Really, I am not sure I can affect an entire zeitgeist. Instead, I will be sufficiently content to adjust the perspective on counterinsurgency (COIN) a bit (1), and offer a means to begin describing its grand objectives, terms, costs, requirements, etc., as simply as those used for conventional warfare. You are surprised that I am more concerned about the zeitgeist bit, and not what you might be thinking about the first part. I would be foolish not to expect a raised eyebrow or more over that one and so it does not concern me. In fact, I will enjoy imagining these first impressions. Besides, you would be disappointed if I did not fully exercise my titling license. 

It should be obvious that the COIN’dinista zeitgeist is taking a beating over the recent turn of events in Afghanistan. Born in the chaos which emerged tentatively and then spread like wildfire across the fracturing regions that was Iraq in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s ouster, the newest iteration of counter-insurgency theory had all the markings of a favourite son striding onto the world stage to earn a place in destiny sustaining the “surge to victory” in 2007/08. Despite claiming intellectual (and tactical) victory in COIN and extolling the virtues of the COIN’dinista Wise Men, we seem to be down the rabbit hole again in Afghanistan. To be honest, I’m not even sure if the conflict there is an insurgency. It may well be a civil war. Perhaps no foreign intervention can eliminate it – perhaps foreign intervention is the cause. That would be tragic-comic, to say the least. No matter the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan an understanding the fundamentals of insurgency and counter-insurgency deserves to be worked out, particularly as Western countries and their military forces will continue to get caught up in insurgencies elsewhere. Let’s not lie to ourselves, such operations will continue. Insurgencies sparked by regime collapse, natural disasters, and resource shortages will all continue to demand the attention of multi-lateral forces, especially in key locales or for key objectives. For example, I suspect the clock is ticking on “Back to Somalia II: The Pirates of Mogadishu,” as the costs and disruptions to the shipping industry and critical resources is becoming too great. Because the root of the piracy issue is the dislocation at the center as factions struggle for control, any foreign intervention would rely to a degree upon COIN expertise. This, then, is an exploration of a particular view of COIN that might be of use to a foreign force in such contingencies.

I have always wanted to argue for a radical review of the assumptions regarding use of force requirements, and was inspired by the topic of a talk put on recently in the department, a critique of the use of happiness as a metric (ugh) for progress in counter-insurgency activities. For the record, I hate this term. It makes me utterly despondent that military affairs have been so quantified that a new and rarefied term for “measurement” was necessary.

To attempt to measure the happiness of a population as a means to tally tactical, operational, or strategic progress in COIN operations? I clearly understand the near impossibility of doing that with any usable reliability. But happiness as an objective to orient COIN doctrines and practices at all levels (policy, strategy, operations and tactics) away from force and towards something else suggests itself as a plausible answer to the riddle of this form of warfare. 

So, I wanted to know what the speaker thought of this perspective, as she had spent a fair bit of intellectual energy coming to grips with the terms of happiness in the context of COIN. I do not care what makes for more effective COIN, it is imperialist and should not be done, even if done well, was the response my inquiry earned. (2)

I was not happy. I am a military historian. I am not interested in political interpretations of current events, and I am neither recommending nor making policy. My purpose was to understand what makes for effective COIN practices to provide a means to interrogate events in my capacity as a historian. I take the world as given and try to explain why things have happened as they have, set the context, narrate events, and examine and analyze the outcomes. If I am to be any good at this I must be able to set aside my personal opinions and interrogate a subject rigorously.

Nevertheless, I was quite intrigued by the conceptualization of the objective in COIN to be the happiness of the people. And I think I can offer my own reasoned response in support of this idea. The historical record on the topic – from the insurgent, partisan, and “terrorist” as well as the COIN’dinistas’ perspectives – in addition to the general run of the military strategic and tactical treatises and studies on the subject suggests that where the people are the object their happiness matters. First, and yes, before defeating the insurgents. Always.

