Via CavGuy at the Council.
Comments
A couple of thoughts on cavguys slide:
Are the terms strategic, operational and tactical even relevant in the context of what the defense department calls irregular warfare?
The slide by itself doesnt address a true asymmetry in this type of conflict, which is where the irregulars are generally political warriors implementing some form of political warfare, so their activities are generally more integrated (true, not every 19 year old with AK is politically savvy, but somewhere along the line his leadership is). I doubt that the insurgents artificially divide their activities in strategic, operational and tactical activities; rather all of their activities support common objectives and desired effects. If you want to compare this line of thinking to the triangle on the right side of diagram you may, but it would be misleading because insurgents are still required to conduct a lot of (what we would we call tactical level) activities at the tactical level to achieve their effects. The difference is that their activities are designed to support political / strategic level objectives, not achieve a military victory. While initially many in the military didnt get it, they now understand that when the Taliban blow up a girls school in Afghanistan it supports their strategic objectives. On the other hand, our military conducts a raid to capture or kill mid level insurgent leaders, which is generally tactical in nature, focused on defeating the insurgent directly. Im not implying that conducting these raids are wrong, they need to be executed, just pointing out the obviously asymmetry.
Nation States (especially States in the West) are encumbered by outdated bureaucracies. Our national defense bureaucracy is still largely based on a cold war model. The elements of national power are largely stove piped despite the mantra "whole of government" (WOG) approach. The WOG approach is our public face, behind closed doors we jealously project our organizations perceived interests, and that wont change without Congressional intervention. The result is that diplomacy and military approaches to solving the problem are often at odds. In the West were not political warriors, were Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, or Marines with a specific military role in life. Most of our ground pounders understand the political nature of this type of conflict, and that attrition warfare (especially when our hands are tied behind our backs) is not a solution. Were capable at the individual and small unit level of being political warriors, but restrained from doing so by our bureaucracy, so our military continues to do what the bureaucracy allows and encourages, and that is pursuing military objectives, while our insurgent has political objectives.
The Special Forces community long advocated more focus on the political nature of this type of warfare (all warfare pursues political warfare, but not all warfare is focused on grassroots politics). Secretary Gates pushes for more change along these lines, but apparently knowing that if only the military changes, then it will be for naught. The military is changing, were waiting impatiently for Department of State and others to catch up. Above all, we have to remember that the capabilities the military brings to the effort is also critical. This is a conflict, fighting must be done, people must still be protected, enemy forces must be destroyed, ground and populace must be controlled, etc., but these activities must support viable political objectives. It isnt hard conceptually, but for many reasons it is very hard in practice.
Chris,
I agree with your post completely:
Chris Mewett :
In fact population-centric coin may be all that nowadays the American Army as a field force and institution can do.
I can't speak for the Army as a field force, but on the institutional side this assertion seems for me to be simply unmoored from reality.
Coming through TRADOC in both MOBC and more recently the MCCC COIN is the new four letter word that shall not be spoken.... You get the hand wave when COIN instruction is taught... "You guys know this" next slide please...
Can we find a balance sure we can... When will happen nobody knows....
IntelTrooper said:<blockquote>"This "permeation" that you perceive is not at all complete (to the detriment of our mission in Astan) and shows that not everyone in the military has the ability to conceptualize these issues as well as you. They have to be <i>told almost exactly what to do</i> and really, <b>this is how the Army has conditioned a lot of leaders to respond to new, vaguely-defined situations.</b> So we need visionaries and quick studies in the top echelons rather than institutionalized robots who will be able to quickly adapt to new, different challenges."(bold emphasis added / kw)</blockquote>
Thirty three years using a deeply flawed conscription based mobilization oriented training process has done this to us...
Tactics and focus can be argued -- what cannot be argued is that quote highlights why this argument is taking place. As long as people continue to focus on processes, nothing will be done to correct that glaring deficiency. Fix that and you will allow the Troops to adopt the most appropriate approach no matter what the situation, The type of warfare, COIN, HIC or anything in between will be immaterial.
