WarThinker's Digest - Issue #4

WarThinker's Digest is a feature of theScience of Global Security & Armed Conflict blog that scans the scholarly literature from academia, government agencies, and major think tanks, highlighting new reports and documents bearing on the complexity of conflict and future trends in warfare. A must-read feature for defense and security strategists from all sectors interested in honing their "actionable intellect."


Obama's COIN toss

In Afghanistan, we have a plan -- but that's not the same as a strategy

By Eliot A. Cohen
The Washington Post
Sunday, December 6, 2009

Excerpt:

Strategy is the art of choice that binds means with objectives. It is the highest level of thinking about war, and it involves priorities (we will devote resources here, even if that means starving operations there), sequencing (we will do this first, then that) and a theory of victory (we will succeed for the following reasons). That is the job of wartime presidents; it’s why they have the title commander in chief. Obama set out his objectives for Afghanistan, focused on thwarting al-Qaeda, and enumerated some of the means, chiefly a 30,000-troop, 18-month surge. But what about the hard part: setting priorities, establishing a sequencing and laying out a theory of victory?

C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan
By Scott Shane
New York Times
Published: December 3, 2009

Excerpt:

The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.

By increasing covert pressure on Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, while ground forces push back the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan, American officials hope to eliminate any haven for militants in the region.

One of Washington’s worst-kept secrets, the drone program is quietly hailed by counterterrorism officials as a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray. But despite close cooperation from Pakistani intelligence, the program has generated public anger in Pakistan, and some counterinsurgency experts wonder whether it does more harm than good.

Assessments of the drone campaign have relied largely on sketchy reports in the Pakistani press, and some have estimated several hundred civilian casualties. Saying that such numbers are wrong, one government official agreed to speak about the program on the condition of anonymity. About 80 missile attacks from drones in less than two years have killed “more than 400” enemy fighters, the official said, offering a number lower than most estimates but in the same range. His account of collateral damage, however, was strikingly lower than many unofficial counts: “We believe the number of civilian casualties is just over 20, and those were people who were either at the side of major terrorists or were at facilities used by terrorists.”

Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency

By: David C. Gompert, Terrence K. Kelly, Brooke Stearns Lawson, Michelle Parker, Kimberly Colloton
RAND Corporation

Effective civilian relief, reconstruction, and development work can help convince people to support their government against insurgency. Knowing this, insurgents will target such work, threatening both those who perform it and those who benefit from it. Too often, the result is a postponement of efforts to improve government and serve the population until contested territory has been cleared of insurgents. This can lead to excessive reliance on force to defeat insurgents — delaying or even preventing success. A RAND team with combined security and development expertise set out to learn how civilian counterinsurgency (civil COIN) (essential human services, political reform, physical reconstruction, economic development, and indigenous capacity-building) could be conducted more safely in the face of active insurgency, when it can do the most good. The authors propose the following to improve the security of civil COIN under fire: a concept for setting priorities among civil COIN measures; a way to allocate security forces optimally among various civil COIN activities, as well as between them and other COIN security missions (e.g., direct operations against insurgents); new, integrated concepts of operation (ICONOPS) that military and civilian leaders could employ during COIN campaigns to manage risk and produce best results for COIN as a whole; and general requirements for capabilities and corresponding investments to secure civil COIN, derived from ICONOPS.

The New Counterinsurgency Era
By David Ucko

Confronting insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has recognized the need to “re-learn” counterinsurgency. But how has the Department of Defense with its mixed efforts responded to this new strategic environment? Has it learned anything from past failures?

In The New Counterinsurgency Era, David Ucko examines DoD’s institutional obstacles and initially slow response to a changing strategic reality. Ucko also suggests how the military can better prepare for the unique challenges of modern warfare, where it is charged with everything from providing security to supporting reconstruction to establishing basic governance—all while stabilizing conquered territory and engaging with local populations. After briefly surveying the history of American counterinsurgency operations, Ucko focuses on measures the military has taken since 2001 to relearn old lessons about counterinsurgency, to improve its ability to conduct stability operations, to change the institutional bias against counterinsurgency, and to account for successes gained from the learning process.

Given the effectiveness of insurgent tactics, the frequency of operations aimed at building local capacity, and the danger of ungoverned spaces acting as havens for hostile groups, the military must acquire new skills to confront irregular threats in future wars. Ucko clearly shows that the opportunity to come to grips with counterinsurgency is matched in magnitude only by the cost of failing to do so.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, USA (Ret.)
Introduction
1. Framing the Reorientation
2. A Troubled History
3. Revisiting Counterinsurgency
4. Innovation under Fire
5. Counterinsurgency and the QDR
6. FM 3-24 and Operation Fardh Al-Qanoon
7. The Ambivalence of the "Surge"
8. Innovation or Inertia
Conclusion: Kicking the Counterinsurgency Syndrome?



