When David Kilcullen is at his best, he is unexcelled at discussing how to wage a counterinsurgency campaign. And I think the Australian infantry officer turned political anthropologist/COIN guru is at his best when he gathers field observations, boils them down to distilled principles, and then describes those rules in a clear, practical manner.
So I want to take some time to go through a paper he wrote recently in Afghanistan. (I didn't get it from him, by the way.) While it ostensibly is about metrics in COIN campaigning, it amounts to a thorough discussion of what works in such warfare, what doesn't, and -- especially -- how to tell the difference. It is written about the current campaign in Afghanistan, but clearly has broader applications. ...
After some initial throat-clearing (one of my rules when I was an editor was to see if I could cut the first three pages of any long article), Kilcullen's first major section is about metrics to be avoided...
Continue on for "what not to measure in a COIN Campaign" at Best Defense.
Comments
Population centric counterinsurgency (COIN) is a technique; nothing more, nothing less. If I wasnt so trusting in the honor of our think tankerists, media pundits and carpet-baggers, I might actually believe that the pop-centrists are trying to turn us into a one-trick pony. I am sure that this incessant push for a population centric approach has nothing to do with cornering and protecting an intellectual market share on all things insurgency. I only wish that the expert class would honestly explain the true cost of the population centric approach. Truth in advertising would be appreciated.
But come on yall. We have all bought into the myth that we can "fix" Afghanistan or we wouldnt be having this conversation about the need for better metrics. We all know how Afghanistan OUGHT to work. All that is needed is a technical blueprint to fix the place and metrics to monitor the progress.
Come to think of it, we may well already be a one-trick pony, notwithstanding Marine officers like Marine and Army Colonels George Amland and Gian Gentile who might publicly challenge the conventional wisdom in play. Thank you, Mr. Exum for keeping the contrarians in line.
Two articles in the New York Times express out current scientific, top-down, population centric approach to social change. In "A Generation of Frustrated Strivers Wage Jihad on Pakistan" we learn that the "militants capacity for regeneration has surprised the authorities... and (that) a deeper fix would be tackling some of Pakistans social problems, which the countrys political elite, preoccupied by power struggles, has ignored". If the countrys political elite would only focus on fixing social problems and less on struggling for power, all would be well. In an article highlighting South Yemens growing instability the author seems to support the actions of the socialist government during the 1970s, that, although they had "shattered the economy and oppressed their opponents brutally, the Socialists also but an end to harmful tribal practices like child marriages, championed womans equality and achieved some of the highest literacy rates in the Arab world".
I find the underlying premise for both articles very interesting. Namely, the local elites in Pakistan dont care about their fellow citizens (retainers?) as much as we do, especially those individuals that seek to feel "powerful in a world that ignores them". See the violence inherent in the self-esteem movement. In the case of south Yemen article, we look back fondly upon a Socialist golden age and the realization that "you have to break some eggs to make an omelet" or in the case of South Yemen; brutally suppress your opponents to create a better society for all. The crazy uncle in the basement is the fact that all revolutionaries need to protect themselves against the rise of the inevitable reactionaries; the yin and yang of progressive social change. The article laments the fact that in South Yemen, the Socialist governments achievements have since collapsed: literacy and education have dropped, child marriages have returned and lawlessness prevails, i.e. tribal law is in effect.
I will predict today that our population centric COIN technique will fail in Afghanistan. We are not ruthless enough to make it work. The good news is that practitioners like Col. Amland are adopting their efforts in response to what actually works on the ground. How is that for a metric?
r/
MAC
Schmed:
Excellent points, agree.
Anyway after I clicked the hyper link on Schmed's post and read Exum's comments on the Marine commander who is no longer "thouhgtful" because he doesn't get Coin it became quite clear to me that Exum's views on Coin have hardened.
How I ask, dear folks, did our Army become so Coin doctrinaire if now a marine commander (who I am sure has plenty of time on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan) is being chided, lectured, tutored by the expert class (Exum) back in DC along with other Coin disciples on the ground? This all rings of Army Times reporter Sean Naylors article from last month where a Stryker Infantry Brigade and Battalion commander were put into the docket and judged to be guilty of not following correct Coin doctrine and of MG Flynns recent CNAS report where he criticized combat battalion commanders in Afghanistan for being too emotional in wanting to kill the enemy.
Can you imagine some four star general, or the lecturing class telling then LTG Starry in the late 1970s to shut up and quit whining about Active Defense Doctrine since it was proven in theory and most likely in practice?
There is no other option--even though some on the ground at times perceive that there needs to be--for our Army nowadays than population centric counterinsurgency. The never ending proclamations of the likes of Exum and others continue to prove that this has become, to our detriment, the New American Way of War. We should be worried, and we should not sit back and take it.
Abu Muqawama should find a different Arabic word to be the father of; that is to say he is no longer the father of the "Resistance" but instead the father of the Coin "Establishment."
gian
<em>"... there are still some Army commanders who disagree with this basic point."</em>
Obviously there is a problem with killing some guy if doing so will create irreconcilable issues between you and 100 of his relatives. I think many commanders acknowledge this, but also recognize that, in some cases, killing <em>some people</em> has more positives than negatives. Unfortunately, this more nuanced view of the situation is often misrepresented with statements such as the quote above.
Whether it is Ricks asserting that some unit "thought it was doing COIN" or Exum <a href="http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2010/02/culture-clash-helmand.htm…; whether a deputy commander of an MEB is sufficiently "thoughtful" to recognize Exum's genius, I never cease to be amazed at the arrogance of the pundit class.
There is a world of difference between a commander not understanding something and simply having difficulty operationalizing it due to competing objectives, lack of resources, lack of capabilities, and the annoying propensity for our enemies to not play along. In 2007, one of our teams killed a mid-level AQI leader who we thought would be better off dead than alive. We later learned that he was a little more integrated into the community than we realized and it ended up being a bad call. Some would conclude that we "didn't get COIN" or some other ridiculous bullshit. The reality was that we simply lacked sufficient information - there were unknown unknowns. It was not that we "didn't get it" or disagreed with the basic concept that killing one guy can create more enemies. But for someone sitting in an office in DC, who is getting the more complete information well after the fact, our actions would probably seem amateurish and maddeningly ignorant of "COIN doctrine." How does that old Teddy Roosevelt quote go about the man in the arena?
Kilcullen is correct in the first part. There is an exponent in there somewhere that makes-up for the 20 you killed, and gives you another 20 to boot.
"there are still some Army commanders who disagree with this basic point." and I think they are wrong.
It is, as I have said, the military is made-up of a band of brothers, but the civilians are brother, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc.... So if, in your effort to kill the enemy, you somehow catch a few civilians, it is not good. The exponent will jump-out and grab you, before you even notice.
You have to read the books -- so you know what not to do...
Yes, that's ambiguous. So, mostly, are the books. Which are written by snowbirds, blackbirds and civilians some of whom have "been there" and some of whom have not. They are then approved by others who may or may not have the knowledge and experience required to provide a totally valid review.
Unfortunately, most of those who have been there are writing about a field other than one they were in when they were "there"...
The good news is that every time an old book is revised or a new one promulgated it only takes about five iterations to get most of the bugs out of them...
@Ramadi
Fair point. But I would also point out Col. Gentile's follow-up comment: "Doctrine is disseminated in many various ways in a military organization beyond the reading of it."
