Lessons from Modern Insurgencies
Paths to Victory: Lessons from Modern Insurgencies by Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, Beth Grill, and Molly Dunigan, Rand Corporation.
Abstract: When a country is threatened by an insurgency, what efforts give its government the best chance of prevailing? Contemporary discourse on this subject is voluminous and often contentious. Advice for the counterinsurgent is often based on little more than common sense, a general understanding of history, or a handful of detailed examples, instead of a solid, systematically collected body of historical evidence. A 2010 RAND study challenged this trend with rigorous analyses of all 30 insurgencies that started and ended between 1978 and 2008. This update to that original study expanded the data set, adding 41 new cases and comparing all 71 insurgencies begun and completed worldwide since World War II. With many more cases to compare, the study was able to more rigorously test the previous findings and address critical questions that the earlier study could not. For example, it could examine the approaches that led counterinsurgency forces to prevail when an external actor was involved in the conflict. It was also able to address questions about timing and duration, such as which factors affect the duration of insurgencies and the durability of the resulting peace, as well as how long historical counterinsurgency forces had to engage in effective practices before they won. A companion volume, Paths to Victory: Detailed Insurgency Case Studies, offers in-depth narrative overviews of each of the 41 additional cases; the original 30 cases are presented in Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Detailed Counterinsurgency Case Studies.
This is a comprehensive and impressive study. While I obviously did not have sufficient time to read it all last night, and individual cases cited are not that critical, the overall trend is solid with this recap of the table on page 25 of the RAND Study:
Degree of Support for 24 COIN Concepts
Concept———-Degree of Evidentiary Support
Development————–Strong support
Pacification————-Strong support
Legitimacy (government)—Strong support
Legitimacy (use of force)—Strong support
Reform—————-Strong support
Redress—————Minimal support
Democracy————-Minimal support
Unity of effort——-Strong support
Resettlement———-Minimal support
Cost-benefit———-Strong support
Border control——–Strong support
Initiative————Strong support
“Crush them”———-Strong evidence against
Amnesty/rewards———-Minimal support
Strategic communication—Strong support
Field Manual 3-24 (COIN)—Strong support
Clear, hold, and build—–Strong support
“Beat cop”—————Strong support
“Boots on the ground”—Strong support
“Put a local face on it”—Minimal support
Cultural awareness—Minimal support
Commitment and motivation—Strong support
Tangible support reduction—Strong support
Criticality of intelligence—Strong support
Flexibility and adaptability—Strong support
Two areas I might take exception to are areas where advances in technology possibly could have altered outcomes. They specifically cite that airpower did not have a degree of evidentiary support either way. However, to some degree any historical analysis is hindered in areas where technology advances could have potentially changed results. For instances, while lack of “commitment and motivation” may have ultimately doomed Vietnam on both the South’s and U.S. side, advances in unmanned airpower potentially could have improved “border control” potentially improving that motivation. More success in controlling the Ho Chi Minh trail using Reapers/Predators with a lethal capability would have improved “criticality of intelligence.”
In addition, better bombers, fighters, and helicopters could have altered “commitment and motivation” of both sides making the 1972 Easter Offensive even more successful for the allies and more discouraging for the North and its communist sponsors. That in turn may have changed the U.S. law that forbid us from using the same airpower to thwart the 1975 conventional attack into then South Vietnam.
The study also cited lack of evidentiary support for or against success in insurgencies motivated by communism or religion. However, the degree of religious extremism obviously has changed since around 1979. As we recall, even Iran and Afghanistan were more receptive to western concepts of modernization prior to 1979. That has changed in the years since then creating unique “commitment and motivation” factors helping the insurgents. After all, suicide attacks are pretty motivated.
Note also the strong support for “boots on the ground” and cited lack of support for a sole raiding SOF, airpower, “light footprint” approach when the insurgent side had strong support from an external element. In other words the strong support for communists insurgents and the NVA from China and the USSR forced a similarly heavy support for counterinsurgents.
The same analogy applies to some extent in Iraq, Afghanistan, and currently in Syria. Except in Syria the “government” has stronger and more overt substantive support from external governments of Russia and Iran…and obviously the counterinsurgents in Syria are, or were, pro-west. This, like Iraq, is another case where religious motivation varies amongst insurgents leading to in-fighting and uncertain outcomes. We don’t know who will be in charge in Syria and how radical or grateful they will be toward external supporters at the ultimate end state.
I am printing a hard copy and will ensure my home computer has the digits for future reference. Not for the conclusions drawn so much, but for the information compiled.
I do so, however, with one cautionary red flag right for me. In a study of “Paths to Victory” – what is victory?? As General Zinni told my war college class years ago in a memorable presentation “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there.” So the first thing I did in digging into this product is seek out how victory was defined by this team. I must confess, I have not been digging long, but so far I have not found it (a search for a word in the title on every page becomes tedious…)
But on page 2 and 3 the team spends considerable time in discussing their definition of COIN. Not the same as defining victory, but it offers some clues:
“Efforts undertaken by a government and its security forces (or the security forces of supporting partners or allies) to oppose an insurgency.”
Personally I find this to be very reactive and symptomatic, that that it makes the common mistake of fusing the efforts of the actual nation being challenged with the efforts of those who come for a range or reasons to lend their support. To me is seems to presume that victory is the preservation of the current government and the defeat of the current challenger. The team goes on to clarify:
(COIN is)”…whatever one does when opposing an insurgency.” and
(COIN refers)”…exclusively to operations against insurgents.”