While other views on COIN nod to the Hearts and Minds mandate, most cannot fully commit to stepping away from the kinetic fight and still urge, recommend, and require the use of a good deal of force. It seems to me that this is because the focus is too often to counter the insurgent rather than the insurgency. The former orients the COIN forces to fighting and defeating the insurgent military as the means to succeed. To take the latter as one’s focus offers different perspectives and approaches. Most importantly, as I see it, making the insurgency the objective requires consideration of its causes (which must lead to political, economic, and social reform) as well as the temper and inclination of the people. This is the starting point, that it is the insurgency, not the insurgent, that must be countered and this inevitably includes limiting force and a consideration of the people. (3)

It is not easy to create a frame of reference for a Western military mind of war that makes quite clear that while strength and resolution are required, the profligate use of force is not a good option. Hence the rather stark coupling of babies and insurgencies to characterize this view. Yes, it’s unconventional, but that seems entirely appropriate to the topic.  Nevertheless, the comparability is impressive given the perspective of COIN I wish to create. (4) Consider:

You don’t win by physically crushing the baby. Even though you can. And sometimes really think you want to – sort of. It’s that brief moment of insanity, in which we are all mostly lucky for not acting on the idea. Furthermore, the baby can hurt you to its heart’s content, with glorious impunity.

In short, this makes clear that COIN victory cannot come at the point of a bayonet and you must be willing to accept that the insurgent – and sometimes even the civilians – will cause casualties. Force does not serve the ends of COIN in the contemporary political-strategic environment. “Collateral damage” is a euphemism for feeding an insurgency. Furthermore, as the conflict’s roots tend to be in political, economic, or societal issues, the population will necessarily be involved. Thus, these conflicts tend to take place within an environment in which the local civilians are at best ambivalent towards the established authority, and it may even be the case that they support the agenda of the insurgents. In conventional warfare, this would make them collaborators. Not so in COIN. But if you are fighting around them with great frequency or intensity they will not only suffer the incidental effects, but their actions and attitudes could make the come to look like the enemy. This creates too great an opportunity for confusion and frustration for the COIN forces. Even where loyalties are legitimately questionable aggressive action towards civilians does not aid COIN – in any way. As events in South Vietnam a half century ago and Afghanistan in recent months demonstrate, the natural problems of COIN are exacerbated by active and offensive combat operations. The rigors and confusion of COIN can lead to terrible outcomes where the COIN operator is not prepared to accept this context and serve the people unconditionally.

Moreover, this restraint is a key requirement for Western armies deployed abroad given the proliferation of communications’ media and platforms. If you are a foreign COIN operator you should probably leave the bulk of the fight to the locals. To the extent that you exercise a mentoring role, you should probably counsel arrest, light treatment, and as many amnesties as possible. Does that risk sending a few bad apples back into the general population? Yes, but you limit the downside of alienating further those who might not have really been committed insurgents. This “train a local to fish” approach was the brilliance of William Corson’s original concept for the Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam. He knew instinctively that there was a limit to what the Marines could do for the Vietnamese and that his real mandate was to work the Marines out of a job. (5)

Above all else, for the baby you will die. Same for the civilians, the people whom you are committed to serve in a COIN environment. (6)

Sgt. Weichel was right. I feel nothing more than the most sincere sympathy for his family, friends, and comrades. But his inclinations and actions were exactly correct. Were such ideals the standard that defined COIN in the US armed forces, for example, events in OEF/OIF might have followed different trajectories. And were we to train and indoctrinate personnel to see the people caught up in these conflicts humanely it would become easier and more transparent to see our own forces in the same way, thus minimizing the chances for men and women in uniform to ever become so troubled as it appears Sgt. Bales did and yet still be deployed. (7)

This vision of counter-insurgency codifies the sanctity of the civilian and looks to eschew force wherever possible. Not to make the military forces softer or because I want people to think I’m nice (I’m not), but because THIS is the only way to render the costs of COIN for Western armed forces abroad accurately. From the most selfish perspective the costs, in time, treasure, and the blood of our sons and daughters, are all far greater than the position on the warfare spectrum leads people to assume. COIN is not soft warfare. It is, in fact, peltingly difficult. These characteristics arise out of the necessary exercise of restraint in the use of force on the one hand and the willingness to die – to sacrifice – for one’s protectees on the other.

Of course, my interpretation and analysis could be wrong. Probably not entirely wrong, though - there is enough to the point that it would interest me to see a discussion that took the issue of the use of force in COIN and interrogated all of the assumptions and objectives with vigor. At the very least it seems to me that the past ten years suggests the wisdom of such a review.

