An Invading Force's Presence in a Foreign Land is its own Enemy
by Ali Iqbal
Download the Full Article: Bismarck's Lesson on COIN
An invading foreign force, on completion of its objectives i.e. regime change through violent means or having inflicted sufficient losses to a targeted group, should not prolong its stay and assume the role of occupiers. This tendency infuriates local passion built on independent beliefs, cultural biases, religious differences and historic events. This complex/non- linear environment poses tremendous challenges for an outsider to transform the invaded country and bring it to a desired level of stability. On the other hand, the same environment presents lucrative opportunities for non-state and other state actors who intend exploiting the volatile situation to further their agendas/interests. The actors relevant to this theory include a foreign force, which can be composed of a single nation or a coalition, local populace of the invaded country, non-state actors within, and outside the invaded country and regional/neighboring countries having negative or positive interests in the invaded country and the foreign force.
Download the Full Article: Bismarck's Lesson on COIN
Major Ali Iqbal, Pakistan Army, is currently a student at the School of Advanced Military Studies Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has served as an instructor in School of Armor and Pakistan Military Academy and has twice served as brigade operations officer in an infantry and armor brigade. He has also served as United Nations Military Observer in Sierra Leone. He is a graduate of Command and Staff College, Pakistan and has a master's degree in Arts and Science of Warfare.
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Comments
Bill M:
First things first. I am not attacking the MAJ for his grammar. It is quite excellent. I'm impressed anyway. I am criticizing the use of the passive voice. A lot of people use that when they want to sound serious minded, or they are forced to use it by higher ups who mistake dense sentence structure for erudition. No insult to the MAJ intended and I am sorry my comment didn't make that clear. Now if you want to take it as a shot at various institutions...
Those places were part of Rome. Gaul in 100 A.D. was not the Gaul of 200 B.C. It was transformed. Fortified towns were the norm before the Romans came and were the norm after the empire fell. They weren't the norm when Gaul was Roman. Several Emperors were from Spain, Romans from Spain. The Romans successfully did far more than we are attempting in South Asia.
In the Southwest we successfully incorporated conquered peoples into the US. It wasn't a matter of liberating anybody. In the case of the tribes though it wasn't done very civilly.
The Philippines may or may not have developed into something resembling a European nation outside of Manila, I don't really know. However, American authority was successfully established and maintained up until the time we decided to leave. It was so successfully done that the Filipinos fought hard for us against the Japanese. What we accomplished was to gain and maintain in the face of great trial the loyalty of a conquered people who fought us pretty hard at the start. That is a big thing.
As far as VN and Algeria go, what if the western powers hadn't pulled out, or hadn't pulled out so precipitously? Would those innocent hundreds of thousands have died? The MAJ is implying that those two countries ended up in the same place with the west pulling out, as they would have if the west had stayed. All very well from a hard nosed real politic point of view, but it ignores all those deaths and the decades of suffering by those who lived. It bugs me when human pain is ignored because it isn't seen as part of the big picture.
The MAJ's primary point is:
"To summarize, a foreign force, even with all the good intentions, is its own enemy, as its presence generates confrontation and resistance." I think that is accurate if the phrase "...or not, depending on how it acts." is added. If that phrase isn't added, he is cherry picking his examples.
Carl,
Your points are interesting, but questionable. Rome made their members pay tribute (taxes), and in return they built roads, etc. I don't believe they engaged in full scale cultural transformation as we are attempting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Who exactly did we incorporate into our society in the America's Southwest? Admitedly my history during that period is rusty, but we put the Indians on reservations and then rapidly settled the land with outsiders from the east. We didn't exactly "liberate" anyone. The former Mexicans that decided to stay were integrated to some extent, but not as equals initially.
We acquired the Philippines from the Spanish-American war (accidental empire) and while our occupation and counter rebellion efforts were successful, the Philippines never really developed beyond the capital region. What do you think we accomplished there?
Algeria and Vietnam were blood baths "during" and after the COIN efforts. The point is westerm forces didn't "prevent" bloodshed when they were there. Do you think the French COIN efforts in Algeria were humane? In Vietnam several thousand civilians died while we were there (just as in Iraq and Afghanistan), and in the end it still didn't stop the subsequent blood shed after Western powers pulled out, because while we may be able to put history on pause, we can't stop it.
