Watching the counterinsurgency debate, I can’t help but observe two dueling strawmen. Critics of American COIN see it as armed nation-building and deride population-centric COIN as ahistorical and invalid. Some proponents of COIN respond to these criticisms by portraying the current mode of COIN as superior to a supposed alternative rooted in brutality towards the civilian population and “search and destroy” missions. In reality, however, there is no real practical difference between “enemy-centric” and “population-centric” COIN. Since COIN is a mission that matches military force against military force, it will by necessity focus on the enemy as the primary object, since it is the opponent’s presence that is causing the direct problem (as opposed to root one) that military force seeks to solve. It seems that the American COIN debate’s complications originate from factors outside of purely COIN theory and doctrine.
Everyone by now has memorized the Clausewitzian idea that war is a continuation of political intercourse (policy + politics), with the added element of violence. “Politics” here generally means the distribution of power among human beings. So the Clausewitzian idea of forcing our will upon the opponent means using force to develop power over people. In regular warfare this generally is accomplished through the destruction or neutralization of the opponent’s field army and the occupation of his territory. Irregular warfare is generally different from this because the process of employing force involves the civilian population, which is not previously too great of a factor in the clash of modern armies. Seen in this light, COIN is an operational methodology that involves the use of force to suppress an armed uprising. Power over people is exerted through a combination of violence, coercion, and suasion. It involves the addressing of root causes, to be sure, but that is not the primary element. And if one examines the history of over 100+ years of organized COIN theory (starting with imperial policing classics) you see a number of military thinkers looking at the problems of using military force against irregulars and the problem of the civilian population. So why the bitter debate and the political complications?
There are a number of factors, however, that have tremendously complicated American COIN. First, there is the matter of postcolonialism. Since the 1950s, a basic presumption in world opinion and international law is that outside powers have no right to rule over foreign populations whose lands have been acquired through force of arms. Of course, there are still states that do so and will not be compelled by any international body to relinquish their holdings. But as a basic norm, it is as passe as suits with elbow patches. However, world opinion does seem to accept the largely nonviolent post-Cold War science of “nation-building” by blue helmets and international development agencies, which enjoys wide legitimacy even if parts of the process do have similarities to colonial practice.
Second, there is the growth of a large body of thinking over the last fifteen years in human rights theory and practice, what might broadly be called development, aid, peace studies, and peacekeeping. These concepts form a coherent whole that is broadly liberal and emancipatory in nature and has been embedded very deeply into the structure of how the West thinks about international relations and security. At times, its proponents can also mistake it for defined law with universal application across the ages, when it is really a set of of norms that evolved in the West from the immediate postwar period to the present. It might also be observed that these concepts mesh at least in spirit with the broadly Wilsonian way of thinking about America in the world that seems perennially popular, unlike realism and its cousins. What these related practices in peace studies, development, and international human rights law all share is a worldview that makes war–outside of narrowly transcribed limits–illegal because its destructive and coercive elements stand in opposition to liberal thought. Much like some of the idealists of the 1920s, this antipathy for warfare expands beyond just war theory and the laws of war to try to banish war itself through a broadly liberal set of policies, norms, and regulations.
So what does all of these things add up to? You get doctrine whose basic purpose–the use of armed force to cement political control over populations by killing or neutralizing irregulars–is broadly unpalatable to a non-military Western audience. It smacks too much of colonial practice, and it offends an audience that has come to see the role of international political-military intervention as linked with nation-building, the “responsibility to protect” against massacre and genocide, and blue helmets (or regional forces) providing security duties against minor bandits. Because the broadly liberal ideology of Western elites is uncomfortable on a basic level with the use of force that does not fit carefully transcribed boundaries, COIN cannot be called what it really is: war. European nations’ discomfort with the basic use of force is a feature, not a bug, of this problem. The fact that we cannot talk honestly about war profoundly distorts our public discussion of COIN.
It is from this collective cognitive dissonance that the mythical dichotomy of “liberal” COIN rooted in cups of tea, CERP money, and road-building projects standing in opposition to harsh collective punishment and “search and destroy” missions of “Roman COIN” emerges. Killing or neutralizing the enemy is the stuff of war itself, and organized COIN science is just an modern update of classical methods of eliminating armed insurgent groups and cementing political control over the population. Like anything else in war, it is harsh but cannot be reasonably called inherently brutal or evil. As stated before, the difference between enemy-centric and population-centric COIN is greatly exaggerated. COIN is neither “Mr. Rodgers” nor “Darth Vader.” It is a complex mixture of force, suasion, and coercion. Does it involve addressing the population’s grievances? Certainly. But one cannot put little girls in school in Kandahar or hand out bags of grain in Mogadishu without destroying or neutralizing the opponent–hence the involvement of soldiers instead of policemen.
