- ‹ previous
- 2025 of 2754
- next ›
Counterinsurgency
COUNTERINSURGENCY....Over at the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman referees an argument between Jason Brownlee and Andrew Exum about whether the Army's new focus on counterinsurgency is inherently imperialistic. Long story short, Brownlee says it is, Exum says COIN is just a tool and it's only imperialistic if Congress and the president use it for imperialistic ends, and Ackerman agrees with Exum. It's worth a quick read if you're interested in this kind of thing.
But as long as we're on the subject, I'll bring up a different concern, one that I'm just going to throw on the table since I don't really have the chops to write anything definitive about it. It's this: even now, after years of hearing from experts about how hard counterinsurgency is, do we really understand how hard it is? Imperialistic or not, my fear is that the success of the surge in Iraq, which was in large part coincidental, and the growing influence of David Petraeus and his proteges, has convinced policymakers that counterinsurgency is rapidly becoming a standard part of our military kit bag, one that we can count on in the future.
But I doubt that. It's still the case that in the entire history of the world since WWII, big power counterinsurgency has virtually no success stories. Malaysia is the famous exception, but the circumstances there were unusual, it took a very long time anyway, and it's almost certainly not repeatable. Likewise, although Petraeus's success in Iraq is unquestionably due partly to his adoption of superior tactics during the surge, that was only one of the Five S's that allowed his counterinsurgency doctrine to work. Without taking anything away from him, this just isn't an indication that COIN is any easier to pull off than it ever has been. It certainly doesn't seem to be making much headway in Afghanistan.
So that's that. Maybe some milbloggers want to weigh in on this. Are we becoming a little too excited about the future possibilities of counterinsurgency? Even if we take it seriously and get a lot better at it than we are now, is it ever something that's likely to be successful more than very, very occasionally? Comments?
The only successes that can be pointed to relate to the physical and emotional separation of an exogenous insurgent force from the population of a country (eg AQ coming into Iraq, subsequently to be rejected by the Iraqis).
When the people of that country have deeply held views that are anti-occupation, independent of that external insurgent force, then counterinsurgency cannot work. 80% of the Iraqis want the US out now and think it is OK to target US troops.
At that point, the US force is in the middle of a civil war, by definition.
Yes, of course it is inherently imperialistic. Give me one example of where the U.S. waged a counterinsurgency campaign that did not also involve U.S. occupation of a land where we were not wanted by the natives. That's usually the cause of an insurgency.
The British Empire waged an extended counterinsurgency campaign against the 13 colonies. Was that imperialistic?
It's more of a mixed bag than you remember. In addition to Malaysia, there's Greece, Kenya (Mau Mau), El Salvador, Tibet, Chechnya, and Indonesia.
By making the military geared more towards COIN, we are only making it easier for politicians in the future to invade and occupy other countries. I mean, people who are all gung ho about COIN seem to fall into the "Iraq was a good idea, just poor execution" style of thought whether or not they realize it.
How about we save the military for fighting conventional wars, which is what we are traditionally good at, and save the imperialistic nation making for the dust bin of history.
I just read the American Prospect article, Cult of Counterinsurgency, referenced by Ezra in post about this. It's largely about the success of Jon Nagl in winning over the military to these tactics and how he has a lot of starpower and a following. I saw him speak in a small setting a few years back (at the worst of Iraq) and he was a) really impressive (which, of course, doesn't mean he is right) and b) very skeptical about us being able to "win" counterinsurgencies. He basically said, here's the tactics of the only way to be successful, but it's really hard AND it takes a long, long time, which the American public won't put up with.
I interpreted his stance as the difference between tactics and strategy - just because these are the only tactics that give us any chance doesn't mean it's a good strategy to embark on.
Or, rather than a civil war, a war for independence or a war for liberation.
Those are hard wars for an outsider to "win".
I'd say that counterinsurgency was quite successful everywhere in Latin America between the end of the Cuban Revolution and the start of the Sandinista revolution.
If counterinsurgency military forces are used to oppress political opposition domestically, then they are not imperialistic. If they are used to suppress opposition to occupation in foreign countries, they are. Regardless of the ideology used to rationalize counterinsurgency, counterinsurgency is all about using the military to kill civilians opposing unpopular rule.
counterinsurgency is all about using the military to kill civilians opposing unpopular rule.
Killing combatants hiding amongst the civilians, in theory.
But enforcing tyranny, in many/most cases. Or protecting civilians from terrorists hiding amongst them in some cases. Or both.
To a guy with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To a military obsessed with counterinsurgency, every third-world disorder looks like . . . .
Read Robert Asprey's great book (2 volumes) War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History.
The takeaway is that counterinsurgency almost never works. When it does, it's because, as mentioned above, the guerrillas are themselves hated invaders in the minds of the great bulk of the populace, when extreme concentration camp tactics (e.g., rounding up the entire population, as in Algeria) are used, or when mass extermination reprisals are used, neither of which are the type of counterinsurgency tactics we are contemplating.
Saying that counterinsurgency worked in Latin America for 20-odd years is saying that it staved off defeat for a while, but ultimately failed. That's typical of guerrilla movements - either the political structure of the country shifts over a time until their goals have been largely implemented or they win a military victory, which also can take a long time. Either way, they largely get what they want, but it takes a long time. That is inherent in the situation; there wouldn't be a guerrilla movement if it was likely that the goals could be achieved in a short time by peaceful means, because of course the populace would simply take that route instead.