Endnotes

1. I was counselled that COIN was passé. Perhaps this is true for the flash in the pan pop-scholarship commentarists. The Abu-pundits will resurrect themselves anew with the next big idea – I’m waiting for a Boydling. (A free drink to anyone who gets that reference.) But I’m a historian, what do I care of fads?

2. There is the matter of ‘complicity’ – that is, that one’s ideas might be hijacked and used, or rather abused for ends or arguments you never intended and might in fact protest. I understand how this might be a concern, but the truth is we can neither know nor control how our intellectual work product will be interpreted and applied once we put it out there. Little remembered any longer, but Alfred Thayer Mahan was viewed dimly by Americans in the aftermath of WWI for having taught the Germans naval strategy. A book about Long Island, NY, written in the 1930s notes with glee that the Captain had learned the truth of sea power when his home was damaged by the hurricane of 1938. (William Oliver Stevens, Discovering Long Island, Dodd, Mead & Co. (1939).)

3. You will think me quite infatuated with Hearts and Minds in COIN. I will go further than that to say that as concerns war generally, where the people are valuable to the political and strategic objectives, then they – their needs, preferences, desires – must be factored into the decision-making. When the people no longer matter in war I will set my sights elsewhere, but until then, I remain focused.

4. Who puts babies and insurgencies together? What do you expect from a military historian made recurrent single parent by the fortunes of war?

5. Corson wrote his own book on Vietnam and his efforts at COIN in The Betrayal, (New York, W.W. Norton & Co.); see also Michael Peterson’s history, The Combine Action Platoons: The US Marines Other War in Vietnam, (New York: Praeger, 1989)]

6. As I originally conceived this concept, I had a rather cheeky PowerPoint presentation in mind for the points. For the first rule, a picture of a parent throttling a baby, in a circle with a line through it. That sort of thing. When I imagined how to train for the mission: Photo of a ranker, NCO, or officer, in full combat gear holding an infant — if he can keep the baby happy and safe for a month on his own he’ll have an idea of what will be demanded of him in a counter-insurgency conflict. A scary prospect I am certain, and perhaps some might prefer the clarity of storming a fortified position. Other rules: Everybody loves the baby. Highlights the point that the insurgent is often ahead in the PR campaign, whereas the side with the preponderance of power usually finds itself coming up short on this front. If Van Creveld is correct, the obviously stronger side is _always_ going to have a PR problem. What worked yesterday may not work today, and today’s victories could be tomorrow’s tragedies, the corollary of which is where you solve one problem but create another. Build a school in one village and you risk offending the denizens of a neighbouring village. Insurgencies usually involve complex issues that will destroy any vain hope that the path to success will be straight forward or simple.)

7. It is for the opposite but similar reasons that I deplore any form of torture or harsh treatment for prisoners – to have our people behave in such a way is an act of brutality – unwarranted – done to them.

The Malayan Emergency is back in the news – again. And once again, bloggers and pundits are invoking this British campaign from the 1950s to say something new about the wars of today. If one were to anthropomorphize the campaign, one would have to feel sorry for the Malayan Emergency: buried only to be repeatedly exhumed and used, in the most simple way, as ammunition for arguments largely unrelated to it. Held up by some as the paragon of counterinsurgencies, it is more frequently derided by others for failing to meet frankly ridiculous standards. All too often missing in this never-ending carousel of a polemic is a genuine interest in the campaign on its own terms.

Exhibit A is the recently penned review of the campaign by Sergio Miller, posted at the Small Wars Journal. To be fair to Miller, he appears to be genuinely interested in the Malayan Emergency and has done some solid research on the case. The text is in many ways good. The trouble is his ‘lede’, or the use to which he puts his research. When Miller titles his article ‘Malaya: The Myth of Hearts and Minds’, he unwittingly or deliberately enters the fray between counterinsurgency proponents (who use the Malaya campaign to validate their doctrine) and counterinsurgency critics (who think the doctrine is frankly suspect). He also picks his side, as dismissing ‘hearts and minds’ and dismissing the Malayan Emergency’s historiography are key hobbies of those who resent the U.S. Army’s adoption of counterinsurgency and want to use the doctrine as a punching bag.