I've never read FM 3-0 (I've skimmed parts of it). But the relevant knowledge was conveyed to me. If, when I was a LT in 2003, my BDE CO had corralled all of us into a giant room and asked, "who has read FM 3-0?" then I am guessing that very few hands would have gone up. In spite of that, the unit did a pretty fair job of stomping the crap out of the Republican Guard. The knowledge was transmitted through training and mentoring.
I can meet you halfway. If a commander has neither read it, nor otherwise obtained the knowledge (assuming he didn't know it already), then it is not entirely clear that he knows whether to apply it. But that would only be a problem if the knowledge were necessary or useful. I think a quick read of the FM reveals that there is not much new information (even at the date of publication) and not much that is all that useful. It largely codified what much of the force had already learned and threw in some other random doctrinal jibber jabber and terminology to connect it with other publications.
<b>Carl Prine:</b>
I've probably said all I need to say about the use or futility of metrics in the measure of combat operation effectiveness. This, though:<blockquote>"How did HES work out for us?
<br>
Now, I would argue one of two (or both) things transpired with the monthly HES reports: 1) The concept of "Hearts and Minds" of the affected rural Vietnamese population wasn't necessarily the center of gravity in the war, but rather a symptom of the real cancer to be cured (VCI), which means that we got the nature of the war wrong or, 2) HES was a good notion of what we needed to measure, but we never found a way to peg progress or failure to it because we never solved input bias or found a means to address the cultural complexity of the people necessary to make the model work."</blockquote> deserves a response...
Actually HES worked out like most such metrics do -- not at all well. That's mostly due to the two factors you cite plus another. The human factor. You cannot correct for that because it is a constantly shifting effect, thus a combination of the nature of the war being misread, no way to correct for the input bias (or flawed data point selection, probably both) and the final straw, the facts that the metric providers often erred, their subjects changed their minds and the report readers and users saw what they wanted -- or did not want -- to see.
Those three factors will always be present and will always produce skewed, only marginally useful metrics in war. Any war...<blockquote>"Regardless, HES became a regular public measurement of the war (and an internal barometer for the efficacy of the "Hearts and Minds" efforts), and it failed well to demonstrate the reality of either effort."</blockquote>True.<blockquote>"...I'm not so sure, and think that we might arrive at a good enough means of measuring population attitudes, loyalties and whatnot.</blockquote>Possibly but improbably. If you do, it will be of little to no help to the Battalions that work hard to collect the information thereby devoting effort and attention to something of no benefit to them and of marginal utility (while probably causing them neglect something more important). Such data will, for broader purposes, be about as useful as the HES reports were. Whatever's important...
"If they plant poppy, they're obviously still insecure about their own local situations and the only important market is the black market that the Taliban and local ANSF still control. However, if they plant cotton or onions or wheat, obviously things are heading in the right direction. "
They might plant poppy because the wheat prices remain relatively low. They might plant poppy because it's still easier to grow and transport opium rather than apples or grain. They might plant poppy because eradication efforts against popply farmers who favor the government allow those who don't to reap profits.
If the UN isn't lying, then maybe we should come to the conclusion that the Taliban and other revolutionary cadres don't tax poppy production so much as any economic activity, and that shifting to grain means the farmer still gets taxed. Efforts of interdiction that raise the price of the poppy might have the effect of enriching the farmer AND those who tax him just as switching to a crop more lucrative than opium might end up with the same results.
Perhaps at some point someone will make the obvious argument that what really matters is ending or slowing the endogenous and exogenous inputs into the revolutionary structure. Something must starve the belly of the snake. Is the only means to do so to bribe the rats so that they don't feed the asp? Or can we address this in another way that cuts the serpent off from his rodents?
Or perhaps we reach the point when we realize that there are more snakes producing at a faster rate than we can kill; that perhaps our snake hunts are stimulating the production of more snakes; that by enriching the food source for the snakes we've given more food to the serpents, leading to more of them; and that these particular snakes are fortunate to have tunnels that lead to places we can't hunt, for political reasons that have nothing to do with the need to kill snakes.
In such a scenario, perhaps we need to agree that we have to live with these snakes and find a means to toil alongside them, or we have to get out of the snake hunting business.
Finding Kilcullen-esque metrics for measuring how big the snakes become or how well we can hunt them doesn't solve the larger problem of addressing the nature of these snakes and the environment in which they live, grow and prosper.
I'm bemused by two arguments that continue to be presented here.
One supposes that while our traditional pop-centric measurements have failed to inform commanders about the spread of the Taliban or the failure of our own policies, this is simply because we haven't properly resourced the fight in the first place.
This is inane. The measurements work or they don't work. The outcomes they're supposed to measure perhaps are what's not worked at addressing the causative forces that created the rebellion in the first place. The faulty assumptions, then, are on the nature of the war and how causation is to be mitigated or solved, NOT on the model that seems to have measured the efficacy of those operations, and FAILED to demonstrate conclusively that they were linked to the causes of the conflict.
We saw many of the same problems in Vietnam, regardless of which plank of the war was being analyzed (enemy, terrain or population). Yes, USAF and other parts of the military dropped 167 million leaflets meant to target the ideations of the "people" in 1966. Yes, Naval fires delivered nearly 41,000 rounds onto the enemy or onto terrain to deny their presence.
There still was no analysis that would demonstrate that the 167 million pamphlets changed the ideations of the people, nor was there any cogent research compiled that would show the effects of the Naval bombardments. That didn't stop people from saying that there were objectively demonstrated effects from both operations.
If we're going to get serious about tying our an analysis of effects to our operations, perhaps we should address the big picture paradox of flooding a nation with occupation troops to fight revolutions sparked, in large part, by the perception that the nation is being occupied by so many troops buttressing certain ethnic allies.
Is that occupation not, itself, a sign of the gradual disintegration of Pasthun society, a reminder to the Pathans about why they continue to fight a retributive civil war based as much on ethnicity as counter-colonial attitudes?
Where's Kilcullen's precious analysis of that? I submit that when we get his essay, we probably won't hear much talk about the paradox of how increasing resources actually increases the counter-strikes against us and our allies WHILE making the government and its militias more dependent on us and consequently less effective against our purported enemies.
The other argument presumes that we have failed to implement population-centric operations in Afghanistan until now and, consequently, that the metrics addressing the counter-Maoist efforts against third world revolutions they were designed to measure will now work.
I would submit that we have attempted pop-centric operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we've tried to use the metrics culled from the past to measure our effectiveness in controlling the causative forces of these wars, and that they have failed.
In deference to Gian, I'll take another longer step and attempt a thought experiments. Solve for X and Y what you think these statistics measured:
"It (X yardstick) "is primarily concerned with evaluating, measuring, and reporting progress of the (Y government) toward the goal of restoring and maintaining security, extending firm government control, improving the living conditions and advancing the economic development of its people."
Does "X" mean a new suite of metrics, proposed by Kilcullen, to measure progress in a pop-centric fight on behalf of the Kabul government ("Y"), especially addressing those who are on the "fence" and might slide one way or the other?
No. That phrase was uttered in the spirit of Robert W. Komer and "X" stood for the Hamlet Evaluation System and "Y" was the government in Saigon.
How did HES work out for us?
Now, I would argue one of two (or both) things transpired with the monthly HES reports: 1) The concept of "Hearts and Minds" of the affected rural Vietnamese population wasn't necessarily the center of gravity in the war, but rather a symptom of the real cancer to be cured (VCI), which means that we got the nature of the war wrong or, 2) HES was a good notion of what we needed to measure, but we never found a way to peg progress or failure to it because we never solved input bias or found a means to address the cultural complexity of the people necessary to make the model work.
