RFI for Practitioners of Modern Small Wars

To those directly involved in small wars during the last decade,

Ultimately, this may be the most important project that I’ve pursued while commissioned as an officer in the United States Army. This project is my attempt to pay it forward…

Here at Small Wars Journal, we’ve begun a discussion on the need/utility to update FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, given the depth and breadth of our military’s experience during the last decade. Most professionals agree that the COIN manual was desperately needed during the 2005/06 timeframe, but it is limited in scope and mostly based off post-World War II, post-colonial examples. Insurgency and small wars have existed since the beginning of the first government – men seeking to rebel, revolt, or separate from the local power structure. My personal favorite remains Moses who brought locust and the Angel of Death in to play for his separatist movement from the Pharaoh. Mostly, it fails to address the level of violence often required to quell rebellions. Dr. David Kilcullen, in his most recent talks, spoke that violence was assumed to the military practitioner. Sometimes, assuming is not enough.

In my own opinion, the doctrine is void of the heart and soul and emotion of the fight. It is too sterile missing the most important of things.

Currently, we’ve heard mostly from academics and defense analysts. My hope is to compile an article entitled, “An Empty Canvas: The Practitioners Voice Truth to Power on Modern Counterinsurgency.” I want to capture thoughts, comments, and pictures from men and women who have been in the field over the last decade. I want to know what they have to say in frank, stark words. We want to hear from you. Ultimately, I’d hope that we can generate enough energy to conduct another symposium to compliment the 1962 Rand Counterinsurgency Symposium.

To accomplish this goal, I am asking a simple question;

Given your experience, in a picture or written paragraph or two, what do you have to contribute to the literature on small wars? Simply put, what do you want to tell those that come after you to fight these wars?

The question is as broad and deep as is the nature of our experiences. I decided that the answers will be anonymous sources validated through internal peer-review to ensure quality of content. We want thoughts from practitioners. One quantifying question remains, “Where did you sleep?” We want men and women to answer who slept outside of the FOB or American controlled areas to relay their experience for the greater good; however, we wish to provide a forum that protects their careers while allowing honest feedback.

Please forward all responses to [email protected].

Thank you for your time in this endeavor. Please pass on to your friends, colleagues, students, and subordinates. Below are some initial responses.

“First, I would ask if the manual covered the concepts needed to fight the full spectrum of conflict you experienced while doing COIN. Does it adequately discuss the use of “kinetic ops” as part of a greater COIN approach? Did it assist your units in integrating combined and joint assets into your campaign? How was it useful in dealing with civilian elements of the interagency? Did the IA use it? That type of thing.

Second, does FM 3-24 assist in planning COIN operations? How? How was it inadequate? I don’t know how to get around asking questions about metrics/assessments that aren’t leading, but that needs to be addressed as well – since the manual fails to in any sort of usable way.

Finally, I think there’s a lot of consensus to move the manual away from purely Galula-inspired thought to something else. While I may agree with that, the manual needs to be useful to units doing this stuff while acknowledging that there is a lot of stuff we won’t ever get into a manual. So less theory (as that will always be contested), more how-to based on what’s worked.”

“Mike, I think that we would agree that the best part of FM 3-24 is the section on intelligence. It’s the most commonsensical part of the manual and the one least likely to be ripped apart by doctrinal disputes. It is as relevant for Kitsonian practitioners as it is for today’s COIN warriors out fighting a most un-Maoist gaggle of enemies.”

“Part of my problem with FM 3-24 is that it’s a Maoist cartoon. It limns best practices, but they’re dated. The enemies that are described in FM 3-24, their organization and their objectives, no longer seem all that relevant to the company commanders who are facing them. Neither, I suggest, would be the “counter-guerrilla” manuals produced in an earlier age and used perhaps inaccurately by certain unnamed Stryker brigades in OEF.”

“What proved so important in Anbar — the buying of loyalties at just the right time — actually is frowned upon in FM 3-24, for example, and the manual infamously treats bribery as something exotic a commander might notice in an insurgent environment but not something he should exploit for his own purposes.”

“When C.E. Callwell was penning his compilation of best practices, he wasn’t so reluctant to discuss the most Machiavellian of methods, should they prove successful. But he was writing case studies, which gets me to my larger point.”

“A real problem with FM 3-24 is its structure. It pretends to define a subject (it’s even called “Counterinsurgency”) with a monolithic listing of best practices, without mentioning how these might have worked, or failed to work, in a given historical moment. Looking beyond the manual’s opening koans, those wisdom-provoking aphorisms and thought experiments, it really is a catalog of operational advice, just like any other military effort…This has two effects. It treats practitioners as if they’re morons who can’t nimbly figure it out on their own, thereby forcing them to be reliant on the doctrinaire mistakes of FM 3-24, and it locks into place best practices as if they’re important for all times and places, and they’re not. A better way to write it would be as a book of case studies, much as Callwell did his opus (and not necessarily as the USMC in 1940 did theirs, although the Small Wars Manual, too, was more open-minded than FM 3-24). It would look at the event being studied in several different ways, and discuss how various audiences would have seen and reacted to the event: The enemy, the “people,” a domestic audience, and international one. This is very different from the way all other manuals are constructed. But that’s my point. It needs to be.”

Again, please forward all responses to [email protected].

Michael Few is Editor of the Small Wars Journal.