As an aside, if a discussion of Army or command focus revolves around a very small action like Wanat, it seems to me that IntelTrooper's quote has far broader and more worrying applicability than simply COIN efforts or even Afghanistan. What will happen when a Reinforced Company takes 70% + casualties...
Hi Herschel,
I'll concede all your points with the exception of one:
<i>It was first of all an intel failure. We knew that the Taliban were massing troops because the local elders told us so. We ignored their counsel.</i>
This was a command failure. Intel assets reported faithfully on an impending attack only to be ignored by the battalion and brigade. But like you said, it's not really a good example.
IntelTrooper,
I won't weigh in on this heady exchange, first of all because neither Niel nor Gian needs my help, but secondly because I am not qualified.
But as for Wanat, I see this not as a failure to understand COIN but rather a confluence or dovetailing of a number of other failures. It was first of all an intel failure. We knew that the Taliban were massing troops because the local elders told us so. We ignored their counsel.
Second, it took entirely too long. It was in the planning stages for nearly a year (and the locals and of course Taliban knew it because were discussed it with them), whereas the Marines put up FOBs, OPs and so on in Helmand overnight and explained to the locals the next day why they were there. That's the one example I'll concede about the big Army being too heavy, intransigent, and so on.
Third, we didn't control the terrain. Of the nine soldiers who perished that fateful night, eight of them did so trying to defend or relieve OP Top Side. The enemy were throwing grenades and shooting from twenty meters or less. Again, we didn't control the physical terrain.
Finally, I believe that we abandoned it because we don't have enough force projection, enough troops, enough logistics capabilities, to support a VPB at such a location. More troops and we can hopscotch our way there, with support able to respond quickly in case of attack. As it was, they had to await CCA and CAS.
I'm not attempting to argue the main point of the post. I am just saying that I don't think Wanat is a very good example of either side of this debate.
When the Chief of Staff of the Army said that he supported <em>but did not agree with</em> Secretary Gates' decision to cancel the FCS manned ground vehicle program (largely due to concerns about the family of vehicles' unsuitability for likely operating environments), was that an example of a COIN-based Army?
When we look at the slow and unweildy mechanisms that exist for training and equipping partner-nation security forces, is that the COIN-based Army? What about when the Army decides not to establish Theater Security Cooperation units for permanent assignment to each COCOM/ASCC -- is that a COIN-based decision?
When the Army decides to send lieutenants and corporals to meet advisory missions intended to be met by O-5s and E-7s, is that the COIN-based Army? Or when brigades from the 82d Abn. are converted to "Advise and Assist brigades" via a six-week course at Ft. Riley?
When the Army's Modernization Plan is explicitly founded on two priorities -- 1) restoring balance and 2) <strong>achieving full spectrum dominance</strong>, is that the COIN-based Army?
When the Army reduces deployment lengths from 15 to 12 and eventually to nine months, effectively reducing each unit's knowledge of its AO, is that the COIN-based Army?
I agree with Niel, the second tragedy of Wanat was the swift abandonment of the OP/VPB.
COL Gentile, you seem to be afraid that from this point forward the USG/military will be shoving square pegs into round holes. I think part of your fear may be justified -- the Army has a history of being slow to adapt, sometimes too slow to save it from failure. On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that this is the <i>only</i> way we will respond to any conflict which looks vaguely like an insurgency, or will quickly turn into one.
<i>Are you really arguing that after 7 years plus in Astan and Iraq and the permeating effects throughout the Army of FM 3-24 that the American Army still does not get at the tactical level the political nature of population centric counterinsurgency?</i>
Having just returned from Astan, I <i>will</i> argue that in some substantial parts of the Army, bringing up "FM 3-24" and "COIN" will only get you puzzled looks. And these were battlespace owners. This "permeation" that you perceive is not at all complete (to the detriment of our mission in Astan) and shows that not everyone in the military has the ability to conceptualize these issues as well as you. They have to be <i>told almost exactly what to do</i> and really, this is how the Army has conditioned a lot of leaders to respond to new, vaguely-defined situations. So we need visionaries and quick studies in the top echelons rather than institutionalized robots who will be able to quickly adapt to new, different challenges. In this matter I think we are in agreement. Just because the current challenges necessitate a population-centric COIN approach doesn't make everyone a robot, though, if they happen to agree on that fact.
