Ten Points for the FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency Manual Conference
#1: Context and nuance: Focus changes on updating and improving the understanding of insurgency itself. This will put current content into a more appropriate context and nuance in general, and address the primary shortfall of the current manual. All lessons learned on COIN are corrupted by the policies and purposes of the times they occur in, but provide insights into strategic understanding.
#2: Define for success: Defining key terms with an eye toward criteria that lend themselves to similar approaches for solving the problem. Purpose for action and relationships between parties are key. Move away from definitions based on degree of violence, type of ideology, or status of parties.
#3: COIN is a domestic operation: Limit COIN to domestic operations (unless dealing with resistance following the military defeat of some state with the intent to bring it under US governance). Casting support of someone else’s COIN as FID promotes proper roles and the enhancement of legitimacy.
#4: Types of Insurgency matter: It is critical to clarify the unique aspects of the three broad categories of insurgency (Revolution, Separatism, and Resistance). Insurgencies range from war to civil emergency and often occur in a blend of types, or morph over time. No single COIN approach works for all, but blended, evolving approaches tailored for each can be very effective (and in many ways occurred during “the surge” in Iraq, but not during “the surge” in Afghanistan, with predictable results). The blend of perceptions of US physical and policy “presence” driving resistance against the US among populaces also feeling internal revolutionary motivations toward their own governments is central to the past 20 years of turmoil. Al-Qaeda conducts UW to leverage this energy and cannot exist without it.
#5: Conditions of Insurgency: Recognize the underlying conditions of insurgency that exist in every society, how to relieve such pressure through good governance, and the critical distinction between natural stability and the artificial stability achieved through state security forces. This facilitate better prevention, greater civil responsibility, more appropriate military roles, and less operational surprise.
#6: Human Nature: Appreciate how universal and timeless human nature is, and those aspects most important for understanding the strategic context of any insurgency. These are constants in the human domain that provide keys for solving complex, adaptive problems between people and governance.
#7: Ideology & Narrative: Clarifying the role of ideology; the role of social media (and info tech in general); and narratives. These are essential tools to initiate and facilitate action, but are not causal.
#8: Sanctuary: Shifting the focus on “Sanctuary” from terrain to being more about legal status and popular support. Deny enabling status and popular support, particularly for regional groups like AQ.
#9: Causation: Recognize that causation primarily radiates out from government, and that it is the perspective of the recipient individuals and populace groups that matter, not governmental intent.
#10: “Winning”: Not preserving some regime or defeating some threat, but expanding the percentage of the total populace that perceives governance works to support their reasonable ambitions.
I’d add # 11 – Expect to go it alone in larger and non- to semi-permissive COIN environments: While the “whole of government” approach is correct and pushes all the right buttons it has not worked in spite of all the good intentions. No other government departments possess the manpower, the available funding, the communications and logistic capabilities and the wherewithal (amongst other tangible and intangible assets) that DoD does. – Dave D.
Another way to look at it and I think reinforce some of Bob’s comments is that we need to know and understand all the insurgency, counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare theory – past, present, and what is evolving – but when it comes to counterinsurgency we should not be conducting it ourselves but instead know how to advise friends, partners, or allies appropriately (as Bob correctly recognizes this is FID). (With the exception being we conduct COIN ourselves only when the US is directly threatened with an insurgency; otherwise we need to stay out of the occupying power business).
However, all the theory and doctrine is of no value if we cannot first achieve balance and coherency among the ends, ways, and means of strategy. Unless we get the policy and supporting strategy right (or recognize when we have it wrong and make the appropriate adjustments) then all the theory and doctrine will not dig us from the hole in which we bury ourselves.
To add a number 12 after Dave D’s 11 I would add, let’s consider streamlining and synchronizing the doctrine – do we really need separate doctrine and manuals for COIN, FID, SFA and Stability Operations?