Counterinsurgency – a much failed strategy?
By Patrick Lang

Excerpt:

Conclusion:

COIN is a badly flawed instrument of statecraft: Why?

- The locals ultimately own the country being fought over.

- Such COIN wars are expensive, long drawn out affairs that are deeply debilitating for the foreign counterinsurgent power.

- COIN theory is predicated on the ability of the counterinsurgents to change the mentality of the “protected” (read controlled) population. The sad truth is that most people do not want to be deprived of their ancestral ways and will fight to protect them.

- In the end the foreign counterinsurgent is embarked on a war that is not his own war.

- For the counterinsurgent the commitment of forces must necessarily be much larger than for the insurgents.

What should we do?

- Hold the cities as bases to prevent a recognized Taliban government until some satisfactory (to us) deal is made among the Afghans.

- Participate in international economic development projects for Afghanistan.

- Conduct effective clandestine HUMINT out of the city bases against international jihadi elements.

- Turn the tribes against the jihadi elements.

- Continue to hunt and kill/capture dangerous jihadis,

How long might you have to follow this program? It might be a long time but that would be sustainable. A full-blown COIN campaign in Afghanistan is not politically sustainable.

Civil War Outcomes
By Roy Licklider
Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University
Saltzman Working Paper No. 11
November 2009


This paper attempts to summarize the rapidly expanding literature on civil war outcomes, organizing it around three central questions, all of which remain under debate: (1) what are civil wars, (2) how do we know when they end, and (3) what can outsiders do to help end them and prevent their recurrence? It focuses on the normative and ethical issues involved in negotiated settlements to civil wars: do they reduce violence or not, do they encourage democracy or not, the conflict between amnesty and justice which they often raise, and, if they are seen as desirable, when are they likely to occur and how, if at all, can outsiders support them.



Third-Generation Civil--Military Relations

by Frederik Rosén
Security Dialogue, Vol. 40, No. 6, 597-616 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0967010609350633

Counterinsurgency strategies employed by the US military in Afghanistan have led to the US military embarking on civil governance reform. This has created new forms of civil—military relations with Afghan and international counterparts. These relations appear less dramatic than ‘conventional’ civil—military relations, in that they do not create the same visible alignment on the ground between military and non-military identities. In addition, the increased merging of civil and military work areas creates a new complexity that stems from semantic confusion. This complexity is mostly about norms and principles, in that the core puzzle is the more general question of what kinds of tasks the military should and should not do, rather than about violent consequences to civilians and questions of neutrality. This article proposes the term ‘third-generation civil—military relations’ to capture and examine the conceptual challenges that stem from the merging of military and civil work areas in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

WarThinker's Digest - Issue #2

WarThinker's Digest is a feature of theScience of Global Security & Armed Conflict blog that scans the scholarly literature from academia, government agencies, and major think tanks, highlighting new reports and documents bearing on the complexity of conflict and future trends in warfare. A must-read feature for defense and security strategists from all sectors interested in honing their "actionable intellect."

Inside the Surge: One Commander's Lessons in Counterinsurgency

Author: Jim Crider

When Lieutenant Colonel Jim Crider arrived in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad in February of 2007 as the commander of 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Riley, Kansas the Sunni neighborhood appeared beyond hope. The streets were largely empty of life and the air was filled with the foul smell of burning trash and open sewage. Improvised explosive devices, small arms fire, hand grenades, and dead bodies were a normal part of every 1-4 CAV patrol in the spring and early summer of 2007. However, through the ruthless implementation of the counterinsurgency principles outlined in Army Field Manual 3-24 and several pragmatic decisions along the way, the neighborhood began to turn in July of 2007. By the end of September, the unit had seen the last attack on its forces. Businesses reopened, the streets were full of people, and there was hope. This paper contains some of the primary lessons learned during their 14 month combat tour. In his foreword to the paper, CNAS Senior Fellow and author of the New York Times best-seller Fiasco Tom Ricks calls Crider’s work “the first in-depth review offered by an American battalion commander about post-invasion operations in Iraq.

Read the article HERE.