It would be one thing if the article proved that hearts and minds in Malaya was a myth but the author actually ends up arguing something else, leaving some confusion about what is actually being said. First, Miller notes that, at a symposium examining the Emergency, ‘none of the British participants (all military) spoke of winning Malay hearts and minds by military force’ (emphasis in original). But as he goes on to explain, this related to the division of labour in Malaya, which left the police in charge of community engagement. For the Army, ‘There was limited contact with Malay civilians, other than jungle aborigines and Dayaks, used as scouts. Good relations were maintained but this was a matter of pragmatic common sense, not doctrine’.

From this, the conclusion could be drawn that the military should not be used to ‘win hearts and minds’; that this is a civilian task. Still, this division of labour was possible in Malaya only because the British had a full colonial presence there, something modern states typically lack when going to war. Thus, the military has become the main muscle of expeditionary operations, where they are forced to chase insurgents all while engaging with the population and honouring other traditionally ‘civilian’ duties. This is a serious conundrum of modern counterinsurgency but it cannot be solved by basing our division of labour on a colonial infrastructure that no longer exists.

The second implication might be that winning hearts and minds did not occur at all, either by the military or the police and that it was therefore irrelevant to the success of the campaign. If this is Miller’s meaning, he ends up arguing against himself. He writes that ‘it was the consistent show of reasonableness that won over the people of Malaya and the problem was still easier once the country became self-governing’. He continues by explaining that ‘Templer’s hearts and minds was first an economic and social policy, laced with political promises that also served a military purpose’. The British gave the local population, even the transplanted communities ‘a good deal, not least because the policy increased employment’.

From all this and other statements in the article, the conclusion that ‘hearts and minds’ is a myth seems somewhat puzzling. A cynic might suggest that Miller used this lede to sell what would otherwise have been a mere account of what happened in Malaya – a far less interesting story to a bloodthirsty audience. I wouldn’t want to impugn Miller in this way. Instead there appears to be some confusion – or at least disagreement – on what hearts and minds really means.

Miller does not appear to see the many examples of goodwill included in the article as proof of a hearts and mind effort; in fact he explicitly excludes them from consideration. For example, Miller writes that ‘units did interact with nearby settlements… and they were assiduous in respecting local custom and making an effort to learn the (difficult) language’. But this, he argues, was not about ‘hearts and minds’ but ‘more “get to know your neighbour” affairs’. Similarly, Miller appears to see no tension between the broader argument of the piece and his anecdote of one officer ‘bring[ing] along the regimental band to entertain the natives before sitting down for a village feast’.

The reader is left puzzled, then, about what winning hearts and minds might look like. The one instance that Miller paints as such is the ‘handing out [of] sweets and other presents’ to local children – ‘the one example’, Miller writes, ‘where it may be stated that the Army indulged in winning “hearts and minds”… If that is the test by which we understand ‘hearts and minds’, I wonder about the utility of our findings. First, what distinguishes handing out sweets from the other, more serious examples of constructive civil engagement in the article? Second, has it not been firmly established by this point that ‘winning hearts and minds’ entails much more than simply ‘being nice’? Assessing the importance of hearts and minds can no doubt be fruitful, but we must first be clear about what is meant by this term.

Miller later refines his argument: the campaign did in fact win hearts and minds, but they were won ‘not by the British but by the Alliance Government’. Again, this thesis seems to contradict the many anecdotes of community engagement in the article but even if it didn’t, what does it matter that support was won by the local government rather than intervening forces? Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be in counterinsurgency, where the legitimacy of the local government is under threat? It would be one thing if the Alliance Government and the British authorities were operating at cross-purposes, but as Miller himself points out, in the process of getting ‘Malays talking to Malays’, ‘the British played an important role facilitating this dialogue and maintaining stability’.

All this talk of hearts and minds leads nicely to exhibit B: a Guardian article detailing recently unearthed Colonial Office files on the Emergency. The article leads with the revelation that the counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya included the ‘elimination’ of guerrilla leaders. Well frankly I am shocked! In a war, no less! Yet on Twitter and elsewhere, this article has been leapt upon to show, again, just how little the British and its partners cared about hearts and minds.