Lastly when we do conduct a military operation and defeat a foreign nation – we should learn that we have to conduct effective stability operations as part of responsibility we have for post-conflict operations in a way that prevents insurgency by allowing the host nation to reconstitute its government without the US trying to build a nation or create a nation (and a military) in the image of the US.
If we want to win a war we send the Army. If we want to help a friend, partner, or ally win a war, then we need to send the right force with the right capability.
And I would add my past thoughts on SWJ to Bob’s
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/a-few-random-thoughts-on-coin-theory-and-the-future
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/is-counterinsurgency-the-graduate-level-of-war
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/considerations-for-organizing-for-future-advisory-missions
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/security-force-assistance-operations
While I have no broad disagreement in general with any of the comments raised thus far by Bob, Gian et al, as generalities about counterinsurgency, I think that there is a broader point that has been missed. I believe that Gian is correct about the poor theoretical basis underpinnings of the last version of FM3-24, however this too misses what the big issue is. The key problem I see is conextual – the document is military doctrine – a ‘Field Manual’ , yet it is written like an addendum to either a party political defence strategy or a QDR.
I recall Alex Alderson telling me in a conversation back in Iraq in early ’08 words to the effect that ‘doctrine is important because it is what is taught.’ He subsequently explored this theme to great effect in his PhD dissertation. Of course, implicit in this idea is that good doctrine is not only ‘what is taught’, but also ‘what is done’ – that is, it reflects best ‘current practice’ that is actually ‘practiceable’ (sorry – made up word..) by the target audience (that is, soldiers and marines – it is military doctrine after all..). And here is where we get to the core problem. While FM 3-24 is , occasionally, ‘what is taught’, its relationship to ‘what is done’ is tenuous at best.
I think that my experience in Taji at the CFE in ’07 and ’08 is illustrative. What we ‘taught’ as core during the RIP/TOA process to incoming BCT / RCT or MiTT was necessarily based on the FM – it was mandated. But what we saw ‘working’ when we went out and around the regions – lets use the term ‘best practice’- bore little or no resemblance to the FM. Of course, one could adopt a ‘Yoda’ posture and spin that the ‘Zen’ proverbs actually did explain ‘stuff’. But not if you valued your credibility. So we had this tragi -comedy where the spin doctors and windscreen tourists were telling the world how great FM 3-24 was, and the guys on the ground were probably doing exactly what they have always done -adapting in the face of need, developing their own SOP / TTP. In the end we had a ‘work around’ where we would race through the formal ‘FM’ lecture, then engage in the ‘real’ learning in seminar style disucssions about what we were told by ‘landowners’ what was actually working on the ground, and what we saw when we went out and stayed with them for a while.
But the issues with FM 3-24 are wider than just relying on poor history / theory and failure to reflect practice. Another key point about military doctrine is that is must be ‘acceptable’ (H/T to Alex Aldersen again). By this we mean more than it must not be illegal or immoral – it must be in a form that the target audience accepts and will willing absorb. In this regard I also believe that FM3-24 failed. Notwithstanding the bestseller status of the Chicago edition (perhaps saying more about non-target audience appetite…), the guys and girls who should have been reading it in ’07 and ’08 were not. I would conduct a poll of every BCT that we mentored on their first day at Taji, asking who had read the FM. The average response was in the order of 5% of all present – and you have to remember that these people were the ‘decision makers and influencers’ – Comds, key staff and senior enlisted of those units. Think about it. On average, 1 in 20 had read their doctrine – after a months of ‘road to war’ prep. My recollection is that one Marine unit stunned me because they had something like 25% – but they were an exception.
So where I am going with all this? Respectfully, I think a lot of the commentary about what should be in the ‘new’ FM misses the vital contextual point. Whilst is must be about ‘a war’ rather than ‘the war’, the next FM should remain focused on its purpose. And this is neither commentary or debate about US strategy, policy or government level issues that are beyond the remit of soldiers. The FM must avoid mumbo-jumbo about ‘types’ of insurgency or any other taxonomical, ethereal social science or ahistorical hearts and minds paradigmatic nonsense and focus on practicalities for the target audience .
