Counterinsurgency Doctrine: In Context
Dr. David Ucko, no stranger to this community as author of the highly regarded The New Counterinsurgency Era (Georgetown University Press), has the lead article in the forthcoming issue of the interagency journal PRISM. That journal is produced by the Center for Complex Operations, located onboard National Defense University (NDU). David is a professor at NDU’s College of International Security Affairs, an institution borne out of 9/11 and extensively devoted to research and instruction in irregular warfare, counter-terrorism, and homeland defense.
Dr. Ucko’s superb article merits serious attention in the Small Wars community and particularly among those debating the merits of and necessary refinements to counterinsurgency doctrine in the contemporary battlespace. David calls American counterinsurgency doctrine a “concept” in crisis and in need of further debate. Professor Ucko claims that there is widespread frustration over the attempt to use counterinsurgency doctrine to stabilize Afghanistan. He notes the counter-narratives to the simple notion that the Army/Marine counterinsurgency theory saved Iraq (and U.S. support) from the brink of disaster in 2007 in “The Surge.” Finally, he addresses the lack of appetite for “large-scale and protracted military operations to build nations, unify states, and establish legitimate and competent governments” as “undertakings that, even if workable, run counter to the fiscal realities facing the West today.”
Thus, as the small number of prolific critics argue, counterinsurgency doctrine “is naïve in its assumptions, unworkable in its requirements, and arrogant in its unfounded claims of prior success.”
He goes on to put the development of counterinsurgency theory and doctrine into context within the larger U.S. defense agenda. He notes that counterinsurgency theory and principles have repeatedly helped illustrate the complexity of intrastate violence and its distinctiveness from the “conventional” types of military campaigns for which most Western armed forces are structured and trained.” It arose not out of a desire to fix Failed States by what some called “failed thinking” but because our senior civilian and/or military leaders had to face the reality that our armed forces were myopically invested in preferences and illusions rather than the real security problems of the day.
Dr. Ucko’s book and this article show that he is an astute observer of American strategic culture. He goes on to note how our most recent “counterinsurgency era” was motivated by a previous failure to grapple with the political complexities of war in the 1990s during the debate over the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs and subsequently, Transformation. Echoing arguments made by LtGen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (and subsequently by Dr. Fred Kagan and H.R. McMaster in the U.S. Army), Ucko finds that “U.S. military thinking was marked by a highly conventional and apolitical understanding of war, epitomized by the program of “defense transformation” and burdened by a “fascination with information technology and precision-strike capabilities” and “airstrikes, drones, computers, and satellites dispensing force swiftly, precisely, and decisively.” This limited understanding of war, past and present, provided scant preparation for the real world.
I will leave Dr. Ucko’s worthy contribution to this serious community of practitioners to debate. Is COIN a concept or a doctrine, is it mature or in need of adaptation, or is it simply a divisive theory searching for relevance or are we once again reverting to form, searching for pristine or apolitical solutions to complex or wicked problems?
Frank Hoffman is a retired Marine, now serving at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at NDU as a Senior Research Fellow and Director of NDU Press.
Not very pointed insight here but I find it interesting that we are told we’re in a “COIN” fight, but it’s our COIN doctrine that is moving the slowest. Meanwhile, the Army is putting out all sorts of new doctrine, even renaming doctrinal publication formats. I think there’s maybe a dozen people in the Army that are actually tracking the changes to doctrine at this time…but 3-24 remains essentially untouched.
Ucko suggests that what we need is “a more integrated understanding of war — that is informed by the experiences and campaigns of recent years …”
Maybe this can be achieved by looking at wars generally, (and herein I do include insurgencies) from the perspective of the population (to wit: as disruptions that are primarily caused by foreign ambition and foreign interference). And, by looking at wars from our erroneous — but self-serving — point of view (to wit: wars [to include insurgencies] are primarily caused by a lack of sufficiently Western political, economic and social structures).
If the perspective of the population is correct, then “wars” (including insurgencies) might be significantly reduced by dis-allowing foreign ambition and foreign interference.
If our perspective, however, is retained, then “wars” (including insurgencies) should be expected to continue; until such time as we have caused all states and societies to become sufficiently Westernized.
