COIN is Dead: U.S. Army Must Put Strategy Over Tactics
COIN is Dead: U.S. Army Must Put Strategy Over Tactics
by Gian Gentile
World Politics Review
There is perhaps no better measure of the failure of American strategy over the past decade than the fact that in both Iraq and Afghanistan, tactical objectives have been used to define victory. In particular, both wars have been characterized by an all-encompassing obsession with the methods and tactics of counterinsurgency. To be sure, the tactics of counterinsurgency require political and cultural acumen to build host-nation governments and economies. But understanding the political aspects of counterinsurgency tactics is fundamentally different from understanding core American political objectives and then defining a cost-effective strategy to achieve them. If it is to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past decade, American strategic thinking must regain the ability to link cost-effective operational campaigns to core policy objectives, while taking into consideration American political and popular will.
Just a personal opinion, but this sounds like a return to the past. The big institutional military finds small wars unpleasant and unsatisfying. So when they end, the institution just turns its’ back on them and resumes thinking about things it likes better. This shunning is covered by high sounding distracting words like “strategy” and “policy”. But the upshot will be the same, all the things learned at such cost over the past decade will be forgotten; not just forgotten, but perhaps actively purged from the institutional memory. This happened once before just a few decades ago.
The obvious problem with this formulation is that the Army does not determine the “core American political objectives”. The Army doesn’t make policy, and policy drives strategy. If the policy and the objectives are nebulous or vacuous, uncertain or impractical or unknown… the strategy can be no better. If the problem is at the policy level, which the Army cannot change, the resort to a focus on tactics is a pretty natural response: one works with what one has, and with what one can control.
Certainly a coherent strategy would be a huge advantage, but until we have a clear, concrete, practical, achievable set of policy goals, a coherent strategy is going to be impossible to develop. If the policy goal is “install a democracy”, we can only pity those charged with developing the strategy!
The problem is that Gian real target audience is the National Command Authority, not with the Theater rank level or lower. Gian’s apparent solution is that we should never have engaged ourselves in Afghanistan or Iraq in the first place. That is a valid position to take. However, Gian seems to target his writings towards soldiers; precisely the group who does NOT make decisions about whether to invade foreign countries (and I would argue for good reason).
What if we were to look at this somewhat differently:
What if our purpose in Afghanistan and Iraq IS/WAS NOT to build host-nation governments and economies but, rather, to provide that Afghanistan and Iraq come to cause the modern world fewer problems and come to offer the modern world, instead, greater utility/usefulness.
If the above is a more accurate description of American core policy objectives re: Afghanstan and Iraq, then might an effective strategy and operational campaign — designed to meet these core policy objectives (taking into account American political and popular will immediately following 9/11) — might such a strategy and campaign logically be expected to include a provision for building host-nation governments and economies; this, so as to achieve the core policy objectives noted above?
I just returned the questionnaire inviting outside comments on the revision of FM 3-24. I thought the writing committee’s decision to open the process to a wider range of civilians deserved a response. I look forward to learning the results and also the findings of Colonel Gentile’s current study of counterinsurgency and generalship.
What I would note here is that while a particular grand strategy is for civilian policy makers to choose, the Army and the other services can and should have a great deal to say about what the choices in fact are.
David Billington
‘COIN is dead’ – really? Seems to be going on all over the world and the US will undoubtedly be directly/indirectly involved in several just this year alone. ‘US must put strategy over tactics’ – Wow, that’s really earth shattering! – This seems to be one part false, and one part obvious.
I’m pretty sure Gen(R) P. was quite the strategic thinker, and probably too involved with the national strategy. But lacking strategic guidance from civilian leadership, and being handed two ill-advised endeavors, what choice did he have?
To be sure, many lessons have been learned over the past decade at the tactical and operational level. My concern is that our strategic thinking, and problem solving has not evolved at all. Before taking action, problems and objectives must be more clearly defined and then our strategic planners must do a better job of empathizing with the local population in order to predict their reaction to our tactics.