Indicative examples of what works ? I would offer up (for lower level / theatre specific stuff) the ATOM pamphlet (3rd edition). Another (notwithstandng it being a little captured by the Maoist focus of the counterinsurgency era) would be the Australian Army Doctrine 1962, ‘The Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 11, Counter-revolutionary war’. Dated now, but a great example of practical doctrine, written by experienced soldiers for their mates to use and apply.
Final observation – I am not ‘against’ the engagment of academics , think tankers and polemicists as we research and develop doctrine. But where the rubber hits the road we must maintain the focus on the purpose and use of military doctrine and ensure that the product is truly ‘fit for purpose’. Let SSI and others publish the thematic and esteroric debates and ideas and lets see doctrine reclaimed for the soldier in the field.
Regards,
Mark
The problem, IMO, is that the original manual is seen as pretty darn good- so there will probably only be tweaking around the edges to incorporate lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Further- the audience will most likely be brigade staff all the way down to the squad sergeant- although the original manual, as one smart person has said, was written more as a PR piece- so only tweaking may not help the intended audience- I’m not sure.
The one tweak that hopefully will be apparent will be some mention of the importance of American political objectives. At the heart of every U.S. sponsored effort to assist a HN in their COIN should be, IMO, a list (preferably short) that ties our efforts to a US interest. Because of that- I don’t think we can automatically and uniformly categorize COIN as always being a subset of FID- since FID is a very big picture (more than just military) and since FID is tied to a HN’s IDAD strategy- which talks of development and governance, etc.- things that lend themselves arguably to nation-building, human rights, and pop-centric COIN (or, as some have dubbed it, “industrial COIN”). If the US is engaged in something else entirely- more limited regional objectives perhaps- that have nothing to do with a HN’s IDAD strategy or anything having to do with the populace- or the insurgency is the populace, and therefore the US has chosen to undercut the insurgency by supporting traditional power brokers, then what are we doing? Surely we can help someone counter an insurgency (or even do it unilaterally) for reasons other than a HN’s IDAD strategy or because we just hate human suffering, can’t we?
I, for one, think this manual should address the military only and shouldn’t wish away the problems we will run into in the real world. What do we do, for instance, when our nation does not issue clear objectives, and yet we find ourselves in a country assisting with a COIN effort? What do we do when the people are only vulnerable in our mind and don’t particularly care about governance, but just want to bash in the head of the guy in the village down the road? What do we do when the insurgents are mostly externally-supported and part of a greater regional power struggle that is much more important to our nation’s interests than winning of any hearts and minds are? We seem to wish away these nuances by saying they don’t describe COIN or they’ve never existed, or- worse- that we can’t admit that we’ll do that in public.
And sticking to “military only” will get us out of templating a nation-building solution only to look around and find we’re the only ones around who can do this nation-building. Nation-building is, for the most part, a theory of how we’d like COIN to work. It is built upon our understanding of what people want in life- which is the ubiquitous Hollywood catchphrase of “freedom!”. The reality is that people act irrationally, war and insurgency is about passions, and templating a solution to COIN is about as crazy as templating a solution to conventional war. How in the world we in the military ever tied economic development to our efforts in a COIN environment is beyond me- what American military officer understands how economies work? What economist, for that matter, does???
A few $.02 points on the Colonel’s points:
#3: COIN is a domestic operation: Limit COIN to domestic operations (unless dealing with resistance following the military defeat of some state with the intent to bring it under US governance). Casting support of someone else’s COIN as FID promotes proper roles and the enhancement of legitimacy.
100% agree. Lots of confusion as to which parts apply to the U.S. and which to the HN. Although- can we do COIN under other umbrellas other than FID? Since FID is attached to the IDAD strategy- I sure hope we can- otherwise we don’t give our leaders too many options.
