Second-party Counterinsurgency
Second-party Counterinsurgency by Mark O’Neill, PhD Dissertation, University of New South Wales.
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the theory and conduct of counterinsurgency operations by interventionist states, defined and labeled herein as second-party counterinsurgency. The conduct of such second-party counterinsurgency has been (and is) commonplace in the contemporary era, yet a large proportion of extant counterinsurgency theory and practice – indeed much of the commonly accepted counterinsurgency paradigm – fails to meet the challenge of its subject adequately.
In line with this assertion, contemporary Western counterinsurgency practice has all too often defaulted to a formulaic approach, characterised by an overly simplistic ‘hearts and minds’ archetype. This model has held the imagination of counterinsurgency theory and scholarship since the early 1960s. It is a basic argument of this dissertation that blind acceptance of the ‘hearts and minds’ paradigm has often led second-party counterinsurgents to adopt of inappropriate ways and means to attain their strategic objectives. This increases the risk of defeat in what is already a complex and difficult enterprise. The most important original contribution made by this study is to identify the need for, and propose, a suitable alternative framework for the conduct of second-party counterinsurgency. The central hypothesis is that the principles of counter violence, counter organisation, counter subversion and pre-emption, supported by the enabling concepts of intelligence and adaptation, provide a new and more appropriate theoretical framework to inform the successful conduct of second-party counterinsurgency. Central to the proposed framework is a method that seeks to focus and capitalise on the relative ubiquity of insurgent ways in order to create a defeat mechanism that invokes Clausewitz’s rational calculus.
The research underpinning this study derives from a literature review and analysis of archival, primary and secondary source material, the conduct of personal interviews, the use of research questionnaires with select personnel, and the establishment and verification of the framework using three critical historical case studies. The key conclusion of this thesis is that strong correlation appears to exist between the dependent variables of the proposed second-party counterinsurgency framework and successful counterinsurgency operations.
The article while interesting as it comes from someone on the outside looking in —the comments below that the surge appeared to be successful fail at explaining if successful then why is AQI now ISIL and the then Islamic Army of Iraq now JRTN are pounding away at a 300K man Iraqi security force quite successfully one might say for a supposedly defeated insurgency.
When we do these types of studies it would behoove the writer to extend the research to understand the current environment when judging the past as it is the past that tells us what the future will be and right now in Iraq based on the population losses we are back to 2006/2007 so again to say the surge was successful is a stretch at best. The years of 2006/2007 reflected in 2013 does not appear to validate the success of the surge.
“Of further considerable interest is that, despite the profound differences in the independent variables between the Iraq case study and the previous two, the second-party counterinsurgency framework appears to have, again, considerable explanatory value in accounting for the conduct of successful counterinsurgency operations.”
Outlaw,
The ‘article’ is not a casual opinion piece. It is a dissertation. As such it makes an evidenced based argument within a defined logical framework. It perhaps useful that the reader understands that framework and accepts it for what it is – and it is clearly not an evaluation of the Iraq War.
The quote you offer is acontextual. The thesis makes it explicit in several parts that the case study is not of the Iraq war per se, rather on whether finite elements of it during a bounded and finite period offer any correlation with a proposed framework. The specific dates used are 07, 08.
The paper assesses ‘success’ (as such) against the relevant aims of the second-party counter insurgency’s ‘surge’ objectives, not whether the Iraq war was won. The war clearly remains unresolved. And unlikely to ever be resolved by any second-party. That idea is fool’s gold.
Let me be blunt (and here comes the ‘opinion piece’). I do not think that the surge was ever about winning the war in Iraq. It was a roll of the dice in order to mitigate a disaster into something a little less embarassing. And allow the US to exit with a modicum of grace. And on these limited criteria, it worked.
Also not sure that I do offer a purely ‘outside looking in’ perspective. My service in Iraq during 07/08 has undoubtedly informed and prejudiced my perspectives.
Cheers and regards,
Mark
Mark,
Thanks for sharing and for all the hard work. I can’t imagine the time and effort that went into this.
