Kilcullen Speaks: On COIN Going Out of Style, His Recent Book, Syria, and More
02.13.2014 at 02:52am
Kilcullen Speaks: On COIN Going Out of Style, His Recent Book, Syria, and More by Tom Ricks, FP’s Best Defense.
Best Defense: What do you make of the whole "anti-COIN" movement? David Kilcullen: It's natural for people to ask "What comes after Afghanistan?" and "Was it all worth it?" There's a legitimate questioning of whether the right decisions were made in orienting the military to COIN in 2005-6. Also, people are looking at Iraq these days and wondering whether we lost friends and colleagues in vain.
The linked FP article is well worth reading, even if it requires registration and so free access.
I have not yet read David’s latest book, it awaits attention.
Yes the interview may have elements of being ‘revisionist’, but he is honest in my opinion in his description of the allegations that US(and allied) COIN in two wars has failed.
This passage struck me – as a civilian – as worth citing: Right now there’s a fashion to reject everything of the last decade and focus on “returning to real soldiering.” But there’s also a groundswell of anger and disillusionment at the junior officer and senior enlisted level. That’s actually positive, because real innovations in military thought come not from academics and generals or admirals but from angry junior leaders with combat experience.
The problem does not lie with COIN; the problem lies with the highly flawed understanding of insurgency that current COIN doctrine rests upon. This is as much the fault of Dr. Kilcullen as any, as he has packaged and sold this flawed message more aggressively and successfully than most.
We used to believe that disease and infections were caused by sin, and no ammount of prayer-based medicine could heal the patients. The problem was not with prayer, it was with the flawed understanding of the nature of the problem.
COIN is not the problem. The problem rests with our understanding of insurgency. Insurgents are largely a symptom, the tip of a populace iceberg with significant perceptions of poor governance running throughout the body of that “iceberg” of a population. Systems of governance must come to appreciate their role as the primary source of causation, and do a better job of understanding and valuing the perceptions of the populations affected by their governance. Simply offering bribes to those who do not actively fight (development), or attempting to take the offending top off of these icebergs (CT), or press the entire structure beneath the surface (C-H-B) may buy some time, but does not offer a cure in of themselves.
We must evolve, but I see little appetite to do so, even in the face of widespread strategic failure. I certainly haven’t heard too many of the “experts” of the past decade step forward and say “maybe I had this wrong…”
Sin does not cause disease, but one certainly sees ample evidence of the 7 deadly sins in our struggles with insurgency.
1.
HU?! What on earth does that mean? And since when is a military’s domestic political position a reflection of either its capacity or responsibility when it comes to foreign (i.e. non-domestic) contexts? This smacks of revisionism to me. In the U.S., the Army is the legal executive agent for military governance according to the Hague Conventions. That means the Army has the responsibility for establishing and maintaining a political government in an occupation. Before the Hague Conventions established the principle that made the Army into a mil-government entity, it as well as the Navy, were engaged in multiple modern-era governance roles in counterinsurgency/small war environments. In fact, the only historical period where Kilcullen’s quote seems to apply even remotely is from 1950-2003, and even then only through willful ignorance. From about 3,000 BC to 1950 AD and from 2003 AD to Present it is categorically not true.
2.
Kilcullen hits the nail on the head here, although he might not have meant to. When he and the 21st Cent coindinistas talk COIN, they are talking of a specific COIN Doctrine. A doctrine that is fixed, defined, and mostly hypothetical. COIN the doctrine isn’t the same thing as a counterinsurgency military campaign. A counterinsurgency campaign can use the doctrine (if any) that the commander of the campaign chooses.
3.
Straw man much? Simplifying the world into military and non-military problems is a gross oversimplification of human social complexity. If one’s political leaders are simplistic enough to use the military for everything, and the military leaders are of such low intellect that they can’t see past steel on target, then your society has some serious issues in its educated and professional classes. The military offers the option of direct and immediate coercion. That option however, isn’t limited to an on/off switch.
4. On Syria
Never heard of this! From all reports I’ve seen, the areas under Assad regime control are stable. The line of contact between regime and rebel forces is pockmarked with sieges and no-man’s-lands and the rebel controlled areas are in total disarray. Seems like pretty standard civil-war type stuff. What,exactly, is escalating and what is it escalating towards? If victory is defined as total control of the Syrian state’s recognized borders, then sure, there hasn’t been one. But if that is the only way you can see an end, then there is a box that has all of your thoughts in it that you need to step outside of.
