World Politics Review: Counterinsurgency in the Post-COIN Era

by Crispin Burke

SWJ Blog Post |

Be sure to check out World Politics Review's feature, "Counterinsurgency in the Post-COIN World" (Subscription Required).  Highlights include:

Steven Metz, Counterinsurgency and American Strategy, Past and Future:  

Americans often assume that insurgency is a modern phenomenon, invented by Mao Zedong and refined by his emulators. The notion permeates official thinking, including Department of Defense definitions and doctrines. In reality, insurgency has existed ever since states and empires began attempting to impose their will on people too weak to resist with conventional military means. Its strategic significance, however, has ebbed and flowed over time.  

Bing West, Counterinsurgency: A New Doctrine's Fading Allure:

Authored in 2006, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps’ counterinsurgency field manual essentially enshrined counterinsurgency as nation-building in U.S. military doctrine. But in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we learned that this approach required a prodigious effort without commensurate returns. The COIN doctrine’s failure in actual practice is due as much to its misguided premises as to any failures in their tactical application.

Michael J. Mazaar, COIN: The End of the Diversion:

For the past several years, the widely accepted view among defense analysts had been that counterinsurgency, or COIN, represented the future of U.S. defense planning and operations. Now things have become far less clear. But if COIN is no longer considered the future of U.S. military operations, what definitive lessons, if any, have we learned from its decade of prominence?

Crispin Burke, Like It or Not, Small Wars Will Always Be Around:

Once fashionable within the Washington beltway, counterinsurgency has come under withering criticism, as violence in Afghanistan escalates and the Pentagon tightens its belt. But despite the temptation to avoid future counterinsurgency interventions, contingencies don’t always conform to strategic theory. Like it or not, manpower-intensive stability missions have a peculiar way of finding us.

Andrew Exum, Amid COIN Debate, U.S. Army Struggles to Find Its Way:

Defense policy analysts and pundits are arguing about whether or not counterinsurgency is dead or alive. The real debate -- the one that risks getting lost in the noise about counterinsurgency’s vital signs -- concerns the future of the U.S. Army. As the U.S. military ends its role in Iraq and winds down in Afghanistan, the U.S. Army, alone among the armed services, has no compelling narrative for how it fits into the nation’s defense.

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by MikeF | January 24, 2012 - 5:32pm

新年快乐！祝大家在新的一年里一帆风顺，吉祥如意，事业有成，家庭幸福，心想事成，往事如意，龙年行大运！

by MikeF | January 24, 2012 - 5:11pm

What done did the preacher man going to tell us to do?

by MikeF | January 24, 2012 - 5:07pm

Or should WPR call it Embracing, Erasing, and Forgiving the White Man's Burden?

Moving past the Post Cold War countering colonial insurgencies?

by MikeF | January 24, 2012 - 4:46pm

Out of darkness comes night?

by Ken White | January 24, 2012 - 5:34pm

Maybe. Probably not. We're slow learners...

What I do know is that saying one will not do a thing is an almost certain indicator that one will in fact do that thing. Equally bad is to say one must do that thing. That said, the overwhelming lesson from the last ten years is that so-called COIN is an idea whose time has passed. Secondary lessons are that our Personnel system is unresponsive to the needs of the Army and the Nation and that our training is generally mediocre.

To say that we must be prepared for wars that come to us is fallacious. Wars of choice do not come to one, they are willfully engaged in due to flawed strategies and goals. Arguably, we have not been involved in 'must fight' war since Korea if not World War II. We've been throwing our egos around with little purpose.

I vote for only two of those articles.

West sums up the basic problem succinctly. We do not have a force that is large enough to do the 'COIN thing.'

It requires Mass and stable, well trained operating forces -- we do not have and are unlikely to have such forces in anywhere near adequate quantity. He also notes the limitations on 'interference' with the norms and prerogatives of host nations. Those impediments also are not going to change.

Mazarr notes:

"In the case of counterinsurgency, for instance, many tactical approaches were based on the assertion that economic aid builds the stability necessary for success. This, it turns out, is simply not true (he includes a linked.pdf), according to many recent studies."

He also hits the money quote:

"Another of the lessons emerging from the past decade of COIN has to do with the conventional wisdom firmly in place in 2001, that “failed states” constituted a dominant national security threat, demanding urgent efforts to stabilize them. A decade later, we know that, as a rule, they do not."

Expensive lesson. One that apparently was not learned.

As an aside, it is sad to note that a couple of the articles whine about cuts to Army Troop strength. Not that big a problem; we do not and will not have enough people or a personnel policy that will allow COIN or FID efforts on a sustainable basis and we have, if anything, too many people for most other missions. We also have too much money. Perhaps if we get smaller, we might get better...

by MikeF | January 24, 2012 - 5:40pm

حين قررت الرحيل في تلك اللحظة توقفت كل عقارب أيامي لاأسمعُ للساعةِ صوت _ قَد أوقَفَها صمتُ رَحيلي فقراريَ يعني--ماذا يعني أتركُ أهلي ___أهجرُ بَلَدي أن تخرج روحي من جسدي أن أُسجَن سجنٌ أَبَدي فَصَمتُ رَحيلي صمتٌ قاتل صَمتُ قراري حَكَمَ بموتي __صمتٌ أَخرَسَ حتى صوتي جَلَستُ وَحيداً----أَتَنَقلُ مابَينَ سكوني نَظَرتُ بَعيداً--لاأدري ماترقبُ عيوني في تلكَ أللحظة جائَتني مَحبوبَةُ قلبي__ جلست قربي وعيوني تنظرُ عَينَيها __قالت والدَمعُ يواسيها قبل أن تَرحَل حبيبي إنتظر __ إن قلبي تحتَ صَدري يَحتضر خذهُ مني --ضَعهُ فوقَ الكف وأنظر ___ أي جزء لستَ فيه خذهُ باللهِ عليك __طائراً بينَ يَديك كَسَرَ الهجر جناحه __أنتَ مَن يشفي جراحه كل جرح يرتجيك ياحبيبي قلبي لايصبر وحيداً ____إن تكن تنوي الرحيل ًلاأرى للصبر نفعا __في ظلام المستحيل ماذا مابعد الفراق __غير آه واشتياق ___إن بُعدك لايُطاق أسكتها صوت نحيبي__ أبكاها صوت نحيبي قالت مايبكيك حبيبي قلت لها والنار بقلبي عفوا حبي فدموعكِ لاتقطع دربي فحقيقة قراري --إن قراري --ليس قراري فزماني مَن سَن قراري فزماني دمر أسواري __أجبرني أن أهجرَ داري ًغاليتي --لاتبكي أبدا فجسمي يرحلُ حيثُ قراري أما روحي __ فبقربكِ تبقى روحي وبذكراكِ أداوي جروحي غاليتي أقسم بالحب __ إني يوماً سوف أعود فَخُذي عَهدي بقايا جَسَدي لاتدفنُ إلا في بَلَدي حيدر

by Peter J. Munson | January 24, 2012 - 10:52pm

Where'd you get this from? I like it.

by MikeF | January 24, 2012 - 5:41pm

C'est vrai

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