Additionally, from a strictly political/IO perspective, no the Army (at least in Afghanistan) does <i>not</i> get it. While the Taliban take videos of all their attacks and make DVDs for sale in the bazaar showing their successes, the best thing the Americans can come up with is to send the battalion commander into a village to do a KLE with the elders. So tell me, who here <i>really</i> understands the bottom-up approach?
<i>GO in Astan who said something like "if you come over here to kill Taliban we dont need you, what we need is for you to engage with the population," or something close to that.</i>
That is frightening to me. We do need people to kill Taliban. In my opinion, that GO is wrong. On the other hand, soldiers should not be <i>afraid</i> of the population. The Americans in my neck of Afghanistan were terrified of Afghan civilians, no matter how many times we explained that the Taliban are not in the habit of blowing up crowds of children.
Chris:
Really?
Who is detached from reality?
Review the Army's latest flagship doctrinal manuals: they are all heavily informed by the precepts of population centric counterinsurgency.
Review the recent decisions that the Army has made in terms of resources: the new brigades that it is building are either infantry or stryker, no heavy brigades; and there has been an increase at providing the army field force the types of enablers that are most suited for nation building and stability operations. I am not arguing that this is right or wrong, but to prove how far the Army has gone in this regard.
Review the focus for the Army's major training centers like NTC, JRTC, etc. They are completely focused on counterinsurgency.
Review as I have said so many times before the kinds of things that Army officers tend to write about on blogs and in published journals; they tend to be largely focused on matters concerning population centric counterinsurgency.
Tie these things to the Army's necessary operational focus in the field in Iraq and Astan toward counterinsurgency and you have an a Coin-based Army.
I can think of a lot of different operational methods for counterinsurgency other than your prescribed approach of the population-centric method.
But can you? Let's test my theory to see if we as an army, as represented by you, can really think outside of the pop-centric coin box.
So can you, Niel, imagine any other way of doing tactics and operations in Astan or any other counterinsurgency fight than population centric coin? If so what would they be? I could build half of an entire revised FM 3-24 doctrinal manual around the paltry paragraph in Chapter 5 on "limited" coin options. Can you?
COL Gentile,
If you hit the link to the council, you can see my initial post that this is a thought generator to provoke responses. Also note it says "tend". Sure some people get it. Some do not. Since it produced a heated response from you, it obviously worked!
"The Wanat engagement shows clearly that that platoon and its higher leadership understood and did their dandiest to carry out population centric coin by living close to and amongst the people."
I don't want to get to deep into Wanat AAR (that has been done and I wasn't there and haven't been), but I suggest that we lost that battle because we withdrew from the outpost the next day, whatever the tactical success. We may think we won, but the enemy clearly won that battle at the end of the day because we sent a clear message that if we take casualties we will withdraw. Therefore, the local population won't trust us to stick around, and will cooperate further with the enemy. That may not be the root of the decision the unit had to make (probably had to do with available combat power), but that is the INFORMATION result. So we obviously didn't understand the point the slide is making.
This is why I still contend we have a coin problem. To paraphrase Bob Leonhard's work, we focus on the checklist for building the battle position without thinking through whether the battle position should be there in the first place, and what its part in the strategy. Combat Outposts are not always the answer, outside of a "full spectrum" counterinsurgeny plan.
To paraphrase ADM Mullen, in this environment we need an "information order with an operations annex".
=========
"I wonder if the peasants in the Korengal Valley view what they are doing as fundamentally political relative to government legitimacy. Perhaps they view things from an ancient, tribal perspective instead of this modern, political model that you have constructed."
I would argue that it doesn't matter which perspective. The insurgent does not usually attack to win the field at the end of the day. He attacks to achieve an effect - i.e. kill enough of them they stop coming. Or put another way, forces loss of will. The second point is the message to the local populace. The point is that the tactical success or defeat matters far less than the interpretation of that result by the relevant involved influence groups.