Counterinsurgency works all the time for a big bully nation like the US versus a 98 lb. weakling, if you want to put the time, blood, and money into it.
The question should be if it is worth it, or can you do it on the cheap, and Iraq and Afghanistan certainly don't qualify.
Amen, John.
I'd just add this:
Counterinsurgency is the perpetual motion machine of military imperialism: it doesn't work and never will, but everybody believes in the possibility anyway.
Civilians can hide insurgency combatants out of support for the cause or out of fear of retaliation. Regardless of the reason why combatants receive material support, does a foreign occupier, even if it is the US, have the ability to determine which choice the civilians have made before killing them? The US determines to attack targets in Iraq and Afghanistan where civilians might become victims because it is suspected combatants are in the vicinity. The US makes no determination as to whether the civilians it is killing provide support to combatants or are coerced into providing that support. After they are killed, the victims are identified as combatants.
Ackerman and Exum's characterization of Brownlee's article looks like a strawman to me. The main thrust of the article isn't that the existence of the manual implies imperialism (though any economist will tell you that lowering the perceived costs of counterinsurgency will increase the likelihood of using the tactic in pursuit of a strategic goal), but that the manual doesn't accurately reflect the costs and difficulties of executing the tactics it describes.
Thomas Powers on COIN:
"...in the long run counterinsurgency comes down to the same self-defeating strategy--killing locals until they stop trying to make us go away".
Roger that.
If you look at the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, which was written by Gen. Petraeus, you will find a section on minimum force levels. It says that a successful counterinsurgency effort demands a *minimum* of 20 troops per 1000 of population. The level of troops then sets a minimum cost on any counterinsurgency action that has a chance of success, if the manual is to be believed.
Just to get a feel for what the constraints are, Iraq has a population of about 25,000,000--requiring a minimum of about 500,000 troops. Afghanistan has a larger area and a somewhat larger population, though no census is quite reliable, and rougher terrain. Probably 600,000 troops is the *minimum*.
So, if COIN is a tool for imperialism, it is one that the USA can not, at the moment, afford in the countries in which it is using it, though the point seems not to have fully sunk in yet.
It's scary that even now people still think about counterinsurgency as something we do with our own troops, when the only effective approaches center on training local troops. Why aren't there more news reports about our successes and failures in training the Afghan army and police?
Aside from that, counterinsurgency is like what Churchill said about democracy: the worst choice except for all the other options.
If you don't do COIN, you're either (a) trying to fight a conventional war or (b) doing nothing and leaving the country to anarchy or enemies.
COIN is not a good way to get victory, but it is a good way to prevent the other side's victory when you can't win anytime soon yourself. COIN will let you, at a high price in time and money, prevent enemies from consolidating control over a country. (As bad as southeastern Afghanistan is now, it was a lot more Terrorist Central when the Taliban didn't have to worry about American bombers and snipers.)
If you don't have a lot of time and money, it's not worth it. But if the enemy is somebody like Al-Qaeda, COIN probably is worth it, even though it's lousy by comparison with the victories you can get in conventional war.
COIN: because sometimes you can't win by conventional war, yet you can't afford to walk away.
Insurgencies only happen in states that are screwed up to begin with. Counterinsurgency is less about "victory" than about buying time to fix the state's underlying crises without allowing the enemy to win.
Unfortunately, both the Army and the public naturally are more interested in traditional all-enemies-beaten decisive victory. Which means there's always going to be an impulse to convert counterinsurgency into a method to get old-fashioned decisive victory. And if you try to use counterinsurgency for old-fashioned decisive victory, you're going to cost yourself blood and treasure for nothing.
The biggest difficulty with counterinsurgency may still be getting people to lower their expectations. Nobody wants to go to war to tie.
In El Salvador, which I think of as a more representative case than Vietnam or Iraq for American-assisted counterinsurgency, American influence successfully limited human rights violations compared to Guatemala, yet there were still huge death squad atrocities; and American influence brought hostilities to a close with far fewer casualties than in Guatemala, yet it still also required a political negotiation and power-sharing deal between enemies nearly as mistrustful as the Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims.
So was El Salvador "success"? Sure, compared to Guatemala, or compared to Cuba. Was it the kind of success Americans like to go to war for? Hell no.
And that's the trouble with counterinsurgency. It's not just that it's not the same means of war. It's not even the same kind of victory.
Insurgencies occur when a country is occupied by a foreign colonizer. El Salvador, like Cuba, experienced a revolution, which, unlike Cuba's, failed. El Salvador's 'success' meant a continuation of the oligarchy that has ruled that poor nation. El Salvador's people will have to attempt another revolution to rid themselves of their capitalist dictatorsip, not another insurgency to force out foreign colonizers.
I agree, Kevin, that the record of succesful counterinsurgency is poor. But the success of the surge seems to have impressed some people a bit too much. More here at the Lowy Institute's blog:
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2008/12/Nationbuilding-as-a-strategi...
I will never buy a device
I will never buy a device that allows a company to push deletes to stuff I have. If I pay for something, I want to be in control. Nagware on our PC's, popup ads in the browsers, locked cellphones. Enough of all this crap.