Interview with Dr. John Nagl

Interview with Dr. John Nagl
 

Octavian Manea

“Counterinsurgencies are after all learning competitions.”

How important is the developing of the local troops for winning a COIN campaign?
Ultimately foreign countries cannot defeat an insurgency. Only the host nation forces can do that. But the intervening powers bring enormous advantages to the fight and if you can properly integrate the host nation forces and the intervening forces you can multiply the effects of both and the natural advantages of both. That is the objective, but we have struggled to do that as effectively as we could, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Could you explain why insurgencies are governing competitors?
It is often said that in a COIN campaign where the counterinsurgent is losing it is not being outfought, it is being out-governed. The counterinsurgent and insurgent are both competing to win the support of the population. The insurgent has some advantages in this fight; he can use violence, intimidation, and terror to coerce support from the population and he doesn’t need to be everywhere all the time. He only has to present a credible threat once in order to coerce support. The counterinsurgent on the other hand has to be everywhere all the time and has to be able to continuously protect the population in order to win the loyalty and the support of the population and ultimately drain the sea in which the insurgents swim. This is why the number of the counterinsurgents required is so great - 50 for every 1000 in the population. These are enormous numbers of counterinsurgents that cannot be provided by an external power. And this is why the creation of capable, competent well trained and equipped host nation security forces that understand the responsibility to protect population is of the utmost importance. It is not what Jominian thinking militaries see as their primary responsibility, but it is probably the single most important task in a counterinsurgency campaign.

How do insurgencies end?
Insurgencies are rarely defeated militarily. Insurgencies end through political accommodation; some degree of political accommodation is essential in convincing the least committed insurgents that politics rather than force is a viable way to pursue their objectives. Insurgencies are composed of large numbers of individuals who have different motivations and different degrees of commitment to the cause. What happens is that the least committed fighters tend to be peeled away by fear of being captured or killed, by more effective security forces, by payments to join the security forces as happened in during Anbar Awakening in Iraq, by other economic opportunities or incentives. Historically, successful counterinsurgents have defeated their opponents by peeling off the less ideologically committed sub-elements with promises of political progress toward their ultimate goals. As the less committed insurgents are peeled away, insurgencies are boiled down to a hard core, people who have to be captured or killed. Insurgencies tend not to end with surrender ceremonies, they tend to fade away.

Which are the most important principles of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual?
There are two main principles at the heart of FM 3-24; protect the population and counterinsurgent forces must be able to learn and adapt. In COIN, the side that learns faster and adapts more rapidly usually wins. Counterinsurgencies are after all learning competitions. As FM 3-24 put it: “Learning organizations defeat insurgencies; bureaucratic hierarchies do not”. Those are the twin pillars of the COIN Field Manual.
 

How important is it for the counterinsurgent to develop local relationships?
You win these kinds of wars by drinking tea, lots of tea. Ultimately, to earn the support of the population, you have to gain their trust and the way you gain their trust is by developing personal relationships. You must be more than a uniform and it is important for the leaders to take their helmets off, take their protective glasses off, body armor off and demonstrate that they trust people whose support they are trying to earn.

What is the future of COIN?
The Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns are certainly not the model that we hope to follow in the future. In both cases we have overthrown the existing governments, disbanded the existing security forces and created ourselves enormous problems. A better example of the kind of campaign we prefer to wage in the future is Yemen, where there is an existing government affected by an insurgency, it is a weak government but it has security forces and does have a degree of popular legitimacy. Today, we are assisting that government with Special Operations Forces, training and equipment. This sort of small footprint model is the way I believe we should think about the future of COIN campaigns, while maintaining the ability to conduct large scale campaigns, but only as a last resort. In his book The Accidental Guerrilla, David Kilcullen argues that our COIN efforts, because of a failure of cultural understanding, have contributed to the creation of insurgents and guerillas. We have increased the number of insurgents rather than decreasing them. So Kilcullen argues that with a light footprint, the targeted use of military force, an increased focus on advisory role, and with a smarter use of economic support, we can conduct COIN using far less American resources while relying on local assets. That said, we must understand that this model might not always succeed.

