The Reaper
10-26-2014, 20:58
Good, if lengthy article on COIN.
"How Counterinsurgency Has Changed Across the 20th and Into the 21st Century"?
by Wayne Tyrrell
Journal Article | October 26, 2014 - 11:33am
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/%E2%80%9Chow-counterinsurgency-has-changed-across-the-20th-and-into-the-21st-century%E2%80%9D#comment-45611
Introduction
The straightforward approach to evaluating how counterinsurgency had evolved across the 20th and into the 21st centuries would commence by evaluating the successful approaches to some of the early insurgencies of the 1900's. Against this we could chart a course of lessons learned, then forgotten, and later relearned. We would recognise some enhancements and adaptations to suit the emerging insurgencies at various times. This would eventually lead us to the modern counterinsurgency publications, which have emerged in the wake of what were commonly accepted as disastrous attempts to quell insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. While this might prove to be a good history lesson, much of the enduring nature of successful counterinsurgency practice might be lost in the process.
Instead, this paper will focus on the modern doctrine crafted in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, its foundational basis and its adequacy to cope with a new form of globally networked and ideologically based insurgency. With scrutiny, it should become apparent that current practices have eclipsed modern doctrine and now reflect some revolutionary thinking in terms of defeating the global insurgency. This paper will suggest that modern counterinsurgency practice is fighting a new insurgency with new tactics based on old principles. In so doing we shall see how counterinsurgency has changed across the 20th and into the 21st centuries.
The Modern Doctrine
Frank Hoffman, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Research at the National Defense University (NDU) in the US, believes that the new US field manual on Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24) is a long step forward, reflecting our current understanding of this increasingly complex mode of conflict (2007: 84). This publication, issued in 2009, establishes doctrine for tactical counterinsurgency operations at the company, battalion, and brigade level.
Based on lessons learned from historic counterinsurgencies and current operations, FM3-24 defines the operational environment of counterinsurgency and covers planning for tactical operations and working with 'Host Nation Security Forces' (Department of the Army 2009: viii).
Of course, the US is not alone in developing counterinsurgency doctrine; the British Army publication, issued later in the same year, bears remarkable resemblance in substance[i]. It is the more comprehensive US doctrine, which has been described as probably the most influential piece of doctrine in the last twenty years (Griffin 2014), that will serve as the principal basis for this paper's evaluation of modern counterinsurgency doctrine.
Modern Counterinsurgency Doctrine - New Concepts, or Old Lessons?
Hoffman (2007: 71) points to the inclusion of a number of 'classical school' examples of insurgency included in FM3-24, underpinning its foundational basis for counterinsurgency, particularly the writings of Robert Thompson and David Galula[ii]. He, like Jones and Smith (2010: 101), criticises the fact that many of the principles expressed in the manual are rooted in the 'classical' counterinsurgency. They assert that texts authored by Cold War theorists and practitioners, whose frame of reference was defined by wars of national liberation and the Maoist model of guerrilla warfare, are outdated and ill suited to modern insurgencies. According to this argument, today's insurgencies, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, are not like those that came before, they are, variously and at once, less hierarchical, more globalised, and more focused on the media and information domain (Nagl & Burton 2010: 123).
Accordingly, the reference point for evaluating whether modern counterinsurgency doctrine is a bald recitation must commence by assessing these classical schools.
The 'Classical Schools' of Counterinsurgency and the Population-Centric
Approach
In terms of assessing the evolution of counterinsurgency, can it be said that current doctrine resembles the approaches of the early authors cited in FM 3-24? During the 1960's a French military Officer, Galula, advocated a population-centric approach to counterinsurgency built from the bottom up (1964: 51 & 95-96), where he sets out the following strategy (1964: 59):
1. Concentrate sufficient forces to destroy or expel the main body of armed insurgents
2. Detach sufficient troops to oppose his return in the villages and towns where the population resides
3. Control the population in order to cut off its links with the insurgents
4. Destroy the insurgent political organization
5. Establish new provisional local authorities by election
6. Test those authorities by assigning them various concrete tasks. Replace the 'softs' and the 'incompetents', while giving full support to the active leaders
7. Assist the development of a national political infrastructure
8. Win over or suppress the remaining insurgent
The strategy espoused by Galula flows from his four principles (1964: 55-59), which are reiterated in FM 3-24 (2009: 3-9):
1. The support of the population is necessary for the counterinsurgent as it is the insurgent
2. Support is gained through the active minority
3. Support from the population is conditional
4. Intensity of efforts and vastness of means are essential
These strategy and the four principles bear significant resemblance to the approach used in Afghanistan for a 2009 Operation Kalay, seeking to establish village stability based on the ink spot approach using the shape-clear-hold-build-enable mode (Verret 2013: 114). Together Galula's writings seems to reflect the 'hearts and minds' approach, which despite having such prominence in the counterinsurgency discourse during the last decade, actually has its genesis in the earlier insurgency in Malaya. Attributed to General Sir Gerald Templer[iii], during Britain's apparently successful counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya from 1948-1960[iv] (Dixon 2009: 353), this phrase is generally associated with a less coercive approach, which emphasises the importance of using 'minimum force' in a population-centric approach to counterinsurgency (Enterline 2013: 187).
