Survey on FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency

Peter,

You sound like you are a product of the USMC system!

ILE is universal -- all (except some medical specialties and such) Army majors go to at least the core course -- 3 1/2 months.

A colleague and I are about to publish an SWJ essay on PME framed with the philsophy of design. Stay tuned to SWJ!

Best, Chris

p.s. collegial, collaborative, intellectual discourse is never snobbery!

Chris,
I don't know how Army CGSC selection works, but in the USMC, the population is relatively small and somewhat self-selected (although less true now than it was a few years ago as the board picks from all the eligible candidates, but there are ways to try not to get selected). The population in the MC is also supposed to be at least slightly above average. As far as SAMS (we have SAWS), if it is like SAWS, the population is exceedingly small and self-selected on the application side, then board selected. I.E. both are not necessarily a representative sample. Overall, the depth of learning you suggest requires intellectual curiosity plus at least a semblance of a graduate education introduction plus time. Few people have all three.

While this may seem like snobbery on my part, I'm basing it off of my own experience. Until I went to grad school, I was reading the usual light history and honestly not getting much out of it. Once I learned how to read and learn at a different level, both the material and what I got out of it changed. That, plus it takes a long time to build the background required to get much out of going into scholarly history. I liken it to throwing mud at a wall. It takes a lot of mud and a lot of time, a lot of it ends up on the ground, but if you keep at it, you start filling in the holes.

p.s. ILE exception is the history curriculum. It is quite good!

Hi Peter,

I am an educator (at Army Command & Staff).

I am not an historian (my doctoral pgm was in public admin); albeit, I am more and more swayed by the eclectic study of history as I learn how creativity and critical thinking work (much of it is based in heuristics/metaphoric reasoning).

Eclecticism, in my view, is about providing multiple views on the same phenomenon/historic example.

I am quite optimistic about many of our students at CGSC (as I was when I was on faculty at the War College). Although you are right to a point, many of my students have been quite rigorous in their approach to learning. I have been very impressed for the most part.

I am also very impressed with the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies program and its Basic Strategic Art Program, 59 educational plan. These are really world class programs. Cannot say the same for the curriculum in the CGSC ILE program -- it is rather mediocre (or less than what should be expected in a graduate school level program-- which may be part of the problem). Of course these opinions are my own and do not represent an official view :)

Chris

Matvey,
Will you make the results available?

Chris,
Curious as to what your background is? I ask, because I'm skeptical that our officers really are equipped to deeply immerse themselves in history in scholarly ways to build a "bank of heuristics." I'm all for it, but it is a pretty big leap to go from reading the normal popular history on everyone's reading lists as opposed into stuff like Gumz's argument and Schmidt's theory of the partisan that he bases it on. I also think it isn't just history, but IR and especially socio-economics that help give people a real understanding of the dynamics behind conflict. In any case, I don't think that your average officer is at all equipped for such study. I'd say that few will succeed, regardless of intellectual capacity, without a foundation that teaches them how to read for these heuristics. Second, a lot of people have zero interest in the amount and depth of reading required to get there. I was recently told by a fellow O-4 that a 2500 word essay was a "long read." Another O-5 CO at a course I attended was told that a 6 page paper was a "varsity read" and said "I don't do varsity reads." The paper was completely non-technical and really had no depth of thought to it. This is the culture we're dealing with. Of course, there are those who like to read, or feel that their profession requires it, but many do not. To that note, many of Huntington's assumptions about the professional man in The Soldier and the State do not hold true in this environment today, if they ever did.

matvey,

One of our looming challenges is not so much doctrine as it is how we cover complex nation-building in our DOD schools, colleges, and universities.

In that regard, we need to pay more attention to deep immersion into studying history. History, presented in scholarly ways and read in depth, provides the opportunity four our officers to build a "bank of heuristics" for later sensemaking. There really is no substitute (I am convinced).

Interesting how we tend not to study the Philippines (especially in the early 50s) and Vietnam (from the North's and insurgent view -- 2 post-colonial wars).

RE: Vietnam -- There is no war I can think of that covers the full range of military operations (to include the looming nuclear exchange between USSR and US down to the peasants view of the world in a village). And there is so much available.

I am neither a believer in "lessons learned" nor "best practices" -- our best hope is to have a range of heuristics in our officers that they can call upon (essentially as insightful metaphors). In that regard, I am not a fan of doctrine -- it is way too reductive and always presents a monistic paradigm that is coutnerproductive to "design" acting and thinking. If we are to have a doctrine, make it an annotated bibliography of "essential" readings.

Critical reasoning and creative thinking are, in practice, the "anti-doctrine." And they should be.

What if "doctrine" is the problem?