Regardless, HES became a regular public measurement of the war (and an internal barometer for the efficacy of the "Hearts and Minds" efforts), and it failed well to demonstrate the reality of either effort.
Gian, I think, would argue that we'll never be able to put this complexity onto a matrix for battalion commanders anyway. I'm not so sure, and think that we might arrive at a good enough means of measuring population attitudes, loyalties and whatnot.
My concern, of course, is that even if Kilcullen's measurements do work, they're meaningless because we're not fighting in Malaya or South Vietnam but rather a post-Maoist war in Afghanistan.
*@ Schmedlap*
"I read 3-24 when it was only available in digits, on a flight while I was TDY. I found very little of practical use and very little information that most of us didn't already know either intuitively or through experience. So, my question is, "so what?"
My point was not about the merits of 3-24. My point is that if you can't count on *commanders* to read it and figure out whether it's great or garbage, then you have commanders who are winging it.
How about metrics on the macro scale? What if this Oct/Nov, after the Marja offensive and the initial surge of the new COIN strategy has had some time to work, we'll take a look at what the farmers in Helmand plant. If they plant poppy, they're obviously still insecure about their own local situations and the only important market is the black market that the Taliban and local ANSF still control. However, if they plant cotton or onions or wheat, obviously things are heading in the right direction.
I know this is a pretty long-term and passive metric, but it could be a very good overall indicator.
Just so that I don't guide the thread too far off topic, I guess I should add one (I hope) clarifying question to help steer it back on path. Do you think this discussion of metrics is evidence that we're learning what works? I think the very notion of outsiders proposing metrics demonstrates that we fundamentally are not "getting it" because metrics are derived from specific operations. They are not a magic list that apply to any operation.
<em>... it is almost as fruitless as arguing isolationism vs. engagement. Either of those positions is based on one's worldview...</em>
Oh man, that's nothing. Wait until the debate resumes about whether to ditch the M4 and replace it with something of a different caliber/model. That's when the hair and blood start flying and everyone retreats to positions based entirely upon bad information and gut feeling.
<em>However, once we embark on the strategy of engagement that requires COIN ops, we start getting more and more cases of what works and what doesn't. Enough anecdotal evidence starts to look like a trend. This is where Kilcullen is making his money these days.</em>
I don't doubt Kilcullen is making very good money these days. But I really am curious what you are referring by "what works and what doesn't." I know we've discovered much of the latter - how about the former? We're talking a great game in Afghanistan right now. We're identifying problems that persist and acknowledging errors and swearing not to repeat them. But as for actions taken, alternatives proposed, and actual results, it seems that the Taliban is stronger, our supply lines are more treacherous, the central government is increasingly seen as illegitimate, our troops are dying in larger numbers, costs are ballooning, and public support among allies is waning. And then there's that pesky question: what is our national interest in Afghanistan?
Schmedlap, I'm in complete agreement with your latter comments on strategy vs. tactics. Unfortunately, in the past few years, only by understanding the tactics have we learned something about the "right" strategy to match it. In not so many words, we got it all bass-ackwards, but we're doing much better now.
I think this strategy realm is where we of the COIN believers club must respectfully agree to disagree with those in LTC Gentile's camp, and we have every right to expect the same in return - it is almost as fruitless as arguing isolationism vs. engagement. Either of those positions is based on one's worldview, and not something that either side has convincingly proven right or wrong.
However, once we embark on the strategy of engagement that requires COIN ops, we start getting more and more cases of what works and what doesn't. Enough anecdotal evidence starts to look like a trend. This is where Kilcullen is making his money these days.
I think there is a bit of confusion or miscommunication running both ways. The frustration here, I think, is the emphasis on the population, rather than the enemy.
Did we invade Afghanistan because we thought the population was prone to harboring AQ? Or did we invade because AQ was there? But now AQ is gone and we're focused on making the population less prone to harboring AQ and the Taliban. So how does our operation in Afghanistan relate back to our strategy, assuming that we had/have one?
LTC Gentile, I think your cynicism (or, at best, skepticism) about Kilcullen's "What to Measure" shows through in your last comment. I'm not convinced that Ricks meant to portray Kilcullen's factors in order of priority. Rather, the complexity of the COIN environment requires us (the S-2/J-2's of the world) to harness the resources of the coalition's civilian and military units to track all of the above simultaneously to obtain an accurate picture of the insurgency. If I'm not misreading him, this is also what MG Flynn has advocated here in Afghanistan. As many of the readers here know, you are skeptical about the role of culture in all of this so there's no need to open that can of worms, other than to say that a failure to understand the "human terrain" - just as we would like to use METT-TC in the old days to understand the physical battlefield - will mean a harder slog into the core of the insurgency.
Back to what to measure: the inability (or outright refusal-as I personally faced in 2008 in the Philippines) of our S-2/J-2 system to process these multiple factors doesn't reflect well on us so-called intel officers. Our intel schools don't do enough to teach young officers or enlisted troops to think about the COIN environment holistically, or prep them with the frameworks that Kilcullen outlines to organize the information they do get into useful form. One of Kilcullen's more poignant comments (via Ricks) is that analysts (and commanders) need to look at trends rather than snapshots to see a better picture of insurgency - a TTP that is not encouraged by the rotational schedule we currently follow. As an AF officer, I am especially worried about AF personnel in this realm, since most will serve their 179 or 365-day tour and never return to this fight in the same position.
Anyway, I've always appreciated your counterpoint in this debate about pop-centered COIN, but a more careful reading of Kilcullen's points reveals a pretty convincing framework. It is NOT the mis-prioritized mess you portray.
Oh by the way you "S-2s" of the world Coin Expert Tom Ricks on his blog is lecturing you on the rules of measurement for population centric Coin. Bluf point in his lecture: Don't worry about the enemy until the very end because naturally they just are not that important. Instead the rules demand that you S-2's focus on the people, their cutlture, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, their desires for better government, their needs for better bridges. Once you have done this and you understand them and their culture then the enemy will be presented to you for killing, capture, or bringing into the people's fold. "Culture," thus, has been weaponized.
You can view Ricks's short lecture at:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/12/kilcullen_v_and_now_a_f…
Agree with Schmedlap.
Much too much is made of the argument based on personal surveys of percentages of folks of a given group as to who has read FM 3-24. When the usual 2 out of 10 pops up then the claim is made that because the other 8 had not read it therefore the Army doesnt get Coin doctrine. Nonsense. I didnt read 100-5 when I was a LT in Germany until well after my first year there but i understood the basics of the doctrine. Doctrine is disseminated in many various ways in a military organization beyond the reading of it.
gian
<em>Before my PRT deployment I sat in a room of about 100 or so of the senior leaders for all 12 US PRTs, including the commanders, and when they asked who had read 3-24, only 2 of us raised our hands!</em>
I read 3-24 when it was only available in digits, on a flight while I was TDY. I found very little of practical use and very little information that most of us didn't already know either intuitively or through experience. So, my question is, "so what?"
"I submit, with all humility, that perhaps our EBO savants haven't cornered the market over the past six years in creating and sustaining Afghan institutions, removing the causes of the instability or denying the enemy sanctuary in AfPak.
