Doubts about Leahy's Afghanistan Plan by Dr. Milton Osborne
...in every counter-insurgency campaign of which I am aware, the goal of overcoming insurgents through programs that emphasise civic as well as military action can only be contemplated when both the non-military personnel who are carrying out that action and their clients can be protected.
It seems evident to me that such a situation does not exist in Afghanistan, and is not likely to be achieved in any foreseeable future, whatever brave statements are made to the contrary.
Our Undeserved COIN Reputation by Major General (Ret) Jim Molan
... I never met anyone in any position of authority who said that success in these wars could be achieved by military forces alone, but the creation of relative security for the people by the use of military or para-military forces is the first and most essential step. Security does not have to be perfect. But political, social and economic progress will not occur while the local population has the insurgent or terrorist tearing their collective throat out...
Both authors were writing in response to Time Running Out to Fix Strategy for Afghanistan by Peter Leahy (former Chief of the Australian Army) in The Australian.
... The West has mistaken killing terrorists and counter-insurgency warfare for nation building. All three are needed but at different times and different degrees. It is clear the only way to deal with many of today's terrorists is to strengthen our defences and kill those who maintain their murderous intent. We can conduct raids on them in their lairs with drones as in Pakistan and raw air power as in Libya. But these actions are also likely to destabilise the countries we attack and generate more terrorists then we kill. So counter-insurgency and nation building will still be needed...
Comments
COL Jones said:
"COIN is what the government does to prevent, mitigate and resolve the issues prompting the insurgency to restore order and stability."
Let's take Afghanistan as the test case.
a. The Taliban and their ilk desire a non-western/non-modern/more excluse state and society.
b. The West and its affiliates, on the other hand, want -- so as to better provide for their interests -- an Afghanistan that has been transformed into a more western/more modern/more-"open entity (this being consistent with what the West desires re: all outlier states and societies -- the rational being that such transformed and assimilated states and societies will offer the global economy/international community fewer problems and more utility instead).
In that these, I propose, are the "issues prompting the insurgency," then what measures can the government take -- to restore order and stability -- other than (1) telling the West to get lost or (2) completely defeating the Taliban?
Re: a compromise along these lines:
a. Is the West willing to accept an Afghan state and society that is significantly less transformed and assimilated than it (the West) desires? (Such a state/society would be expected to remain a "thorn" in the international community/global economy's side)?
b. Is the Taliban willing to accept constructs (constitution, etc.) that may provide -- in spite their individual wishes -- that Afghanistan becomes much more "open," much more western and much more modern than they (the Taliban) desire?
RC...
<i>I strongly recommend that we take our MSCA doctrine to apply as a template starting position for C2 for any intervention in a foreing country where an insurgency is taking place.</i>
This makes perfect sense if we're looking at our traditional cold-war style interventions, supporting a "friendly" foreign government against an insurgency that we choose to believe is supported and even generated by hostile outside forces. Application to current efforts would have been minimal, because we didn't intervene to suppress insurgency. We intervened to remove governments we didn't like. The insurgencies didn't exist until we created them, by installing governments that suited us.
Post-regime change insurgency is a completely different animal form efforts to support a pre-existing government, and has to be treated as such.
Morgenthau said (To Intervene Or Not To Intervene) -- re: the ambiguous nature of weak states -- (they need outside assistance but resent outside assistance):
"This ambilvalence of the weak nations imposes new techniques on the intervening ones. Intervention must either be brutally direct in order to overcome resistance or it must be surreptitious in order to be accepted, or the two extremes may be combined."
Accordingly, if we should we wish to be less "brutally direct" in our intervention(s), then should we not (1) abandon the potentially counterproductive and much too straight-forward "democracy, capitalism and markets" approach and (2) adopt an approach which is (at least initially) much more conducive to and sensitive of the applicable states, societies and cultures with which we must interact?
Herein, we may need to consider that:
a. While "democracy, capitalism and markets" may ring our bell (render a positive response),
b. These items may elicit a very negative response re: others (directly threatens their present way-of-life; bad experience with the West in the past).
This change being consider reasonable and necessary so that we might (1) reach favorable accommodation so as to (2) enhance our influence and (3) better provide for our interests.
Gian,
I have no problem with being given a task to "disrupt insurgency X"
I will, of course, want to know for what purpose, as that is always the essential question in any operation.
But this is not "counterinsurgency."
If I say "well, this is an insurgency and I know I am not the insurgent, so therefore I must be doing "COIN," is not, IMO, the best way to approach such a mission. Not for the least reason of which being the very flawed understanding of insurgency in our COIN doctrine that draws so heavily from Colonial, Containment, and GWOT experiences. All of those are intervening perspectives for very different reasons. To lump this all up, along with what the acutal government being challenged thinks and does to survive, makes one big, pot of operational stew that is hard to make sense of. By breaking it down it is easier to identify the distinctions that are critical to effctive engagement.
