COIN: Smart Soldiers (and Diplomats)

[Warrior-Mentor]

Lifted from an e-mail...

The Economist is thinking about COIN today. It's a reasonable introductory piece, although most readers of this page will have dealt with the concepts at a higher level. Still, if you are new to the subject -- or if you work for the State Department, and you don't understand why your bosses want you to go to Iraq -- you could do worse than to spend a few minutes with this piece.

A growing body of opinion, both in the Pentagon and outside, has concluded that insurrections are best fought indirectly, through local allies. “It is extremely difficult for Western powers to defeat insurgencies in foreign countries in modern times,” says Max Boot, author of “War Made New” (2006). “At the same time, there are very few instances of insurgencies overthrowing a local government. The problem is that Western armies lose the will to maintain imperial domination.” Western forces always have the option of going home; for local governments, though, fighting insurgents is a matter of survival.

A better model than Malaya, argues Mr Boot, is the end of the Marxist insurrection in El Salvador in 1992. American forces did not lead the fighting. Instead, a small contingent of under 100 advisers from America's special forces helped the democratising government reorganise its army and avoid the fate of nearby Nicaragua, which fell to the Sandinistas in 1979.

This is the "by, through and with" model, which is a model that has a lot of success to report for it. It's the one that the Special Forces are designed to handle, but it's not a SF model only. To work properly, you need at least three components:

1) SF or other military forces, to turn social networks like tribes or families away from the insurgents, and then train them toward compatibility with government forces.

2) PRTs, MiTTs, and USAID to apply benefits to "green" areas and deny them to red/yellow ones. The yellow ones see the benefits the green areas are getting, and want them. When they approach the government to ask for them, the government answers, "Yes, of course we'd love to do those things for you, because we care about helping people. But first, we need you to commit to the following things: controlling your youth, helping us find insurgents, and taking a public oath to stand with us."

Then, when you get those things, you start to expand the "green" zone. This is the so-called oilspot method of Counterinsurgency.

3) State Department support at the highest levels, from the Ambassador down, who understand the mission and answer for it. This is listed in spot #3, but it's ultimately just as important as getting it right on the ground. State needs to be shepherding the local government in ways that will help defuse the insurgencies, and encourange stable settlements.

None of this is easy, to be sure. There are serious challenges in terms of training, for example. SF is designed for this; conventional forces aren't. You can see in Iraq, though, that conventional forces can do it -- look at the so-called "Concerned Local Citizen" programs that have been stood up from Anbar to Wasit. Mostly these have been developed by conventional fighting forces, Marines or Soldiers.

I've written here quite a bit about the PRTs and the role they are playing in Iraq. That element is getting stronger all the time, and I'm proud of what they're doing.

State is still in transit at its upper levels. This week's stories show that they aren't really there yet. The stories also show, though, that they are starting to move in that direction. We need them to get to where they are "doing" counterinsurgency as one of their main duties -- in places like Iraq, it is their main duty.

This is one of those places where the nation and its government continue to learn on foot. Rumsfeld was right about one thing: you go to war with the army you have, and the State department you have. We've got to keep up the momentum, especially with State, because they do have a serious and important role to play in all this. Perhaps Ambassador Kenney can do some "subject matter expert exchanges" with her colleagues at State. She has done a great job down south, and we'd do well to have more like her.

[JMI]

There were a couple articles in the issue. I read them both on the plane ride home last night.