Did CT Kill COIN?: Perspectives on the Special Forces Raids
Did CT Kill COIN?: Perspectives on the Special Forces Raids by David Ucko, Kings of War.
James Kitfield, author of the classic text Prodigal Soldiers, has penned an interesting ‘five takeaways’ article about the two US Special Operations raids in Somalia and Libya last week. One of his observations is that the raids vindicate the advocates of CT – or counter-terrorism – in their ‘heated debate’ with the advocates of counterinsurgency. He concludes that ‘the news of the nearly simultaneous U.S. commando raids this past weekend drives home just how decisively advocates for a limited counter-terrorism strategy have won the argument’.
I have no doubts that we are or will soon be leaving this particular ‘counterinsurgency era’, a period defined by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Kitfield is also correct in noting the US administration’s and the public’s aversion to protracted, costly and ambiguous state-building operations. Still, there is something a little troubling about the interpretation of this shift, from COIN to CT, as a ‘winning argument’…
I find myself in violent agreement with David Ucko on almost all points. My slight disagreement is on the issue of the degree to which Afghanistan and Iraq are anomalous. When a major power determines that it must overthrow the government of a sovereign country, it immediately becomes the occupying power over any ground that it controls. It remains the occupying power until such time as a new host government can control the territory and enforce limits on any agreed upon residual foreign forces. If resistance develops during an occupation – rather likely – then the occupier must fight a counterinsurgency (COIN). That COIN will be some kind of combination of enemy centric and population centric strategy, operations, and tactics. In Libya, NATO avoided being an occupier by essentially putting no troops on the ground. It worked but the outcome was clearly less than optimal. Although the UN and NATO accepted the obligations of occupation in Afghanistan, it was half hearted and we all tried to transfer sovereignty before Afghan government was capable of fully accepting it. Last point is that direct action is only one of many SOF missions and while other SOF units are capable of performing it, DA is the forte (in the US at least) of the two tier 1 Special Mission Units (DEVGRU and Delta).
Have agree with John on this, that he is not saying that one has to stay and occupy, but rather that if one does a resistance insurgency is apt to result. This is the one type of COIN that I believe can fairly be classified as war, as it is simply a continuation of warfare. Two separate systems clash, one defeats the government and the military of the other, and then must in turn defeat the population as well in order to exercise its dominion over them.
But we did not set out to exercise our dominion over either Iraq or Afghanistan or the people their. So in fact, we were never doing “COIN” in either place, though certainly we provoked a resistance insurgency against us by our occupation in both. We may have destroyed any effective host nation governance, yet for all of that, we were still in the FID role in both places due to our status and our intent. We set ourselves on a path of illegitimacy and years of frustration by not appreciating that our actions would spark resistance, and equally by not staying in our lane as the FID actor from the start. The role one defines will in turn define the family of actions one takes. We picked the wrong role and it led to all manner of wrong families of actions. The results speak for themselves.
We also then decided shortsightedly to conduct CT against insurgents. Not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, Somalia, etc, etc, etc. All this can hope to accomplish is perhaps suppress the current generation of actors, but at the same time drive the conditions of iinsurgency deeper into the fabric of those societies, and also drive the motivation to wage acts of transnational terrorism against the US in deeper as well. We pat our backs for our tactical successes, but whistle past the cemetery regarding our strategic failures.
Bob–
Agree with your analysis of the FID role. Question: who says we (and anybody else for that matter) can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?
It seems that you, Gian, and I all agree (and I suspect that David Ucko would as well)that the critical issues are at the strategic and policy levels. If those are well thought out then we have a chance of success; if not, then no matter how good our tactics, we will fail.
John
Gian, John,
If I follow this exchange correctly, Gian doubts that the victor automatically assumes the role of occupying power and rejects the premise that there exists a law that defines what is an occupying power. John disagrees and explains that international law dictates that the victor assumes the role of occupying power as long as he controls the ground.
It appears that legal consensus is on Gian’s side. Legal scholars continue to debate the topic and as of present there is no one law that definitely defines the term “military occupation” or “occupying power.” The relevant body of law addressing occupation is weak when the term occupation, with its entire emotional connotations, is rejected by one party or another. You can say that the concept of occupation is actually juristically inoperative especially since it is disputed in practically all contemporary conflicts, particularly those involving guerrilla and irregular warfare.
John is also correct because the 1907 Hague Regulations, like those of 1899, assume that a military occupation occurs in the context of a war, and consists of direct control of one hostile State’s territory by a rival hostile State’s armed forces. But what if there was never a formal declaration of war? No declaration of war; no war?
A fair rule of thumb, proposed by Adam Roberts is that “every time the armed forces of a country are in control of foreign territory, and find themselves face to face with the inhabitants, some or all of the provisions of the law on occupations are applicable”. In essence, it appears that you are free to pick and choose how much of an occupying power you are.
http://bybil.oxfordjournals.org/ at Columbia University Libraries on January 22, 2013
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MAC