Small Wars Journal

Keep Fighting: Why the Counterinsurgency Debate Must Go On

Wed, 12/04/2013 - 3:32am

Keep Fighting: Why the Counterinsurgency Debate Must Go On by Mark Stout, War on the Rocks.

Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine in general and the military’s FM 3-24 in particular have been the subject of extensive and often vitriolic debate in recent years.  Now the debate is finally subsiding, but not in a satisfactory way.  It must not be allowed to die yet.

The broad cycles of the counterinsurgency debate have followed a dialectical process as so many other historical and political debates do…

Read on.

Comments

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 12/08/2013 - 1:40pm

In reply to by Bill M.

Thanks! Here I am complaining about the need to use buzzwords but I do it myself too, take relatively simple concepts (human beings reinforce one another's beliefs) and turn them into some mystery that must be pondered.

Social networks must facilitate these passions, especially when shocking events occur, and then, as Curmudgeon said, people fall back on what they know.

So, how to expand what a bureaucracy or system knows and how to introduce checks and balances?

BTW, T.X. Hammes writing on the potentially escalatory nature of ASB seems to fit right in with this conversation.

We have to get back to basics in a lot of our dealings with the world, don't we, including a serious attention to what motivates the "other." All these BS theories but in the end it is just cold hard work, investigating human motivation.

Bill M.

Sun, 12/08/2013 - 1:13pm

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

This may help your efforts.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.4658v1.pdf

Quote
Social networks allow people to connect with each other
and have conversations on a wide variety of topics. However,
users tend to connect with like-minded people and read
agreeable information, a behavior that leads to group polarization.
Motivated by this scenario, we study how to take
advantage of partial homophily to suggest agreeable content
to users authored by people with opposite views on sensitive
issues.
Unquote

This may have potential, but I suspect the general response will be, "Great! Now all the people that disagree with my position will be able to see that I'm right when they're forced to view opinions contrary to theirs."

If technology can overcome human nature instead of reinforcing it, then that would be powerful, but I have my doubts.

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 12/08/2013 - 1:04pm

I apologize for the tone of my last comment.

At the end of Gordon Corera's book <em>The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6</em> is the following about Daphne Park:

"There was a reference to her fascination with the riddle of power but also with the most ordinary people."

Well, I'm an "ordinary people," (and clearly proud of it) but the riddle of power and that which animates ordinary people are topics that fascinate me too.

I was a bit frustrated with the comment thread to the War on the Rocks post, although I wrote half of the comments myself.

I was frustrated because there is another story, narrative, ecosystem, human domain, set of assumptions, strategic context, or understanding beyond Coindinista and Cointra or legitimacy or "populaces", and I keep seeing it in the corner of my vision, sometimes clouded, other times coming into focus a bit.

As long as you all will tolerate my sometime bad behavior, I am going to explore that story. It's not about "South Asia", I am only using the topic as an intellectual lens, a foil, a way of understanding.

The human domain that most interests me is what is in YOUR mind as military and foreign affairs professionals and why it is that you develop certain passions that carry you away from time to time....

Curiously, The American Conservative and Tom Dispatch types follow the same patterns too which is odd. A function of an American lens of whatever variety?

But, once again, I apologize for the tone of my previous comment.

But you have, or had, a pattern that carried you into the very earliest days in Afghanistan and that initial campaign against the Taliban. That pattern is present in a generation of South Asian analysts and the Anglo-American "understanding" (which was not always the same) of the region which has its roots in the period immediately after WWII, if not earlier.

I used to think that maybe this was one of my flights of fancy that might not pan out but I am seeing too many serious academic works on the subject to think I am totally off track.

Pivoting to Asia, staying home, or continuing in the Mid East, these patterns remain in some ways. You should be interested in this aspect of your human domain.

The evidence from our recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan indicates that our pop-centric COIN approach and associated COIN doctrine is a crock if you evaluate it strictly on results. An objective evaluation requires putting pride and old beliefs to the side which is easier said than done. This doesn’t mean that political, social, and psychological aspects are not critical considerations when developing a COIN campaign. In fact they’re critical considerations for any time of conflict or war.

Americans have a hard time grasping that there is plenty of historical evidence that a counterinsurgent can shoot their way to victory because we generally don’t have the political will to do so for good reason. A political aspect of war is maintaining our own moral legitimacy with our population (not just those we occupy), and an excessively violent effort against insurgents and the populace from which they hail cannot be sustained long before our own people are in the streets protesting. It speaks to our national character in a positive way in my view, but it also means we have to adjust our campaign approach to adapt to that political reality, which is separate from the reality in war/insurgency zone.