Nope, sorry, Ucko’s piece(and Frank Hoffman’s endorsement of it) in all of its apparent sophistication and nuance and detail completely misses the essential point that population centric counterinsurgency as an operational method to achieve appreciable strategic and policy aims has utterly failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ucko’s obvious desire to resuscitate components of Coin from its overall death throes (a Coin, which although he doesn’t acknowledge, he had a strong hand in its rise and promotion yet now seems to be able to criticize it to an extent, but with no explanation as to why he “flipped”)blinkers him from understanding this essential strategic point. Reading Ucko’s piece makes me imagine hypothetically how a person might have tried to rationalize the disastrous 1915 British campaign in Gallipoli as a strategic success and then somehow draw useful strategic lessons for the future. A foolish quest to be sure.
Ken, old friend, good to be back in discussion with you on SWJ.
Agree, and i would add that Dr Ucko’s piece is more Nagl-learning-and-adapting-coin speak. It is the same old trope: big stupid conventionally minded army that doesn’t get coin, screws it up when it tries to do it, but then voila the coin experts with their savior generals ride onto the scene to rescue the non gets-it dolts. Here now in this piece Dr Ucko says that coin is still valuable simply because it keeps us knuckle dragging killers in the conventional army on our toes, makes us think otherwise. Hokum i say.
Look a colleague of mine at West Point has taken Nagl’s model for learning and adapting in coin wars into the archives on the Vietnam War and you know what? The American army throughout the war learned and adapted perfectly in line with his model. Problem though for the coin straightjacket is that the only way to learn and adapt was to the correct methods–aka Malaya and Templer–of population centric coin. The real strategic lesson that we should learn from Vietnam is that in war armies can learn and adapt all they want tactically and operationally and the war can still be lost.
Lastly, and this is my biggest problem with this latest essay by Dr Ucko, is that now he has “flipped” and wants to be a critic to an extent of coin. But if you go back and read his latest book “The New Counterinsurgency Era” it is all about how population centric coin works: past and present. He argues that it worked in Malaya (wait, not so simple, read Karl Hack’s work), then he says it worked under Petraeus in Iraq. So how about an explanation for the intellectual flip here.
To answer Dr Ucko’s question to me about the Surge and alternative methods well to be honest if the additional brigades led to a quicker American withdrawal from an already a failed war then I can accept that as a method. But what folks like you did after the Surge was turn it into some kind of significant, game changing strategic shift under an enlightened general, and it was nothing of the sort. Then sadly that understanding of the Surge was the template for Afghanistan, with nothing but strategic waste for the United States and its allies.
I guess what I am looking for in all of this is a bit of intellectual leveling on your part: how do you go from proponent and advocate of coin to now somewhat of a critic and skeptic of it and one recommending its non-usage in the future. What has changed for you?
gian
COL Gentile: you speak of me ‘flipping’ like this is a black or white issue, that you are either ‘for’ or ‘against’. That in itself tells me this exchange won’t be very fruitful. This is a complicated issue, not to be treated like a college wrestling match, where there can be only one ‘winner’ and one ‘loser’. That perversion of the debate is itself a problem – as stated in the article, it becomes too personalized and, in that sense, too emotional.
What I try to advance in the article is nuance – something you mistake for weakness. Of course I want to be “a critic to an extent” of the concept (whatever that means) — what else would you expect: a pamphleteer, a propagandist? I stand by what I have already and always said: counterinsurgency was, once again, a necessary innovation because of narrow reductive thinking within the US and other Western militaries. Prove me wrong, please. JV 2010 and JV 2020 might be good starting points…
As to your questions to me: “how do you go from proponent and advocate of coin to now somewhat of a critic and skeptic of it and one recommending its non-usage in the future. What has changed for you?”
Read the article. It depends on what is expected from the concept. I laud its contributions but understand its limitations. The only reason I recommend its non-usage is because placing the lessons of the last decade in the category of ‘counterinsurgency’ makes it more likely that they will be flushed out along with the term itself. Again, read the article.
My ‘intellectual levelling’ lies in my delineation of the term’s contribution and limits. Maybe I could ask the same from you?
Ps. Karl Hack no doubt is a great researcher and historian, but your tireless persistence in invoking his name does nothing to contradict anything I have ever written about Malaya.
Mike:
Good comment and accurate — yes, I did wrongly apply the ‘COIN’ label to large scale interventions without clarifying while that type of ‘COIN’ is quite foolish and inappropriate today, the need for smaller scale operations similar to those you cite will be necessary.