Attacking a foreign officer's paper for his grammar is a low blow that is uncalled for. He is writing it in our language, and I only wish I could write that well in a foreign language.
MAJ Iqbal ignores the tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people who died while Algeria and Vietnam were making their way into the fold of respectable countries. Just a personal thing but that rather irritates me. I hope that kind of thing is not encouraged at schools of higher strategery.
He also ignores successful Roman incorporation of Gaul, Spain, North Africa, Britain and several other places into the empire for rather a long time. He ignored our incorporation of California, Arizona and New Mexico into the US after the Mexican war, the British rule of India for decades and decades, our pacification of the Philippines and a few other things. All of these places were occupied and transformed by foreign troops. And these occupations were fairly successful because they brought benefits to the residents. Bringing benefits to the residents is one of the precepts of the various small wars ways of working so maybe the coindinistas have one or two useful things to say.
I hope SAMS doesn't normally encourage writing in the passive voice. It is a bit dull.
I found little to disagree with in MAJ Iqbals paper. While his arguments could have been better supported, this isn't a term paper, but rather it is a think piece and in that regard it serves it purpose well.
I agree with Dave Maxwell's comments, but we probably diverge in opinion when I state if you just conquered a country and then occupy it, then you're an occupying force in the eyes of that people that live in that country. When we're an occupying power, then we'll face all the challenges MAJ Iqbal indicated in his paper.
It is probably worthwhile to consider why we didn't have the same degree of challenges in post WWII Germany and Japan. I suspect for one, our culture didn't significantly differ from Germany's democratic and industrial society, and at the end of WWII we faced a common enemy (the USSR). There was German resistance to our occupation, and much chaos, but it paled in comparision to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Japan we didn't try to change their culture, we accepted most of it, and left the royal family in place to leverage their power to provide stability. In contrast to both Iraq and Afghanistan where we decided to implement fundamental changes in each society, so obviously that was met with great resistance.
At the risk of beating a dead horse or the usual accusation of me tilting at windmills I would offer this timeworn "theory": Only a sovereign nation can be effective at countering an insurgency that threatens it. An outside force can provide advice and assistance but if it conducts "direct" counterinsurgency then it most likely will undercut the legitimacy of the sovereign government and at least de facto, if not in fact, act as an occupying power, and thus fuel the insurgency. That outside force must understand and be proficient at COIN, but it cannot take the lead COIN operations. As long as we believe that we have to be the ones conducting COIN, then we will continue to fuel the very insurgency that we are trying to help counter. I think that MAJ Iqbals paper underscores that "theory." It is good to see we have a Pakistani officer at SAMS.
Of course the Coinistas retch when they read arguments like this since it places limits on what military force can actually accomplish. For the Coinistas there really are no limits to what American military power can accomplish which is why some have been quoted as saying that it will have the ability to "change entire societies."
The good Pakistani Major (who currently attends my alma mater) I think makes a superb, albeit implicit point: that in an age of limited wars states must understand and accept what military force can accomplish and devise strategy around that essential premise.
Not brilliant, as Roger suggests, but a good solid argument I think made by a thoughtful field grade officer. Kudos goes to SWJ as usual for publishing things that push the conceptual and intellectual envelope.
gian
I think that this paper is just brilliant. We have to realize that all does not fall into our purview. I like the examples and it all makes sense. Why do we not learn from history?. Great pictures to support the view point. Let us not be blinded with the fact that the major is Pakistani, let's see his point of view and the immense sense that it makes. We Americans have a lot of room to learn.
Bottom line, Afghanistan should have been awarded to Pakistan as protectorate/colony, and the US should have vacated while the getting out was good.
One can see that this is desirable from the Pakistani perspective, but in view of the incapability of Pakistan to effectively govern itself, or to provide responsible oversight after the Soviet withdrawal, the proposal is laughable, and completely contrary to US interests, not to mention Afghan interests. Who vets this stuff?
I looked forward to reading this when I saw the title, but I have to say it's a bit rubbish. The author uses no facts/figures to support his theory, and the lumping together of different insurgencies and then comparing them to the Austro-Prussian war is cackhanded. A better effort is needed if you're going to entice IR, Bismarck-lovin' buffs like me with a title like that.