Principles of Modern American Counterinsurgency: Evolution and Debate

Author: Janine Davidson
The Brookings Institution

Insurgency and counterinsurgency are not new to Americans. People often forget that the American Revolution was an insurgency by colonists against the British crown. In South Carolina, Frances Marion, the so-called “Swamp Fox” who hid with his band of guerrillas in the woods and led raids against British troops, is considered an American hero. Likewise, during the American Civil War, southern “partisans” such as John Mosby, of Mosby’s Rangers, became infamous for their successful guerrilla tactics against Union soldiers.

Americans have an even more extensive history as counter-insurgents –with a mixed record of success.2 Early American expansion led to a number of bloody engagements between the Army (and sometimes the Marines) and various Native American tribes in the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), in the Creek and Seminole Wars that followed in the South, and in the many famous clashes with the Sioux, the Comanche, and others in the West throughout the 1800s. Many of the lessons learned through trial and error on the American frontier were handed down through word of mouth by soldiers who brought their personal experiences from one fight to the next.

This nearly uninterrupted string of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operations informed the U.S. military’s approach in later conflicts, including the guerrilla elements of the Civil War and its aftermath; the Mexican-American War of 1846-48; the Spanish-American War and the long struggle against Filipino insurgents from 1898 to at least 1910.3 The Marine Corps leveraged the only doctrine the Army had up to that point (Small Wars and Punitive Expeditions)4 in the so-called Caribbean “Banana Wars,” and ultimately recorded its lessons learned from that experience as doctrine in the 1940 publication of the Small Wars Manual.

An excellent, concise primer on modern COIN. Read it HERE.

100 Years of COIN: What new have we Learned?

Author: David Betz
Kings of War

After a comprehensive review of COIN research, David Betz reaches some interesting conclusions and poses some intriguing questions for understanding the next generation of (perhaps Post-Maoist) conflict. In particular, he highlights "two really exciting new areas of insurgency research." The first is the concept of a ‘virtual dimension’ in which the battlespace is viewed as an arena or "theatre," in which the commander functions as a "producer." Betz has written on this topic previously.

The second is the study of insurgency, or more specifically ‘Islamic Activism’, using social movement theory (SMT). Betz points in particular to the work of Quintan Wiktorowicz. I share Betz's enthusiasm about the potential promise of SMT as a useful way of thinking about current ideologically-driven movements. I have used this quite a bit in framing issues related to "radicalization" into violent extremism. I agree there are also important applications to understanding insurgency as well.

Read Betz's post HERE.

Warthinker’s Digest - Issue #1

Warthinker's Digest is a feature of the Science of Global Security & Armed Conflict blog that scans the scholarly literature from academia, government agencies, and major think tanks, highlighting new reports and documents bearing on the complexity of conflict and future trends in warfare. A must-read feature for defense and security strategists from all sectors interested in honing their "actionable intellect."

The Taliban: An Organizational Analysis

Authors: Major Shahid Afsar, Pakistan Army; Major Chris Samples, U.S. Army; and Major Thomas Wood, U.S. Army Military Review, May-June 2008

The Taliban did not grow out of the dark overnight, nor was it unknown in the Middle East, the region of the world most severely affected after 9/11. Following its emergence in 1994 from madrassas, the Taliban achieved surprising victories over its enemies and assumed rule over much of Afghanistan. Simultaneously hailed as saviors and feared as oppressors, the Taliban were an almost mythical phenomenon that seemed to embody the very essence of Afghan cultural beliefs, especially revenge for transgression, hospitality for enemies, and readiness to die for honor. The Taliban knew the Afghan people and their ways and embedded themselves in the complex Afghan web of tribalism, religion, and ethnicity.

Despite their quick overthrow in 2002 by a small coalition of U.S. forces and anti-Taliban groups, the Taliban has not gone away. In fact, today, in the face of thousands of NATO and U.N. troops, a growing Afghan National Army (ANA), and a popularly elected government, the movement's influence in Afghanistan is increasing. It continues to wage an insurgency that has prevented the new government from establishing legitimacy, and it has created massive unrest in Pakistan. Clearly, it behooves us to know something more about this archaic but formidable enemy.

In this article Afsar, Samples, & Wood provide a thoughtful, yet practical, primer on the evolution and organization of the Taliban, addressing each of the following dimensions: History, Culture, Religion, Ethnicity, Organizational Resources (Religious Allies, Human Terrain, and Drug Revenue); Physical Terrain; Strategy; Structure (Leadership, Decision-Making, C2, Recruitment & Training, & Motivation); and its means of Securing the Future (Growth of coercive capabilities and of internal and external political influence).

You can read the full report HERE.