#4: Types of Insurgency matter
We describe an approach to all insurgencies (clear, hold, build) as “operational art”. Is one framework really art? Sounds more “scientificiness” (“truthiness”) to me. The answer from some is that the art is in how you apply the framework. So, you can color by the numbers, but how you apply the colors is art??? I think we’re very weak in operational art when it comes to COIN. And unfortunately COIN doesn’t lend itself to our preferred “scientificiness” methods.
#5: Conditions of Insurgency: Recognize the underlying conditions of insurgency that exist in every society, how to relieve such pressure through good governance, and the critical distinction between natural stability and the artificial stability achieved through state security forces.
This is the “prerequisites, no? I still think this lends itself to advocating a nation-building approach every time we step in to an insurgent environment. “Good governance”- may be something needed, but something arguably we cannot give nor even most times support. If they lack that- then we either need a clear connection between our national objectives and attempting to nation-build (something we’re likely never to get), or we shouldn’t make it a prerequisite for conducting COIN IMO. So- in short, either we admit we’ll very rarely recommend to do it, or we divorce governance from our required support activities. I favor the latter.
#6: Human Nature: Appreciate how universal and timeless human nature is, and those aspects most important for understanding the strategic context of any insurgency. These are constants in the human domain that provide keys for solving complex, adaptive problems between people and governance.
I think this is part of our problem- we think we can understand other population groups because we’re all the same. I would rather we spend more time trying to tie our efforts to our national interests than trying to understand others- except in as much as it takes to get to our national interests…
#8: Sanctuary: Shifting the focus on “Sanctuary” from terrain to being more about legal status and popular support. Deny enabling status and popular support, particularly for regional groups like AQ.
What if building popular support means you get AQ?
#10: “Winning”: Not preserving some regime or defeating some threat, but expanding the percentage of the total populace that perceives governance works to support their reasonable ambitions.
What do you do when the populace’s reasonable ambitions are a type of governance that will work against our country’s interests? We can’t be Pollyanish about the world- populist entities rarely turn out to be U.S.-friendly from what I can tell. We need a more realistic and even Machiavellian option/context in our doctrine IMO
RCJ—as always great comments and well worth the read.
For those that doubt the military has not learned its lessons on nation building—believe the recently published Demsey Doctrine on that specific issue puts that it to bed for once and for always.
It is urgent that this military refocus and rebuild and Demsey fully understands that if his Doctrinal statement is placed against his 3 April White Paper.
Special Forces was created to do all of this…maybe we should let them get back to their original mission…”To raise and train indigenous forces and/or carry out missions beyond the scope of regular troops”. To include the original organization of psy-ops,a-teams,civil affairs. Some organization concepts from the “Cold War Era” were very well thought out and still have merit today.
All,
Great comments all. Getting ready for day one. Today we listen and gain a sense for the goals and atmosphere of what direction this intends to go. Will we simply seek to layer on another few years of tactical lessons learned from a couple of discrete operations? Will we seek to incorporate force structure demand signals to help carry ground services through the pending budget crisis? To be determined.
There is indeed much that is very good about the current manual, but we need very much to upgrade our understanding of these types of conflicts, and to rethink how effective it really is to manipulate the governance of others by helping hold their revolutionary populaces in check to preserve some regime that believe is the best hope for securing our interets (or at least better than what we fear might emerge).
Maybe we will learn that the leaders of these countries often play on this fear of ours, making us see mere windmills as great giants, and sending us out to tilt with their political challengers in a manner that allows them to extend their reign, or delay making needed reforms.
Should be a good day.
Something for consideration- this is a mission that I had to detach a platoon to execute unilaterally many years ago, and I still don’t have a good answer for.
What do you do when you are tasked to advise or overwatch a host nation security force suspected of war crimes during the government’s pacification campaign?
I think this exemplifies the dilemma. Personally, I cannot imagine a worse way to write doctrine that to call together a mob of SMEs and have them introduce change proposals by BOGSAT. Although TRADOC talks the talk of modeling and simulation, one would never dream of actually holding a battle lab experiment with all these SMEs as players to probe the problem space and work out solutions.