Read more: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/599-manea.pdf 

Interview with Dr. David Kilcullen

Interview with Dr. David Kilcullen

Octavian Manea

What would success and victory look like in a counterinsurgency (COIN) operation? What specific role should the Western expeditionary forces should have in this fight?

What would victory look like? It doesn’t look like victory in a conventional military campaign. Insurgency is much like a disease. It has very negative symptoms that affect the whole of society. Victory in COIN is a lot less like military victory and a lot more like recovering from a disease. If you think about the last time you were sick, you may not able to get out of bed, you had to take medicine, you couldn’t do the things you wanted to do, but gradually you got stronger and you were able to do more. You might have continued to take antibiotics for a few weeks until you were completely better, but basically, sooner or later, you forgot that you were sick.

When we see societies that have recovered from an insurgency, we typically don’t see a single big military victory. What we see is a slow gradual improvement to the point where a society comes back to full functioning. Now in the case of Afghanistan the problem is that the country hasn’t functioned properly for at least one generation. Afghanistan in particular is not a counterinsurgency in a classical sense. It is actually a stability operation. We really care about the Taliban because they make the country unstable. But there are other things that make the country unstable as well, including the Afghan government, the destabilization by Pakistan, the corruption and criminal activity, the drugs. There are a lot of things that must be dealt with. If we were to defeat the insurgents, in a military sense tomorrow, and not fix all those others problems, a new Taliban would arise next year. We must think more broadly than counterinsurgency in the context of Afghanistan.

What is the role of foreign forces? I think that the role of foreign forces is to create an environment that is conducive to stability and societal recovery. If you think that victory is when the society recovers, then what we have to do is to create an environment that fosters this recovery. But there are limits to what we can do: we can set the conditions for the Afghans to come together or Iraqis to come together and solve their problems. But the long history of counterinsurgency emphasizes that foreigners can’t fix all these issues. It has to be the locals.

One of the key quotes in your book Counterinsurgency is that of Bernard Fall’s: A counterinsurgent that is losing is not outfought, but out-governed. Is the ability of providing governmental services the right metric to assess winning in a COIN campaign? How do you win a governance contest?

Governance is extremely important in pretty much every counterinsurgency. But how it needs to be addressed is different from campaign to campaign. In the case of Afghanistan, for example, ISAF still has in its campaign plan the statement that the aim is to extend the reach of the Afghan government. But the problem with the Afghan government is not that is doesn’t have the reach but that it is corrupt and oppressive. In fact the better you do at the strategy of extending the reach of an oppressive government, the worse the situation can get. What I have been arguing for years is that we need to change the focus of governance in Afghanistan; away from extending the reach of the Afghan government towards reforming it. What we need is a process of governmental reform, noting that we were responsible for a lot of the problems that are on the ground. We have to deal with this problem. If you are going to succeed in the COIN governance contest, you have to deliver to the people legitimate, responsive, just and effective government. It is not enough to be effective but not just. You got to be just. Justice, or fairness, is probably right now the most important aspect for the Afghan population. People are not happy with the Taliban, but they do see them as more fair and just than the Afghan government. And that is a very significant problem for us.

How would you assess the Marjah operation? There are a many critics who say the failure of “in box government” is a symptom of a larger failure-of the whole Obama surge and strategy.

