Small Wars Journal

Pentagon Rethinking Value of Major Counterinsurgencies

Thu, 05/13/2010 - 8:59am
Pentagon Rethinking Value of Major Counterinsurgencies - Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers.

Nearly a decade after the United States began to focus its military training and equipment purchases almost exclusively on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military strategists are quietly shifting gears, saying that large-scale counterinsurgency efforts cost too much and last too long.

The domestic economic crisis and the Obama administration's commitment to withdraw from Iraq and begin drawing down in Afghanistan next year are factors in the change. The biggest spur, however, is a growing recognition that large-scale counterinsurgency battles have high casualty rates for troops and civilians, eat up equipment that must be replaced and rarely end in clear victory or defeat.

In addition, military thinkers say such wars have put the U.S.'s technologically advanced ground forces on the defensive while less sophisticated insurgent forces are able to remain on the offensive...

Much more at McClatchy Newspapers.

Comments

I don't think she was saying FID is new. She is saying it is coming back into vogue as a cost effective option for protecting US interests, vice large scale scale interventions.

Sir (Col. Gentile):

Ideally, I would agree with you--good strategy would preclude the use of military forces in such a wasteful method.

Unfortunately, the world is less than ideal. Foreign policy is subject to irrational decisions, errors in judgement, and changes in the state of human affiars which are too complex to accurately predict.

Outlaw 7 (not verified)

Thu, 05/13/2010 - 12:28pm

Finally DoD has awoken to reality.

COIN has always and will be always the SOF community. Afghanistan has been at it's core FID, FID, and more FID coupled with a robost intel effort. In some ways the invasion of Iraq ceated an insurgency as it was definitely not there at first-Afghanistan on the other was an insurgency.

We got sidetracked with the Rumsfield doctrine of BCT light because we were in an overthrow the exisiting country mode not FID.

Afghanistan began as SOF/FID and should have remained FID but when troops are at the max then the only thing left are BCTs.

Now if one goes back to the Kilcullen "conflict ecosystem" model now it makes sense in a truely SOF/FID environment.

Interesting how the COIN debate over Kilcullen gets overwhelmed by reality on the ground.

And so it begins - in the next few years the defense budget is going to go down. One of the few budget slices that is both large and discretionary, the military budget is going to be a major billpayer for our recent fiscal indiscretions. A lot of the waffle you will hear about strategies, training, equipment, and warfighting focus is going to be budget driven - not the result of professional debate between 'military thinkers' of various philosophical stripes. Gearing up for FID/COIN light will provide a nice semantic cover for hollowing out the armed forces.

Ken White (not verified)

Thu, 05/13/2010 - 12:08pm

I'm with Gian. We almost always have the luxury of picking and choosing the conflicts in which we 'find' ourselves. We have in the past 'found' ourselves in conflicts chosen by Politicians which were actually inimical to US interests.

In many of those cases, DoD elements subscribed to the stupidity partly due to 'obeying orders' but also due to potential for budgetary enhancement -- provided by very perverse reward and fiscal systems. The obligation to the Nation and its people was at least in part subsumed by institutional greed.

Conversely, we have also on occasion not gotten involved in specific conflicts at the right time due to a lack of full spectrum capability. From 1979 until 2001, we did not forcefully react to probes and provocations emanating from the Middle East essentially due to a lack of an adequately broad set of capabilities. That lack of forceful but tailored response arguably put us where we are today. We should avoid a repetition of that shortfall.

Bernard Z is correct in asserting that conventional conflict can and frequently will cause a higher casualty count. It is, simply, a perception problem that is almost invariably exacerbated by the political opponents of the existing Presidential administration. That occurred even during the existential wars and is far worse in wars of choice -- or poor choice.

The basic fact is that 'counterinsurgency' is costly, casualties do occur, the cost is rarely worth the presumed benefits, interventions in other nations entail a host of problems and we, the US, have too short an electoral cycle and are far too impatient to do all that well. That is historical fact.

Such efforts can be largely avoided by better Intelligence (led by civilian agencies), better Diplomacy (headed by the Department of State, Not the NSC and emphatically not DoD) and a robust early arriving FID effort <b>led</b> by Special Forces doing their primary mission instead of getting involved in ordinary Infantry tasks.

We also need to develop and maintain strategic raid capability -- as well as the political and institutional will to use that capability when warranted. That should be GPF and not a USSOCOM capability. We learned in 1979 that we did not have but did need such capability and we did nothing to develop it due to fear of institutional harm. The Cold War ended in 1989. We have not, 21 years later, fully adapted to that -- due to fear of institutional harm. We <i>really</i> need to get over that. We can and must do better...

The capability to do large scale GPF counterinsurgency operations must be maintained at a sustainment level but they can and should be avoided to the maximum possible extent. They are quite simply and all too often just a dumb solution to an ignored problem.

M-A Lagrange

Thu, 05/13/2010 - 12:07pm

I do agree with most of the article and comments.
But I would like to remind that shock phases in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been quick. What takes time and always will is the stabilization phase. Especially if there are resistance from the populations and local authorities.
Counter insurgency remains a solution for a situation that went bad says the article. Could someone tell me went the situation went good in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The shock and shake approach does not work. This is the lesson learned from those two wars. There are no shake effect or a very limited one in time. Managing this from day one could have been the solution. Counter insurgency approach has to move from responsive approach to preventive approach.
You grab, you hold, end of the story. But when you hold, you do not way the situation to be out of control to deploy troops to protect civilians... If you have to surge then it means you messed the hold phase.

gian p gentile (not verified)

Thu, 05/13/2010 - 11:20am

Starbuck:

Yes we do and it is called good strategy.

The stock statement though from Counterinsurgency experts is just like yours, that we dont get to chose the wars we fight. In a narrow tactical sense for the American military that is correct. We go and do what we are told to.

But the military also has a hand in the formulation of strategy along with policy makers and it is in that realm where we do have a choice about the wars that we will fight. To suggest otherwise is to reach the heights of a-strategic thinking.

Remember what Sun Tzu said: no state ever benefited from a long war and that "speed was the essence of war."

gian

I agree with a good portion of this article. Yes, counterinsurgency takes a long time, it's manpower intensive, it's expensive, and it's certainly not the preferred way of doing business.

Unfortunately, let's not kid ourselves, we often don't have the luxury of picking and choosing the conflicts we find ourselves in the middle of. Peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and even "Phase IV" operations often involve many of the lessons we've learned while developing COIN doctrine.

BernardZ (not verified)

Thu, 05/13/2010 - 10:23am

i would not think that troops losses are high in such conflicts compared to regular conflicts.

Nancy,

Foreign Internal Defense is not "a new form of counter-insurgency."

Other than that, I'm on board.

v/r

Mike