The reason might be that the EBO models that assumed certain actions would create certain reactions that would favor the counter-revolutionary were themselves flawed, unlike our assumptions in Ramadi."
Or the reason might be that we have done NOTHING we were supposed to do that would prove or disprove the merits of whatever approach was advanced at the strategic level. Being "properly resourced" is not the same as being properly implemented, as I am sure you will agree.
I'm curious to know what our assumptions were in Ramadi. My AO was the exact neighborhood where the Awakening started, for what it's worth. I'll tell you what the assumptions were in 2006 when I left. That the whole thing was not a great idea. But the Iraqis themselves had been pushing for the Awakening for the entire year I was there sitting on Satar's couch (while Satar was away and his brother was calling the shots), and who knows for how long before? Americans take a lot of credit for whatever "assumptions" we made or actions we took, when, in fact, all the assumptions, actions and risk were on the part of the Iraqis and 1-35 and 1-37 were the units that finally agreed to get out of the way.
"Certainly, you're not going to hang your hat on the Subnational Assessment Model because ... those who have been studying the metrics employed for the first eight years of the war ... concluded that these measurements weren't working."
I am going to hang my hat on the subnational assessment model, and here's why: SNAM is simple. It's common. You cannot legitimately claim it has or has not worked in the past because *there has been no serious effort* to implement this or any other common assessment or planning framework. (Now, of course, TCAPF is getting all the attention, but again, no one is actualy going to use it, I am sure.) It's great to talk about what generals think is or isn't happening, or what it seems like is or isn't happening from reading it on the Web, or what may have worked or not worked at a different time, in a different place. But you cannot claim with any authority that SNAM or EBO or any other tool has or hasn't worked because you cannot claim that, with any consistency, each company, BN, PRT, BDE or even DIV has used it, either at the same time across AoRs, or from one rotation to the next in the same AoR. It just isn't happening with any kind of consistency that would allow you to measure and make the kinds of claims that are being made.
It doesn't matter if ISAF is telling you SNAM is being used. It isn't. It hasn't. The Integrated Civ-Mil plans for the country and the RCs -- great idea, but they are being completely ignored. No one has read them. But I am sure the same people will be saying a year from now that they were bad plans or at least ineffective.
Before my PRT deployment I sat in a room of about 100 or so of the senior leaders for all 12 US PRTs, including the commanders, and when they asked who had read 3-24, only 2 of us raised our hands! And that includes 12 commanders, and 12 Army Civil Affairs O5s or O4s. This is the kind of buy in you are getting on the tools at our disposal.
The point is, in Afghanistan we don't know, because we haven't tried. Fighting in "small wars" at a different time on a different continent unfortunately does not give us a cristal ball that enables us to say what will work or not work in Afghanistan today. It sounds a lot like the same criticism you make of Kilcullen.
I am neither evangelizing about the merits of any metrics or any approach, nor disputing those merits. That seems to be what you are taking me to task over. What I am saying is that the intellectual laziness of our corps of officers is preventing whatever progress we could be making. We could use *any* method right now, and if everyone would take the time to learn it and use it, we would make progress.
MikeF -- I'm wrong a lot! I can live with that. But only because I'm willing to engage in conversations like these with people who obviously have a lot more experience than I do, not to mention a lot more time to read. You guys don't have to worry about my wanting to publish anything. I'm much more interested in reading what guys like you and Carl have to say than I am in my own opinion about these things.
Back on track and my final post for today...
How do we measure success?
- What about the horrible commander that assumes an area that is quiet, safe, and pacified? He looks good on paper. He might be a Courtney Massengale.
- What about the stellar commander that walks into the middle of hell? He might take his boys through today's version of Thermoplyae with many casualties and still complete his mission. Is he a bad commander?
- What about the good-enough commander who actually is a decent leader but is over-come by events as the enemy slides into his AOR. Is he now a bad commander?
I'd submit that's there is only one way to determine an answer to these questions. Ask the men and women that serve underneath him. Collectively, they'll get you closer to the truth.
v/r
Mike
Carl-
I didn't mean to put you on the defensive. I actually agree with a lot of what you and COL Gentile write. I just didn't want you to beat up on Ramadi too much. Remember, he's in the middle of a tough fight right now.
If there were easy answers to these problems, then we wouldn't spend so many hours debating them. I'm currently working on a paper about my unit's actions in Iraq working in rural, denied areas. It attempts to show the difficulties of applying theory to practice in small wars.
I'll leave you with the motto of my mortar platoon. It is starkly different than FM 3-24. It is more reminiscient of the early days of the Malayan Emergency prior to what Dr. Nagl wrote about.
Armis Exposcere Pacem. They demanded peace by force of arms. - Motto of "The Lost Boys," Mortar Platoon, A/5-73 Recon
I hope y'all have a good weekend. I've got one or two more post in me, then I'm off to have a real life outside of small wars :).
Mike
"He spoke of practice and not theory, and I think that's what Dave Dillege and PhilR are getting at."
Yes, I'm a real piker when it comes to practice. I have no possible knowledge about what it means to fight in small wars, nor have I lived with the guerillas in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and blah blah blah.
We all dig that individual experiences can add up to something. No sh**. The problem is that we really have apriori notions about COIN that are being treated as if they're the gemstones uncovered by Kilcullen some a seam of knowledge.
I would argue that his examples really depend on theory, not practice, and that the theory actually is fairly dated. My perspective on COIN, on the other hand, comes from the extreme of practice and has arrived at a counter-point to the dominant pop-centric/HAM theory.
I don't much like cookie-cutter declarations. It's why I actually have some concerns about the notion that "a COIN fight won't feature clear seizure of terrain or attrition of combat units" because often a COIN fight does just that, unless Callwell and pretty much every thinker before the counter-Maoists was lying.
SOMETIMES a COIN fight will feature clear seizure of terrain and attrition of enemies, and we might wish to listen to the Sri Lankans, Ugandans and the colonels in Sierra Leone on the subject because they might have something to tell us.
One might suggest (and on this Kilcullen agrees) that the typical counter-revolutionary strategy requires means of articulating force to seize terrain, defeat the enemy and persuade the population that forms the human topography hiding and feeding the insurgency -- or, in contemporary parlance, pop-centric and terrain-centric and enemy-centric, albeit at different times and to achieve different results.
It depends on the AO. It depends on the goals of the counter-insurgent. It also depends on what the population, terrain and enemy decide to confect in terms of friction.
As for the much-maligned EBO that's been applied in Afghanistan, I would simply refer you back to my waggish comments on metrics and you might fill in every application of EBO in OEF since 2004.
I submit, with all humility, that perhaps our EBO savants haven't cornered the market over the past six years in creating and sustaining Afghan institutions, removing the causes of the instability or denying the enemy sanctuary in AfPak.
The reason might be that the EBO models that assumed certain actions would create certain reactions that would favor the counter-revolutionary were themselves flawed, unlike our assumptions in Ramadi.
Part of this is simply misunderstanding the nature of the war, what force and suasion might accomplish and how we track success and failure.
Alert the media.
Carl,
I met a National Guard Sergeant today. He's a veteran with three tours working through some physical and mental issues from his deployments. Back in 2002, he rolled with GEN Jim Huggins, "Huggie Bear" as we affectionately call him in the land of the airplane gang and a man that we should all listen to, in A'stan. In 2006, he was patrolling the streets of Eastern Baghdad and Wassat Province. This soldier spent thirty minutes teaching me about small wars that would rival anything in SWJ, published books, academic's lectures and theories, or any think tank. I encouraged him to start writing down his story and to look to Stephen Pressfield's blog for encouragement on the writer's struggle.