Chris

Thank you for your responses. I appreciate the suggestions and will incorporate many of them as this project progresses. However, as written the survey was designed for SAMS or CGSC students, which is why I didn't include spots for NCO designation, etc. Although you could write in your rank under the "Other" tab for international or OGA respondents. But, point taken.

Just to clarify, the purpose of the survey is to gauge perception of the manual. And, even in 10 questions, it's been very informative. It is, by no means, intended to be a comprehensive study of FM 3-24 or COIN. I would add that the discussion thread here has given me a sense that the anecdotal evidence I've picked up from students, and the response in the survey, are tracking the sense in the larger community.

So, please, feel free to take the survey despite your reservations. Or email me directly: [email protected]. Again, the point was to verify that what I was hearing as anecdote is more than such.

Best,

M

Who mentioned making Iraq into three States and then incorporating their citizens into the U.S.? Occupation doesn't mean annex, it is actually mandates certain services we must provide by international law. Seemed to workout relatively well for Germany and Japan. Of course we tried your idealist approach and look at what we have in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. Insufficient courage and too much idealism get us nowhere, not to mention the severe suffering the populace must endure in those countries.

Like many others posting here I lived through the dysfunction of the Paul Wolfowitz endorsed idealism and arrogance in Iraq, and can't see how that approach can work anywhere.

I'm talking about providing protection and giving them some space to get on their feet before we pull the rug out from underneath their feet by establishing a non-functional government based on "our" perception of legitimacy. This would be an international effort as it was in Germany, not simply a U.S. occupation.

Funny, the Iraqis I spoke to were very disappointed with our lack of will to take charge, yet you seem to endorse just that. What do we do? We deactivate the military, then begin a progam of debathification to remove everyone with skills from the government, and then hand it over to a brand new government that was really only endorsed by the Shia. That is called mob rule, not democracy.

(My response is also to Chris's question, and largely concurs with what Bill M submitted while I was typing.)

So...things would have been better if we had made Iraq into three new states or territories of the U.S.? Draw lines with one primarily Sunni, one Shia and one Kurd? All immediately granted full rights and privileges of US citizenship?

I think that the U.S. overestimates the wonderfulness of America, and how appreciated it will be when one gets a big slice of Americana slammed dry and sideway up their 4th POC.

Long prior to the U.S. invasion, the conditions of insurgency were sky-high in 2 of 3 of these populace groups in Iraq, but well suppressed by Saddam's regime. The country was a powder keg ready to blow. Also worth remembering is that the US had been waging war in the form of harsh sanctions, control of airspace, access to the global community, and subject to regular use of deadly force through aerial bombing for the 13 years preceding the U.S. invasion. Probably not on anyone's Christmas card list when we rolled in uninvited.

I'm not sure how much being really good at occupation would have helped. Certainly AQ would have came in just as fast to exploit our presence there, and equally certainly as many, if not more foreign fighters would have infiltrated to support AQ's cause.

Kind of like if you came home from deployment and found Jody in your house, eating your food, riding your Harley, and taking care of business with your family. Are you going to be less pissed if he's doing all of that very well???

On the other hand, if by occupation manual, you mean one that clearly states that the occupying force will likely be met with resistance no matter how bad what he replaced was; and will never be the COIN force, no matter how thoroughly defeated and non-existent the former government is. Then you might be on to something. Occupation and dealing with resistance is very different than annexation and dealing with resistance. A COIN manual is not a great help when one is not doing COIN, and IMO, the US is not doing COIN in any of the OEF/OIF locations.

Chris,

You'll see several of my old posts probably going back to 2006 where I addressed this very concern multiple times to a rather hostile crowd. We were in denial that we were in fact an occupation force, so we produced what was perceived as a puppet government, and because we did it so quickly it was largely ineffective. This is much different than COIN. I think we still would have had resistance, but we would have responded much more effectively, rather than hoping the "new" government would step up to the plate. COIN like, but very different.

In my view this is one of the many dangers of allowing political correctness to shape our policies. Bill

p.s., for perspective, commend a very good piece by a scholar on faculty at USMA:

Jonathan E. Gumz, Reframing the Historical Problematic of Insurgency: How the Professional
Military Literature Created a New History and Missed the Past, Journal of Strategic Studies, 27 July 2009.

I know this is a little bit out-of-the-box, but would we have needed a field manual 3-24 if we had instead focused on "Occupation Operations?"

If we had occupied and provided US military governance immediately (notwithstanding hiring former Iraqi government officials to assist us in governing), would an insurgency have taken place?

I think our biggest issue may be that when we move in to topple regimes, what is our plan to occupy? We are still ignoring this large "elephant in the room."

