Counterinsurgency for Fun and Profit
Fred Kaplan has a great article on the new Army counterinsurgency field manual and the questions it raises. I like the way he frames this point at the end:
A debate has been raging in some circles over whether the war's disasters were avoidable or inevitable. Would a smarter U.S. strategy have produced a more stable Iraq? Or were the long-suppressed sectarian feuds destined to gush forth like a geyser, no matter how we tried to control them, once Saddam was blown from his throne?
A better question provoked by this new Army Field Manual: Should we follow the authors' advice in the hope of waging a better counterinsurgency the next time around? Or should we give up these sorts of wars as futile and—do what instead?
As the author of a long entry in the debate Kaplan says we shouldn't be having, let me say that I basically agree with him. From a journalistic point of view, I think the inevitability question is just a good way to motivate the forward-looking question Kaplan raises. And I think that, basically, yes, we should give up these sorts of wars as futile.
Kaplan observes near the top of his article that "as a nation we may simply be ill-suited to fight these kinds of wars." This is a common trope in the counterinsurgency literature. And it appears to be true. The deeper problem, though, is that so do all the other relevant nations. The history of liberal democracies waging successful counterinsurgency campaigns of the sort suggested by the Field Manual is very poor. It should also be observed that the United States has, in fact, had no small measure of success with a very different sort of counterinsurgency -- the mass bloodshed and brutality of the Indian Wars.
Historically, I think that probably provides the "best" model for counterinsurgency tactics that "work." US-backed Guatemalan forces also had some counterinsurgency success in the early 1980s based on mass slaughter tactics "which resulted in about 200,000 deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians."
With very, very, very good reason this is not the sort of thing that the Army Field Manual recommends. It's wrong and immoral to do that sort of thing. But it also seems to be the only even vaguely reliable method of waging that sort of conflict. Which suggests to me that we need to endeavor to steer clear of counterinsurgency situations as much as we possibly can.
I think that rather than forego wars where a counterinsurgency would be necessary, America might choose the scorched earth approach.
July 10, 2006 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The question of how or whether we should be fighting counter-insurgency wars is the dark side of the bigger question how and whether we need to be an empire. Some writers have said we have stumbled onto the role (forced into it, by luck and circumstance, and have no choice but to take it up.) Others, like French demographer Emanuel Todd, say we have already failed as an empire, since we have lost the moral legitimacy and belief in the rule of law that is the main gift of empires to their clients. Alexander Cockburn remarked that empires' first duty is to provide security to their subjects, and that we are not doing either.
In Todd's view, we are militarily incapable of empire, reduced to displays of force (shock and awe) but incapable of occupation. So, unless you believe that empire is our destined role in the world, we should have no business with counter-insurgency wars.
July 10, 2006 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
The British counter-insurgency in Malaysia after WW2 is often cited as an example of a success on the part of a liberal democracy. I don't know much about it but it might be an interesting project for Matt or some other opinion journalist.
Let me just add that I think that Fred Kaplan is terrific and perhaps the best national security commentator writing today. He works hard and reads the original reports and also has the knack of finding fresh things to say on much-discussed issues. It's a shame he works in relative obscurity while mediocre commentators like Tom Friedman get the attention.
July 10, 2006 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
FMFM1A - A Field Manual for Fighting 4GW (2005)
Why did Bush lose Iraq?
He invaded it.
Kaplan's reframe is no different than the original question as even a cursory glance at the above will make abundantly clear.
As Stuart Blackton has reminded us before, there is nothing new here just much forgotten
July 10, 2006 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Leaving aside for just a moment the US's particular role and circumstances, there are a lot of nations fighting insurgencies of various strengths and intensities, and I would prefer a few more choices and recommendations than withdrawal or genocide.
In a sense, Israel is fighting an insurgency, and one would like to think some strategy working toward a negotiated settlement was possible.
The same is true for our "friends" the Shia in Iraq:should our final words on our way out the door be:"Kill them all. Nothing else
works."
July 10, 2006 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Certainly there are both more nuanced and pragmatic grounds on which the questions posed in the article can be evaluated than merely suggesting that counter-insurgencies should never be fought because they can only be quashed through an immoral, indiscriminate use of murderous force?
Of course it is difficult and possibly impossible to know whether the Iraqi insurgency was "inevitable". One would think however that national security analysts are employed to try to answer such inscrutable questions beforehand. But this course forms another part of the voluble debate surrounding Iraq.
What is intriguing about the citations that Kaplan draws from the field manual is the suggestion that even if (as it has) the US found itself caught in a counter-insurgency that it failed to anticipate, there may be measures (seemingly ignored) that would at least minimize the damage to all parties involved.
Counter-insurgencies may be intrinsically futile and the resistance in Iraq "inevitable". More disconcerting are the missteps to which the field manual draws attention and the prior pretexts under which the US entered into conflict there in the first place.