I will read it in full some day (I promise), but my short question is “Can a second-party counterinsurgency ever yield long term positive results?”
BTW, my son is a graduate of UNSW
Interventionalist nations would seem to use the opportunities and excuses available to them — as provided by various and sundry difficulties presenting in other nations — to try to achieve a “better peace” in these other nations. This “better peace” is often defined as the problem state and society being transformed along the political, economic and social lines of the intervening nation.
Thus, powerful intervening states, such as the former Soviet Union, might seek to transform the way of life and the way of governance of a problem state and society along communist lines and, in this manner, achieve their strategic objective (peaceful, well-functioning neighbor; organized, oriented and ordered, in this instance, along communist political, economic and social lines; this providing the intervening power with optimal access to and use of the human and other resources of this state and its societies).
So when regime change has been accomplished and/or the insurgency begins, the manner in which the counterinsurgency is conducted is often heavily influenced by this “better peace” definition, and the strategic objective, as outlined in my first and second paragraphs above.
Thus, winning “hearts and minds,” in these scenerios, would seem to mean winning the population over by way of the attractiveness of the foreign intervening power’s way of life and way of governance.
Herein, the “blind acceptance” of the intervening nation that its way of life and way of governance had some kind of “universal appeal” — and, therefore, great utility re: counterinsurgency — this often dooms the project from the outset. This, because numerous populations either will not or simply cannot make the radical and rapid transition to such an alien and, in their view, profane way of life and way of governance.
Would this be an example of second-party interventionalists using inappropariate ways and means (“hearts and minds”) to try to achieve their strategic objective?
(In my second paragraph above, I used a former USSR/communist example for variety and interest, but this flawed “universal appeal”/”hearts and minds” method would also seem to be a/the classic approach to counterinsurgency used by intervening western/capitalist nations.)
Being honest: I only read the abstract, the Iraq case, and portions of the conclusions. Being succinct: Tremendous addition to the existing literature. I benefitted from the comparison of counter organization and counter violence tactics versus the “Hearts and Minds” illusion. I also appreciated the planner’s perspective provided by interviews with Ollivant.
Congratulations, Mark! I eagerly anticipate reading the dissertation. Have you arranged for publication yet?
Mark–Thanks for an absolutely outstanding paper.
A couple of notes of historical interest:
(1) Strikes me this is an opportune time to mention that when I arrived in Military Region 3 (earlier, III Corps)in 1971, CORDS was obviously overwhelmingly US–but not entirely so. Australians filled a number of important positions. The numbers were small, but the contribution notable. Inter alia, the CORDS Regional (i.e., III-Corps level) Senior RF/PF Adviser was an Australian full colonel (Sorry, I can’t recall the name); and two out of the three or four CORDS District Senior Advisers in Phuoc Tuy Province (the Australian AO) were Australian army officers…
(2) US CORDS District and Province Senior Advisers, largely US army field grade officers plus a handful of civilians (of which I was privileged to be one)routinely underwent training (up to nearly one year)prior to being deployed to VN, at the State Dept.-run Vietnam Training Center (VTC) in Arlington, Virginia. In 1970-71, the VTC COIN expert, periodically in attendance on a recurring TDY basis, was Dennis Duncanson, for years a close collaborator of Sir Robert Thompson’s and at the time a leading theoretician of the British so-called “drain the swamp” school of COIN. (The VTC staff were convinced that Duncanson was Sir Robert’s ghost writer, but this is entirely unconfirmed.) Duncanson (voicing what had become the official line) made it clear that the COIN state of the art had put paid the idea of WHAM as a relevant COIN element. As he put it, referring to the idea that the rural Vietnamese would choose between competing friendly and communist menus, “The South East Asian peasant has historically never been, nor is he now, the master of his own destiny.” He elaborated that under no circumstances would the rural Vietnamese be allowed to choose, without dire intimidation, which side to support.
Cheers,
Mike.
Thank you Mike,
Those men probably came from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATV) . The Team remain. The most decorated unit in our Army’s history .
