Caverly discusses this aspect in the context of the USMC CAP effort in Vietnam and the extent to which that model could have been extended throughout the country. As he noted, it was recognized at the time and in the years after the war that such an approach was very troop-intensive such that any significant expansion would require force levels that were otherwise “unacceptable” politically, especially if a conflict was “mixed” in the sense that, as Westmoreland believed, some capability had to also be maintained for more conventional threats. Thus, a distributed operations model for COIN has an inherent drawback in that it presses on the most sensitive point of the overall politico/military effort–the need for more forces than the political leaders of the COIN nation(s) are willing or able to commit. This is quite evident in the recent much-delayed decision by the Obama administration grudgingly granting only in part McChrystal’s request for reinforcement (especially when one remembers, in spite of the White House effort to obfuscate the point, that the numbers requested were the bare minimum needed) and in the on-going hand-wringing throughout the rest of NATO as to what, if any, future contributions to the Afghanistan effort its members will make.

Regarding the article I am also sceptical, particularly considering that at its 1968 peak the US commitment stood at roughly 500,000 men. Its difficult to consider the overall force level to be anything other than ‘labour intensive’ regardless of how they were used. Only when Westmoreland asked for 200,000 more to be deployed following the Tet offensive did the US commitment stop expanding. A lot of soldiers considering the size (and in hindsight the importance) of South Vietnam. And as David mentions in the original post, 36,000 of them didn’t come back.

The first is an insurgency, of course, whether it can be described, as is the latest fashion, as Maoist, post-Maoist or otherwise. It has a dynamic that is created not only by its founding ideology, but also by the interests and abilities of those prosecuting it. Rarely will an insurgency be like any other, due to variations in history, motivation, ability, culture, geography, timing, etc.

The second is a counter-insurgency programme. This, too, has a diverse number of elements: a strategy, based on an understanding (complete or wrong, or in between) of the insurgency and on a number of domestic and institutional influences (‘we don’t do nation-building’, for instance); the execution of that strategy, based on the ability to turn an idea into effective practice; the list goes on.

These are not often overlooked and have been well discussed elsewhere. What is overlooked, in my opinion, is what might be called ‘surgency’: the government’s ability to govern the country. If the government is corrupt, out of touch, or otherwise illegitimate, this has an enourmous impact on the effectiveness of any COIN campaign, quite apart from issues like military effectiveness, messaging, etc. The governments of South Vietnam, whether civilian or later military, were not ‘surgent’. Therefore, attempts to shore them up by means of US counter-insurgent strategies were unlikely to be effective.

The same might be hypothesised for Afghanistan. If the US wins the hearts and minds of the local population on their own merits (because they are careful, considerate, and contrite in the military operations, for instance) but the Kabul based government does not, this legitimacy cannot be transferred ‘by proxy’.