It is too early to say if the surge is a failure or not. But Marjah in itself as an operation is a lesson in how important just and effective governance is and how important is that the government has to be locally legitimate. It is not enough to have somebody in place we think as legitimate, it has to be someone the local people respect and believe will look after their interests. A lot of people start their assessment of Marjah from a period of two years ago when it was a stronghold of the Taliban. But they are actually forgetting chapter one of the story - that Marjah was held by the government until 2008. The government was so oppressive, so abusive to the population that the town elders got together, banished the government officials from their own village and then invited the Taliban in. So the root of the problems in Marjah is not the Taliban. They are the symptom, they came later. The root of the problem is bad, oppressive government behavior by the Afghan government officials. When we went in Marjah and drove the Taliban away, that wasn’t the end of the operation, that was the beginning and what the population was looking to see was – are we going back to the same oppressive governance from the Afghan government that we had before the Taliban or are we going to have a better solution? I don’t think that we have offered them a better solution. The military side of the operation has gone actually very well. But it is a symptom of the broader issue - that military operations in counterinsurgency are actually not central. Governance, legitimacy, effectiveness are central and if you don’t have that piece then it doesn’t matter how good you are on the military side. We are back at the Bernard Fall - “a government that is losing is not outfought, is out-governed”. I would argue that we are not losing in Afghanistan, but we are certainly being out-governed right now. We need to change that or we will lose.

How powerful should the counterinsurgent be in order to compel the insurgent to negotiate?

A counterinsurgent needs to convince the insurgent they are better off negotiating than continuing the fight. So it is about convincing the adversary that the insurgency will not attain strategic objectives. You can’t get there using insurgency alone. Sometimes you can do that through a combination of negotiation and targeted violence against the insurgency. Usually we don’t get there just through violence. It is usually a combination. In my experience insurgents keep fighting for decades until they believe they have a better option than fighting. A solely coercive approach can drive the insurgency to a point where it’s reduced but that doesn’t fix the problem. You have to deal with the underlying causes - the political grievances. The role of the military is to create conditions under which negotiations become possible. But negotiation in itself is the key activity.

What is the decisive terrain for an insurgent?

The decisive terrain for an insurgent is the population. I am thinking of an insurgency like being like an iceberg - only the top 10% of an iceberg is above waterline, only about 10% of an insurgency are the fighters, the command group and the planners. The actual base of the insurgency (the other 90% of the iceberg that is underwater) is the population group. The ability to manipulate and mobilize and organize that group is the fundamental thing in an insurgency. Fighting the insurgent guerillas without dealing with the population base is like shaving the top of an iceberg-it is not going away.

Read more: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/597-manea.pdf

Defending the Baltics

by William S. Lind
y William S. Lind

I recently returned from Estonia and the Baltic Defence College, where the Russian counter-attack on Georgia had left a residual case of nerves. They have little to fear in the short run, unless they duplicate Georgia’s folly and attack Russia. But the question of how the Baltics might be defended is worth considering, both in itself and in terms of what it means for defending other small countries.

The worst option, which Georgia took, is to create a toy army. A handful of modern jet fighters, a battalion or two of tanks, a frigate for the navy, all add up to nothing. Against a Great Power, a toy army goes down to defeat in days if not hours. More, even a few modern jet fighters or tanks cost so much there is no money left for a real defense. Unless the Baltic states want to fight each other, they should leave military toys to children.

Second, the Baltics could try to ally with other near-by Powers strong enough to balance Russia. But this option exists only in theory. Germany could fill the role but has lost all Great Power ambitions, while Sweden has been out the game for two centuries. There could be benefit for all concerned in a union of the Baltic states and Finland under the Swedish crown, all retaining complete domestic autonomy but united for defense and foreign policy, but it is probably only historians who can see the potential.

A third option is to ally with distant Great Powers in order to balance the threat from a local Great Power. That is what the Baltic States have done through their membership in NATO. Unfortunately, while central European states have attempted this over and over again for centuries, it never works. It may involve Western Powers in war with Russia, or in the past with Germany, but it does nothing to protect the country in question. Poland is a recent example: Britain and France went to war with Germany in 1939 over Poland, but Poland remained an occupied country for 50 years.

NATO membership also increases the pressure to build a toy army, or to specialize in "niche" capabilities like water purification that serve NATO but not home defense. Both are roads to military irrelevance.