Best,
Mark
To understand how the SVN villager was reacting towards anything resembling COIN suggest reading the 1982 book Silence Was A Weapon—The Vietnam War In the Villages by Stuart A Herrington
He worked as an officer in the Phoenix Program, spoke fluent Vietnamese and was one of the last off the Embassy roof in 1975 and went on to command the elite counter intelligence unit in Berlin and then commanded the Foreign Counterintelligence Team at INSCOM.
Well worth the read as so the Vietnam villagers reacted so reacted the Iraqi and Afghans toward both sides of the their conflicts—namely sitting on the fence in silence until one side was winning.
a. “A unified political, economic, diplomatic, administrative, and social effort to win broad popular allegiance alongside a strictly limited military campaign to destroy the politically marginalized insurgency.”
The above would seem to be wrong somehow and the following would seem to be more correct:
b. “A unified political, economic, diplomatic, administrative, and social effort to (1) undermine and eliminate the way of life and way of governance of the outlying states and societies (the “root cause” of many present difficulties) and to (2) replace these with a way of life and way of governance which are more similar to and, therefore, more compatible with that of the interventionist state and its society.”
Note that in my item “b” above, I do not suggest that one can, via this method, “win popular allegiance,” conduct “a strictly limited military campaign” or “politically marginalize (the) insurgency.” Such would seem to depend on whether one could prove that the interventionist states’ way of life and way of governance held some magical and “universal appeal” with each and every population in the world. And as we and many other interventionist states have learned, such is not the case.
Thus, if a “better peace” (see my item “b” above) is what the interventionist states are after (and I suggest that it is), then they must concede that this cannot always be achieved via hearts and minds.
!
Mark,
Just read through the introduction and I look forward to wading through the remainder of the dissertation. One point that isn’t clear yet, which is hardly fair after only reading the introduction, is the definition of the second party counterinsurgent. Your definition in the introduction is clear to a point, but I want to clarify your intent in my pea brain. It appears that in all your case studies the 2d party counterinsurgent is engaged in combat operations against the insurgents. Does this definition for the purpose of your study and findings still consider the U.S. (for example) a second party counterinsurgent if it is conducted limited FID and no combat operations against the insurgents?
G’Day Bill M.
While all three case studies involved Second-party Counterinsurgents being engaged in direct combat, I do not regard participation in combat as an ‘essential element’ of Second-party counterinsurgency – although my sense is that it will be more common than not. Hence the definition specifically refering to ‘counterinsurgency activity’ rather than something more specific like ‘counterinsurgency related combat’.
Regards
Mark,
Up to chapter V and I’ll have to hold off on the case study chapters until next weekend. I think this dissertation adds a lot to the ongoing COIN debate, and frankly I tend to favor your theory over the others I have read and studied. I’m somewhat an outspoken critic of our current COIN doctrine based on nation building and social/political reform. You addressed the illogic in this approach brilliantly.
I believe it was chapter IV, you pointed out what I consider to be obvious, how does “attempting” to win hearts and minds address conflicts related to identity, religion, and culture? I would take it a step further, and state our development efforts frequently inflame the issues of identity and culture. In short I agree with your premise that focusing on hearts and minds doesn’t align with our end of defeating an insurgency. Myths die hard if they die at all, so I suspect while your paper is well argued up to this point it won’t change our cultural bias towards embracing hearts and minds.
The one area in your paper that I found a little weak was your description of subversion. I encourage you to look at our UW doctrine for a fuller and perhaps more relevant description as a starting point, not an ending point. Subversion can take many forms beyond the three principle actions you described.
It is an accurate move to consider renaming operations involving foreign intervention, and especially the toppling of the existing government as minimally a different sort of counterinsurgency. It was frustrating hearing recent lectures on the “history of counterinsurgency,” by Max Boot, roll over these distinctions and then draw out conclusions based on a failure to distinguish in kind. The early phases bear more in common with classic occupation and the mopping up of residue resistance than “foreign internal defense” of an allied or longer-term friendly government.