Having an honest discussion of COIN means recognizing that it is a form of warfare, and that war cannot be liberalized (or made more “conservative”–it’s purpose is not to validate political ideologies). The second is that warfare and force are basic tools of statecraft and will remain so no matter what a NGO or a bureaucrat in New York thinks. Once we get past the dichotomy of “Mr. Rodgers” vs. “Darth Vader” forms of COIN we can begin to discuss with more precision whether our usage of force is the best method of achieving our larger objectives.
Red teaming and alternative analysis for national security and business advantage.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 16 comments }
Joseph Fouche 07.12.10 at 3:38 pm
The debate over COIN is as much about politics as it is about the actual conduct of operations. More important than FM 3-24′s actual content was the process of co-opting political and media elites to the COIN narrative through the process of drafting and disseminating FM 3-24. If it turns out that FM 3-24′s content does little on a kinetic battlefield, it was effective on the influence battlefield in Washington. Proponents of other operational nostrums probably wish their pet platform was as well sold as COIN.
Russ Greene 07.12.10 at 7:28 pm
One other thing that is largely missing in the COIN debate, is the crucial role of intelligence in counter-insurgency. Any practical (as opposed to theoretical) discussion of COIN will reveal that one of the main benefits to winning popular support is that it makes it much easier for the COIN forces to gain intelligence on and within the insurgent organizations. This is important because applying effective military force against insurgent organizations is difficult or even impossible without such intelligence.
I believe that the role of intelligence in COIN has been largely underplayed in the public discourse is for two reasons: 1.) it hurts the PR initiative that Joseph Fouche mentioned, since the much of the target audience in the U.S. would would rather not think about finding and killing terrorists. 2.) it deals with what is mostly classified or at least closely guarded programs and information.
Adam Elkus 07.12.10 at 8:40 pm
Joseph, although there was something of a PR element to the “selling” of American COIN as a concept, I do think that the basics of the Army/Marine Corps manual did come out of sound historical study of insurgency as well as the experiences of the soldiers who wrote it. Mattis, for example, who is not known for being a softy, played a good hand in writing it. The problem, I think, is as I’m saying the politics of it make us unable to really discuss the doctrine for what it is.
Russ, I think the intelligence stuff is being looked at pretty extensively, especially by the special operations community. But in the public realm, I think intel is somewhat underplayed as are most “technical” elements of military science.
Russ Greene 07.12.10 at 8:43 pm
Adam,
You are correct. Practitioners of COIN get that point, at least pretty much all the ones that I know of do. My point was restricted to the public realm.
Adam Elkus 07.12.10 at 8:58 pm
Speaking of that, what was your take on Flynn’s CNAS report on COIN intel?
Starbuck 07.13.10 at 11:55 am
I think the COINdinistas shot themselves in the foot when they referred to COIN as “armed social work”, attracting a number of benevolent NGOs, many of whom were shocked that “armed social work” involved the use of force.
Phil Ridderhof 07.13.10 at 5:00 pm
I think that the issue may be more fundamental than simply how to approach COIN. In this line, I find myself agreeing with those that contend that the concepts of COIN have crept into all aspects of doctrine and, to a degree, have possibly become a substitute for strategy. My contention is that we have all but written off the idea that we may actually find ourselves fighting a people (population) in addition to an armed organization (regular or irregular) and government. We now approach almost every scenario with the assumption that the people are not our enemy, but an entity to either be influenced, protected, etc.
Taking the “Westphalian” interpretation of Clausewitz’s trinity of people, military and government, in the past, we recognized the difference between these aspects of an adversary, but they were almost always considered to constitute the whole of the adversary. The “people” participated in war via their military, under the leadership of their government. The enemy was defeated when the military was defeated and the people accepted that decision as final. If the people did not accept that decision (such a Spain against Napoleon), then you descended into “People’s War.” Further examples would be the Paris uprising in 1870 and the “what if” the American south had continued with a guerilla war after the surrender of the Confederate Armies.
