University of Birmingham (UK) and Aaron Karp and Dr. Regina Karp of Old Dominion University, in which several of our distinguished speakers have prominent contributions including Mr. Lind and Col Hammes.

Let me begin by summarizing the arguments up front. The 4GW construct is often criticized for three major faults.

The theory is described as “weak” and the concept is too diffused, having become over time the equivalent of everything that is asymmetric.

Second the history that is drawn upon is uneven and often “too selective,” that is it is packaged to support a major component of the theory without full examination of trends or detailed counter-findings.

Finally, the generational framework is labeled “indefensible” and unnecessary. In my own assessment, I find that it hides more than it reveals...

Continue reading "4GW as a Model of Future Conflict" »

Stopped in at Borders for my weekly fix and came across Ralph Peters’ latest anthology. (Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts that Will Shape the Twenty-First Century, Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007, 367 pgs, $27.95) While I am pretty familiar with Ralph’s worldview and his extensive writings in the Armed Forces Journal, this one appeared to include a lot of his material that I had not seen. A few hours of reading confirmed my suspicion, and I wanted to let the readership know that this may top the cake for a brutal dose of reality and nonpolitically correct reporting from around the globe.

For those tired of the mainstream media’s twisted presentation of facts and generally warped reasoning, pick up Ralph Peters’ latest book. Anytime you are frustrated by the banal posturing of government officials and want straight-forward thinking, take a close look at Wars of Blood and Faith. It is a coherent assessment of today’s most pressing threats and opportunities from Africa to India to the Middle East. So if you’re a student of strategic affairs, a policy official enshrouded with the official view and want to break out of the blinkered pap you get from the party line, or simply an American citizen who wants to find insightful and at times brutally frank perspectives on current challenges, you don’t need not to look any further. Ralph Peters and Wars of Blood and Faith provide the most penetrating assessment of what could be called the age of identity-based conflict...

Continue reading "Fighting for Faith" »

I wanted to alert the SWJ community regarding my recently issued essay on modern counterinsurgency in the Summer issue of Parameters. This essay, titled “Neo-Classical Counter-insurgency?” strives to accomplish two objectives; a) an evaluation of the newly issued Army/Marine counterinsurgency manual and b) arguments for extending our understanding of classical (largely Maoist) insurgents into the 21st century. I think I was more successful about the former than the latter objective and I will await the SWJ’s collective assessment. This essay extends and builds upon my 2005 essay in the Journal of Strategic Studies, “Small Wars Revisited.” I am pretty satisfied with the COIN manual and believe it deserves the acclaim it has received to date. I think it’s a product of various schools of thought about modern insurgencies, although still too grounded in what I called the Classical School, based on the concepts of Mao and Revolutionary Warfare...

Continue reading "NEO-COIN?" »

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2007, 208 pgs, $24.95.

John Robb’s long anticipated book is finally out, and I have to say that I think it’s an important contribution to anyone trying to make sense of today’s evolving security challenges. It’s a rather brilliant synthesis of Fourth Generation Warfare, net war, swarming and global insurgency. For those of you who not routinely read the Global Guerillas blog, Robb is a former counter-terrorism officer with the U.S. Air Force, and is now based out of Boston as a consultant. His blog has been highly regarded by forward thinking analysts as evidenced in the warm foreword written by the prescient James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly. For those who are familiar with Robb’s main themes Brave New War offers a book length treatment of the problem and a number of recommendations for dealing with today’s religiously inspired, globally networked urban terrorists...

Continue reading "Global Guerrillas" »

Air Force Major General Charles Dunlap, a respected but frequently provocative author, has critiqued the Army/Marine counterinsurgency manual in a commentary titled “We have a COIN shortage” in the May Naval Institute Proceedings. I would have normally dismissed General Dunlap’s observations as a rare but poor example of discourse, as I have a lot of respect for him personally. But this commentary reflected more than just an inadequate grasp of irregular warfare. Having recently returned from a counterinsurgency symposium at Maxwell Air Force Base, it is clear that a broader misunderstanding exists about the nature of irregular conflict and FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5 that needs to be cleared up...

Continue reading "“Non Cents”" »

I’d like to follow up Dave Kilcullen’s commentary about Dr. Luttwak’s specious article. Dr. Kilcullen is too much of a gentleman to suggest that someone has not taken their medication, yet he was far too gentle with the insidious notion that the writing team was advocating the moral equivalent of medical malpractice. (Full disclosure, I had a minor part in the production of the manual.) The new FM is a welcomed step forward, reflecting our current understanding of an increasingly complex and lethal mode of conflict. Dr. Luttwak may long for the gruesome effectiveness of “the Roman model,” but he has badly misdiagnosed the disease and his overemphasis on kinetic solutions reflects poorly on his grasp of history and a bad use of history out of context. The Romans were smart enough to minimize their footprint and maximized local leadership and control over government, taxes, and religion. The benefits or “carrots” of Roman rule were more obvious than its costs, but clearly the “stick” (more accurately the gladius and pilum) was available when necessary.

Continue reading "Luttwak's Lament" »