The Trouble With COIN

By Steve Hynd

Back in 2006-07, a lot of progressive national security writers were seduced by the prospect of a "kindler, gentler war" that counter-insurgency theory held out for Afghanistan and, particularly, Iraq. We were being told that "winning hearts and minds" would neuter insurgencies from the ground up and that it could be done without the horrific loss of innocent lives we'd seen drive those very insurgencies. Many, including myself, wrote admiringly of the new theories - and the new theorists - as being the only way forward in Bush's "war of choice" as well as in the Afghan war most felt was far more justified. Some, given access to those theorists by the military, saw their careers as serious journalists take off on the backs of the stories they could write because of that access.

For more hawkish types, like neoconservatives and the Clinton wing of Democratic foreign policy thinking, the US military's newly rediscovered COIN theories looked like a blueprint for successful interventions by force in foreign places. America had this massive, expensive military/industrial machine but it was only good for breaking things - which usually made matters worse in the long run - and it had sucked up all the budget dollars for the kind of foreign aid that might actually change around the world's generally poor view of America's performance as the self-appointed "world policeman". A new career revolving-door opened up for anyone who could reasonably be labelled a COIN expert: "serious" foreign policy think tanks wanted them like fish wanted water.

So we came to where we are now, where COIN is the pre-eminent paradigm for American warfighting, to the point where even the Secretary of Defense says we need to concentrate budget dollars on equipment and training for the kind of counterinsurgency wars America expects to be fighting for the forseeable future rather on big-ticket shiny toys for wars that might not get fought. Whether by accident or design the military/industrial complex, through COIN, has neatly sidestepped the prospect of a "peace dividend" from the break-up of the Soviet Union drastically reducing its budget. America now knows it will be fighting small wars ad infinitum, with only a mumble of protest about that decision from "DFH" types.

Instead, the perfect budget predator has mostly co-opted those parts of American action overseas that used to belong to State - aid, reconstruction and good governance advice - along with the dollars that go with them. Even when U.S. civilians go out on such missions in Afghanistan, for example. they do so largely at military direction and under military command.Military budgets now are far higher than they ever were during the Cold War, which has meant the money hasn't been available for other things - like public health care, for example. When Obama took office, arms manufacturing shares rose, because the stock market knew the new paradigm for eternal war, and the need for arms companies, was now set in stone for another four years or more.

But since 2007 and the "success of the Surge" in Iraq, I've come more and more to believe that the COIN boast of a "kinder, gentler, war" is a con job. During that surge, American and allied forces killed more Iraqi civilans per day than at any time during the the troubles that preceeded it, mostly via vastly increased numbers of airstrikes although night raids and the mistakes that seem to accompany them like flies accompany cow dung played their part. Even so, Iraq today still suffers under greater levels of daily violence than even Afghanistan or Beirut at its worst, while everyone worries about a Kurdish/Arab civil war, or a Sunni/Shiite one. And the "non-combat troops" that Obama is leaving in Iraq for a residual force? They still include 4,500 Special Forces personnel who are still actively raiding. "Supporting them is a continuing mission of the rest of the force," the head of U.S. Special Operations Command recently told a think tank audience.

In Afghanistan, it's just been more of the same. Today we heard about yet another killing of civilians and yet another video of an atrocity about to be released. The commander in Marjah, the latest PR attempt, says we'll need another Friedman Unit to be sure of stability there - by which time everyone will have forgotten about it again, just in time for the next (fifth) Helmand Province offensive. In Marjah, US forces and their allies were responsible for most of the civilian casulaties, and according to aid workers in the area over 40% of those injured were children under the age of 14. The Pentagon insists that it is "doing everything humanly possible to avoid civilian casualties" but it doesn't actually count them.

There's a fundemental flaw in COIN theory - one that prevents the fine Pentagon and think-tank papers (published in PDF, natch) from being turned into a fine reality on the ground. AsMichael Cohen writes in the current issue of World Policy (PDF, natch):

With its seemingly progressive and humanistic approach, FM 3-24, and counter- insurgency in general, offer a seductive ideal for the future of American war fighting. But the veneration of COIN conceals a brutal reality. The history of counter-insurgency in the twentieth century is not a story of warm and fuzzy war, of benevolent soldiers providing essential government services to grateful natives, of armed social work, or of the gentleman soldier�s antidote to the Shermanesque notion of Total War. Instead, counter-insurgency is a repeated tale of coercion and violence directed largely against unarmed civilians. And this defines both those COIN efforts that have been successful�and those that have failed.

...Though protecting the population, or cleaving them away from insurgents, has long defined COIN operations, the more coercive elements that have accompanied these efforts receive far less mention. For example, FM 3-24 approvingly cites the experiences of the British military in Malaya and Kenya, as well as the French in Algeria, as potential models for how to wage a population-centric counter-insurgency. But each of these conflicts�as well as U.S. COIN operations in the Philippines and Vietnam�were defined by significant levels of coercion and violence against civilians. Even in Iraq, which has been heralded as COIN�s shining contemporary success story, the �triumph� of counter-insurgency tactics that accompanied the 2007 surge of U.S. troops was matched with horrific levels of violence and population resettlement�and a higher number of civilian deaths due to American military actions.

In fact, none of the major counter-insurgent wars fought by the United States and other Western countries look much like the humanistic approach described by COIN advocates. Still, current operations in Afghanistan are predicated on this fundamental misreading and misunderstanding of COIN�s bloody past. Indeed, the tactics espoused by McChrystal and others are fundamentally counter to historical precedent�and the assumption they will succeed in Afghanistan is highly suspect.

Like all wars, counter-insurgency is, at its core, war�and the idea that it can be sanitized or made less violent is deeply and dangerously misleading...The mistaken belief that counter-insurgencies can be waged humanely risks embroiling the United States in more conflicts and weakening national security. When it comes to COIN, the best course of action for the United States is most certainly less, not more.

The trouble with COIN can really be boiled down to two simple statements:

1) Whether we talk about "enemy centric" COIN or "population centric" COIN, the actual truth on the ground is that it is all and always "force protection" COIN.

That is, the notion that its "better them than us" when push comes to shove. Troops will use airstrikes or spray bullets at pregnant women when they themselves are stressed, scared or under fire - and in places like Afghanistan that is always. Officers who buck this, and lose soldiers in the process, know their careers will be gloriously COIN-approved and very, very short.

2) Because of this, there can be no "kindler, gentler war".

The negative pressure of the force protection paradigm on the ground will always outweigh any fine words on paper about "hearts and minds". A deep-seated paradigm of force protection, aka Fobbitmania, means: airstrikes based on bad, bought intel; contracted mercs running over civilians with whole convoys; relying for an appearance of success on bribing already corrupt warlords; relying on security forces manned by criminals who are already in the pockets of warlords; corruption and bribe-taking within the military (Petraeus' aide Lt. Col Lavonda Selph et al); acceptable "collateral damage" ratios of 50-1 or worse (e.g. drones in Pakistan); freefire orgies on civilians after attacks - and a whole lot more, none of it condusive to long-term COIN success.

When the connection between theory and real-world outcome requires America to do some things that are unlikely or impossible, you should know your strategy and it's theoretical foundations are in trouble.

Thus we are left with something far more akin to colonial pacification operations, than counter-insurgency as it exists in PDF dreams. To paraphrase a French officer speaking to journalist Douglas Saunders last year.

If you find yourself doing COIN, and it's not your country, you've already lost.

Yet we're spending billions and thousands of lives on the impossible reverse proposition.