COIN is like Soviet Communism?

By Steve Hynd

Spencer Ackerman has received a paper from a source living in Kandahar, Afghanistan, entitled "A Counterproductive Counterinsurgency". Although the anonymous author is supportive of COIN theory (emphasis mine):

An effective counterinsurgency can only be waged by an organization that is capable of committing to support only those it empowers, remains quiet until it strikes, and effectively owns the world of information. Once it is capable of identifying the vulnerabilities in core infrastructure before the enemy is able to exploit them�and strikes with precision to seal them up, the enemy will dissolve and we will find the war is won.

He's also scathing about the yawning gap between theory and practise (emphasis mine).

The counterinsurgency methodology which is currently being employed in Afghanistan is not going to lead coalition forces to victory in this war.

The idea of �counterinsurgency� appears to be a viable way for success on paper. Military units, along with NGO�s [non-governmental organizations], the Department of State, GIRoA [the Afghanistan government], and other government agencies work together to emplace the clear, hold, build strategy in key areas of the battlefield. Like communism, however, counterinsurgency methods are not proving to be effective in practice.

Perhaps, in another fifty years, COINdinistas will be lamenting that counterinsurgency has never worked but "real COIN has never been tried", just as wannabe Marxists lament that real communism has never been tried and thus communism has never worked. Both ignore a key factor - human nature. The reason "real" COIN has never been tried to date and never will be is that 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. Because of this, there can be no "kinder, 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".

The only possible answer to this dynamic is to erase it from the record and replace it with the opposite spin, if you can. Thus the COINdinistas' constant exhortations to "own the world of information". But, again like the Soviet communists attempting to cover up their failure to practise "real" communism, that means propaganda aimed at your own citizenry as well as those beyond your own borders. We've seen this again and again as the military and White House roll out happy talk about "slow progress" when all the evidence points the other way; as the military denies atrocities causing civilian deaths or even blames them on the enemy (only to have contrary evidence emerge followed by their trying to buy off the victims' families); as the White House tries to bolster falling popularity for its war at home by false and fearmongering narratives about the threat to Americans.

However, as the Soviets also discovered, the truth tends to get out. COIN advocates like Ackerman's source respond by calling for even more information totalitarianism, both in Afghanistan and on the home front, It's a vicious cycle of spin that ultimately will fail to deliver their wished-for information control, the world is simply too big and too connected, but in the meantime it works to erode the credibility of the government and military and erode the freedom (of access to information) Americans are told the war in Afghanistan is fighting for.

Unable to work in the real world because it ignores human nature and covering for that failure through increased propaganda. Yet still, we're told that COIN is really for our own good, even for the good of those Afghans being killed by the gap between theory and reality. The truth is that it's colonialism by another name - just like the Soviet doctrine of the inevitable march of communism - and colonialism is always about totalitarianism even if it wears a "kinder, gentler" mask.

Yes, there certainly seem to be some worrying similiarities, don't there?