July 10, 2006 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
The U.S. involvement in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, is, like the Indian Wars, another example often cited of a ruthless and bloody counterinsurgency that met with some success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War
July 10, 2006 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also note Mark Twain's use of the word "quagmire" to refer to this conflict, which I found interesting. I suppose someone has written on the historical origins of the use of this term to refer to various military adventures.
July 10, 2006 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The field manual's chief authors—Lt. Gen. David Petraeus and retired Col. Conrad Crane—would never make these points explicitly. When Petraeus was commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, he combined combat power and community-building more astutely than any other officer."
As soon as I read that, I knew I didn't need to read the manual.
Petraeus is an idiot. I don't know the co-author's background vis-a-vis Iraq, so I can't comment. But I've read Petraeus's statements back in 2003 - and like I said, he's an idiot. Saying he was better than any other US officer is damning with faint praise.
As for the British Malaysian experience, I read about it years ago, but can't remember much. My remaining impression is basically that the Brits followed most of the "good" concepts of counterinsurgency. They tried to do that to some degree in Iraq, and they are trying to do it in Afghanistan now.
See Christina Lamb's article about how the Brits are being forced to undo the US military's typical ham-handedness in Afghanistan just as they had to do in Iraq. Lamb quotes someone as saying that Afghanistan's wars are never serious until they're "over" - meaning until the insurgency starts. The British found that out long before the Russians learned it - and now the Brits are relearning it again, along with the US.
The US simply isn't capable of this sort of "cultural sensitivity" because the average US citizen is provincial and views everyone else in the world as a "loser" - and no where is this more reflected than in the US military.
You'd have to revamp the entire US military concept - including all of its personnel and doctrine and training - from top to bottom, to even have a bare chance of making that work.
Good luck with that project.
Email me when it happens.
The fundamental error is in the concept that the US military should engage in wars where the US mainland is not directly threatened. This is simply stupid. The US should only engage in wars where the US nation is at direct risk and where all other solutions have been exhausted. "Proxy" wars like Vietnam or "economic" wars like Iraq are never a good idea and should be rejected by the public (if the public had a clue - which it doesn't - email me when THAT happens.)
Once the US HAS engaged in a war, the goal should be defeating the enemy military and political leadership with minimal force expended and minimum casualties on either side. Once that is done, rebuilding the enemy country is not our problem, let alone occupying it.
But, then, none of this military stuff is done rationally. It's all primate emotion, and any sense of rationality is wiped away instantly the issue of conflict arises.
July 10, 2006 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose the real issue is what is the United States doing in Iraq at all.
As nearly as I can see, your country trumped up a pack of lies which you then sold to each other in order to raise hysteria to the point where you could invade. Having then played the UN and every peacemaking effort for fools, you proceeded to invade and won a quick and easy victory by bribing Saddam's commanders. Following that you set up shop with the intention of privatizing the economy, eliminating all obstacles to foreign ownership, looting the oil wealth, and paying back corrupt capitalist cronies. You promised democracy, but stymied it every chance you had. You promised human rights and freedom, but treated the Iraqi's like dogs, you promised to leave but made plans to stay, you promised to rebuild but you simply used their own money to line your corporations pockets. Finally, you showed every intention of sticking around in direct rule of the country for at least five to ten years, and maintaining permanent bases there from which you could project force to every other country in the region for fifty years... An objective that guaranteed that even when Iraq was nominally returned to the Iraqi's, it wouldn't be returned to the Iraqi's, but would reduce them to a puppet state and host for American power.
Frankly, with a deal like that on the table, I can't think of any country you could have gone into that would not have bought you an insurgency.
Nor can I imagine any way of ending an insurgency to further such goals, without committing something very close to Genocide.
Malaysia, which everyone yammers on about, was an insurgency in which the main element was a small chinese minority. The British merely turned the Malay loose on them and said 'slaughter to your heart's content.' The insurgency, along with much of the Chinese minority was wiped out.
The Sunni, by contrast, are not a small or tiny minority, and they have enough geographical and technical cohesion to resist such a 'small scale genocidal' approach.
Moreover, the Sunni are only part of the insurgency, as there is an increasingly restive Shiite component, as represented by the Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades.
The problem that you face in Iraq is that the insurgency is markedly more popular than you are. Or to put it bluntly: The people hate you. They think you are there to rob, rape, pillage and terrorize them. The awkward truth of it is that they are right, that's exactly what you are there to do.
They'll never stop hating you. If you are prepared to kill somewhere between a quarter million and a million Iraqi's, then you may win. You may have won a country so brutalized and devastated that they are incapable of resisting your ongoing rape.
But they will always hate you. They will never love you.
July 10, 2006 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is time for someone to ask Bush, in a televised press conference, just what it was that Saddam Hussein did that suppressed the kind of violent warfare that currently exists in Iraq and how the "new" Iraq, with the help of the American military, might reproduce the stability. I would like to hear Bush's reply to a query about why regimes such as Hussein's exist and what other similar sorts of regimes exist in the world today.
July 10, 2006 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can't disagree with any of that.
Thanks for the historical point on the Malaysian case.
July 11, 2006 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink