Career-Centric COIN: A SWJ Retrospective
Editor’s Note:
This essay is the first in a new series at Small Wars Journal called RETROSPECTIVES. In this series, we are asking authors from our community to submit articles that reflect on their own works from 10+ years ago. Ideally, these are essays that you published with us or articles that were frequently cited in SWJ as part of the discourse on small wars and irregular warfare. We ask that you reflect on your thesis with the power of hind-sight on a personal and professional level. For our inaugural article, our Editor-in-Chief, Ken Gleiman, reflects on the first article he ever published back in September of 2011.
My Jerry Maguire Moment
I published an essay in Small Wars Journal in 2011 that coined the phrase, “Career-centric COIN.” I was a Special Forces Major at the time and had just entered my second year in Fort Leavenworth at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). The essay was a sort of a Jerry Maguire moment in my career, or at least it felt that way for me. If you’re not familiar with the movie, there is one scene where the title character, played by Tom Cruise, pours his heart out into a monograph that highlights everything that’s wrong with his industry, the firm he works for, and how to fix it. He then prints multiple copies and leaves one for every person in his company. Initially greeted with praise, McGuire is soon fired for his vision that goes against the grain.
I did not get fired for my essay. I did receive some praise and attention, though not nearly as much as another Special Forces Major, Jim Gant, whose essay One Tribe at a Time made an undeniable impression across the national security community. While I admired Jim Gant (and still do!) I didn’t think much of his piece which I called “Gant’s Rant.” Perhaps with a touch of jealousy, but I believed Gant put too much focus on tribal engagement.
In retrospect, I think a bit more of it. It was personal, passionate, and very persuasive. My monograph and article were historical, analytical, and empirical. Despite the moderate praise I received for my very academic article, there was a patronizing dismissiveness from more than a few senior Army leaders. Some agreed with my arguments but effectively patted me on the head – cynically suggesting that that’s just the way it is. Somehow, I was smart, yet naive for pointing out the scandal of the haphazard organization of the COIN campaign in Afghanistan that wasn’t optimized with centralized authority and decentralized execution. Gant got sent back to Afghanistan to his beloved valley to engage with tribes and raise Afghan Local Police. He then tragically spiraled. I was sent to Afghanistan to do plans for the special operations command and try to figure out how to sustain the Afghan Local Police program politically, logistically, and operationally.
The Argument
The central thesis of my essay was two-fold. First, the United States designed its counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan against all evidence of what might be considered best practice from both history and theory. Second, the United States justified its counterinsurgency design on secret and sometimes overt military service and bureaucratic interests, as well as on the interests of their leaders, and those of other civilian agencies. The evidence backing my thesis was everywhere – from the decisions made about doctrine, to staffing, tour length, talent management, and especially in chain of command and command-and-control relationships. The military had replaced unity of command with a thin veneer called “unity of effort” top to bottom.
The Journey
The essay was based on my master’s thesis (more of a book really) that I had written while attending Command and General Staff College (CGSC). The Organizational Imperative: Theory and History on Unity of Effort in Counterinsurgency Campaigns was no ordinary CGSC paper. I came to CGSC unwillingly. I already had a master’s degree. I had graduated from Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute (now the McCourt School of Public Policy) several years before. I had two combat tours and numerous operational deployments, but it wasn’t enough. I was young and arrogant enough to believe that I didn’t need any additional directed education. I studied and read widely enough on my own and I had heard that CGSC was not very rigorous. But I was compelled to go to clear a hurdle for promotion; and so, I went.
I’d often watch the faces of instructors as they tried to remain stoic to such undermining comments. It was the face of defeat, concealed with stoicism.
I found the intellectual experience at CGSC wanting, despite some very committed professors. There was no challenge. It was easy to pass, hard to fail, and annoying to others if you excelled. At that time, academic excellence had no real impact on one’s career, assignments etc. Senior leaders who occasionally stopped by to address the student body openly belittled the curriculum routinely playing to audience of students by saying, “It’s only a lot of reading if you do it.” I’d often watch the faces of instructors as they tried to remain stoic to such undermining comments. It was the face of defeat, concealed with stoicism. (I’d see that same face of defeat on my peers in late August of 2021 when everything in Afghanistan collapsed.) I was always impressed by some of the instructors though. They’d bounce back from these awkward moments and move on to teach their next lesson with passion. Some did not bounce back. (Same with my peers in August 2021).
But these incidents aligned with the general attitude about CGSC that it was supposed to be one year of respite from the long hours and the grind of deployments and training cycles. CGSC was a time to refresh and recharge. Spend time with your family. Improve your golf game or learn something new.
I took a different view (and still do). While I empathized with the need to spend time with my family, I thought the degree of the diminished attitude toward education and the study of war was distasteful. We were a country at war. Our salaries were funded by taxpayers. We would all be moving on to positions of greater responsibility to lead America’s volunteer Army and win. Sure, it was important to recharge and spend time with families but under such circumstances, we should have been studying our asses off, learning everything we could about our profession. But I learned very quickly, don’t be that guy that raises his hand at the end of class.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only person that felt this way. One day I was told that I had been nominated for a new program called the “Art of War Scholars” program. The new program would be intense, would involve original research, and would focus on historic campaigns analyzed in depth, width, and context in the spirit of the old sage, Sir Michael Howard. The new program would be led by an Oxford educated professor with a few others helping (the stoic ones I mentioned earlier). I accepted right away.
Professor Dan Marston was brutal. My arrogance dissipated in the first week. Marston set us on an academic crucible that to this day remains the toughest academic experience of my life (PhD included). We studied war like our lives, and the lives of others, depended on it. It was a lot of reading, and if you didn’t do it, everyone would know. Worst of all, you’d hear it from Marston in his matter-of-fact Boston accent. It was like an historically inclined Good Will Hunting had just shamed you in front of your peers…how you like them apples?
We studied historical cases in depth, width, and context focusing mostly, but not exclusively on counterinsurgency. Vietnam, Malaya, Dhofar, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan to name a few. We studied theorist of war from Clausewitz to Mao, Galula, Trinquier, Thompson, Kitson, MacKinlay and more. The names became celebrities to us. Even better though, we were given a budget to do research. Originally, we were going to go to Afghanistan amid the conflict and conduct historical interviews and fact finding. That plan changed when General Stan McChrystal was fired and instead, we traveled around the US and the UK to interview soldiers and leaders returning from the conflict. Using semi-structured interviews that would assess key pieces of our individual research questions, we interviewed over 100 people…hundreds of years of combat experience. We also interviewed Vietnam veterans and British SAS veterans of the campaigns in Dhofar and Northern Ireland. I even got to meet and have drinks with Sir Frank Kitson on more than one occasion. A true example of a warrior scholar. “Call me Frank,” he said. My friend Mike looked at me in shock as if to say, “Like hell we will. You’re Frank *&^%$ Kitson.”
The Evidence
That experience formed the basis of the evidence for my monograph and SWJ article. The interviews demonstrated that there was widespread frustration and disagreement about the organization of the campaign. Cross purposes, lack of unity of command, unity of effort by exception, overlapping battlespace, Afghan counterparts answering to multiple advisors, etc. I was certainly not the first to point out these problems, nor was I the first to point out the not-so-distant mirror of Robert Komer and the too-little-too-late examples of reform under the CORDS program.
Before I finished writing my thesis, I had the opportunity to share my findings with the just-fired and newly retired McChrystal. Like most former Rangers, I greatly admired “Stan-the-Man.” ( And still do!) He was my Battalion Commander at 2nd Ranger Battalion back in the 90s. I asked him about the organization of the campaign from top to bottom and even shared examples of the structure employed by Templar in Malaya and others. I asked why we were pursuing career-centric COIN rather than organizing for victory. He said.
“Why wouldn’t you do that? Counterinsurgency is a complex problem that required unity of effort and a unified solution. This is how it was for all players, the less unified we were the harder it was. I know that key leaders at the highest levels did not push for more power and authority. Should they have? If a commander or ambassador asks for that now he wouldn’t get it and in the very act of asking he would create scar tissue and once rejected there would be bad blood. We need a BRAC-like solution, a blue-ribbon panel, to design and recommend it. Then we need a President and/or Congress to approve it. It is just too hard to get done when those asking and proposing are part of the deal.”
In the SWJ essay and in my monograph, that quote was attributed to a “high ranking ISAF General Officer.” McChrystal and I agreed at the time that I should not attribute that quote to him. He was sensitive to the the potential of causing more controversy and making the Obama administration’s job harder than it already was. A few weeks ago he agreed that I could name him for this retrospective. Everybody knew; nobody could say anything.
In Retrospect
The reasons for the U.S. failure in Afghanistan are numerous and interconnected. There is a whole congressionally mandated commission trying to illuminate the answers. The most thoughtful analyses of failure highlight the themes from Career-Centric COIN as just one part of many causes of failure.
What happened to our civil-military dialogue? Why couldn’t a commander or Ambassador ask for more authority and then organize whole of government advisory efforts at the province, district, or tribal levels? Could a Commander propose such a thing now? Should the United States find itself as an interventionist power in another counterinsurgency (Gaza?!), designing such a campaign would not be the first critical question in need of an answer, but it would come soon enough.
The last section of the essay is called, “It’s Bigger than Afghanistan.” That was certainly true then as it is now. We are all watching President Trump and Elon Musk rapidly deconstructing the federal bureaucracy. As I watch it unfold, I want to believe that some good might come of it, despite the questionable constitutionality and recklessness of the whole business. Perhaps a more lean and agile bureaucracy? One that could adapt to the sui generis aspects of a given campaign foreign or domestic? A younger me would try to have some of that optimism. That’s NOT what’s going on though. To reform our federal bureaucracy to allow us to tailor the organization of campaigns would require analysis and empirical study. The current effort is more personal and motivated by passion and persuasion. It seeks to weaken the federal bureaucracy, not make it more effective or agile. Our democracy may become the victim of this passion, much as Jim Gant’s mental health became the victim of his passions. But the right way to do it; the analytical and empirical, seems just too hard?
In retrospect, I still believe in rigor for professional military education. I see too many senior officers with little to no historical consciousness and reckless beliefs in their own abilities. Too much passion and persuasion, too little education, analysis, reflection…
In retrospect, I don’t think I changed anything. At most, I made some people aware of one more reason why Afghanistan was a losing endeavor. There was barely enough political will to send the military to the other side of the earth and to foolishly try to change a whole society, but there was not enough political will to change ourselves to make success (generally defined) more likely.
As I said in the original article:
“As our planning for the campaign in Afghanistan has evolved, it seems we looked at our tools of national power several times, recognized that we could not reorganize them to suit the mission for which we were engaged and so we just drove on. Yet, in essence, we drove on to fix and reorganize the governments of an entire complex state and whole society of tribes, ethnicities, and identities. Somehow, we thought it easier to do that, than to fix our own institutions.”
Maybe that’s the simple lesson which has a greater generalizability beyond counterinsurgency or even military campaigns. It should serve as a warning to others today. Whether it’s the management of the migrations of people or the changing dynamics of the world order, these complex things are new enough that the design of your old organizations might not fit. If you are willing to invest blood and treasure to change a highly complex environment that you only partially understand, but you’re not willing to use thoughtful analysis and historical consciousness to change your own organizations to do it, then you’ve just found the embryo of hubris and strategic failure.