I guess one has to decide, are they out to resolve an insurgency or defeat the insurgent. Many of the cases employed in this work reflect that cycle that governments and their partners and allies so often fall into; generations of defeating wave after wave of groups who have emerged from populations where high conditions of insurgency exist with little enduring strategic effect. The particular population group or region or ideology or name or leader often varies, with the common ingredient being the government. Insurgent after insurgent challenger is defeated in turn, with the thorn of poor/provocative governance remaining in the paw of the population as a whole. “Victory” is declared. Then every 10-20 years over the cycle repeats. Counterinsurgent operations keep nations on this hamster wheel of violence and instability. Counterinsurgency looks at how nations have stepped off of the wheel, and sometimes that requires governance to change in whole, always in part, and sometimes it happens when the insurgent prevails.
So, my initial take is that this is probably a very good study on “Counterinsurgent” operations, but I suspect I will be disappointed in how well it actually addresses “Counterinsurgency.” For me the insurgent is not the insurgency, he is primarily a symptom of the actual insurgency and must be dealt with in a supporting manner to what one does as their main effort in addressing why the current system of governance is generating this negative energy within the population the insurgent rises from.
Making a current group of fighters stop is an important and largely tactical mission. But as our founders noted specifically in our own Declaration of Independence, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Insurgency is a natural human response to certain types of governance. I still wait for the study that focuses on that. Until then, governments will continue to seek to sustain the status quo, and people will continue exercise their right and duty to “throw off such government.”
Bob
This data may be of some important value but more so if it is viewed along the lines of our present-day needs, to wit:
The United States seems ready and willing to back:
a. Pro-reform populations against governments opposed the transformation of their states and societies along modern western political, economic and social lines.
and
b. Pro-reform governments against population groups opposed to such favorable transformations.
In certain cases (those noted in paragraph “a” above), the United States would seem happy to have such insurgencies (hopefully non-violent but violent if they are important, necessary and required) prevail.
The United States understands that to achieve its radical, rapid and fundamental “change” goals, re: other states and societies, such disruptions as insurgencies often cannot be avoided and may, in fact, be necessary and positive developments.
Thus, it is within the context offered (as relates to favorable state and societal transformation) that the information provided in this study would seem to have value.
Insurgencies, accordingly, to be understood as being “bad” or “good” only in terms of how they relate (respectively: promote and facilitate; hinder or deny) to the United States’ political objective (noted above).
The problem with such studies is that they give the impression of rigor and have a kind of scientific gloss, when, in reality, the collection and coding is subjective and arbitrary. As another commenter states, it is too simplified to approach any kind of reality.
Punjab Insurgency:
1. Diaspora support overseas.
2. Internal governance issues (not just poor governance, but exploiting the issue for internal political and monetary gain).
3. Religion.
4. Language and other markers of group and ethnicity.
5. Connection to transnational and internal criminal groups.
6. Cross-border support.
7. Connection of insurgents to other transnational groups.
8. Insurgency occurring within background of certain international Cold War and post Cold War state-state relationships.
9. Connection to overseas governments (Saudi, US, UK) in terms of complicated state-to-state and diaspora relationships.
And so on. Instead of Algeria-in-Afghanistan, better models (and I see Baluchistan in the list) might have been those that parallel the actual situation in the general region.
Insurgent Archipelagos in the mind, physically, as related to strong and weak states, and within the larger “Davos” man or woman phenomenon where everyone knows where the money and support is coming from and the internal problems too, but we are fixed in responses.
But, at this point, is there anyone really interested in studying such issues in this way?
This all works for China and Russia and the contemporary Mid East and others too. It never was about state versus non-state, but the complicated web of connections.
PS: As outsiders, looking at insurgency through the lens of a kind of ersatz colonialism (is there any other kind?) has been a big mistake. As outsiders, the policing of monies, criminality, and being aware of the “Davos Man” phenomenon among top Western decision-makers is more important for “countering” than anything else. We have limited ability to change internal governance until those within wish to truly change. Everything for us is risk management, mitigation and avoiding pouring gasoline on the fire.
This Rand study claims to break new ground. It doesn’t. That does not make the study worthless; in fact, its value is that it replicates what other studies have shown using a somewhat different methodology. It essentially confirms that US COIN doctrine is mostly correct. That is, in itself, useful information. At the price of a few electrons or the paper to print a hard copy, the study is worth the price to have in your library.
That said, I do have some methodological issues to raise. First, the authors misuse the term “factor” as used in statistical analysis. Factor refers to a particular metric scaling technique that is based on a linear regression model. The authors, however, use the term as a synonym for variable and, although they don’t say it, for an independent variable. Second, they have created a number of indices that they use to combine variables which they call “factor stacks” and “concepts.” While it is relatively easy to create an index, it is not as useful or accurate as a scale. There are many statistical scaling techniques available for both non-parametric data (the kind they used) and interval/metric data. For the former a Likert Scale is an example while Factor Analysis is an example of the latter. Finally, I have a problem with their assertion that statistical tests like Chi Square and its associated probability tables are not relevant to the analysis of their two by two contingency tables because they did not sample but instead have tested the entire population of cases. The problem with this assertion is that Chi Square is used to determine the likelihood that the particular distribution of the data in the contingency table could have occurred by chance alone. Their analysis simply does not address this rather important issue.