"...Bring the guys with dirty boots together and produce more Vietnam primers; and ensure they have input to the FM as well...."

The COIN Center at Fort Leavenworth is trying to do this with a certain measure of success through a range of means like the annual symposium, internet forums/blogs, and the monthly Virtual Brown Bags sessions. I'd encourage anyone with a desire to shape COIN 'doctrine' development to engage the CPON Center (http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/BLOG/blogs/coin/default.aspx)

I have sitting here next to me a copy of "Vietnam Primer" written by SLA Marshall and then LTC David Hackworth in the '67/68 timeframe. It's a great little tactical guide based on lessons learned in Vietnam for tactical leaders going to Vietnam. Tools like this are very valuable and we need to do a better job of producing similar products by and for tactical leaders going to Iraq, Afghanistan, Mindanao, HOA, etc.

This is not the part of FM 3-24 that I find problematic though. The part that needs adjusting the most, IMO, is the theoretical/strategic foundation. Now perhaps this doesn't belong in an military manual for primarily tactical military users; but if not here, where? If not the military to produce this, who?

This one aspect I liked about Galula's approach is that he discussed insurgency at the theoretical down to the operational level. Where I see us making the kinds of mistakes that really hurt us it is at the flag grade and policy level, not at the Squad and platoon. Just as for the lead man every form of maneuver is a frontal assault, things get pretty fundamental for our guys out there at the squad and platoon level as well. They will easily adjust the nuance of their operations as their senior leaders get smarter; getting those senior leaders who think they know every thing they need to know from their own experiences over the past several years is the challenge.

Bring the guys with dirty boots together and produce more Vietnam primers; and ensure they have input to the FM as well. But also bring those who also deal with this higher level of theory, policy and strategy together as well and be willing to put some sacred cow concepts on the alter. Afterall, an ignorant squad leader learns real fast, or faces dire consequences. An ignorant general or senior policy maker can gleefully wallow in ignorance for years and never be held to personal consequences for the effects of their actions.

The survey asked when you were deployed and where, but it doesn't ask what you were doing.

I was on a battalion MTT team. The section on developing Host Nation Security Forces is focused on the operational level of that aspect. So, the only insight it provided at our level was how much of FM 3-24 was being ignored at higher levels.

Someone doing one mission is going to have a very different view of the document than someone doing another mission. It's an important distinction.

Suggestions:

1. Ditch Question 1 entirely as irrelevant (at best background data)

2. At any time during or after your deployment did you make use of FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency"? If yes, what year?

3. Before the publication of FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency" in December 2006, what, if any, sources of information on counterinsurgency were you using? Please list titles or authors to the best of your ability.

4. Given the best you can remember, please briefly describe the parts, sections, chapters, or themes you found most useful. For example: "chapter 3, on intelligence", "the parts on the population," or "the sections on how to plan COIN ops", or "I found little useful info in the FM".

5. On a scale from "Not useful" to "Extremely Useful", please rate how useful you felt FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency" was to you.

6. Please check the box next to the phrase that best describes how FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency", was used during your tour. (Please check all that apply.)

Please check the box next to the phrase that best describes how FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency", was used during your tour. (Please check all that apply.)

- Informed my own understanding of this type of conflict

- Changed planning and operations of my unit.

- Had no effect on my unit.

- Changed planning and operations of my command.

- Informed my subordinates about counterinsurgency.

7. How useful was FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency", in informing your subordinates about the reasoning behind plans and operations informed by the discussion of insurgent war in the manual?

8. In your opinion, how important was an official statement of doctrine on counterinsurgency, like FM 3-24, to the success of operations in Iraq or Afghanistan?

9. At what levels do you think FM 3-24 was most useful?

10. Please describe why you think FM 3-24, "Counterinsurgency" was or was not important to success in Iraq and Afghanistan. (deleted 'military' - the whole point of COIN is that success requires more than just military engagement).

It's good to see that someone is asking some questions...broaden the focus and I think you will get a better response not just from the US but coalition friends and allies, and not just operators in the operational theatres but also trainers and other non-deployed support staff whose insights may be useful

Couldn't agree more with LongTabSigO and Sabers8th. There needs to be an Soldier/NCO/Warrant field.

Full disclosure: I am an NCO

Mike F:

Question 1 should add in their drop down OEF-A or OIF, OEF-P, OEF-TS, OEF-CCA, JTF-HOA.

Then the rest of the questions will have a lot more context, especially in significantly less-well resourced AORs.

So they automatically assumed not a single enlisted soldier read the manual? Fail

Everything you need to know is in the first question. They only ask about Iraq or Afghanistan.

I guess that's the only place where there's an insurgency to counter?

*sigh*