I clearly state in my SWC post that this slide isn't to suggest Ahmed the RPG gunner is thinking political strategy waiting to ambush me in Baghdad. But his leaders understand it. If they didn't we wouldn't get our weekly news story about a bomb drop or predator strike that kills XX civilians, who we say were bad (mostly), and the truth in the middle. In the end, the truth unfortunately doesn't matter - it's the perception of the truth by all parties, most importantly the local populace.
This slide tries to challenge some basic assumptions. #1 is that there is not any secret formula for COIN success. Yes, everyone wants a checklist. Some people are dumb enough to try and template Ramadi on Hemland province. That's why we have to get people to ask the right questions first, and understand the nature of the problem at hand.
Just because someone badly ("unthinkingly" as you say applies COIN principles does not invalidate the doctrine. Lots of blinking BLUEFOR lights at NTC would make the same argument about HIC you are making about COIN.
If we truly have reflexive, unthinking leaders blindly following COIN checklists regardless of the local conditions, then our entire LD&E system is broken beyond belief. Following a checklist is as risky in HIC (perhaps more) as in COIN. Would you say "two up, one back" is always right? Of course not. Neither do I say anything like that about COIN, and you know it.
I will agree that we "get it" better than ever. Two years ago when I hit the circuit I would get regularly machine gunned for suggesting solutions other than "shoot them in the face" were possible. I was privileged to speak to the command group of a light infantry division last month (BN and above CDRs) about this subject. They clearly were sold from the start. Instead of fighting over whether COIN is a good idea, a useful discussion of how to think about COIN followed. I never give solutions when I instruct, because I have none. I only offer differing ways to conceptualize the problem. I trust in the intelligence of my audience to determine whether it is applicable to their place and circumstance.
As I said earlier, if our leaders can't do that, we have a bigger problem, and it's not COIN doctrine's fault.
And finally, Charlie over at AM has been standing at parade rest for about a year and a half for your alternate conceptualization of COIN. We "COINdinistas" all understand you fear our over-reliance on 1960's COIN foundations. Some of that is justified. Facing irregular threats, what operational methods are you actually FOR? What should we be doing instead?
Niel
Niel:
If you mean "we" as the United States Army, I disagree fundamentally that this is how "we" view things in a Coin fight. Are you really arguing that after 7 years plus in Astan and Iraq and the permeating effects throughout the Army of FM 3-24 that the American Army still does not get at the tactical level the political nature of population centric counterinsurgency?
How do you explain the large numbers of articles written in Military Review, Parameters, JFQ, AFJ, Blogs like this one and AM, etc that state over and over again how much the American Army does get population centric counterinsurgency? Read any garden variety statement by an officer on the ground in Iraq or Astan and you get the standard population centric coin staple statements: just last week I read one from a GO in Astan who said something like "if you come over here to kill Taliban we dont need you, what we need is for you to engage with the population," or something close to that. The Wanat engagement shows clearly that that platoon and its higher leadership understood and did their dandiest to carry out population centric coin by living close to and amongst the people.
What your slide actually depicts is a relic of the early 1990s view by the Counterinsurgency experts of the American Army. It may have been true in a limited sense then, but it is not anymore.
Your model via this slide is flawed because it views counterinsurgency premised on the counter-maoist approach of the early 1960s. I wonder if the peasants in the Korengal Valley view what they are doing as fundamentally political relative to government legitimacy. Perhaps they view things from an ancient, tribal perspective instead of this modern, political model that you have constructed.
Whatever, even though your model is narrowly conceived it is inaccurate to suggest that the American Army doesnt get the political nature of Coin at the tactical level: It Does. In fact population-centric coin may be all that nowadays the American Army as a field force and institution can do.
Why cannot folks of the counterinsurgency persuasion accept the notion that the American Army gets coin? Is it because that by so acknowledging, a raison dêtre therefore goes away? To use Exum on AM as an example, there would be no more of a resistance to be the father of, because resistance has melted away. The American Army has become Coin.