He spoke of practice and not theory, and I think that's what Dave Dillege and PhilR are getting at. Simply put, US intervention in small wars should be avoided at all cost. Duh! You ask any hardened soldier, and he intuitively understands that; however, we don't make policy. That's the realm of the politicians. We just try to find the least-bad solutions to intractable problems.
I'm not trying to be confrontational here just trying to articulate the differences. Defining what we should be doing IS mutually exclusive to figuring out how we need to handle the task at hand. I don't say that lightly. Actually, I hardly ever say that anything is mutually exclusive. One of the biggest criticisms of SWJ that I've heard is that it is too inclusive and narrow-minded. That bothers me
So, I guess my point is don't be too hard on Ramadi. If you had asked me in 2005 about EBO, I'd have told you that it was the "silver-bullet" answer :). Shows you how far I've come.
And, to your suggestion about a new 1962 small wars seminar, I'm all about it, and, BTW, it's done everyday in SWC. CNAS would probably be the perfect venue, but I think there's a reason that RAND got as far away from DC as they did. I've got some time. If someone wants to give me the authority, responsibility, and funding, I'll set up a great forum down along the North Carolina Coast.
Ramadi-
Good work and keep driving on. If I may, I'd suggest that you write down your thoughts. Later, you'll look back and think: 1. Damn, I was right about that. 2. Okay, I over-generalized a bit. 3. Crap, I was dead-wrong on that one. If you choose to take it a step further and publish, there are many willing volunteers in this forum that will help you frame, edit, and publish.
Oh BTW, I have a high regard for Dr. Kilcullen and Dr. Nagl. I read everything that they publish. Sometimes, I just disagree with them, and that's okay.
Schmedlap-
Dude, I read your blog. You've just had some deep thoughts this week, and I wanted to give a proper response not just sarcasm or an old war story.
v/r
Mike
"So, throughout operations (shape, clear, hold, build) we continuely develop hypothesis to test"
Perhaps the failure to succeed at shape, clear, hold and build, MikeF, implies that this very model is wrong, at least when we consider pacification in OEF.
Metrics that imply success or failure for a model that doesn't address the causative forces of the conflict are therefore meaningless. We're only measuring how well we're doing the model, not how well we're addressing the uprising.
In other words, we're measuring occupation, not pacification.
I submit that Kilcullen gives us a fancier means of not only measuring occupation but the addressing of Maoist insurgencies from several generations ago. He won't help us measure success or failure in OEF.
"Its called the Subnational Assessment Model, and it gives commanders a straightforward, common way to measure progress along the lines of effort, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It gives them a tool with which to build a PLAN."
Certainly, you're not going to hang your hat on the Subnational Assessment Model because, as I previously said, those who have been studying the metrics employed for the first eight years of the war (even those scripted by USAID and NATO, which has been trying to figure out workable metrics for multinational missions and wider "conflict environments") concluded that these measurements weren't working.
As I waggishly mentioned earlier, using the metrics thus far deployed in OEF (including some Kilcullen has mentioned), one would expect that we had won the war in 2004 and the existence of so many Taliban cadres and their shadow government a statistical outlier to be explored later.
I actually could argue that commanders in OEF have had a "plan," and it's actually been based on faith-based pop-centric HAM ideology for a long time, even before McChrystal arrived. Even when properly resourced in certain provinces, it has failed.
It has failed for all the paradoxes I outlined above, and the metrics that seemed to show that it was working also failed.
At this point, one might want to suggest that perhaps the commanders have gotten the nature of the war wrong, along with our assumptions about what force and suasion might accomplish, plus a firm understanding of the enemy and the culture in which he operates.
Some of that is pop-centric dogma, but much is the stuff of Clausewitz.
oh, and @ *Robert C Jones*, then I'll stop wasting bandwidth:
"One thing worth considering is that the Taliban are not on the warpath because of a lack of reliable electricity in Kandahar City. Neither do the hundreds of seasonal fighters report to the nearest cache to draw an AK or RPG do so because they don't have indoor plumbing."
I couldnt agree with you more. This is my point about the correct time to be talking about metrics. What, exactly, are we wanting commanders to measure? If putting a new paint job on a car will improve its braking distance?
If were not even getting at the basic problem in Afghanistan, which we are not, then lets not take the time to measure the results of doing the wrong things. Lets wait until we have actually done some work on the brakes so we dont start congratulating ourselves because the metrics show the paint is coming along very nicely.
Im concerned that more hasnt come out of COMISAF/USFOR-A about shutting off the spigot. We are wasting an unbelievable amount of money and accomplishing nothing because, as you point out, giving electricity to a community that has never had it in the history of time is not going to make any difference in the insurgency. I am a Kilcullen fan, and I think if everyone fighting this fight digested The Accidental Guerilla, theyd see how misguided our approach is, and how we continue to play into the AQ strategy.
I would love to see your 5 questions asked at every meeting in Afghanistan, because people might realize we are trying to buttress a government that will never be legitimate here, and were doing so in a way that does not address the root of conflict in Afghanistan. A unitary executive in Kabul could not *ever* be a realistic governance solution in Afghanistan. Mountain folk around the Khost-Gardez pass will never care; they never have.
There is another troubling fallacy of the political solutions we are pursuing for Afghanistan: that there can be some sort of political accommodation with the combatants that will end the conflict. The leaders of the movements causing most the trouble in Afghanistan do so for their own personal wealth and power, and laying down arms is a direct contradiction of their aims. Who thinks Siraj Haqqani wants a job in Kabul? Is there anyone on Earth who believes Hekmatyar will honor any agreement you could make with him? And while we're on the point, what, exactly, does Mohammad Omar control at this point?
These are the reasons I dont want to see us wasting our time devising new ways to measure our progress right now. As I pointed out in my previous post, we already have the tool we need. In any event, at this point, we would only be measuring how well we are failing.
@ MikeF and Ken White
Thanks for the warm welcome! Mike, I've been saying for a couple years that what we need here is not another 3-star command. We need Ted Turner. Someone who can tell what works and what doesn't, and with the spine to walk into an office and say, "go get your XO. You're $%*& fired." Buffett would be even better. And Ken, you're right. There has to be a baseline for guys to work from. See below.
@ Anonymous (Carl Prine?)
Weve already developed "some means of assisting commanders in the field with quantifiable and qualitative guides to help them shape their operations." Its called the Subnational Assessment Model, and it gives commanders a straightforward, **common** way to measure progress along the lines of effort, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It gives them a tool with which to build a *PLAN*. Something that can be handed off from unit to unit. Its being trained at JRTC now to some extent.
We have to stop using what little time we have left talking about these things like they don't already exist. But the thing is, these guys gotta use it. Seems like everyone already knows everything. They "got it." Theyre "tracking." This is why the Counterinsurgency Training Center here still has to fight to get units to come get trained. Everyone's "tracking." Yet O6s and especially O5s are approaching this thing with no COIN plan whatsoever. How can you tell? Because the O2s and O3s have no plan. What happened to the days when your commander looked at your plan (because you definitely had to have one!), made sure it fit into his, and only then did he send you into battle. I am horrified that these are combat arms officers leading these BDEs and BNs and COs who have completely failed to do the basics.