(Cont. at link above)
"How Counterinsurgency Has Changed Across the 20th and Into the 21st Century"?
by Wayne Tyrrell
Journal Article | October 26, 2014 - 11:33am
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/%E2%80%9Chow-counterinsurgency-has-changed-across-the-20th-and-into-the-21st-century%E2%80%9D#comment-45611
Introduction
The straightforward approach to evaluating how counterinsurgency had evolved across the 20th and into the 21st centuries would commence by evaluating the successful approaches to some of the early insurgencies of the 1900's. Against this we could chart a course of lessons learned, then forgotten, and later relearned. We would recognise some enhancements and adaptations to suit the emerging insurgencies at various times. This would eventually lead us to the modern counterinsurgency publications, which have emerged in the wake of what were commonly accepted as disastrous attempts to quell insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. While this might prove to be a good history lesson, much of the enduring nature of successful counterinsurgency practice might be lost in the process.
Instead, this paper will focus on the modern doctrine crafted in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, its foundational basis and its adequacy to cope with a new form of globally networked and ideologically based insurgency. With scrutiny, it should become apparent that current practices have eclipsed modern doctrine and now reflect some revolutionary thinking in terms of defeating the global insurgency. This paper will suggest that modern counterinsurgency practice is fighting a new insurgency with new tactics based on old principles. In so doing we shall see how counterinsurgency has changed across the 20th and into the 21st centuries.
The Modern Doctrine
Frank Hoffman, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Research at the National Defense University (NDU) in the US, believes that the new US field manual on Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24) is a long step forward, reflecting our current understanding of this increasingly complex mode of conflict (2007: 84). This publication, issued in 2009, establishes doctrine for tactical counterinsurgency operations at the company, battalion, and brigade level.
Based on lessons learned from historic counterinsurgencies and current operations, FM3-24 defines the operational environment of counterinsurgency and covers planning for tactical operations and working with 'Host Nation Security Forces' (Department of the Army 2009: viii).
Of course, the US is not alone in developing counterinsurgency doctrine; the British Army publication, issued later in the same year, bears remarkable resemblance in substance[i]. It is the more comprehensive US doctrine, which has been described as probably the most influential piece of doctrine in the last twenty years (Griffin 2014), that will serve as the principal basis for this paper's evaluation of modern counterinsurgency doctrine.
Modern Counterinsurgency Doctrine - New Concepts, or Old Lessons?
Hoffman (2007: 71) points to the inclusion of a number of 'classical school' examples of insurgency included in FM3-24, underpinning its foundational basis for counterinsurgency, particularly the writings of Robert Thompson and David Galula[ii]. He, like Jones and Smith (2010: 101), criticises the fact that many of the principles expressed in the manual are rooted in the 'classical' counterinsurgency. They assert that texts authored by Cold War theorists and practitioners, whose frame of reference was defined by wars of national liberation and the Maoist model of guerrilla warfare, are outdated and ill suited to modern insurgencies. According to this argument, today's insurgencies, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, are not like those that came before, they are, variously and at once, less hierarchical, more globalised, and more focused on the media and information domain (Nagl & Burton 2010: 123).
Accordingly, the reference point for evaluating whether modern counterinsurgency doctrine is a bald recitation must commence by assessing these classical schools.
The 'Classical Schools' of Counterinsurgency and the Population-Centric
Approach
In terms of assessing the evolution of counterinsurgency, can it be said that current doctrine resembles the approaches of the early authors cited in FM 3-24? During the 1960's a French military Officer, Galula, advocated a population-centric approach to counterinsurgency built from the bottom up (1964: 51 & 95-96), where he sets out the following strategy (1964: 59):
1. Concentrate sufficient forces to destroy or expel the main body of armed insurgents
2. Detach sufficient troops to oppose his return in the villages and towns where the population resides
3. Control the population in order to cut off its links with the insurgents
4. Destroy the insurgent political organization
5. Establish new provisional local authorities by election
6. Test those authorities by assigning them various concrete tasks. Replace the 'softs' and the 'incompetents', while giving full support to the active leaders
7. Assist the development of a national political infrastructure
8. Win over or suppress the remaining insurgent
The strategy espoused by Galula flows from his four principles (1964: 55-59), which are reiterated in FM 3-24 (2009: 3-9):
1. The support of the population is necessary for the counterinsurgent as it is the insurgent
2. Support is gained through the active minority
3. Support from the population is conditional
4. Intensity of efforts and vastness of means are essential
These strategy and the four principles bear significant resemblance to the approach used in Afghanistan for a 2009 Operation Kalay, seeking to establish village stability based on the ink spot approach using the shape-clear-hold-build-enable mode (Verret 2013: 114). Together Galula's writings seems to reflect the 'hearts and minds' approach, which despite having such prominence in the counterinsurgency discourse during the last decade, actually has its genesis in the earlier insurgency in Malaya. Attributed to General Sir Gerald Templer[iii], during Britain's apparently successful counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya from 1948-1960[iv] (Dixon 2009: 353), this phrase is generally associated with a less coercive approach, which emphasises the importance of using 'minimum force' in a population-centric approach to counterinsurgency (Enterline 2013: 187).
(Cont. at link above)