“The primary aim of undertaking counterinsurgency is to defeat the insurgency.”
As relates to such interventionist powers as the former USSR then and the United States today, we may wish to consider whether the above statement and thought is accurate.
With certain intervening great powers, such as the former USSR then and the United States today, the primary aim of engagement (diplomatic, military, etc.) would seem to be to transform outlying states and societies along the intervening power’s own political, economic and social lines.
This causing such things as “defeating an insurgency” to take a back seat to this overriding political objective; which the former USSR then and the United States today seem to have in common.
Thus, the overriding political objective of outlying state and societal transformation often (1) dictating how the former USSR then and the United States today conducted a counterinsurgency campaign, (2) determining whether success was likely to be achieved and, if so, (3) at what cost in time, blood, political capital and other treasure.
So, as relates to the former USSR then and the USA today, not garden-variety counterinsurgency campaigns — where the goal is simply to defeat the insurgency — but something more complicated than this — in which the goal of the interventionist power is much more entailed and much more grandiose in nature.
Mark,
I look forward very much to reading your work in detail. I am confident that it will be a very helpful experience and valuable resource regardless of where one falls in their conclusions as to what the problems with recent COIN efforts have been, or what the most appropriate cures for those problems might actually be. My initial thoughts upon review of this short introduction are as follows:
“It is a basic argument of this dissertation that blind acceptance of the ‘hearts and minds’ paradigm has often led second-party counterinsurgents to adopt of inappropriate ways and means to attain their strategic objectives. This increases the risk of defeat in what is already a complex and difficult enterprise. “ ( I personally believe the problem is not H and M per se, but rather our very liberal and literal interpretation of this concept that seems to overly focus on “buying” the loyalty and support of the population through gifts of development and services provided by the second party and efforts to improve the effectiveness of the first party at providing the same things. When one thinks of H and M as a poetic name for earning perceptions of political legitimacy in the minds of the aggrieved segment of the population the insurgent emerges from and is supported by, one comes to a very different family of viable approaches than those practiced in recent years)
“The most important original contribution made by this study is to identify the need for, and propose, a suitable alternative framework for the conduct of second-party counterinsurgency. The central hypothesis is that the principles of counter violence, counter organisation, counter subversion and pre-emption, supported by the enabling concepts of intelligence and adaptation, provide a new and more appropriate theoretical framework to inform the successful conduct of second-party counterinsurgency.” (This appears to be both too “counter” and too focused on the operational arm , the insurgent, rather than upon the conditions of insurgency that exist across the much broader segment of the population that such groups emerge from and equally rely upon for their sanctuary, support and sustainment across all classes of supply, not the least of which is “personnel.”)
“Central to the proposed framework is a method that seeks to focus and capitalize on the relative ubiquity of insurgent ways in order to create a defeat mechanism that invokes Clausewitz’s rational calculus.” (This appears to promote the belief that success comes when we approach all insurgencies in a more war-like manner such as promoted by Clausewitz. My concern is that only resistance insurgency, where the goal of the second party counterinsurgent is to bring the population of their opponent also under their foreign control following the defeat of their government and Army, seems to fit this model (e.g., Germany in the territories they occupied during WWII). Sustained control of a population is not typically the mission of second party counterinsurgents in the modern era. Most insurgencies are revolutionary in nature, where some internal element of a system of “Government-Army-People” is seeking to coerce change in part or whole on their own system of governance. I don’t believe that Clausewitz’s rational calculus applies very well to these types of internal conflicts that are probably better thought of as civil emergencies than as war, regardless of how destructive and violent they may become.)
Congratulations upon completing this major addition to the body of work on counterinsurgency. I think most can agree that current interpretations of the history of such operations are not working in the modern era. Reasonable minds will always differ as to what these emotionally charged conflicts are, why they emerge, and how to best resolve them; but projects such as this help collect and clarify the facts surrounding key issues in a way that all can benefit from.
Respectfully,
Bob