Doctrine means little, but context is everything. If we're in a war against another Nation-State and we believe the stakes are our national survival we have no problem carpet bombing cities and even using nuclear weapons to compel the other side to surrender to our terms. With few exceptions our streets will remain quiet. When we're fighting insurgents in another country our national survival is not at risk, so we have to go to great lengths to maintain our moral legitimacy in our own eyes. This puts us in a position where we can't win militarily, so we are forced to pursue a pseudo social-science approach that is built on faulty economic, political, social, and psychological assumptions. We choose due to collective arrogance and pride to reinforce these assumptions through selective and shallow interpretation of history to include our recent history in Iraq where it is in some people’s personal interests to promote it as a success. Personal agendas are always going to be present, and some of those individuals will have outsized influence based on their rank, position, or academic standing (doesn’t equate to being right), thus common sense and a non-bias assessment is hard to come by when a powerful group think is preventing challenges to current views on COIN.

In my opinion I’m glad to see the COINdista group’s influence erode, but it also concerns me because the author is right. We’ll do COIN again, so while we may dismiss the current doctrine and COINdista cult we don’t have the luxury of dismissing COIN, so the debate should be far from finished. I think we’re overly focused on doctrine, when we should be focused on analytical methods to gain a better understanding. We're not Einstein, but his approach is worth considering, spend 90% of our time understanding the problem, then 10% solving it. Every situation will vary significantly due to the cultural and political issues that are unique to each conflict. We tend to look for commonalities instead of gaining nuanced understanding. Throughout our recent history I have come to believe that our mission analysis and operational design processes have largely been a joke because of the way they’re practiced, not because of the process itself. We rush through the understanding and move quickly to applying our doctrinal template to solve the wrong problem based on a rushed analysis. This too often results in second and third order effects that puts us in a no win situation like putting illegitimate governments in place that we align ourselves with.

In some ways we have become the new communists with our evangelistic push for other countries and cultures to embrace our democracy and free market values and systems, which is why we're increasingly disliked in many parts of the world. I see a trend where people around the world are starting to ignore us and look for alternatives to American leadership and the American model. It wasn’t that long ago they looked up to us. A large part of this strategic shift is directly and indirectly tied to the way we conducted COIN the past 10 plus years, and the way we conduct COIN is tied more to our political and cultural values than to reality in the countries we’re operating in. This debate should be far from over, but it may need to start anew with fresh voices leading it.

Bill C.

Thu, 12/05/2013 - 11:38pm

Outlaw 09 may have made an argument for why the counterinsurgency debate must go on with his observations here (taken from another thread) regarding our neighbor to the South:

"Bill C----this was taken from John Sullivan's recent article which goes to what I indicated---would argue that currently Mexico is at stage 3 on the list below and headed towards stage 4---what is interesting for me is the simple fact that if one takes the drugs out of the equation what is going on inside Mexico is an old fashioned insurgency (maybe a throw back to the Zapata Revolution which was never completed) against the existing government---maybe we could call this new model criminal induced insurgency;

1. Local Insurgencies (gangs dominate local turf and political, economic and social life in criminal enclaves or other governed zones);
2. Battle for the Parallel State (battles for control of the ‘parallel state.’ These occur within the parallel state’s governance space, but also spill over to affect the public at large and the police and military forces that seek to contain the violence and curb the erosion of governmental legitimacy and solvency);
3. Combating the State (criminal enterprise directly engages the state itself to secure or sustain its independent range of action; cartels are active belligerents against the state);
4. The State Implodes (high intensity criminal violence spirals out of control; the cumulative effect of sustained, unchecked criminal violence and criminal subversion of state legitimacy through endemic corruption and co-option. Here the state simply loses the capacity to respond)."

This suggesting that one cannot simply wish insurgency and counterinsurgency away nor ignor it.

From my perspective, of course, problems such as insurgency, terrorism, increased criminal activity and, in fact, state and societal difficulties of every stripe and kind, can be traced to our decades long effort to transform states and societies (including Mexico) such that they might better benefit from and better provide for the global economy.

These such efforts having been initiatived and driven hard for decades now, one cannot simply shut them off and go back to the way things were. The damage to the cohesiveness of states and societies -- worldwide -- has already been done. Now we must deal with the consequences of our actions, whether we like it, or can afford it, or not.

