It’s Time We Move Beyond COIN
Foreign Policy's Af-Pak Channel published an article of mine on strategy
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the much needed conversation over counterinsurgency (COIN) has returned. Ryan Evans’ COIN is dead, long live the COIN attempts to add to this debate, but his efforts fall short, because he and other COIN proponents refuse to understand the underlining flaws in counterinsurgency as a strategy. COIN as a strategy cannot work in today’s world, given the current limitations in available resources, time, and national will. It was a collection of tactics and operational arts developed for twentieth century wars of nationalism and communism. Strategy, defined as the ends, ways, and means of American policy, must rise above a collection of disjointed tactics that have no proven cumulative effect.
Refusing to understanding the disconnect between tactics and strategy leaves analysts like Evans wondering why “success has eluded the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has been unable to translate operational progress into strategic success,” as one recent journal article asked. Instead of addressing the underlying problems of the fledgling Afghan state, the regional geopolitics, and COIN in general, Evans in his article looks internally at the American perspective far removed from the fight and examines how “divisions that were aggravated in the lead-up to the Afghan ‘surge,’ remain unhealed” leading to a current “debate surrounding counterinsurgency [that] has become highly personal, emotional, and angry.” Evans thus ignores the possibility that tension in the COIN debate may arise from our actual failure in war.