There is a model that would work for the Baltic states and other small countries: the Iraqi model. Instead of creating a toy army, they should plan an Iraq-style insurgency against any occupier. This requires a universal militia like Switzerland’s, where every male citizen knows how to shoot and how to build and emplace IEDs and where weapons and explosives are cached all over the country. In the Baltics, this would be a rural rather than an urban defense: Russia could take the cities but not the countryside. The "Forest Brothers" kept up just such a resistance to the Soviet presence well into the 1950s.

An Iraqi-model defense would not make it impossible for Russia to conquer the Baltic states. It could only make such a venture expensive for Russia, hopefully too expensive.

For long-term security, the Baltic states must approach the problem not just at the military but at the grand strategic level. What that means is that, like all small countries bordering Great Powers, they must accommodate the Great Power’s interests. The model here is Finland during the Cold War. Finland maintained complete sovereignty in her domestic affairs, but she was careful to accommodate the Soviet Union in her foreign and defense policies. She was a good neighbor to Russia, as the Baltic states should strive to be good neighbors to Russia now. Their goal should be to create a situation where it is more in Russia’s interests for the Baltics to remain independent than to reincorporate them into the Russian empire.

I realize this advice is unpalatable to the Baltic peoples. Half a century of Soviet occupation has left a residue of hatred for all things Russian. But grand strategy must be based on facts and reason, not emotion. The most important fact is geography. Geography dictates that the Baltic states must accommodate Russian interests, whether they want to or not. If they refuse, then the recent example of Georgia may have more relevance than anyone would wish.

September 9, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind147.html

When Do We Teach the Basics?

When Do We Teach the Basics?

By Donald E. Vandergriff

We have to develop leaders who understand that context matters. The complexity of today's challenges and the uncertainties of tomorrow require a much broader approach to leader development and a clear understanding of the operating environment.

— General Martin E. Dempsey
Commander, Army Training and Doctrine Command
October 2009

By-the-book answers to specific wellknown situations are not good enough. It is the ability to think that allows a leader to take the knowledge from personal experiences, education, and training and adapt it to the imperfect information of the present situation to arrive at a timely, sound, and workable solution.

The Army is taking on and evolving a new approach to training and education called Outcomes-based Training and Education (OBT&E) while developing a new teaching method under the umbrella of OBT&E called the Adaptive Leaders Methodology (ALM).

The OODA Loop

Fundamental to applying Boyd's concepts is the realization that the OODA loop isn't really a loop at all. Boyd, in fact, never drew it that way. Instead, the loop is more appropriately considered as a way of thinking about conflict based on the concept of keeping our orientations better matched to reality than our opponents can. Boyd demonstrated, by combining examples from both military history and modern science, that the side that can do that not only can respond to changes more quickly, but also can shape the situation to its liking, and then exploit the advantage before the opponent can react. Another key is to use training and experience to assemble an arsenal of potentially effective actions that will flow intuitively, smoothly, and quickly from orientation. The end result is, as Boyd described it, to "operate inside an opponent's OODA 'loop'" and thus produce rapid, jarring changes that disorient and demoralize the opposition.

At the heart of ALM is the essence of the Boyd Cycle, a 4-step theory of decisionmaking that was first articulated by Col. John R. Boyd following his study of fighter pilots in combat during the Korean War. . . . Commonly known as "OODA" (observation, orientation, decision, action), the Boyd Cycle is a useful framework for the assessment of students throughout the course. We focus on the critical step of "orientation" because this is where the cadet attempted to make sense out of the information at hand. The decision that the cadet makes is important, but how they arrived at that decision is just as important.

The OODA loop serves as the centerpiece of how an adaptive leader makes decisions. Unlike the Army's Military Decisionmaking Process—a linear and analytical decisionmaking approach—the OODA loop provides a guide to how to think faster and more effectively than the enemy. However, it is a guide and not a process. Students should first be guided through many scenarios to discover the loop on their own. When finally introduced to the formal theory, students will say, "Wow, that is what I was doing!"

