insurgency

On 15 June, the Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis division of the Joint Staff J-7 published a report titled, "A Decade at War."  This report came in response to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Dempsey's guidance that we should make sure we "actually learn the lessons from the last decade at war."  The report can be downloaded in PDF format here.  An excerpt follows:

In the decade following 9/11, it became evident that the Cold War model that had guided foreign policy for the previous 50 years no longer fit the emerging global environment. Key changes included: 

• A shift from US hegemony toward national pluralism 
• The erosion of sovereignty and the impact of weak states 
• The empowerment of small groups or individuals 
• An increasing need to fight and win in the information domain 

In the midst of these changes, the US employed its military in a wide range of operations to address perceived threats from both nation-state and terrorist groups; to strengthen partner nation militaries; to conduct humanitarian assistance operations; and to provide defense support of civil authorities in catastrophic incidents such as Hurricane Katrina. This wide range of operations aimed to promote and protect national interests in the changing global environment. 

In general, operations during the first half of the decade were often marked by numerous missteps and challenges as the US government and military applied a strategy and force suited for a different threat and environment. Operations in the second half of the decade often featured successful adaptation to overcome these challenges. From its study of these operations, JCOA identified overarching, enduring lessons for the joint force that present opportunities for the US to learn and improve, best practices that the US can sustain, and emerging risk factors that the US should address. 

The report broke down lessons into eleven strategic themes, analyzing each one in brief and providing a way ahead on each.  These were:

• Understanding the Environment: A failure to recognize, acknowledge, and accurately define the operational environment led to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions, and goals. 
• Conventional Warfare Paradigm: Conventional warfare approaches often were ineffective when applied to operations other than major combat, forcing leaders to realign the ways and means of achieving effects. 
• Battle for the Narrative: The US was slow to recognize the importance of information and the battle for the narrative in achieving objectives at all levels; it was often ineffective in applying and aligning the narrative to goals and desired end states. 
• Transitions: Failure to adequately plan and resource strategic and operational transitions endangered accomplishment of the overall mission. 
• Adaptation: Department of Defense (DOD) policies, doctrine, training and equipment were often poorly suited to operations other than major combat, forcing widespread and costly adaptation. 
• Special Operations Forces (SOF) – General Purpose Forces (GPF) Integration: Multiple, simultaneous, large-scale operations executed in dynamic environments required the integration of general purpose and special operations forces, creating a force-multiplying effect for both. 
• Interagency Coordination: Interagency coordination was uneven due to inconsistent participation in planning, training, and operations; policy gaps; resources; and differences in organizational culture. 
• Coalition Operations: Establishing and sustaining coalition unity of effort was a challenge due to competing national interests, cultures, resources, and policies. 
• Host-Nation Partnering: Partnering was a key enabler and force multiplier, and aided in host-nation capacity building. However, it was not always approached effectively nor adequately prioritized and resourced. 
• State Use of Surrogates and Proxies: States sponsored and exploited surrogates and proxies to generate asymmetric challenges. 
• Super-Empowered Threats: Individuals and small groups exploited globalized technology and information to expand influence and approach state-like disruptive capacity. 

The venerable Foreign Affairs offers two pieces worth clicking through to.

First, Ivo Daalder has a discussion with Gideon Rose and Rachel Bronson on the NATO summit.

First, with regard to Afghanistan, we took stock of the transition process and agreed it was on track. And indeed, the leaders of the 50 ISAF countries decided that there was a next phase in this transition process, that by the middle of 2013 we would reach a milestone at which every district and province in Afghanistan would have started the transition process, meaning that the Afghan security forces would be in the lead for security. And as a result, the ISAFs -- the Afghanistan international mission would shift from a combat role to a support role. ...

Then by the end of 2014, we should be in a position in which Afghan forces are fully responsible for security, and enable the ISAF mission that has been in place since 2004 to end. So we agreed here that we are winding down the war, as President Obama put it yesterday.

We also looked at what post-2014 or post-transition commitment NATO should make. 