Until commanders start to assess and plan, assess and plan(using methods they didn't just make up once they got into country) and within a common framework, theres nothing to measure. Its been correctly pointed out that commanders are winging it. They are. And it's not just the non-lethal stuff, as we recently saw from events surrounding the COPs in Nuristan. Letters of reprimand don't go nearly far enough. Where's Ted Turner??
Mike/Phil,
It's bad form to pimp one's own blog, but I figure this conversation is slowly shifting to <a href=http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=9669>the council</a> and will soon slip off the "recent comments" list, so fwiw, here is <a href=http://www.schmedlap.com/weblog/post.aspx?id=100210-2>a lengthier response</a>.
PhilR:
"to a hypothesis of why there might be a relationship and further effort can be put forth to validate of invalidate the hypothesis--which leads to better understanding. Better understanding is ultimately subjective and that is something we have to learn to live with."
Sir, I just typed almost that exact statement today while working on a paper about company level operations. I'll try to expand a bit. Understanding one's environment is never fully complete. We gather information through observation, conversation, reconnaissance, surveillance, etc, but there is no certainty in small wars- trust and truth are often elusive.
So, throughout operations (shape, clear, hold, build) we continuely develop hypothesis to test. Then, we conduct further missions to confirm or deny them trying to minimize the gap between what we think we know and what is actually going on. In some sense, we are continually in the first part of MDMP as our facts and assumptions may change or shift based off new information.
Occasionally, we reach decision points where the commander must state, "this is how I see the world." Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we get it wrong.
v/r
Mike Few
Schmedlap: "Well then, I would reiterate: if that's the case, a lack of "metrics" isn't the problem. Perhaps proper planning has a role in the outcome. Planning has to precede metrics, not follow from them."
Exactly. When "metrics" or assessment don't seem to make sense its because there's a real disconnect in understanding the mission. The arguments Ive read in these comments are not so much about whether we measure the correct things, but whether we have the right strategy or have set realistic and achievable goals given the means available.
I'm not so negative on all of the statistics being discussed. Its when we describe them as "metrics," or try and let them speak for themselves that we lose their utility. Unfortunately, however, we tend to use quantifiable measures as the proof--that the tables can stand for themselves to demonstrate some truth about the situation.
Given that a COIN fight won't feature clear seizure of terrain or attrition of combat units, you have to gain information about what is going on in some manner. The best is observation, reliable HUMINT, etc. Quantifiable measures are useful if you use them as a starting point to ask why, or focus your observation/analysis on apparent anomalies. As indicated in most of the Kilcullen passages on Tom Ricks blog, these statistics aren't telling you that you are winning or losing, but they are telling you something about what is going on in the area. Each of Kilcullens observations about some measure is useful or not could only have been established because someone had to investigate further to find out the story behind the numbers. This is good and leads to a better appreciation of the environment and the cause/effect relationships at play. I noticed that the statistics he found most useful were not single counts, but comparisons between two or more. The correlation does not lead to an answer, but to a hypothesis of why there might be a relationship and further effort can be put forth to validate of invalidate the hypothesis--which leads to better understanding. Better understanding is ultimately subjective and that is something we have to learn to live with.
Carl said: <i>Again, SWJ, perhaps it's time for the adults to start seriously debating the topic. Use your forum for good!</i>
We've had this conversation before Carl. As a so-called crossroad and "big umbrella" we post items that start dialogue such as the one generated here. That's what we do.
S/F
Dave D.
I suspect that commanders at the highest levels ARE winging it. Why do I suspect this? Because in August, we received a draft report on how the staff running OEF, in conjunction with NSC, would begin (BEGIN!) to develop metrics and measures of progress that would chart the "transformative effect" of our warmaking and whatnot in Afgahnsitan.
Part of this was leaked ( http://www.politico.com/static/PPM130_civ-mil_plan_afghanistan_090907.h… ), but it had been presaged by the CNAS "Triage" report co-authored by Kilcullen that had perhaps the most depressingly bare and unconvincing section on "metrics" imaginable.
Others commented on this at the time ( http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/07/29/the-strange-contradictions… ), but the reality likely remains: We're hearing from Kilcullen now through the Muppet-hand of Ricks moving his mouth because the Australian had been asked to add something to the discussion about metrics and the deadline is now EIGHT YEARS AFTER THE WAR STARTED.
I'm probably wrong, but reading the tea leaves puts us here.
When I hear that commanders in the field are interested in confirming EKIA, EWIA and other sorts of BDA, I'm not willing to just say that they're doing that because those numbers are easier to get than, say, attitudinal surveys limning the "people" and their thoughts on the Americans and the Karzai government.
It might be because that particular commander is in the clear stage or that the enemy might get some vote on how the AO is shaped. Nutty as that sounds.
I've noted another creeping measurement lately that suggests how "bad" commanders do their jobs -- their own KIA or WIA.
The assumption seems to be that the pop-centric/HAM doctrine works and that if there are an undue number of casualties in your unit than you're obviously "too kinetic" or that you're doing something wrong that's getting your men hurt.
My only concern as a layman is that journalism should look beyond this shallow sort of causation and cheap narrative and explore what are really the causative forces of the uprising and seek to explain to the general reader how he or she might notice "progress" or "failure."
But while my interest in this is journalistic, I suppose that military minds of a higher rank than I ever held might add something on the subject more substantive than the regurgitation of Fall and other colonial savants found in the latest Kilcullen/Ricks tag-team.
<em>Obviously, those at higher ranks (and the democracy which they theoretically serve) deserve to understand how the fight is going. While all COIN is local, redistribution of resources, sharing lessons learned and assisting those elements that need the most help ARE NOT based on what a platoon leader thinks about the sitrep.</em>
I agree with all of that, so I'm not sure where our disagreement lies in regard to my last comment.
That makes no sense, Schmedlap. Obviously, those at higher ranks (and the democracy which they theoretically serve) deserve to understand how the fight is going. While all COIN is local, redistribution of resources, sharing lessons learned and assisting those elements that need the most help ARE NOT based on what a platoon leader thinks about the sitrep.
Regardless, I'm flummoxed by Ricks' latest effort, which parrots Kilcullen's advice for the ANA's metrics: We'll grade you on how well you do things that Kilcullen thinks aren't worth recording for US units!
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/11/kilcullen_iv_how_to_mea…
This is so open to parody that it's hard not to get a good chuckle from it. Body counts are bad for US forces but "the ratio of enemy killed vs. security forces killed may tell you how aggressive and confident an Afghan unit is."
If a tiny dot of pee doesn't come out while you guffaw over this, you have no sense of humor!
Again, SWJ, perhaps it's time for the adults to start seriously debating the topic. Use your forum for good!
Metrics must be established by the commanders because they are derived based upon what operations the commanders are undertaking. They cannot be imposed or suggested from those of us in the gallery as goals for the commanders to shoot for. If you're searching for some quantifiable and qualitative guides to help commanders shape their operations then that suggests to me that you don't think our commanders have developed a plan and are just kind of winging it day by day. Maybe that's true - I don't know. But then, if that's the case, a lack of "metrics" isn't the problem.
'"Metrics" is a conversation for another time. '
Yes, it would be nutty to suggest that EIGHT YEARS INTO A WAR we might have developed some means of assisting commanders in the field with quantifiable and qualitative guides to help them shape their operations.
