NEO-COIN?

I wanted to alert the SWJ community regarding my recently issued essay on modern counterinsurgency in the Summer issue of Parameters. This essay, titled "Neo-Classical Counter-insurgency?" strives to accomplish two objectives; a) an evaluation of the newly issued Army/Marine counterinsurgency manual and b) arguments for extending our understanding of classical (largely Maoist) insurgents into the 21st century. I think I was more successful about the former than the latter objective and I will await the SWJ's collective assessment. This essay extends and builds upon my 2005 essay in the Journal of Strategic Studies, "Small Wars Revisited." I am pretty satisfied with the COIN manual and believe it deserves the acclaim it has received to date. I think it's a product of various schools of thought about modern insurgencies, although still too grounded in what I called the Classical School, based on the concepts of Mao and Revolutionary Warfare.

I have accused the Classicists of focusing "perhaps myopically" on the glorious heyday of Mao and revolutionary warfare. Furthermore, I also accuse the Classicists of ignoring the uniqueness of Maoist or colonial wars of national liberation, and over-generalizing the principles that have been drawn from them. Today's insurgent is not the Maoist of yesterday, as many have noted. Our understanding of COIN is really a synthesis of the best of the classical practitioners, including General Kitson (see chart below). While I accept the general teachings of Robert Thompson and David Galula, I suspect that they might be bewildered by the distinctly different nature and scale of today's global insurgency.

Galula:

Primacy of political over military actions

Single direction

Isolate insurgents, use minimal force

Population is critical

Adaptation (tactics and structure)

Kitson:

Coordinating machinery

Rule of law

Fused intelligence

Unconditional support of the people

Qualities required for COIN different

Thompson:

Clear political aim

Overall plan, coordinating structure

Priority against political subversion not insurgents

Secure Base

Dr. David Betz, from King's College London made a similar assessment, concluding

While the new counterinsurgency field manual is thorough, serious and stands in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric concerning the "War on Terror" of the last few years, it is not without failings, chief among them that it is pervaded by concepts drawn from Maoist-style People's Revolutionary Warfare, which is not the sort of insurgency now being faced.

Environmental Conditions

My essay examined the influence of four environmental factors and their incorporation during the development of the COIN manual. I suggest that the impact of trans-dimensional actors, urbanization, information technologies, and the rise of religious extremism augur for new or neo-classical approaches to COIN in this century. These emergent factors should, as Dave Kilcullen has suggested, require us to "Rebuild our mental model of this conflict, redesign our classical counterinsurgency and counterterrorism methods and continually develop innovative and culturally effective approaches."

Potential Implications

The convergence of networked cells, operating in dense urban environs, passionately inspired by their faith, exploiting the connectivity and real time intelligence of modern IT, generates a very different context for COIN. Galula and the classicists are certainly not irrelevant because of this change in context, but there is enough change to suggest that a fundamental reappraisal of conventional wisdom is required. The collective impact of these environmental factors complicates the three major and interrelated competitions that are inherent to insurgency. This section will address how these major competitions are altered.

The Competition for Political Legitimacy.

The rise of religious identity may substantially influence our COIN approach. In many cases, ethnic identity or religious affiliation are the basis for belonging and for legitimacy, and our historical approaches are hard pressed to win the political competition unless we operate in the most indirect manner. How do we compete with a Hamas or Hezbollah-like entity? In Iraq, the American military is being exposed to identity or religious-based militias, another form of alternative community formed to meet community needs. Some of these entities, like Hezbollah, are being very trans-dimensional, meeting their respective community's security and social needs. Rather than employ our traditional "market-based" approach, we have to work more indirectly via a moderate representative of the same collective identity group. Naturally, the adversary works to discredit and de-legitimize any candidate as a puppet of the external intervening force. Hence, this competition will continue to prove harder as long as identity politics or ethnic-based conflict remains central to complex insurgency.

The Competition for Perceptions.

Perceptions may trump or displace reality within the information dimension of counter-insurgency. In the Information Age, perceptual isolation will be even harder if not impossible. There are too many sources and means of transmitting ideas and images in real time today. The battle of ideas has always been a central competition within an insurgency, but in the past governments had some advantages. Now, the IT revolution magnifies the ability of the modern insurgent to exploit his limited success. A sophisticated insurgent can exploit the communications revolution to extend his influence and maximize his credibility by continuously flaunting his tactical successes all out of proportion to their accumulative operational effect. This is where a true competition exists, best captured by General Rupert Smith's analogy of rival commanders as film producers, competing with each other for the best narrative and the imagery to support it in order to influence people. Instead of Clausewitz's duel, it's a contest between producers with stories. Combat and casualties are no longer the key cash transaction of war; it's an exchange of carefully choreographed images and stories to produce an effect. Rather than physical effects, the psychological impact of all actions has to be considered. As Kilcullen has noted "In the battlefield, popular perceptions and rumor are more important than a hundred tanks."