Second, Paul McGeough writes on the struggle to succeed Iraqi Shi'a Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani.

As Sistani ages, a struggle to succeed him has begun, putting the spiritual leadership of one of the world's foremost faiths in play. But with neighboring Iran moving to install its preferred candidate in the position, the secular political foundations of Iraq's fledgling democracy are at risk. Consequently, what amounts to a spiritual showdown could pose a challenge to Washington's hope for postwar Iraq to serve as a Western-allied, moderate, secular state in the heart of the Middle East. 

Shia doctrine requires that an incumbent die before jockeying can begin in a succession process that is as opaque as it is informal. But Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the 64-year-old cleric who is widely seen as Tehran's preferred choice, has jumped the gun by sending an advance party to open an office in Najaf.

#1:  Context and nuance: Focus changes on updating and improving the understanding of insurgency itself.  This will put current content into a more appropriate context and nuance in general, and address the primary shortfall of the current manual.  All lessons learned on COIN are corrupted by the policies and purposes of the times they occur in, but provide insights into strategic understanding.

#2:  Define for success:  Defining key terms with an eye toward criteria that lend themselves to similar approaches for solving the problem.  Purpose for action and relationships between parties are key. Move away from definitions based on degree of violence, type of ideology, or status of parties.

#3: COIN is a domestic operation:  Limit COIN to domestic operations (unless dealing with resistance following the military defeat of some state with the intent to bring it under US governance). Casting support of someone else’s COIN as FID promotes proper roles and the enhancement of legitimacy.

#4:  Types of Insurgency matter:  It is critical to clarify the unique aspects of the three broad categories of insurgency (Revolution, Separatism, and Resistance).  Insurgencies range from war to civil emergency and often occur in a blend of types, or morph over time.  No single COIN approach works for all, but blended, evolving approaches tailored for each can be very effective (and in many ways occurred during “the surge” in Iraq, but not during “the surge” in Afghanistan, with predictable results).   The blend of perceptions of US physical and policy “presence” driving resistance against the US among populaces also feeling internal revolutionary motivations toward their own governments is central to the past 20 years of turmoil.  Al-Qaeda conducts UW to leverage this energy and cannot exist without it.

#5:  Conditions of Insurgency:  Recognize the underlying conditions of insurgency that exist in every society, how to relieve such pressure through good governance, and the critical distinction between natural stability and the artificial stability achieved through state security forces. This facilitate better prevention, greater civil responsibility, more appropriate military roles,  and less operational surprise.

#6:  Human Nature:  Appreciate how universal and timeless human nature is, and those aspects most important for understanding the strategic context of any insurgency.  These are constants in the human domain that provide keys for solving complex, adaptive problems between people and governance.

#7:  Ideology & Narrative: Clarifying the role of ideology; the role of social media (and info tech in general); and narratives. These are essential tools to initiate and facilitate action, but are not causal.

#8:  Sanctuary:  Shifting the focus on “Sanctuary” from terrain to being more about legal status and popular support.  Deny enabling status and popular support, particularly for regional groups like AQ.

#9: Causation:  Recognize that causation primarily radiates out from government, and that it is the perspective of the recipient individuals and populace groups that matter, not governmental intent.

#10:  “Winning”: Not preserving some regime or defeating some threat, but expanding the percentage of the total populace that perceives governance works to support their reasonable ambitions.

Ryan Evans offers a scathing indictment at Foreign Policy's Af-Pak Channel of the op-ed penned by Bruce Reidel and Michael O'Hanlon.  The below sentences sum it up, but you should read the rest found here.

The mission and objectives O'Hanlon and Riedel envision are of the never-ending variety: creating a viable, stable nation where none has previously existed. They also ignore their former, wiser caution on the future of the war. ... Two years later, reading their article on "finishing the job" in Afghanistan (which recycles the same old arguments) it is clear to me that O'Hanlon has not fulfilled his promise to call for a re-assessment, and Riedel has not been frank about our lack of success.