The Counterinsurgency Paradigm Shift
The Counterinsurgency Paradigm Shift by Justin Lynch, War on the Rocks
It has been a challenging year for the Department of Defense. For more than a decade, Operation Iraqi Freedom and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan highlighted the need for a modern military to be able to operate in complex human terrain. But even as the military continued to fight in Afghanistan, it also faced the budgetary uncertainties of sequestration. In this fiscally constrained environment, even given current events, counterinsurgency may return to a low priority. The DoD has reached a decision point; it is undergoing a paradigm shift, deciding what its capabilities will be in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military will either resource the training required to be capable of conducting counterinsurgencies, or focus almost exclusively on conventional operations. Given today’s operational environment, the military must retain and improve upon the counterinsurgency lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. If not, the United States will not have the competencies needed to accomplish its policy objectives…