The Past and Present as Prologue: Future Warfare through the Lens of Contemporary Conflicts

Author: General Robert H. Scales

Center for a New American Security

Eight years of war have given the U.S. military an unparalleled opportunity to translate real war experience into a vision of how conflicts will be fought in the future. Getting a vision of the future more right than wrong depends on the military's ability to sift through experiences gathered from combat to discern those that will endure. This monograph seeks to do just that.

A key premise of this paper is that the United States' emerging national security strategy is right in postulating a future conflict environment dominated by irregular wars. For brevity, the paper concentrates on a few characteristics of future irregular wars that are likely to endure. For clarity, it parses the vision into the three classic levels of war; strategic, operational, and tactical. And for credibility, it concentrates on the ground dimension for two reasons: because Afghanistan and Iraq, like all irregular wars, are being fought principally on the ground and because the author's past intellectual endeavors and expertise have been in that dimension.

You can read the full report HERE.

Hybrid Threats: Reconceptualizing the Evolving Character of Modern Conflict

Author: Frank G. Hoffman

This essay describes the hybrid adversaries that employ a combination of capabilities to gain an asymmetric advantage in modern warfare. "America's ongoing battles in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted limitations in our understanding of the complexity of modern warfare. Furthermore, our cultural prism has retarded the institutionalization of capabilities needed to prevail in stabilization and counter-insurgency missions. An ongoing debate about future threats is often framed as a dichotomous choice between counterinsurgency and conventional war. This oversimplifies defense planning and resource allocation decisions. Instead of fundamentally different approaches, we should expect competitors who will employ all forms of war, perhaps simultaneously. Such multimodal threats are often called hybrid threats. Thus, the choice is not simply one of preparing for long-term stability operations or high-intensity conflict. We must be able to do both simultaneously against enemies far more ruthless than today's." This report compares and contrasts four competing perspectives of the hybrid threat and evaluates them for readiness and risk implications. "This risk assessment argues that the hybrid threat presents the most operational risk in the near- to midterm. Accordingly, it concludes that hybrid threats are a better focal point for considering alternative joint force postures."

You can read the full report HERE.

Cultural Dimensions of Strategy and Policy

Author: Jiyul Kim

There has been a growing recognition in the post-Cold War era that culture has increasingly become a factor in determining the course of today's complex and interconnected world. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq extended this trend to national security and military operations. There is also a growing recognition by the national security community that culture is an important factor at the policy and strategy levels. Cultural proficiency at the policy and strategic levels means the ability to consider history, values, ideology, politics, religion, and other cultural dimensions and assess their potential effect on policy and strategy. The Analytical Cultural Framework for Strategy and Policy (ACFSP) is one systematic and analytical approach to the vital task of viewing the world through many lenses. The ACFSP identifies basic cultural dimensions that seem to be of fundamental importance in determining such behavior and thus are of importance in policy and strategy formulation and outcomes. These dimensions are (1) Identity, or the basis for defining identity and its linkage to interests; (2) Political Culture, or the structure of power and decisionmaking; and (3) Resilience, or the capacity or ability to resist, adapt or succumb to external forces. Identity is the most important, because it ultimately determines purpose, values and interests that form the foundation for policy and strategy to attain or preserve those interests.

You can read the full report HERE.

Human Terrain: A Strategic Imperative on the 21st Century Battlefield

Author: Nick Masellis

Small Wars Journal 5/31/09

Six months into a one-year deployment, my unit was shifting its area of operation from the southeastern Tigris River city of Al-Kut, to one of the main centers of adherents to the Shia sect of Islam – Karbala …we all were mesmerized by the mosques and the culture around us, but had no clue where to begin in order to understand what they meant in the context of our presence among the people apart from: 1. do not get near the mosques; and 2. do not fire on them if fired upon from its vicinity. But more importantly, the prevailing attitude at the time seemed to be that we didn't really have to understand anything beyond the latter. That seemed to be a reasonable tenant; after all, why would it be necessary to know such things about any given area, people or buildings? How, if at all, is it pertinent to the mission?

Well, one of the gravest shortfalls in the early years of Iraq "stabilization" was the lack of such understanding. That the tribes and religious sheiks had, in the midst of the political vacuum that developed after the fall of Saddam's regime, assumed control and influence. The majority of military and civilian leadership in Iraq did not understand these religious and ethnic nuances, which heavily contributed to the sectarian violence and militias that developed in areas like Najaf and Karbala. Moreover, corruption in the country ran rampant, especially through the local police, who had a long history as a force of subversion and brutality. Even the interpreters were at times influenced by their own biases; to include the fear for their own lives and those of their families. As a result, this depreciated the value of effective translation, actionable intelligence and serious engagement with the population - essential components in counterinsurgency operations.

You can read the full report HERE.