Silly me. I guess managers in this year's World Series really can wait a few more for accurate numbers about how certain batters can hit or the efficiency of fielders beyond what the naked eye will show them. Perhaps we'll just go with "gut" or "hunch" or "art" or "credentials" or whatever also passes for received knowledge (see the celebrity competence of Kilcullen for the proper example) in lieu of actually determining causation or finding out what works.
The larger complaint, it seems to me, would be to understand the nature of this war. Is this sole means of achieving our goals the establishment of a viable national government in Kabul, complete with adequate security forces and sustainable development projects?
If this is the only (or best) means of arriving at pacification, then one should listen to Kilcullen blather about his "metrics" culled from five or more decades ago and repackaged as something new because they might do some good (maybe not) against a Maoist insurgency.
If, however, one begins to surmise that the nature of the war in Afghanistan is quite different from Vietnam in 1962, then perhaps we should consider other means of addressing our long-term goals there and finding ways that we can measure success or failure in achieving them.
When I hear it seriously suggested that by becoming more efficient at sluicing aid to the "people" currently in rebellion, I almost want to gag because I suspect that the extra funds from this are skimmed by the Taliban's taxmen to fund ongoing cadre development and attacks against us (and which the UN has discussed iteratively while we refuse to listen).
Perhaps what Kilcullen's metrics really amount to are the continuous blandishment of David Kilcullen's career. To Ricks, these oats of Kilcullian wisdom are like catnip because they seem so counter-intuitive to anyone who hasn't really read the COIN literature compiled during the later Colonial era.
I don't think this, but I fear Gian and others do. They seem sincerely regurgitated for today's commanders, relearned wisdom that he believes will help them fathom the people, the enemy and the war.
I simply ask that the editors of SWJ quit making the assumption that this so and instead cast a wider net to glean other ideas about warmaking against irregular foes. Should SWJ get behind the CTC push to rewrite FM 3-24 and make it doctrinally more relevant to the commanders in the field, we might arrive at a chapter on "metrics" that works better than what we see misfiring today.
<b>Ramadinights:</b>
Good post and great comments. Thanks for being where you are and doing what you're doing. Let me echo Mike F and ask you to keep posting here as you are able.
One minor quibble. The delusion of metrics is indeed way down the list of concerns compared to the GIGO problems you cite and which most of us are aware of and agree are bad idea. Problem is that if basic principles are ignored -- and that is the gist of your valid complaint -- or skewed for odd reasons, that contributes to the GI aspect and thus leads to the GO problem.
Metrics, all too often, are themselves the garbage and precipitators for flawed actions. That elementary point was made in another war long ago. It was ignored then and an often counterproductive process became embedded and an almost Doctrinal mistake. If we put it aside when it is a current issue or problem, it just gets shunted to the next time...
We should drain the swamp in spite of the alligators.
Ramadi- Thank you for taking the time to check in and please feel free to contribute more as time allows.
One thing that I've tried to do the past couple of years is look at people and organizations outside the military that are highly successful and see if their approaches can assists us in our ventures. Sometimes, I found things that are useful. Sometimes, not so much.
Here's one guy that we could take a look at- Warren Buffett. He's done pretty well in a profession that can sometimes seem like gambling. Honestly, how many fund managers do you trust these days?
So, how does Mr. Buffett analyze companies for a good deal? Here's a brief overview.
1. He understands that the market is driven by fear and greed. He gets the human nature of any man-made endeavor.
2. He looks at a company using specific metrics over time. Does this company have a good product to sell? Can he trust what the CEO says? He tries to identify quantitative/qualitative measures that bypass fraudulent claims of success and over-valued/hyped companies.
3. He becomes intimately involved in the running of the company to coach, mentor, advise, and assists in order to protect his investment- Economic FID if you will.
I'll let y'all debate if his thoughts have merit in our world. I think they do. If not, I guess we can turn to Jimmy Buffet.
v/r
Mike
Ramadi,
Sounds like you just need to run a powerline up to Kajaki and turn on the switch, right? Oh yeah, that line would run through a hundred miles of prime poppy growing, Taliban controlled territory...
What to do.
One thing worth considering is that the Taliban are not on the warpath because of a lack of reliable electricity in Kandahar City. Neither do the hundreds of seasonal fighters report to the nearest cache to draw an AK or RPG do so because they don't have indoor plumbing.
Ineffective government did not cause this insurgency, and effective government will not resolve it. The rank and file resist because we are here and because they get paid an honest days wage to do so. So it has always been in this country, and so it will always be. Those who have overdosed on pop-COIN do not fully grasp that point.
This is politics, and bribing the populace is no more effective than killing the populace. At some point you simply have to enable the development of a government whose legitmacy they recognize, and then hold off the neighbors and other opportunists long enough for them to get their feet on the ground.
It won't be horribly effective, but then it doesn't need to be.
You're all missing the point about our involvement in Afghanistan. "Metrics" is a conversation for another time. What we need to be discussing is that we are still doing nearly everything wrong in Afghanistan from a COIN perspective. Having a 4-star talk the talk isn't having much effect at the company and platoon level. Metrics would be great if we actually had something legitimate to measure from a COIN perspective, but we're still in "garbage in, garbage out" mode.
Almost every LT and CPT is still trying to get the locals to tell him where the Taliban are hiding. We still focus almost solely on the enemy, instead of gaining ANY useful insight whatsoever about the population. We are still starting over with every RIP, because there are no worthwhile, realistic assessments of where each AO stands along each line of effort, and the plans on where each AO should go are being completely ignored.
We're still counting on the military to do reconstruction and stabilization when the two facts are: 1) No MOS is any service is trained to do this work, and 2) we have already proved ourselves to be dramatic failures at this. As I write this a USMC MEB in the west of Afghanistan has approved a $3 million electrification project using DIESEL GENERATORS, this despite the volumes that have been written about what an awful idea this is, to include a recently-released USAID document regarding clean energy in Afghanistan. Let's be clear, though: the reason generators are an awful failure has nothing to do with pollution. This is an abject failure of the DoD to learn anything at all about reconstruction. And lest we blame everything on the Marines, the PRTs are not only no better, they are worse, because they waste more money, and spend more time patting themselves on the back.
Please let me point out that I am writing this from a company-level COP in Afghanistan, I previously served on a PRT here, and I served attached to the Marines in Anbar, so I have some familiarity with everything I'm talking about. (I'd also like to point out that almost all the places I hear the Marines taking credit for pacifying in Anbar were in Army AoRs, so let's not get too excited about how great the Corps is at COIN just yet.)
Typically in insurgency you have a government that is perceived as illegitmate by the insurgent segment of the populace, and more often than not, the intervening party on the behalf of that illegitimate government is there for its own selfish national interests and is most likely perceived as the source of "legitimacy" of that HN government by their populace.
Not judging, just assessing. This was true in Vietnam, it was true in Irag, It is true in Afghanistan.
The military gets sent into these situations to attempt to stabilize what is by definition an untenable, instable political situation. The metrics that are important are POLITICAL; but military commanders are sworn to be apolitical, at least to the politics of their own country. This is the quandry we put our military commanders into. They cannot assess and measure the political metrics that are truly material to resolving the insurgency, so default to measureing things related to their actions on the ground.
Put up a powerpoint slide in your next Commander's Update that asks and answers the following quesitons:
1. Is the government of Country X perceived as Legitimate? (followed by appropriately sexy color coded graphs, etc to assess)
2. Who does the populace perceive as the source of legitimacy of the government of Country X?
3. Is our presence here perceived to be more about the national interests of Country X or of our own?
4. What national interests do we believe will be secured by sustaining the current government of Country X in power; and what alternatives to supporting their COIN effort could achieve those same effects?