The new files are interesting from a historical perspective and the Guardian should be commended for covering the recovery of these long-lost documents. But on the basis of what we’ve seen so far, these files do not say anything particularly new or surprising about the campaign. Yes, lethal force was used in Malaya, as it always is in armed conflicts. And yes, there were instances of abuse in Malaya, as there are in all conflicts. The question left unanswered by this article is whether abuse marked the campaign as a whole or was an exception to the rule.[1] So to read this article in isolation and to conclude that hearts and minds was a sham, that the campaign was one of terror and abuse and that counterinsurgency doctrine is therefore entirely bogus, reveals a very parochial mindset that says very little about Malaya.

The point of this post is not to say that winning hearts and minds is strategically decisive, fantastic, and should always take place. Those are separate debates. What is worrying is the hurry with which historical material is weaponised to score points in more recent yet unrelated debates. Of course analytical shortcuts are sometimes necessary but they should always be faithful to fuller accounts that treat the past on its own merits.

By ways of conclusion, let’s quickly deal with one more Malaya-related argument currently in circulation: that the role of Gerard Templer has been exaggerated at the expense of Harold Briggs so as to sell the ‘COIN narrative’. This argument is most often advanced by Gian Gentile and the target is typically John Nagl’s research. I do not understand where this Briggs vs. Templer stand-off comes from but I suspect it was constructed to resonate with the Westmoreland vs. Abrams debate and the separate Casey vs. Petraeus debate in Iraq. In other words, if Briggs can be shown to have been important in Malaya, then Casey mattered in Iraq and the counterinsurgency fanfare around Petraeus can be proved all wrong. This type of historical analysis by analogy is deeply troubling. What’s more, all of the serious scholarship on Malaya (Nagl included) recognises the critical role played by Briggs during his time as Director of Operations. If there is truly a problem with the historiography on Malaya in this regard, let’s discuss it. But let’s be careful so that we don’t talk about Malaya when we actually mean Iraq.

A wise man once said ‘Remember it’s just a blog. Have fun’. In the light of these sage words, I give you the parody saga of Generalissimo Grice versus the Mouse Insurgents.

My wife and I recently moved into a new territory (rented a new flat). Like many occupying powers, we decided to take over the location because of its geostrategic advantages (it’s near the local high street and has good transportation links), its natural resources (a dishwasher, washer-dryer and a large fridge freezer), its relatively tranquil surroundings (a nice quiet residential street) and territorial considerations (it’s slightly bigger than our old apartment).

However, after the initial turmoil and subsequent euphoria of occupation (moving in), we came across the first symptoms of something worrying: insurgents in the mist (we found mouse droppings under the fridge and a few other places).

Like many occupation forces, our first reaction was denial. We  convinced ourselves that the symptoms were exaggerated (that the droppings were old), that the threat was inconsequential (just one or two mice) and that any resistance would quickly expire (our very presence would drive the mice away). We repaired the damage (vacuumed up the droppings) and set about the other tasks of governance (studying, working, paying bills, etc).

But the problem didn’t go away. In fact, it became worse. Noticing our lax approach, the mouse insurgents grew bolder and began to sally out from their strongholds (holes in the walls) on guerrilla raids (dashes across the living room floor late at night). Other evidence of insurgent activity increased (the droppings reappeared), and gradually we realised were in for a fight.

In response to the threat, we first consulted with our North American support base (our Canadian landlady), and then embarked upon a series of counterinsurgent campaigns, also known as: Generalissimo Grice’s five anti-mouse bandit encirclement campaigns:

The first campaign involved an attempt to physically prevent the insurgents from infiltrating into our territory and to coop them up within their hideouts. Without resources, so the plan read, the insurgents would be starved and forced to either surrender or perish. We erected walls and barb wire fences around potential strongholds (stuck a bunch of steel wool into the holes in the walls) and restricted access to open food sources (vacuumed up any and all crumbs after each meal).

Alas, the number of potential hiding places vastly outnumbered the quantity of resources available (too many holes, not enough steel wool; too many meals, not enough vacuuming willpower), and we weren’t entirely convinced that the defences we had erected were effective anyway (my wife remains convinced that they were pushing the wool out of the way or simply climbing over it). When it became clear that the campaign had failed to have a measurable impact (we had further mouse sightings), we decided to embark upon a second campaign.

For the second campaign, we took the fight into the very outskirts of the mouse rebel heartland and placed false sympathisers within the area, each of whom was tasked with infiltrating and killing the enemy (we put a bunch of poison into areas where we had found droppings).