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 12/08/2013 - 1:05pm

In reply to by TheCurmudgeon

Old blog friend,

You couldn't possibly be more jaded than I am on certain subjects, although it brings me no happiness to type that out, it makes me feel as if I'm a person that gives up on people.

No physician wants to be a person that gives up on people. It's our emotional bias.

"As you point out our Generals’ “personal emotional lenses” matter. I am simply arguing that our Generals will default to what they know."

Perhaps we have been saying the same thing all along without realizing it? Without my realizing it?

Knowledge is knowledge and understanding situations requires curiosity about all aspects of an event, I don't understand the chest thumping between historians and social scientists and political scientists, although I think currently some of social and political science is a bit "lost", perhaps because practitioners are a bit intellectually insecure underneath it all. There is a lot of bad scholarship out there and many decision makers are badly educated, sadly.

I think the quality of work matters more.

One area where I disagree is that the "he said/she said" of history, or narrative doesn't matter. You can't trust the work of people that are not thorough and that is where being rigorous about he said/she said matters. It's not nothing.

The point about Karl Hack is that some people in the military never think about the other despite all the bleating about wanting to understand populations. But who even bothered to ask Chin Peng about anything? That's not he said/she said, that's a weird inability to do the work that matters. It's about competence.

I understand history is always being rewritten and no field is static but some work is better than other work.

:) And not everything about the pivot is total BS even if the military seems to be doing the COIN-thing with ASB. The world changes, its centers of power and commerce shift, and we need to think about these shifts. Trouble is, lots of shifts right now so who knows the correct way to prioritize?

TheCurmudgeon

Thu, 12/05/2013 - 11:48am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Good morning (evening) Madhu,

I guess I am a bit more jaded than you are regarding the topic. The dichotomy I pointed out was the same one identified at the beginning of Stout’s article. As Steve Metz points out, it is false. None-the-less, it was still what most military people think of when they talk about debating COIN and was a large part of the commentary after the article.

As for what the military uses for social theory I can’t say. Some people will tell you that we get our social theory from RAND Corporation. I will say that it has to be in line with the civilian political master’s dictates. We don’t exist in a vacuum even if it sometimes seems like our doctrine is drafted as if we do.

As you point out our Generals’ “personal emotional lenses” matter. I am simply arguing that our Generals will default to what they know.

OBE (Overcome By Events) is an acronym used to describe something that is no longer an important matter. Sadly, in the US military, COIN is largely OBE. Our top four issues are 1) telling everyone that the military's #1 priority is SHARP, 2) budget concerns, 3) the Pacific Pivot, and 4) budget concerns (not necessarily in that order). I hope I am wrong but I am not as much of an optimist as I used to be.

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 12/05/2013 - 10:34am

Wrong.

The political and social scientists complained about pop centric COIN too, the most cutting edge researchers, and their complaints were the same as the historians, that the work the military was purchasing and promoting was dated and intellectually incomplete. It lacked rigor. It doesn't take but two minutes to find these people via a search.

You yourself were years behind the curve on the arguments regarding modernization, etc., which are old old old intellectual conversations in the literature.

He said/she said isn't what happened, what happened is that someone didn't know how to do intellectual work. This is not about the field of study but the lack of intellectual rigor of the products the military both produces and consumes. It's not he said, she said, it's he didn't do his homework and didn't bother to follow the standards of the profession.

For reasons that are unclear to me, the military purchases inadequate intellectual work in many fields, uses politicized consultants, and is easily gamed by its foreign counterparts, largely because it's General's look at the world through their own personal emotional lenses.

"Hey, this guy is our ally, his country once set troops to Operation Whatever We Are Now Doing", he must be on our side!

If you all were so knowledgeable, I wouldn't have to keep pointing out basic things to you and the Pak military and Taliban and Afghan government wouldn't have made royal fools out of you.

TheCurmudgeon

Thu, 12/05/2013 - 10:20am

It will be very hard to keep any interest in COIN. The “debate”, if you can call it that, is now in the realm of historians who are arguing the he-said-she-said of historical facts. Is GEN Petraeus really a genius and a hero or simply a convenient poster child to make us feel good about events after 2006 and forget about the events from 2003 to 2006? What did Karl Hack really mean when he said “…”? It is almost more about personalities than it is about what works and what does not work … and more importantly, WHY what does work works.