The essence of the ALM is not to arrive at the school solution, or even to teach the students to go down a prescribed checklist of steps. For an era where we cannot predict what leaders will be doing—or even if it should be called "war" at all—the checklist mentality is irrelevant at best. Instead, the method requires instructors to put students into increasingly complex and disorganized scenarios. A good scenario employing TDEs gives students a tactical problem and then puts them under stress—often a time constraint, but there are other means limited only by the instructor's imagination. The students must not only present their solutions, but also explain why they did what they did. The instructor and the other students will critique the solution as well as the explanation and the technique for solving the problem. Did the students, for example, use an effective balance of written and verbal instructions? Why did they micromanage their NCOs? Did the local population think better of the coalition as a result, or did the "favorable" body count just help recruit more insurgents?

Read more: http://www.ndu.edu/press/teach-the-basics.html

Warfighting

Warfighting

U.S. Marine Corps doctrine MCDP1

War is a violent clash of interests between or among organized groups characterized by the use of military force. These groups have traditionally been established nation-states, but they may also include any nonstate group—such as an international coalition or a faction within or outside of an existing state—with its own political interests and the ability to generate organized violence on a scale sufficient to have significant political consequences.

The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. War is fundamentally an interactive social process. War is thus a process of continuous mutual adaptation, of give and take, move and countermove. It is critical to keep in mind that the enemy is not an inanimate object to be acted upon but an independent and animate force with its own objectives and plans. While we try to impose our will on the enemy, he resists us and seeks to impose his own will on us. Appreciating this dynamic interplay between opposing human wills is essential to understanding the fundamental nature of war.

The object in war is to impose our will on our enemy. The means to this end is the organized application or threat of violence by military force. The target of that violence may be limited to hostile combatant forces, or it may extend to the enemy population at large. War may range from intense clashes between large military forces—sometimes backed by an official declaration of war—to subtler, unconventional hostilities that barely reach the threshold of violence.

Read more: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/mcdp1.pdf

Defence Planning, Surprise, and Prediction

Defence Planning, Surprise, and Prediction

By Colin S. Gray

As a professor with a doctorate I am a card-carrying intellectual, an ascription that is not usually employed in Britain with approval, but I need to warn you of the dangers in over-intellectualising strategic matters. Learned disputes among gifted defence experts can lead theorists to be too clever. It is possible to lose the essentials of the plot in politics and strategy by excessive analysis.

As a general warning, be very careful of the concept of the day, the newly fashionable big idea, because: (a) there really are no new ideas in strategy; (b) prophets are apt to fall in love with their message, and unintentionally take their self-critical faculty off the field of play; and (c) the popularity of a notion is no guarantee of authentic merit.

Our mission cannot simply be a search for strategic truth, because we need our truth to be a useful truth. The truth about the future is that it is deeply uncertain, it cannot be predicted or even anticipated with any confidence, let alone reliably. It is not foreseeable, so do not refer to ‘the foreseeable future’.

So, what broad principles might we adopt to help shape our defence choices? My master guiding principles are the following:

(a) Try to get the big things right enough.

(b) Acknowledge that you will make many mistakes, but strive to restrict the inevitable errors to relatively minor matters.

(c) Recognise that you and your successors will be surprised many times in the future, so that your challenge is to plan with consequences that are surprise-tolerant. You will be surprised, but you need not be disabled by the effects of surprise.

(d) Plan flexibly, adaptively, and inclusively. This is what is meant by prudent defence planning.

Read more: http://www.act.nato.int/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=266:nato-multiple-futures-project-documents&catid=54:conferences-subpages&Itemid=1

Unrestricted Warfare

Unrestricted Warfare

Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui

Everyone who has lived through the last decade of the 20th century will have a profound sense of the changes in the world. We don't believe that there is anyone who would claim that there has been any decade in history in which the changes have been greater than those of this decade. Naturally, the causes behind the enormous changes are too numerous to mention, but there are only a few reasons that people bring up repeatedly.