Now, however, I don’t think we would draw up any campaign plan that considered the people as an enemy. At most, they are the source of recruits for the adversary (once again, whether the adversary is a uniformed regular military, or an irregular insurgent group). The population has moved from the category of non-combatant into the category of non-belligerent. Now, in almost every fight, the population’s support appears to be the central objective and it appears that positive suasion is primary avenue for achieving that objective (whether by protecting it, or bribing it, or providing it good government). What if we face a foe where the population can’t be persuaded, but must be convinced through the “hard hand of war”?
Dan 07.14.10 at 2:08 pm
This reminds me a bit of ADM Olson’s comments on the COIN debate from a month or two back. There are competing interpretations of what is meant by words like kinetic, force, political, etc. Yes, COIN is not about building schoolhouses and drinking tea to make new friends. (That all may be a way of winning support from the population, but it’s very unlikely to be the deciding factor). Yes, COIN is war. And yes, the debate at times has sounded like COIN involves putting the guns away, which is entirely incorrect. But the question then remains, what are we firing at? What do we mean by “force” and “kinetics.” ADM Olson is right when he says it’s about “countering the insurgents,” but combine that with his comments that COIN involves kinetics, and one might interpret him to mean that the kinetic part involves hunting-killing, or trying to take out insurgents/terrorists one by one. Same goes for this column. But, respectfully that also largely misses the point.
In part, this has to do with the near-impossible task of trying to explain some of these concepts in a few soundbites or paragraphs. The natural inclination is to resort to the existing lexicon, but the problem is it’s not always clear what those words mean to different people (“hearts and minds” is another good example). However, another part of this is not recognizing that there is a cause and effect for each of these things (kinetic action, winning population support, hunting/killing insurgents, etc). Yes, COIN will involve countering insurgents by capturing or killing them. But trying to track them down one by one as the the sole or primary approach has, historically, time and again proven futile, usually described as those tasked to do it as being like “chasing ghosts.” The purpose of winning the population is so that you then remove that support network the insurgents have – they can no longer disappear easily into crowds, their movement is constrained, they have more difficulty obtaining supplies, they have fewer places to hide, etc. The optimal result is therefore fewer insurgents who are willing to take the risk, and who simply put down their weapons and go back to their normal lives. What’s left, however – the irreconcilables or the true believers – are the ones who need to be hunted and captured or killed. Having the support of the population first both leaves the insurgent exposed by removing that support network and allows you to gather an increased amount of good intel that allows you to locate and capture/kill those insurgents/terrorists.
Of course, how you win the support of the population has also become somewhat controversial, and is some of what both the author and ADM Olson were getting at – and I think they are right. It is this aspect in particular that has turned into and en itself, rather than a means to an end. Most folks know that they are trying to win the support of the population, but you hear it from some and you can’t tell if they’re entirely sure why they are doing this – and the why is important for how you go about doing it. Fundamentally, it’s not because they need a new schoolhouse or because they want soccer balls for their kids. In many instances, these things can even work against the goal of winning the population’s support. That is because, fundamentally, what you want is for them to stop supporting the insurgents in order to draw them into the open, and to provide more and improved intel on where the insurgents are. That is an inherently dangerous thing for them to do if you are not willing to simultaneously ensure their safety. If you build buildings and hand out soccer balls, books and candy to the kids, or even restore electricity, but otherwise think that this process requires an absolute minimum amount of shooting your weapon, you’re not going to win anyone over because they know it will get them killed. Even giving them the soccer ball or the schoolhouse could end up getting them killed. What they want more than anything is an assurance of their safety. As many commentators have pointed out, support for the Taliban and its objectives is in the gutter in Afghanistan, yet at the same time a ,much greater percentage (exactly what that percentage is may be unknown) is clearly providing active and passive support for the Taliban, in large part because they have no alternative if they want to live. Yet we don’t make the connection and draw the obvious conclusion. We understand this concept when it comes to witness protection against the mafia or drug gangs in this country, but we don’t quite seem to entirely grasp the concept elsewhere.
If we accept the premise, therefore, that first and foremost what people want is to stay alive if they turn against a group that they do not support ideologically, but which has the very real ability to kill them and their family, then the way to winning the support of the population is going to be a very kinetic activity – only with the force being used in defense of the population rather than an attempt to hunt down each individual insurgent. That process of countering the insurgent would come after, once you’ve made it easier to locate and capture/kill irreconcilables without them disappearing into the crowd like a ghost or without shooting yourself in the foot by unnecessarily killing civilians. Incidentally, this was the cause of the concern I had with the Afghanistan Rules of Engagement, at least how they were presented in the media (recognizing that there has been some debate as to whether they were interpreted as intended on the ground). I understand and agree with the need to minimize civilian casualties, but if you can’t engage the enemy near population centers, then you can’t really do much to protect that population from the enemy. It was the right idea, but had the order backwards and led to a somewhat disconnected approach to win the support of the population.