But that isn’t my main gripe. In the end, there will be a lieutenant colonel stationed at Leavenworth who has to put all these disparate inputs into a coherent book. There is a 100% probability that less than 100% of the stakeholders will be pleased with the results. Also – given the lack of a central authority to issue interagency doctrine – COL Gentile’s remark that the military has to take on the COIN burden alone is only pragmatically accurate. One would be much better off defining clear definitions and terms of reference in doctrine, and if one did just that, it would be quite a lot. Given that there is a very deep tradition in the social science academic community – going back to Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies” – that negates the development of definitional standards, the lead author will be very much on his or her own. My advice on definitions – Make ’em up. That’s right, make ’em up, if you can’t find an acceptable definition in JP1-02 or even the CCO Lexicon. At the worst, you won’t be doing any more damage than ambitious US Army combat developers have done for generations with a seemingly endless rain of neologisms.
One does get the sense that we are at a juncture where doctrinal concensus – specifically on COIN – may simply be unachievable. It is difficult for the Army to live with that reality. Formal doctrinal publications do give the community a venue for honest and thorough argument. Don’t try to fudge the issues. Use the language so as to clarify choices, not cover them over. Very often there will be a range of actions which fall outside doctrine, indeed, which doctrine cannot easily capture, even if it is theoretically well-grounded. When it comes to the “how to” (do this, do that, do yet another thing), don’t imagine that it is possible to cover every possible scenario – write at a level that gives doctrine some breathing room and gives commanders some freedom. They’ll need it.
Kings of War blog has an item that refers to the revision: http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2012/05/object-subject-bullets/
It opens with:’Metrics, metrics, metrics. Three out of the six pointers in this rather good Foreign Policy article concern the ability of military organisations to figure out their impact on the world around them. Surprisingly, the concept doesn’t appear (by name) in Robert C. Jones’ advice on the revision of the FM 3-24 manual’.
The FP article is: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/03/the_next_war?page=full
#3 COIN is a domestic operation. Definitely. this is not to say that COIN cannot be done by a foreign force – they can, but only when in position as an occupying power. Foreign forces can assist and advise local forces on COIN. COIN as a domestic operation leads to #5
#5 “…how to relieve such pressure through good governance”. When you are not conducting COIN but assisting an indigenous government in COIN operations there is often conflict between enabling good governance and supporting the extant power structures. These are most marked at the operational and strategic levels. Most poor campaigns have their genesis in poor strategic planning and I think this is one of the areas at the strategic level where more thought needs given.
#9 Unconvinced by this. I think we often conflate causation with governance issues; the root causes are often deeper. Poor governance is often a symptom of an extant conflict between differing power systems. We attribute to governance because one element happens to control the mechanisms of governance – sometimes we have to look at the reasons why the governance is poor.
Some other miscellaneous points.
Understanding and context are key, and we need to be better at understanding ourselves. I am often struck by how much we assume about the validity of our perspective even to the extent that we assume all cultures regard time in the same way as we do (I speak as an Anglo-Saxon). It would be useful for COIN doctrine to have a primer on our own culture, including organisational culture.
Aim for the target audience. One size does not necessarily fit all in terms of language and construct for any publication and this includes doctrine. With the current level of experience in the US armed forces this doctrine should come across as intuitively right and understandable at every level.
I have to compliment COL Jones for a valiant effort on this one. Some of his suggestions, #4 in particular, remind me very much of the ambiguity I faced with the COIN challenge, during my most recent deployment in Afghanistan (summer 2008 to summer 2009).
