The Counterinsurgency Paradigm Shift
The Counterinsurgency Paradigm Shift by Justin Lynch, War on the Rocks
It has been a challenging year for the Department of Defense. For more than a decade, Operation Iraqi Freedom and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan highlighted the need for a modern military to be able to operate in complex human terrain. But even as the military continued to fight in Afghanistan, it also faced the budgetary uncertainties of sequestration. In this fiscally constrained environment, even given current events, counterinsurgency may return to a low priority. The DoD has reached a decision point; it is undergoing a paradigm shift, deciding what its capabilities will be in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military will either resource the training required to be capable of conducting counterinsurgencies, or focus almost exclusively on conventional operations. Given today’s operational environment, the military must retain and improve upon the counterinsurgency lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. If not, the United States will not have the competencies needed to accomplish its policy objectives…
Modified and added to since my initial offering:
” … Operation Iraqi Freedom — and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan — highlighted the need for a modern military to be able to operate in complex human terrain.”
This, I believe, is the wrong view of things.
What was highlighted — re: Operation Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, etc. — was that our national leaders were TOTALLY WRONG in believing that the majority of the populations within Iraq and Afghanistan (and, indeed, within Syria, Egypt, Libya, etc.) wished to order, organize and orient their lives more along modern western political, economic and social lines. Thus, our belief that we need only liberate these populations from their oppressive regimes, give them a “leg up,” and help them deal with a few remaining “losers’/”dead-enders.”
This erroneous worldview suggesting that there is a need — not so much for our military — but rather for our national leaders — to learn more about the “human terrain” and, thereby, learn how to operate therein with some reasonable degree of intelligence.
So, I suggest, we can view future counterinsurgency operations in one of two ways:
a. We can say that our national leaders WILL NOT learn from their recent mistakes, WILL NOT become more knowledgeable re: the world’s “human terrain” and, therefore, WILL make these exact same mistakes again, again and again. Or
b. We can say that our national leaders WILL learn from their such mistakes, WILL, accordingly, learn more about the “human terrain” and, thereby, WILL NOT make these same mistakes again ad infinitum.
Thus, the “paradigm shift” that we need and seek is not one that, properly, relates to the military or counterinsurgency.
Rather, the paradigm shift that we need and seek is one that sees our national leaders (1) learning more about the “human terrain” and, thereby, (2) not making foreign policy and military decisions based on such erroneous ideas as (a) “universal (western) values and the idea that (b) everyone wishes to be like us.
Once our national leaders gain a better handle on the “human terrain” — and come to see, thereby, the viability (or lack thereof) of their foreign policy goals and political objectives — then and only then, I suggest, will we have developed a sufficient foundation upon which we might adequately view, discuss and address such things as counterinsurgency v. conventional warfare, etc.
Bill C: You suggest that your argument and Lynch’s are mutually exclusive. I suggest that you’ve both identified important shortfalls: you with policy-makers, Lynch with the military. Your observations, while relevant and largely irrefutable, obfuscate the issues Lynch raises. And, in so doing, they absolve the DoD of maintaining capabilities for which the current and future requirements should be obvious. America can either institutionalize the innovations and experience of the last thirteen years, or expend more blood and treasure the next time – and there will be a next time, sooner or later – America’s strategic interests require operations similar to those in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is obviously important that America’s policy-makers learn the lessons you identify, but it is also important that America’s warfighters learn and institutionalize the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, and to avoid the potential mistakes which Lynch identifies.