So in review, many of these debates suffer from a lack of precision when using terms that have many different interpretations. Yes, COIN is war, requires kinetics, and even requires hunting and killing insurgents. But this is not at odds with the requirement to win the support of the population. It is the how of all of this, though, that is important: how kinetics are used, how you hunt and kill insurgents and how you win the support of the population – as well as an understanding of the cause and effect of doing each of these things. Each of these things enables the next, and not recognizing that can lead to a very disjointed and ineffective approach, no matter how often you say the right words.
Adam Elkus 07.14.10 at 3:16 pm
Starbuck,
That might be true, but it’s normal for things to be oversold in DC policy debates. And contrary to what a lot of COIN critics think, I think COIN has not really been oversold too much.. I tend to lean towards what Gulliver of Ink Spots has written about this.
Phil,
The history of the American West as well as some of the British and French overseas campaigns in the East over the last 200-300 years have some historical examples of the issue you’re talking about that might be interesting to explore.
Dan,
I’m not sure that what you’ve typed out is at odds with the message of the post. The key term in the post is “complex mix of force, suasion, and coercion.” I also note that the “Darth Vader” COIN stereotype is simplistic and the difference between enemy-centric and population centric-COIN is exaggerated.
Even with the protection of the population as an important aspect, COIN is still a military activity whose endgame is the defeat or marginalization of the insurgent. Of course, that doesn’t mean violence should be employed as an end in and of itself, it means that violence should suit the strategic objectives and conditions of the conflict. In other words, like any other kind of war. Understanding cause and effect is a basic element of strategy. Using violence incorrectly is a bad idea whether in Kandahar or 1945 Berlin.
I think this is well-understood in contemporary American COIN doctrine (FM 3-24 et al) as well as practice. The problem is that the public debate has yet to catch up with it–the debate is cast as a stark choice between the two strawmen of trying to buy the population’s loyalty with a combination of security and development and an aggressive attempt to “cull the sea” in the manner of Assad in Hama.
Dave 07.14.10 at 3:47 pm
After World War Two, guerrilla and revolutionary movements effectively stopped abiding by the rules of nation states in general, seeing them either as a means to an end, or something no longer relevant in their minds. The groups operating today are simply taking this to the next level, by completely getting rid of any real organizational structure and simply fighting on the basis of a general shared ideology.
In this situation there is no “enemy” to defeat, there is no “leadership” to negotiate with, there are only infinite groups of isolated, angry, or simply bored individuals who want to gain power, fame, respect, and or martyrdom fighting for something they believe in. These people are literally the forces of chaos at the gates, and through their actions they undermine the larger order and rule of law we are trying to establish.
This is what annoys me about the way people approach the issue, they keep seeing this ubiquitous “enemy” that simply does not exist. You need to treat these people as the isolated nut-jobs they are, not re-enforce their delusions of grandeur by grouping them all into one mass movement. Often the only thing these “insurgents” have in common is some general notion of “Islam” and their targeting of us and anyone who supports us.
Yes, when they kill and start undermining the things you are trying to build you need to take them down, by whatever means necessary. But to see this as a “war” is very problematic because ultimately what you are fighting against is the idea that the government you are supporting has no claim to authority.
Many Americans vehemently disagree with the government, yet few have ever sought to wage terror campaigns in order to destroy it or deny it power. This is because Americans generally accept the legitimacy of the government as stemming from the constitution and everything that has happened since 1776.
Most Afghanis have no such acceptance of Karzai or his government, and they never will until it they feel it reflects their particular understanding of the world and who they are as human beings.
The only thing that we can do as an outside power, is to support people in crafting whatever order fits within their way of life and world-view. Thankfully, for most Afghanis, this does not entail the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, it probably does not entail the Afghan National Government either.
Honestly, we can do this with a combination of NGOs, Special Forces, and civilian contractors, all embedded deeply within the population and simply teaching them what they need to protect themselves, make a living, and keep the extremists from controlling them.
The 130k troops and billions of dollars spent only provides the crazies with a huge target to attack and rally people around. It can never artificially create legitimacy where there is none.
The rest, the government or whatever central authority emerges in Afghanistan, needs to be build from the bottom up, by the people who have a real stake in its composition.
