More Commentary on COIN is Dead by Mark Safranski, Zenpundit.
It is extremely difficult to free military bureaucracies, which are budget-centric, turf-conscious and institutionally track career incentives to the former, from the tyranny of either-or thinking. Bureaucracies as complex organizations are sustained and steered culturally by cherishing and reinforcing simple narratives.
Comments
Well said Bill, Dave.
Dave, can I just point out quickly, and I believe Nagl at CNAS has made this point, that Iraq, while it is no China or post war Germany, sits on an estimated 143 billion barrels of oil, could potentially produce 10 million barrels of oil per day in a region which accounts for %60 of global oil production. A region, we now observe, that is full of regimes on the brink of anarchy. And we are looking at an oil crisis very soon as demand gradually reaches the level of production. Under Saddam, Iraq was just rotting, and we were waiting to see some sort of collapse in security there.In that scenario, Iran would have benefited even more than with what they stand to gain now.
Now, that does not mean it was worth so many lives and nearly 1 trillion dollars. However, none of the post 2003 disaster was foreseen by many at DoS or DoD. That is the reason why US forces ushered in a new era of COIN doctrine. COIN doctrine however, is wrongly perceived by many of it's critics as being a recommended proscribed solution, when in fact most of what you read on COIN is more like an emergency treatment- the emergency treatment that we saw was carried out in Iraq. In Libya, one hopes some of the lessons we are learning from COIN are being carried out by the NTC and foreign advisers.
It's high time the US and NATO focus on conventional war, but as you rightly point out Dave, we are not in an "either COIN or state on state" world. Let's hope we can preserve some of the best elements of COIN, not falling into the post Vietnam ignorance of the '80s, while hoping that our politicians never put our forces into the situation where an insurgency is likely...
The problem I have with your model above is that it does not seem to fit such insurgencies as those we experienced in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Explanation:
a. Your model seems to apply to those cases in which a civilian government has been in place for some significant period of time and, over a significant period of time, has developed a track-record of being derelict in the performance of its duties. At some point thereafter, an insurgency emerges to address this long-running dereliction of duty by the civilian government.
b. This (example "a" above) does not seem to be the case in such insurgencies as we experienced in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; wherein, (1) brand-new governments are put in place by foreign powers, and immediately thereafter, (2) insurgencies emerge to attack these brand-new foreign-introduced governments. (Note: At this point there would seem to be no "poor governance" track-record to blame for these type "b" insurgencies.)
Thus, while the use of the military against the insurgency in example "a" above may well relate to trying to protect a bad governement with a "poor governance" track-record, such would not seem to be the case in insurgencies like those we experienced in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rather in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (etc.), the military would seem to be used to (a) hold the population and the insurgency at bay until (b) the brand-new civilian government might have enough time to develop a good governance track-record; one of sufficient quality as to be able to overcome the "stink" of foreign interference (the root cause of these type "b" insurgencies) and, in this manner, defeat the insurgency.
Thus, should our understanding of insurgency include -- not just type "a" insurgencies (those caused by "poor governance") -- but also type "b" insurgencies (those caused by foreign interference, of the kind noted above)?
I suspect our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan (and previously in Vietnam) were/are far more rooted in our lack of understanding of insurgency than in the COIN tactics we applied; and in our strategically flawed constructs for each of those conflicts.
Good COIN tactics are more effective that bad COIN tactics, but if one has a flawed understanding of the nature of insurgency in general, and the character of the specific situation one is getting into the middle of, no amount of good COIN will overcome those fatal flaws.
Our doctrine and most modern writings on counterinsurgency tend to pick up the story on insurgency at the point it goes violent, and drop the story at the point violence deminishes to acceptable levels. That is like writing about how to deal with icebergs while only studying the portion above the waterline, and with no understanding of what turns water into ice or ice into water.
COIN is a critical mission, one that civil governments all around the world exeucte unknowingly every day. For military forces that are called in once a situation degrades to being beyond the capacity of civilians it tends to look a lot like warfare at that point, and the military naturally tends to address it as such. By opening the aperture to better understand the full dynamic of insurgency we will get to better understanding of how civil governments are more effective at prevention, and how militaries can be more effective at assisting civil governments get back on top of their game.
Should we blame nation-building-COIN for our lack of strategic success in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Or would it be more correct to blame the lack of strategic importance of Afghanistan and Iraq for the failure of nation-building-COIN?
Herein, if Afghanistan and Iraq were of similar strategic importance as, say, Japan, Germany, China or the USSR, then nation-building-COIN, given similar time (50 or so years) and other resources might well produce the required strategic success.
Accordingly, should we say that what is "dead" is not nation-building-COIN, per se, but rather the idea of employing this otherwise important method to the wrong cases (those that do not offer the requisite strategic importance needed to allow success)?
And I really like this quote at the top of Mark's Zenpundit web page:
"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity." James Madison
We are often our own judge especially when it comes to the COIN/CT/IW/AirSea Battle/Full Spectrum Operations/Major Combat Operations debate. I think Adam Elkus' quote from is Rethinking Security blog is very appropriate (I have pasted his entire comments below Mark's rollup of commentary):
"Second, COIN, for all of the heat and noise about it, is still rather poorly understood in Iraq and Afghanistan. So much of the debate is weighted down with external baggage, mainly because it was never entirely about Iraq or Afghanistan. Rather, the COIN debate was often a proxy for many different political, professional, interdepartmental, and other battles within the United States political and defense establishments. Ollivant’s paper, and newer research highlights significant uncertainty to cause and effect in both sides of the COIN debate that will likely not be definitely settled soon."
I think the second and third sentences in the above quote are most important.
But I am not too worried about COIN dying off because I am confident that Special Forces will keep it alive and well and will continue to practice it whenever and wherever necessary. As I have said, I do not expect we will see a purge of the COIN doctrine as we did post 1975 – at least not at Fort Bragg and especially not here on Small Wars Journal.
Many say the future is COIN or the future is Major Combat Operations with a peer or near-peer competitor (China?).
However, it is not an either or approach at the strategic level. Insurgency is not the only form of warfare nor are major combat operations. The right balance must be struck in education and training for various potential threats just as the right balance ( and coherency) among ends, ways, and means must be struck. We cannot be a one trick pony of either COIN or major combat operations. This is especially true when the fundamental mission of our military must be to deter war and if deterrence fails, to fight and win our nation's wars. And if it is determined by our political leaders to be in our interest to take on a non–existential threat ( non-existential to the US that is) such as to aid, advise, assist, or support a friend, partner, or ally that is threatened with lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, and terrorism then we need to be able to have the ways and means to do that as well.
But all this arguing about the end of COIN and the trend back towards big wars is to me a waste of our time and intellectual capital. We need to be expending that intellectual capital on how to develop and execute strategy to support our national policy as directed by our political leaders (which of course could be another whole discussion). I would submit that COIN and IW need to take their rightful place amongst all the forms of warfare that we may have to be prepared to conduct in the future, which could also include major combat operations. We cannot throw COIN and IW out but we cannot raise them above major combat operations either. We need to achieve the right balance among the ways we have to support our national objectives and deal the threats with which we have to be prepared to face. And especially the uncertain or unknown threats (which of course makes defense costly - but being ill-prepared is potentially even more costly as we have seen over the past 10 years).