We need to fully exploit the cognitive terrain of conflict and "maneuver" in the minds of our allies, friends, neutrals and the enemy. But how does one "clear, hold and build" in the virtual dimension?

The Security versus "System Disruption" Competition.

Urbanization increases the difficulty of winning the security competition. It will be extremely difficult for the counter-insurgent force to establish a credible perception of a monopoly over lethal violence in dense urban complexes. The urban guerrilla has too many tactical advantages, and our efforts to impose control on large populations are replete with opportunities to create resentment or provoke a disproportionate response. Technological profusion and urban complexity produce too many opportunities for the urban guerilla today to strike repeatedly and effectively at the sinews of municipal order. The degree of systemic perturbation that this can cause may not be significant in real terms, but it will undermine the local government and breed instability. The urban guerilla may not be able to mass enough force to take over territory, or to regularly overcome state forces. But he can disrupt communications, services, transportation and energy distribution networks at will. Readers are strongly encouraged to look at John Robb's new book, Brave New War, about the nature of this competition.

The Security-Disruption competition mismatch can impose heavy costs on the government, resources better spent on other counter-insurgency programs. But until security can be provided, and met unequivocally, then the other initiatives will stagnate. It is axiomatic to classical COIN that we should seek to isolate the insurgent from the population. Physical isolation may be possible but has always proven hard to do, without draconian population control measures and significant investments in barriers lines and posts. The imposition of such control measures today, thanks to the media, could weaken our position and extend any conflicts. Dr. Kilcullen's comments about the "urban tourniquet" are spot on.

Conclusions

The new FM is a long step forward, reflecting our current understanding of this increasingly complex mode of conflict. Yet it is true that "the 1960s theorists cast a long shadow" in FM 3-24. This era is necessary but not sufficient. We must do more than simply relearn classical COIN, we need to adapt old doctrine to new and increasingly more complex circumstances. We also need to pay more than lip service to the notion that every insurgency is unique and that war evolves. Victory against the fervent and fanatical who find "the notion of transcendence through death enticing rather than forbidding," will not be gained by "outgoverning" those that do not seek to govern. In short, the solution to today's so-called "irregular" challenges will not be found by laminating yesterday's frameworks on to our current context.

In short, I think we need to draw upon the classical COIN principles and update them to reflect changed conditions, to produce what could be called "neo-classical insurgency" for the lack of a better term. The COIN manual, despite its critics, actually made some headway in this regard. But not enough. Additionally, we should urgently place a greater emphasis on human capital and greater institutional adaptability, as T.X. Hammes has argued. The proposed ground force expansion provides resources for this proposal. Finally, inasmuch as there is universal agreement on the critical contributions from nonmilitary agencies, interagency shortfalls which have hamstrung our performance in OEF and OIF must be resolved. As Steve Metz from the Army's Strategic Studies Institute has stressed:

...if Iraq is a portent of the future—if protracted, ambiguous, irregular, cross-cultural, and psychologically complex conflicts are to be the primary mission of the future American military (and the other, equally important parts of the U.S. security organization)—then serious change must begin.

NOTES

David Betz, "Land Forces and Future Warfare: Learning to Fight Wars Amongst the People," Contemporary Security Policy, 2007, p. 9.

David J. Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," Journal of Strategic Studies, August 2005, p. 615.

Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," Survival, Spring 2007, p. 112.

Dr. Andrew Krepinevich and his work at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments are thanked for employing this analytical construct about the nature of competitions within conflict or within domains of military combat.

Steve Metz, Learning from Iraq, Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 2007 pp. 83-84. Metz puts it simply: "Applying existing counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine, derived from 20th century ideological conflict, to Iraq thus was pounding a round peg in a square hole. This hamstrung the effort from the beginning."

General Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, New York: Knopf, 2006, pp. 286-287.

David Kilcullen, "Twenty Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency," Military Review, May-June 2006, p. 106.

Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," pp. 112-113.

Ralph Peters, "When Devils Walk the Earth: The Mentality and Roots of Terrorism," Quantico, VA: Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, Dec. 2001, p. 24.

Metz, p. 91.