I could dispute Bosnia and Kosovo on the basis of our involvement being not only unnecessary from a US interest viewpoint but possibly counterproductive from the standpoint of encouraging others to do their own cleanups…
Accepting the other operations as within the realm of US interests, they are indeed excellent blueprints for the future. A large part of the problem is that the US Army has become rather monolithic and so extremely bureaucratic that it unnecessarily limits the options available to policy makers. Add to that the political imperative and — wrongly — budget driven ‘relevance’ question and you have a system that literally requires oversize efforts and the use of mauls to kill gnats. Policy makers are now largely constrained to Libya-like efforts, which will rarely be as successful or major interventions which are generally quite inappropriate and unlikely to be affordable or politically viable. We do have Special Forces and their capabilities but there are limitations on that model. We simply need better trained and equipped conventional forces that can offer a variety of options. We can do that…
We for a variety of reasons adopted largely British models and later Prussian or German precepts to mold an Army. However, in all cases we seem to have chosen to employ the worst aspects of the models while rejecting their better points. As Phil Sheridan, quoted by Jörg Muth in Command Culture (A quite accurate IMO and damaging appraisal of the US Army culture) once said
Quite right. Problem is we aren’t European and adopting things they have done and do does not work well for us. It never has. Sheridan referred to our slavish copying of Prussian methodology without understanding the nuance that led to the German Army’s fostering of innovation and initiative as diametrically opposed to the British — and US — processes which stifle those attributes. We should encourage those traits, yet we fear them in an effort to make warfare an exercise in management.
Mass is no longer the answer to many things…
All that is not a digression, it is quite pertinent to the topic. As I mentioned earlier, those large interventions are copies of European practice in the Colonial era and the methods should have been retired decades ago. Our hidebound approach to war, our insistence on trying to codify chaos instead of training and equipping to operate in the cluster that is warfare in all its permutations has put us in a straitjacket and has in the past offered policy makers only a sledgehammer and a wrecking bar. Those are needed tools, no question — but we have the capability to produce great framing hammers and delicate cabinetmakers hammers plus fine jewelers tools as well.
We have used large scale interventions in cases where an action was required and the large effort was the apparent best available option due to the constraints our organization, equipping and training have imposed on our capabilities. Those same qualities have imposed limitations on what was or could have been achieved. We can do better.
Required is better dissemination of intelligence, acting on that intelligence by earlier diplomatic initiative and when necessary, smaller interventions by tailored and better trained forces to aid other nations in their COIN efforts. We must at all times be cognizant of the fact that it is their nation — with all the limitations that will and does impose upon us — and that throwing money down rat holes is seldom beneficial. History shows we should do everything in our power to preclude the commitment of large general purpose forces to such operations due to costs, time and the probability of a less than desirable outcome — there will be no ‘victory.’
Equally appropos, Sheridan also noted rather cynically that
That is regrettably apparently still true today. The point is not headgear; it is that the US Army is capable of original thought and superbly tailored action or a better hat yet due to intellectual laziness and bureaucratic inertia seems all too often to succumb to mediocrity and the aping of others. We can, indeed, do better.
Dr. Ucko,
In your summary you conclude:
“Within the U.S. military, the strategy behind the surge was driven by a group of officers inspired by the theory and principles of counterinsurgency against the backdrop of an institution resistant to such ideas.”
I think we should look at how the concerns were understood at the time we entered Iraq. General Shinseki in late 2002 identified a need for several hundred thousand US troops to stabilize the country in the aftermath of a US invasion. He (and insofar as he was speaking for the service, the Army) thus recognized at least implicitly that there could be resistance requiring an adequate ratio of occupying troops to population, a fundamental principle later made explicit in FM 3-24. Shinseki was overruled by civilian superiors.
As the insurgency got underway, civilian leaders then asserted that they were giving the Army all of the troops that commanders in the field requested, but it was never clear to the public whether commanders were under duress to accept the numbers that they had been given. General Abizaid finally conceded in late 2006 that we should have had more troops, and the surge of 2007-08 would seem to confirm this judgment.
Even then, there is an important overlooked point. General Petraeus convinced President Bush to make the surge, mainly in the greater Baghdad area, because it could be done with existing troops. The arguments against Petraeus either dispute whether the surge was effective or dispute whether it was necessary. Your article examines these arguments and the problems with them very well. But General Petraeus could not have implemented the surge at all if the situation had required a much larger US force. There was a limit to the number of available brigades.