Military people are more comfortable with military history than political science, social science, and psychology so the debate will remain “personality deep”. The military “can’t handle the truth” that the world is a complex place filled with complex people, not all of whom can be coerced into submission. That legitimacy really does matter, but we don’t want to understand legitimacy because it is a squishy concept that does not have easily quantifiable metrics. So we default to what we are good at – using force to obtain compliance. I remember the old phrase from Vietnam “When you got them by the balls there hearts and minds will follow”. Our doctrine may have moved slightly beyond that but our execution still relies on that type of thinking.

So we will endlessly debate the false dichotomy of Pop-Centric versus Pop-Control. But there is no glory in being the global social worker and you don’t need next gen tanks, ships, and fighter jets to build roads and expand local economies. The answer will be Pop-Control because that is what we want it to be. And the debate will end there.

davidbfpo

Thu, 12/05/2013 - 8:09am

Yesterday I posted a comment on WoTR, it is yet to pass moderation and is reproduced slightly changed here.

Mark is right to say the COIN debate must continue, alas to date this debate is very limited OUTSIDE the US military, who have recently come to dominate the debate.

From my British vantage point, with the current Afghan and Iraqi experience in mind, there is NO political will to debate COIN here, it is simply too painful. There is concern within the Whitehall-Westminster bubble how do we explain to the electorate why all the blood and gold was spent for such an end result?

In some West European countries (including Canada) there has been a public debate about the validity of prolonged campaigning in such places.

How much debate is there in France for example? We know that French policy in its primary theatre of intervention, Africa, has changed in the last twenty plus years largely without a public debate. I suspect that policy change was a politically driven policy stance.

There are FAR more users of COIN than the USA. India for example has a significant problem.

Nor is COIN always a military-dominated campaign and across the world today it is far more often a joint police-military effort alongside varying degrees of civil government.

I would argue that it is the weakness of US civil effort in your recent COIN campaigning that is your national weakness, not the military. This weakness has also been seen in the UK’s role in Helmand, with some startling decisions by DFID and other civilian partners.

Let us have a debate in the knowledge that many others have their own debate, very few of the public are listening and even fewer politicians. This leads it appears to the temptation COIN is a military-led process and so we can talk to ourselves.

Bill C.

Wed, 12/04/2013 - 12:59pm

One must come to look at COIN, I believe, through the prism of one's goals (for example: containing communism or promoting westernism) and understand insurgency and counterinsurgency accordingly.

Thus, if my goal is to contain communism, then I might, in my effort to secure popular support, point out that communism was incompatible with the history and the culture of a state and society, and that communist thinking clashed with the foundational values, attitudes, beliefs and practices of the nation and its people. In this scenerio, (containing communism/communist insurgency), the more-liberal (pro-change) elements of the population become my natural enemy.

If, however, my goal is to promote westernism, then I might, in my efforts to secure popular support, point out that the present way of thinking, present way of life and present way of governance of the state and society could -- quite obviously -- no longer meet the wants, needs and desires of the population. And suggest that, as "history" indicates, only western ways of life and western ways of governance could accomplish these tasks in the modern age. In this scenerio (promoting westernism), the conservative elements of the population (anti-change; status quo anti folks) become my natural enemy.

Thus, insurgency and counterinsurgency must be addressed, I believe, within the context of the political objective of a nation. This providing one with:

a. A knowledge of one's self.

b. A knowledge of one's enemy and

c. An understanding of the type of war that one was embarked on and why.

These such matters helping to explain why the counterinsurgency debate must go on.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/04/2013 - 11:29am

That post at War on the Rocks sure is an inkblot judging by the comments. (Yeah, my comments too).

Here is what I thought I saw looking at the Rorschach: shades of my own suspicions and suspicious nature, Dr. Freud!

<blockquote>Using counter-insurgency campaigns as paradigms for contemporary practice also involves ignoring their less savoury aspects. These were deliberately concealed by the destruction of incriminating written materials relating to brutality, murder and torture. Even the ashes of burned papers were pulverized by the British, while crates crammed with papers were dropped into deep sea, where there were no currents to wash them up again.</blockquote> - Michael Burleigh, <em>Small Wars, Faraway Places</em>

Many positive reviews of the book (very well-deserved positive reviews) seemed to miss that point or glossed over it.

It's not just about COIN, or shilling for human terrain contracts, or Air Sea Battle versus Human Domains, or colonialism or anti-colonialism, or the rest of the same old-same old.

This is about the very foundations of belief and self-knowledge. The world shifts and how are we to shift along with it?