By Steve Hynd
An important piece by Col. Gian Gentile in the new National Defense University's Joint Force Quarterly looks at the dogmatic defense of counter-insurgency theory by its advocates and how that defense hampers foreign policy thinking.
A snippet:
FM 3�24 is not perfect, and it is not the Bible on counterinsurgency; its principles and methods are not timeless in warfare, and more importantly, they have not been shown to work in past and current operational practice as promised. But after listening to COIN experts, one comes away with the impression that the principles of COIN as laid out in FM 3�24 are irrefutable and that they must stay in place, without challenge. The experts often hold as an incontrovertible rule that they believe these principles must be followed in any counterinsurgency: the people are the "prize," or the center of gravity, and they must be protected.
Carl von Clausewitz said that a center of gravity is something to be discovered, and it could vary depending on the aims of the war being fought. Yet the COIN experts essentially tell us that there is no need to discover a center of gravity or even an operational method because the rules of our current COIN doctrine have already done the discovering and planning for us. For instance, if there is one hard and fast prescription in our doctrine that must always be followed as a rule, it is that the people must always be protected because they are the "prize." This concrete prescription therefore demands a specific operational method of large numbers of boots on the ground�doing "clear, hold, and build"�thereby winning hearts and minds. So, for example, when the President of the United States tells the Army to stop the pirates from coming out of Somalia, or to allow no more underwear bombers from Yemen, the only operational method that the Army has in its doctrinal toolkit is an expeditionary campaign of multiple combat brigades dispersed into the local population to protect them and win their hearts and their minds.
This is how being doctrinaire with counterinsurgency can lead to dogmatism�in other words, an inability to move beyond, when needed and called for, prescribed principles, methods, and rules. Unfortunately, the dogmatism of counterinsurgency has eclipsed strategy and, even more troublingly, shapes policy. To break out of this military dogmatism, FM 3�24 must be deconstructed and put back together but without the constraining proscriptions that in essence have been turned into rules and binding principles that have made current COIN doctrine so hidebound and straitjacketed.
The straitjacket of counterinsurgency makes it difficult to appreciate that it is problematic whether or not the United States can achieve a positive strategic outcome with counterinsurgency in distant, foreign countries. Any temporary tactical advantage U.S. forces achieve with COIN, whether with force of arms or cash, does not translate into the creation of a stable, competent, and most important, legitimate pro-Western regime. On the contrary, as seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the practice of population-centric counterinsurgency not only cultivates an "expectations gap" between what the U.S. military can deliver with money and infrastructure projects and what the indigenous government can deliver. Counterinsurgency American style also breeds its own opposition inside the indigenous population thanks to a large, unwanted U.S. military footprint. While advocates of American nationbuilding efforts might argue that Iraq has turned the corner and is on the path to peaceful reconciliation through the political process, recent reports of violence and serious and ongoing divisions in Iraqi society suggest that it is just too early to tell.
Read the whole thing.
I've written previously that the COINdinistas were beginning to defend the obvious failures of counter-insurgency dogma in Afghanistan and Iraq by saying that those weren't examples of "real" COIN at work - rather like advocates of communism explain its failure by saying no-one has done "real" communism yet. I've also written that the modern "mystery religion" that is COIN conveniently obscures the fact that counter-insurgency in foreign lands inevitably takes on most of the aspects of colonialism. Thus, it's depressing to hear from an insider friend that there's a faction in the Pentagon advocating,as does Newsweek's Christopher Dickey, that the U.S. should shoulder the "White Man's Burden" and replicate a British Imperial style colonial administration in Afghanistan.
Are they insane or just blinded by COIN dogma? Leaving aside the simple fact that State doesn't have the personnel and the military doesn't have the mindset to set up a successful network of political agents - the British Empire created an entire educational establishment to train such people - are they ignoring that such a system creates a decades-long local dependency? The British Empire saw that as a feature, not a bug, but surely the American people wouldn't. And have they forgotten that the British colonial system created many of the geopolitical problems we're handling nowadays in Asia, the Mid-East and Africa?
Anyone advocating such a step is blind, unable to look beyond their beloved doctrinal dogma to learn the lessons of history and apply them to the reality on the ground.
Seeing it as dogma is good, but I prefer to see it as kind of social engineering by alchemy. A quasi-scientific narrative designed to appeal to sources of funding, as opposed to achieving results.
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