On point #4 for example, our lack of precision in the military and civilian spheres with terms such as insurgent, terrorist, guerilla, etc., indicates more than semantic laziness. Our organizational failure to name the threat clearly and accurately undermines our very planning efforts in the COIN fight. For example, when we fail to carefully determine whether we are combating revolutionaries, criminals or insurrectionists, we breed confusion as how best to employ our own Information Operations and Public Affairs/Media Engagement capabilities to influence the population and the threat. Another concern is how do we utilize money as a weapons system when we’re unclear on what type of disaffected individuals we are contending with? This lack of semantic precision also limits our non-kinetic options as well. If we understand those we fight to be mainly criminal in nature, without additional ideological motivation, that affects the types of options we have at our disposal. Admittedly certain groups will always display overlapping tendencies, which makes the naming process harder. This challenge, however, should not deter leaders and policy makers from pursuing precision when defining the threat. As my Brigade Chief of Operations in Afghanistan used to say, “Words have meaning.” The duration, lethality and success of our COIN involvement could correlate very closely with how accurately we conceptualize and name the threat.
CPT Robert Schmor
Student, US Army Command and General Staff College
“The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.”
I am also curious as to the plan for Joint Pub 3-24. What is the plan for the revision of that document and what will its focus be?
I have serious reservations about making too much out of ‘legitimacy’ in any military COIN doctrine. It is a lacuna that will spur countless motherhood statements but ultimately shed little light in what a military force engaged in counterinsurgency should or could do.
Consider:
1. The ‘concept’ of legitimacy bears lightly on many insurgent actions. It has serious explanatory difficulties once you step away from the sort of maoist revolutionary threat that people like Rostow, Hilsman and Thompson theorised about in the 60s. There are not many of these insurgencies today. Shafer’s critique of US systemic views on this issue are as valid today as when he wrote it.
2. Legitimacy concepts do not deal with well with issues of criminality, warlordism, ethnic conflict, religious conflict , resource wars and globalisation – all of which are features (often simeltaneously) of contemporary insurgencies. Or multiple insurgencies. Or multiple causality.
3. Legitimacy is not a military goal or task. Consider the mission statement ‘1/1 BCT is to foster / achive legitimacy in TAOR JIHAD in order to consolidate the Government of Coinistam’. Farcical right? So why are we debating it in an FM?
Legitimacy is COIN red herring that empirical review of COIN campaigns suggests has no direct correlation with COIN success. It is a Hearts and Minds paradigm hangover that made little sense during the Kennedy years of COIN enthusiasm and even less now.
The only context where we can draw positive correlation between legitimacy and COIN success is in the realm of the reinforcing the state in the Westphalian tradition as the only legitimate user of violence within society.
Bob,
Given your comment at 0738 this morning excerpted below, can you give us some additional insights into how the conference turned out? Thanks
QUOTE: The old FM 3-24 does not address this and it is a MAJOR shortfall. From the discussions of the past week the next version will be even more limited in that regard, as it seeks to only focus on that aspect of insurgency that is likely to be encoutered by a Brigade Combat Team, and those things a BCT would do to Clear-Hold-Build to stability as part of the interagency/coalition/host nation team.END QUOTE
Bob,
Thanks for the clarification. I am in broad agreement. The point you make about ‘containment’ COIN is a very good one. I think that we (the west ) need to recognise that the strategic ends of what I term ‘second-party counterinsurgency’ (ie, ‘interventionist’ COIN) are far closer (but not 100% aligned) with the tenets of the ‘imperial policing’ era (need to get over our hang ups with the term) than the ‘counterinsurgency era’. In many cases ( dare I say most) our stargeic interest has nothing to do with nation building and everything to do with the maintenance of some form of status quo that we believe to be in our interests. Defeating insurgency , rather than decades long dubious efforts at nation building will normally suffice for our strategic purposes.
I also think that the sentiment that the doctrine needs to maintain and focus on being an ‘FM’ is about right. I also agree with the point that Dave M made about the utility of the previous FM’s dogma being incorporated into a JP (or something similar).
Cheers
Mark
Saw this in the “most popular” section and took a view minutes to see if my positions of three years ago were standing up to the test of current challenges. a great deal of powerful discussion, well worth the review.
One point I would add today is that if an intervening power hopes to help cure insurgency, and not simply suppress the current insurgents, they must ensure that the population behind the insurgency perceives it has a viable political alternative, and that intervening party must also be fairly agnostic ast what type of government emerges, or who remains or rises to power. This is not yet within our risk paradigm, and we continue to fail in support of answers we think best for us.
