COIN Metrics: What Not to Measure

Kilcullen (I): Here’s What Not to Measure in a COIN Campaign – Tom Ricks at FP’s Best Defense.

When David Kilcullen is at his best, he is unexcelled at discussing how to wage a counterinsurgency campaign. And I think the Australian infantry officer turned political anthropologist/COIN guru is at his best when he gathers field observations, boils them down to distilled principles, and then describes those rules in a clear, practical manner.

So I want to take some time to go through a paper he wrote recently in Afghanistan. (I didn’t get it from him, by the way.) While it ostensibly is about metrics in COIN campaigning, it amounts to a thorough discussion of what works in such warfare, what doesn’t, and — especially — how to tell the difference. It is written about the current campaign in Afghanistan, but clearly has broader applications. …

After some initial throat-clearing (one of my rules when I was an editor was to see if I could cut the first three pages of any long article), Kilcullen’s first major section is about metrics to be avoided…

Continue on for “what not to measure in a COIN Campaign” at Best Defense.