My apologies to those readers who read through this rant. My tone is admittedly hostile. But I find that this kind of pop-intellectualism is doing some true harm to the way we in the defense establishment conceive of conflicts and our role in them. Dr. Kilcullen’s insights in his latest book are tarred and obscured by this type logic.
http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2014/02/letter-91-marketing-doth-make-cowards.html
My thoughts about this interview are in a letter to my friends and family. Kilcullen is simply a market-maker to profit from the upcoming urban attacks against the few remaining ISAF troops congregated in the cities post-2014. Senator McCain’s thoughts of Syria are more worthwhile.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?317782-4/senator-john-mccain-on-syria
Should we say that the kind of COIN (and, indeed, the kind of foreign policy and the kind of military operations generally) which were based on such post-Cold War ideas as the belief in:
a. The universal and overwhelming power, influence and appeal of our way of life and our way of governance and
b. The corresponding lack of power, influence and appeal of alternative ways of life and alternative ways of governance,
This kind of COIN, foreign policy and military operations may now be dead.
This being evidenced, for example, by the fact that we have now moved to consider/reconsider and embrace/re-embrace such concepts as counter-unconventional warfare (as per COL Maxwell), village stability operations and the study of the so-called “human domain.”
All of which were present in one form or another, I believe, during the Cold War, when the power, influence and appeal of different ways of life, different ways of governance, different values, attitudes and beliefs and, indeed, different ideologies were not downplayed, ignored and/or marginalized but, instead, (1) readily acknowledged, (2) significantly respected and (3) heavily factored in and planned against.
Thus, what has gone out of style would not seem to be so much the idea of COIN itself but, rather, the belief that COIN (and, indeed, foreign policy and military operations generally) can be based on such erroneous post-Cold War ideas as those identified at “a” and “b” above.
I have read the above positive and negative comments about Kilcullen’s interview. With all due respect, I think Sparapet is being hypercritical. Of course one can find problems in Kilcullen’s expression and even his basic premise, but I don’t think he is generally as off the mark as much as Sparapet believes. I have written elsewhere that two of the key judgements that must be made before even engaging in a counterinsurgency program are: 1)the host government’s willingness to make the political and functional changes necessary for success and 2) the host government’s ABILITY to make those same changes. They are not the same thing. The difference between the two arises from difficult political, religious, and cultural realities that can be different in every country. What the host government will say to get U. S. support is one thing, what they are capable of doing is another. I think Kilcullen’s previous works cover that same ground, which is only one narrow aspect of the difficulties the U. S. has had with counterinsurgency.
McDonnell’s comments about Kilcullen being a “market maker” might be correct though it doesn’t address anything about counterinsurgency. Nevertheless, it does bring up the point that almost all those who have written books on the topic can be charged with having some other dog in the hunt, whether that be book sales, consulting careers, think-tank employment, or military/foreign policy careers. On the other hand, it would be highly unusual for a totally innocent bystander to have much to say on the topic, no?
There is nothing improper about writing a book that seeks to set the agenda in a particular field, or attempt a paradigm shift. Even if David Kilcullen’s book is a bit Thomas Friedman come Al Gore in predicting a future that could be apocalyptic. In that respect it read a little bit too much like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that pick the extremes of their assessments as the median.
Personally, I have a great deal of faith in enough people in the world finding solutions to many of the challenges we face. We have succeeded at this in the past.
The military is also an adaptable organisation. While we can all find faults with individual leaders, it is also a learning organisation that prepares for multiple scenarios in multiple terrains against multiple opponents. If our current and future military leaders are not planning how to protect our interests and security across a range of scenarios, then they cannot be taken seriously and neither can their political leaders.
I still have a problem with Kilcullen’s inferred capture of the COIN market. It has been around in some form for a long time, as an option dependent on the war or conflict confronting the military at that particular time, terrain and political direction. For example, the Selous Scouts, a highly proficient COIN implementing unit, and I have yet to see much of a reference to these guys by Kilcullen. (maybe I missed any reference by David Kilcullen to the Selous Scouts) Further, lets not get to glassy-eyed about Sri Lanka. If the US, UK, Australia and other allies could engage in a military campaign with complete disregard to the rest of the world as to how we would be judged by our choice of battlefield, media and civilian tactics, then Afghanistan, Iraq and other places may have been waged differently.
One of the concerns with respect to Syria that Kilcullen does not mention (I read the book but let me know if I missed it) is the return of the foreign jihad tourists to their western country of residency. Those who survive the fighting will have extraordinary skills and experience that will be an enormous badge of honour in front of impressionable young aspirants back in the UK, US, Australia etc. They will be the poster boys for a potential new generation of terrorists.