Yes, thanks Bob. This is worth revisiting. Heart of the blog stuff. As most of you are aware, I’m generally anti-FM 3-24, anti-COIN. I think we should leave the definition of counterinsurgency at countering insurgency, and leave the definition of insurgency to civilian lexicographers as they see it evolve in common usage. Although I will agree with all of you that ‘irregular war’ also has its problems as an umbrella term for our doctrine, I think it gives us the scope and flexibility to consider what to do without falling into too many other semantic traps. Few wars are completely internal, and, from what I can tell, as soon as any foreign intervention happens, a contest immediately becomes some sort of mixture. I’ve got to go with Dave M. here that we should not separate doctrine and manuals for COIN, FID, SFA and Stability Operations. I think we should take each conflict as its own category of conflict, and consider early and recurrently what it is that we wish to prevent, stop or punish, and who the perpetrators are. One more snipe: I think even looking at its appearances in this very thread, the word legitimacy is exposed as a weak vessel. I think it is used more than a 170 times in the last insurgency-counterinsurgency manual — inconsistently at that. Let’s have a moratorium on the use of that word; it has become an excuse and an argument more than a guide and a goal.
I still think we should leave doctrine to the tactical level and get out of the business of defining abstractions. Our theories of how the world works aren’t referenced- in doctrine or otherwise- and therefore are just assertions. We have conventional wisdom, the people who have influence, and the people who shout the loudest. FM 3-24, like most of the doctrine I’ve worked on, was heavily, if not wholly, influenced from the top and what little the bottom got in was accepted more through surrender than any compelling reasoning.
Instead of coming up with our own suppositions backed up with assertions, we should look at three things:
1- how has Russia and Iran been so successful at operating through proxies and we haven’t??
2- what are our own institutional obstacles to learning?
3- what is the realistic situation with respect to our own political environment and decision-making situation?
I submit many of our problems are systemic– and internal- yet we continue to focus on “the other.” And our solutions – at least doctrinally- are simply recommendations to re-name things or come up with new lists of stuff we have to think about/do.
Re: the idea of a more-“generic” study of insurgency, rather than a more-specific study of our current paradigm, I vote for the latter. In this regard, consider the following:
For the United States today, the idea of insurgency — and especially the idea of global insurgency — these must be understood in terms of:
a. OUR enduring determination (and great post-Cold War push) to transform other states and societies more along our very different political, economic and social lines. And
b. THEIR enduring determination (and great post-Cold War push back) to deny/prevent these such radical and rapid transformations.
Thus today, in our New Cold War, we essentially have:
a. The exact same problems (re: insurgencies, etc.) with
b. The exact same people (for example, with the conservative elements of various populations, and with great nation rivals) that
c. Our Soviet/communists counterparts did in the Old Cold War; this,
d. For the exact same reason that they did back then, to wit: due to their (then) and our (now) attempt to:
1. Gain greater power, influence and control throughout the world; this,
2. Via the radical and rapid transformation of other states and societies along one’s own (alien and profane in the eyes of many natives) political, economic and social lines.
Thus, to suggest that the difficulties that we are now experiencing — re: insurgencies and many other issues — these can be traced directly to our discomfort and unfamiliarity with our current role. One which finds:
a. The U.S./the West now doing “expansion” (much as the Soviets/the communists did during the Old Cold War),
b. Many native populations resisting our such efforts (much as they did the Soviets/the communists such efforts in days past),
c. Our great nation rivals taking advantage of this situation and doing “containment” (much as we did back in the day). This, so as to
d. Effectively deny the U.S./the West the ability to (1) gain greater power, influence and control throughout the world via (2) favorable outlying state and societal transformations.
So: Is it possible that such things as insurgencies, political warfare, etc., etc., etc., today might best be understood — not via a study of insurgencies generally — but, rather, via a consideration of the specific and governing “New Cold War” paradigm outlined above?