War which has undergone the changes of modern technology and the market system will be launched even more in atypical forms. In other words, while we are seeing a relative reduction in military violence, at the same time we definitely are seeing an increase in political, economic, and technological violence. However, regardless of the form the violence takes, war is war, and a change in the external appearance does not keep any war from abiding by the principles of war.

If we acknowledge that the new principles of war are no longer "using armed force to compel the enemy to submit to one's will," but rather are "using all means, including armed force or nonarmed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one's interests."

This represents change. A change in war and a change in the mode of war occasioned by this. So, just what has led to the change? What kind of changes are they? Where are the changes headed? How does one face these changes? This is the topic that this book attempts to touch on and shed light on, and it is also our motivation in deciding to write this book.

Read more: http://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf

Private Contractors in Conflict Zones: The Good, the Bad, and the Strategic Impact

Private Contractors in Conflict Zones: The Good, the Bad, and the Strategic Impact

By T.X. Hammes

The United States has hired record numbers of contractors to serve in the conflict zones of Iraq and Afghanistan but has not seriously examined their strategic impact.

There are clearly advantages to using contractors in conflict zones, but they have three inherent characteristics that have serious negative effects during counterinsurgency operations. We cannot effectively control the quality of the contractors or control their actions, but the population holds us responsible for everything the contractors do, or fail to do.

Contractors compete with the host government for a limited pool of qualified personnel and dramatically change local power structures.

Contractors reduce the political capital necessary to commit U.S. forces to war, impact the legitimacy of a counterinsurgency effort, and reduce its the perceived morality. These factors attack our nation’s critical vulnerability in an irregular war – the political will of the American people.

Read more: http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/StrForum/SF-260.pdf

Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces and the Georgian War

Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces and the Georgian War

ROGER N. McDERMOTT

Russia’s rapid military victory over Georgia in August 2008 surprised many commentators, since it stood in stark contrast to the manner in which Russian forces had once become bogged down in a protracted conflict in Chechnya. On the other hand, the conflict might be thought of as the final war of the twentieth century, fought by a Soviet legacy force, desperately seeking to make do with dated equipment and a top-heavy command and control system more suited to conducting the kind of large-scale conventional warfare that had passed into the annals of military history. Damage to Russia’s international reputation also ensued, jeopardizing the nation’s relations with the European Union and NATO and raising questions regarding the legality of what Moscow dubbed a “peace enforcement operation” that precipitated its unilateral recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia’s military actions provoked widespread international condemnation, spread panic among foreign investors, and left the East European and Baltic members of NATO calling for protection from a “resurgent Russia.” In the following analysis, the lessons learned by the Russian military will be examined in the context of an an¬nounced military reform and rearmament program aimed at producing a more efficient, combat-capable conventional force by 2020. Despite the rapid victory, the war itself exposed fundamental weaknesses and shortcomings in Russia’s armed forces, reinforcing conditions that were already known and served as a catalyst for the military reform program.

Read more: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/09spring/mcdermott.pdf 

28 Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency

Twenty-Eight Articles

Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency

By David Kilcullen

Your company has just been warned for deployment on counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. You have read David Galula, T.E. Lawrence and Robert Thompson. You have studied FM 3-24 and now understand the history, philosophy and theory of counterinsurgency.

You watched Black Hawk Down and The Battle of Algiers, and you know this will be the most difficult challenge of your life.

But what does all the theory mean, at the company level? How do the principles translate into action – at night, with the GPS down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don’t understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos?

How does counterinsurgency actually happen?

There are no universal answers, and insurgents are among the most adaptive opponents you will ever face. Countering them will demand every ounce of your intellect. But be comforted: you are not the first to feel this way. There are tactical fundamentals you can apply, to link the theory with the techniques and procedures you already know.

Read more: http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/28articles.pdf