We have come to realize that there must be "whole of government" responses, but then the military wants the WOG to simply add lines of operation to a COIN warfare program led and defined by them.
We need to make the next step, that not only is this whole of government in both cause and solution; but that it is primarily a civil operaton, with the military "Last in, First out."
One huge benefit of leaving the Regular Army to go to law school was joining the National Guard, and the getting into the Military Support to Civil Authorities business, ulitmately running MSCA for the Oregon Guard, with several State and Federal disasters (Floods, Fires) and hundreds of day to day events (building skate board parks, providing tentage for events, developing supporting security plans for major events from athetic venues to prison riots, etc). The National Guard does "COIN" day in and day out CONUS and rarely, rarely, rarely is ever in a leading role. Working with FEMA and the Active Army support to disasters was totally different. Regular Army wants to be in charge and run a military campaign supported by others.
I strongly recommend that we take our MSCA doctrine to apply as a template starting position for C2 for any intervention in a foreing country where an insurgency is taking place. We tend to start however with the midset that the military is in charge and that it is conducting warfare as our starting template. That canalizes thinking horribly from the very momemnt of mission reciept of "disrupt the insurgency."
Instead of simply saying "Yes sir!" if we instead asked "Why? To what purpose? What concerns are prompting the idea that we must disrupt this insurgency, what ends do we hope for here at home, and what endstate in the affected populace/government?" Then we could break it down into much more reasonable components. But only if we have the mechanism to do so. Currently we have a "COIN warfare" pot and we just toss it into the mix.
We can do better, no one should argue that point. The first step to doing better is to do it different. Not just different tactics within the same old framework of thought, but different in how we think about such problems in the first place.
Bob
Gian,
Actually, yes, I do get to define in more distinct manner the wide range of operations that have been clumsily lumped together by the US military over the years as "COIN" in order to highlight key distinctions that cannot be made otherwise.
You don't have to like how that disrupts your fixed perspective on such conflicts, but in my experience, be it physical, intellectual, or emotional, becoming incredibly uncomfortable is typically the first step to true breakthroughs and growth.
To dogmatically say in effect, "these are the presecribed rules and we must only operate and think within the lines drawn for us by those senior to us," is absurb. That is essentially the lecture I got at the Army War College. The Army leadership sets limits of intellectual advance, and the professors and students operate freely within that assigned sector. Needless to say, I painted outside the lines and made people very uncomfortable as I explored a thesis on the COG for the War on Terrorism. There was no way to get to a smart answer by staying inside the lines (The official answer at that time was that the COG was AQ's ideology, btw).
Insurgency and COIN are an internal dynamic between a populace and thier government. That is not narrow. Insurgency is when the populace begins to act out illegally to challenge that government. That is not narrow. COIN is what that government does to prevent, mitigate and resolve the issues prompting the populace to insurgency to restore order and stability. That is not narrow.
"COIN and Insurgency are complex forms of warfare." (FM 3-24) THAT is narrow.
Bob
MG Molan is just another western military officer who has allowed the tactics of counterinsurgency to eclipse strategy and policy.
What are we to do in a democracy when the political leadership decides that it is no longer worth pursuing the tactics of population centric coin? Are we to override that political decision based on the tactical needs of pop centric coin which demand a lot of time--generations to be exact--to carry out?
It seems that many have become General Jack D Ripper who taught that "war now is too important to be left up to the politicians."
gian
No Bob, you do not own the license to define what coin is and is not.
You said this:
"COIN is how a national government deals with illegal political challenges, violent or non-violent, arising from their own populace."
that is how Bob Jones narrowly defines Coin, but countering and insurgency (from the perspective of US strategy) can involve many other methods from doing almost nothing, to discrete military actions to disrupt, to full blown statist coin that you seem to define as the only way.
gian
With all respect, Generals like Jim Molan do not understand insurgency. I've never heard of MG Molan, so I did a quick Google and here is what popped up:
http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article5542-is-australian-general-ji…
Now, I doubt General Molan is a war criminal, but I do believe he waged war against an Iraqi populace that quite reasonably did not want to be occupied by a foreign force, and equally had major unresolved issues of poor governance from the decades of Oppression under Saddam. He addressed the problem before him IAW his training and experience and with the tools provided to accomplish the mission he was given. In other words he acted reasonably and competently.
He was still wrong then, and is wrong now, in his understanding of insurgency.
Now, to establish foreign control over some populace in order to force them to submit to both that control and to a new national government chosen for them by that foreign power? Then yes, you must "establish security" (code for "force submission") first. But that is not COIN. We do a disservice to COIN when we call such operations what they are not.
COIN is how a national government deals with illegal political challenges, violent or non-violent, arising from their own populace. When military force is required that is a pretty powerful metric that the government is probably deservedly being challenged in such a way.
When we frame the problem incorrectly, we will continue to apply inappropriate responses and draw the wrong lessons learned.
MG Molan's response was "appropriate." But it was not COIN.
Robert C. Jones
Director of Strategic Understanding
Center for Advanced Defense Studies