Adam Elkus 07.15.10 at 2:55 am
Dave,
Regardless of the problems (and there are many!) with our Afghanistan strategy, it qualifies as a war. There is a “Taliban” and other factions trying to impose their will, and we are fighting against them. Just because it might be more disorganized than past insurgencies does not mean it isn’t a war, with armed opponents and combat. And every armed group, from a Zulu war band to a modern UK Battlegroup, has an organizational structure of some sort with lines of authority–it just depends on how centralized or decentralized it is.
Adam Elkus 07.15.10 at 2:57 am
Another interesting issue that I’ve been chewing on a bit that Phil raised is the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. Might be an interesting template for the future.
Dave 07.15.10 at 6:32 am
Adam,
I agree that it is a “war” in the broad sense, but not in the context that Clausewitz and far too many military theorist understand it.
In the Afghanistan situation, a military force such as our own looses its greatest asset, the ability to concentrate its firepower on a singular enemy.
We fight in an open space, be it air, land, or sea and we have the organization, training, and weapons to win every time.
We start fighting a guerrilla force that does not mass itself in any open space and we can still win with good Intel and, good robust COIN doctrine, and our precision strike capability, whether that be predators or SOF.
Now start fighting a multitude of groups that have no central organization and where killing so called “leaders” does nothing to diminish violence and instability, and all our power gets dispersed in a million different directions and becomes meaningless.
In order to fight this sort of war, you need to literally create a society from the chaos, something that can’t be undertaken from the top-down or from the outside, especially by people who for the most part have no understanding of the culture or history of the area in question.
As I mentioned though, this does not mean we can’t do anything. We can embed SF into the villages, towns, and cities, and have them do what they are best at, Foreign Internal Defense. If every village can protect itself from outside coercion, if every village can sustain itself, then you start building up nodes of strength and security in the country that over time leave less and less space for the Taliban and other groups to operate.
Adam Elkus 07.15.10 at 6:43 am
The Clausewitzian conception of conflict is a lot more flexible than many give it credit for. He also wrote on uprisings and guerrilla conflicts, but it’s a little-known section of the book.
I would submit that leader targeting has never been a panacea in conventional warfare either–when it is possible (often rarely!)) Shooting down Yamamoto in the Pacific War deprived the Japanese of a top strategist but did little to shorten the war.
It seems that your other policy recommendations may come to fruition: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/07/karzai-approves-plan-to-keep-t/
Phil Ridderhof 07.15.10 at 7:42 am
Adam,
Pertaining the Franco-Prussian War, I wrote the following passage in a paper back in late 2002 (which seems much longer ago than merely 8 years):
The Franco-Prussian War. In an impressive two-month campaign, Prussian Armies defeated the major French Armies—forcing one Army into the fortress of Metz and destroying a second Army at Sedan. These two events caused the Imperial French government to fall and a Republic to spring up in its place. As the Prussians surrounded the urban fortress of Paris, they were faced with this ad hoc government in the city and surrounding unoccupied areas, with the besieged French Army in Metz still officially an Imperial formation. As the siege of Paris dragged on and the Prussians defeated newly raised French Armies, Bismarck, the Prussian Chancellor, would have preferred to have a strong and stable French government who could surrender and guarantee a peace that would address German security concerns without humiliating the French people. To this end, he restrained the Prussian Army’s actions in the siege. Such a French government never emerged. When Paris fell Bismarck, dictated harsh terms to include significant territorial concessions, in order to ensure the security of Germany’s borders in the face of an unstable and unpredictable France. As the German Armies withdrew, revolution broke out throughout France. France emerged from this experience as an emotional, implacable foe.
The awe-inspiring performance of the Prussian military may in fact have driven the French state to dissolve beyond the point that was politically desirable. Germany could not conduct “nation building” in France, but neither could it trust a weak French government to hold up their end of any security guarantees. The result was a harsh peace that all but guaranteed a future war.
Adam Elkus 07.15.10 at 7:46 am
Yeah, I also remember from my reading of Naval War College’s Geoffrey Wawro’s history that Germany tried to install its own faction but failed.
Phil, this last bit you wrote has a lot of relevance to today: “The awe-inspiring performance of the Prussian military may in fact have driven the French state to dissolve beyond the point that was politically desirable. Germany could not conduct “nation building” in France, but neither could it trust a weak French government to hold up their end of any security guarantees. The result was a harsh peace that all but guaranteed a future war.”
Comments on this entry are closed.