5. Why does the populace at home believe we are here, what do they perceive the measure of "victory" to be, and is that measure linked more closely to our own national interests, or the interest of the government of Country X?
Military commanders can not ask and assess the very things that are most meaningful to victory and defeat in an intervention in another nation's insurgency. But when you label that intervention as a "War" then the metrics of warfare overwhelm everything else, until the politicians and diplomats at home are also tracking success and failure by the military measures. At this point you have lost the proverbial bubble.
The critical metrics are the political metrics, and they need to be designed and tracked by and for political leaders. We let the tail wag the dog when we focus on the military metris in such matters.
But like any dog will tell you, its pretty damn hard to ignore your tail when its been slammed in the door.
<b>Carl:</b>
Good post and good comments. There is however, a short answer to your well stated points.
Bureaucracy.
We have it and they do not. That simple.
They do foul up; bunches. Fortunately, they err more often than we do which is one reason we aren't in worse shape. Some times they pull off a good one, more often they do not -- not because we're more flexible but simply due to discipline and training (and the latter could be better...).
There are always a few US units who are better than average and who rarely miss a beat. They are exceptions because the system encourages mediocrity and the tall poppy who builds and employs a good unit has to fend off his competitors for promotion and retention. That, too hampers our flexibility.
I agree with you on the hearts and minds foolishness -- it is a bad idea with no real basis in history or reality. I further agree that small unit leaders are far more capable than they are allowed to actually be. I'm with you and <b>Gian</b> on the savants contribution or lack thereof...
However, I think <b>Lee Brown</b> has the metrication idea sorted correctly:<blockquote>"...but when things started getting better, somehow we knew. Commanders could see improvement in their AOs and could explain it to their bosses."</blockquote>This stuff is not rocket science, nor is it 'the graduate level of war.' Attempts by a host of Academics and their clones to make it a 500 level MBA course are a HUGE part of the problem...
Do we even need standardized metrics to demonstrate success? Might not success look different from locale to locale? Can't commanders articulate progression/regression/stagnation through a few simple statements in a SITREP or briefing?
Think of QTBs to measure unit readiness, ORAs to measure Iraqi unit capabilities, and body counts as a measure of success in VN. None of these are perfect and some down right poor. I'm not sure if we ever really had anything better than measuring SIGACTs in Iraq, but when things started getting better, somehow we knew. Commanders could see improvement in their AOs and could explain it to their bosses.
Why should we default to the insurgent the notion that he is inherently more nimble than the counter-insurgent? That seems to be another one of those chestnuts of received wisdom, such as the revolutionary always has time on his side and blah blah blah.
It depends. Sometimes, he does. Sometimes, he doesn't. Sometimes the insurgent is more nimble and sometimes he's more clueless than even our most ate-up battalion commander.
The larger reason why I brought that up was to continue my jihad against Hearts and Minds (HAM) as a construct. How do we know that it works? How do we know that cutting off the endogenous and exogenous inputs necessary to sustain the machine of revolution isn't MORE important than winning HAM?
What if HAM is only important if it can help us find the inputs and strangle them? Are there other means of getting this information that don't involve long, pop-intensive occupations that sap our national strength and ruin opportunities elsewhere? Why do we assume that the lengthy, intensive process of nation building is the ONLY means to defeat, deter or delay an insurgency, especially in a post-Maoist world?
I also believe that SULs tend to be bright enough to figure things out and adapt what seems to work -- if they're given the time, the resources and the ability to experiment without having things dictated to them by martinets of COIN who think they've already cracked the code.
Like Gian, I think the maximalist narrative that's been constructed that so many battalions didn't "get it" in OIF in 2005-06 until a learned band of savants arrived to save the day is silly.
<b>Carl:</b>
Gian has some wise words:<blockquote>"The problem with metrics in Coin is that they tend to reflect our own set of tactical methods and procedures."</blockquote>Add the fact that we historically do not do the COIN thing well and you're on a path to problems...
Re: your 2:04 PM post, while that Commander institutes patrols and policies to crack down on fuel sales, as you say <i>"It doesn't mean that the snake wouldn't have to move on to other food only that this one input could be quickly attacked."</i>
If the opponent is far more flexible and agile than are you you will never catch up as he switches food sources. That has been and is likely to be generally true and was and is certainly true in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Metrics tell you what is happening or has happened, that may be somewhat beneficial for State and NCA but it is of marginal or less utility for tactical units (who get tabbed with collecting metrics of no value to themselves...) -- you're always going to be a step behind.
The object is to get several steps ahead...
I guess I disagree with you on communicating progress or failure to the people in a democracy, Gian.
Obviously, it wasn't hard for Ike's SHAEF to communicate progress to commanders or the public because all he had to do was publish a map showing where we were and where the enemies were.
It's trickier to do so with COIN, but does that mean that it can't be done? As you well know, we both share concerns about how a journalist's narrative often replaces reality in describing success in these murky sorts of wars.
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try! The largest problem with HES -- it seems to me -- wasn't that the measurement of government control and people's attitudes in a counter-Maoist fight isn't important. It was the fact that the measurments in HES were dubious in their authenticity, and appeared to be so by officers in the field such as Bing West.
Were Marines like Bing West wrong in assuming that VC political infrastructure was the center of gravity in their fight? No. He and they were probably right -- not for the entire region, but for their COIN effort. Had the US developed the proper metrics, they likely would've been able to finely chart just how deeply entrenched VCI was, how futile it had become to change the ideations of the people and how incapable we were at shutting off the inputs necessary to allow the insurgents to subsist.
Those in the field who have to deal with this firsthand realized the shortcomings of HES. What is unpardonable is that civilian and military leaders then used the numbers as "public measurement of progress" for the democracy's consumption.
To echo you, MikeF, my larger concern with Kilcullen's list is that he fails to understand human nature, too. If we think back to HES, weren't local commanders and district advisors under pressure to assign a good grade to their AO? Beyond the natural desire to see one's own efforts are better than they probably are, there also was a large dollop of CYA: Lowering a grade wouldn't find any rewards for accuracy or honesty but more likely some general showing up to find out why your village was so screwed up and seemed to be getting worse, unlike what everyone else was reporting.
Or, as Westmoreland put it in 1967, "It appears that again facts will reveal that there has been distortion of reports on the optimistic side. It seems to be one of the things that has plagued this war from the beginning."
With Kilcullen's examples, wouldn't the local commander on a short rotation be more inclined to give in to temptation when measuring the "outputs" of aid or patrols or whatnot?
Might one fudge the attempted murder of an Afghan government official to make it seem more like a pot shot? Might one bundle all the nightletters into a number instead of deciphering the urgency of what they actually said?
Ideally, we want to measure pacification and not occupation. It seems to me based on Ricks' limited effort that Kilcullen mostly is measuring the former not the latter because I suspect he's got the nature of this war wrong and hasn't quite fathomed the bureaucratic nature of our big green beast.
The other obvious problem, as I mentioned above, is that the assumption that spreading the Karzai government to the hinterlands will pacify the populace seems unduly wrong. One might suggest that it's the spread of this government OR ANY GOVERNMENT that's sparking the revolutions in the first place.
Measuring government effectiveness, government "control" or government growth really could be seen not as a "success" in the road to pacification, but as a failure.