The idea that some parts of counterinsurgency doctrine can be preserved for future use critically depends on the scale of the problem and on whether any US effort can and will be resourced properly to that scale. Sufficient troops are no guarantee of success, but the best principles cannot succeed if there are not enough troops to implement them.
I don’t think it is really possible to attack or defend counterinsurgency as such if it has never been properly resourced in the first place and depends, where it succeeds, on a fortuitous match between the forces we have available to commit and what the situation requires.
David Billington
Rather than condemning nation-building COIN or, for that matter, conventional operations for lack of strategic success, should we, instead, look to the issue of strategic importance (or, more correctly, the lack thereof)?
Herein, let us suggest that it will take, based on our experience, 50 or so years to achieve our strategic objective (the full and complete transformation and incorportion of the subject state and society); this, whether we use:
a. Conventional methods followed by a half-century or so of occupation by thousands of troops — and the expenditure of exceptional amounts of money and other “treasure.”
Or
b. Nation-building COIN and the use of thousands of forces for a similar 50 or so years — accompanied by a somewhat equivelent expenditure of funds, etc.
Given that both operational methods, in order to be successful, are likely to incur somewhat similar high cost (re: time and other precious resources), then the issue of “failure” becomes:
a. Not so much which operational method was used. But, rather,
b. Whether “war” (in whatever guise) was appropriate; given the strategic importance — or lack thereof — of each particular case (examples: Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan).
“Is COIN a concept or a doctrine, is it mature or in need of adaptation, or is it simply a divisive theory searching for relevance or are we once again reverting to form, searching for pristine or apolitical solutions to complex or wicked problems?”
Having spent the past week with Frank I better understand the differnce between a “concept” (just something we are thinking about) and doctrine (here’s the school solution). I will offer this. COIN is really no more, and no less, that the goal of every civilian government every day, every where. It is the constant efforts by those who govern to meet the needs of those who are governed. As populaces and governments drift apart, it is the government’s job to close the gap. When they fail to do so that gap is readily exploited by internal and external actors alike, and that is what we call “insurgency.” Sometimes it gets so bad that the military is called into help.
It is a bit of military arrogance to assume that the problem only begins when it is so violent as to require their help, and that it truly ends when that same violence is suppressed to where they are no longer needed. Insurgency is best viewed as an continum, COIN as well.
Mike: I am not so sure large scale foreign invasions, interventions and occupations haven’t worked in the last few decades, by which I mean going back to WWII. The Chinese took and held Tibet and the North Vietnamese took and held South Vietnam. The Israelis took and still hold the West Bank. In Iraq I think the jury is still out; the Iraqi armed forces don’t threaten their neighbors and they don’t shoot at us. That could all change tomorrow of course.
As sort of a thought experiment, if the North Koreans had succeeded in kicking us off the peninsula, I am quite sure there would now be a unified Communist Korea.
So I think these types of actions can be successful. The critical factor is if the force doing the intervening can isolate the people they are fighting physically and/or keep them from being strongly supported by a relatively powerful nation state. We haven’t been able to either in Afghanistan but we were able to keep external states from supporting the Iraqi insurgents as powerfully as the Pak Army/ISI supports the Taliban. That is the big difference between our relative success or lack thereof in the two places.
I agree we do not want to be the Chinese, North Vietnamese and North Koreans. We don’t want to be the Israelis either. By isolating the people you fight, I didn’t mean strategic hamlets or Hesco barriers. I meant completely isolated by natural physical barriers like oceans and mountains. The Malayan Communists were doomed almost no matter what the British did or didn’t do because they couldn’t physically get external help because of geography. The same thing with the Tibetans and the South Vietnamese.
If that geographic advantage isn’t available, then you have to isolate them in that no relatively powerful nation state will assist them in important ways. We managed that in Iraq and the Israelis continue to manage that. We haven’t managed that in Afghanistan. We haven’t even tried.
How you conduct your small war, the kill ’em all approach or the approach that the western nations mostly try to adopt (spectators, please don’t harangue me with tales of western cruelty, there is a real difference between what the western nations attempt and what the Commies would do), doesn’t really matter too much if you get one or both of the other two things going for you. If the insurgents can be geographically or politically isolated from important external support, they don’t have a very good chance.
Government’s have effectively and rightly in my view suppressed popular movements. One example is the Civil Rights Act, which went against the grain the south, so this assumption that there is this singular mass called the people and another singular mass called the government that is binary in nature is false. It much more complicated than that.