Once again, however, this undertaking failed. We had underestimated the strength of the enemy’s organisational structure and intelligence network. They were able to detect and ignore the agents (didn’t seem to eat the poison, despite its supposedly wheaty smell and grainy goodness). Insurgent activity remained high (yet further sightings), and we decided on a different approach.

The third campaign represented an escalation of the strategies employed during the first. We deployed heavy artillery (high pitched noisemaking devices that only mice can hear) along the outskirts of the insurgent borderlands and used this to try to drive them out of their holes and either destroy them entirely (force them out of the building) or at least make them flee to another country (go and bother some people in another flat in our semi-detached building).

This too failed to make a clear difference. Our resources were limited and artillery is expensive (anywhere between £25 and £40 pound for a decent quality noisemaker and they only really cover one room each) It was also unclear whether the artillery used was actually impacting on the movements of the insurgents at all; foreign reports suggest that insurgents can operate under such conditions relatively unhindered (some Amazon.co.uk reviews suggest that mice may just run past noisemakers). Fresh evidence of insurgent activity continued to appear, and a new campaign decided upon accordingly.

Campaign number four represented a change in approach. Up until now we had tried to fight using precision tools, without success. Now it was decided to go with more aggressive approaches, including building armed block houses, laying mines and preparing ambushes (setting mouse traps). We piloted both violent and violent methods, but found the more humane options to be more expensive (£0.99 for a standard mouse trap, around £10 for a humane one) and less effective in design (they set themselves off constantly and seemed less appealing for a mouse).

However, insufficient resources were used (we purchased just six mouse traps in total) and negligible impact achieved. On review, we noticed that some of the new methods seemed to contradict the older ones still in place (placing the traps in the kitchen seemed pointless when that was the same room which had the most steel wool and the noisemaker in it) and that some of our intelligence was wrong (apparently mice don’t like cheese, but prefer peanut butter or chocolate paste). Learning from our mistakes, we prepared yet again for a new campaign.

The fifth and final campaign (so far), involved a massive effort to root out and destroy the mouse insurgents. Significant amounts of resources were invested (I purchased a further 26 mouse traps) and efforts were taken to adopt the latest counterinsurgent ruses from abroad (we copied this YouTube video of an American building a bucket trap). Efforts were synchronised to avoid internal contradictions (we removed the steel wool from trap heavy locations and switched off the noisemaker) and lines of blockhouses, mines and ambushes were set across all of the major insurgent border areas (all of the mouse traps were laid, now with peanut butter and chocolate paste baits). This time, we vowed, there would be no respite, only victory.

The results are hard to discern. We have yet to catch a single mouse insurgent, a sad truth that has permeated our entire counterinsurgent endeavour. However, there have been no further raids and no other symptoms of insurgent activity (no more sightings or droppings). We know that our immediate neighbour (the flat downstairs) has had success in using capitalist running dogs within their territory (their dogs have caught several mice in their garden) and wonder if perhaps these were the same mouse insurgents that we had fought against. Similarly, we conjecture about whether some of the methods used in our initial campaigns may have gradually worn the enemy down and had a belated impact (e.g. they ate the poison and eventually died away from our flat).

We are now facing a period of internal disagreement. One side of the government (my wife) remains convinced that the mouse insurgents are still present, merely biding their time, growing in strength while we become complacent. On the other side (me), there is a growing belief that the mouse problem has been resolved and that by focusing in on an expired threat impairs our ability to rebuild our territory for the future.

Who is right? Time will tell. If hostilities flair up again, it will feed fire to my fear that Formosa/Taiwan may be represented in this analogy by our attic. If the comparison plays out in full, I may end up writing the remainder of my PhD while perched up there with a laptop. Here’s hoping for a more successful outcome!

I hope you will forgive me for the somewhat whimsical tale (inspired perhaps by too much reading about Chiang Kai-shek and his war against the Chinese Communists on my part perhaps) – definitely not a post to be taken too seriously!

Potential negotiations between the Afghan government and representatives of the Taliban have stirred ever increasing international interest during the last two months. Pundits the world over have voiced myriad assessments of the morality of such talks, the possible agenda of the negotiations, and the potential outcomes. Many have argued that talking to terrorists is inherently a bad idea, fearing that negotiations would legitimise terrorist groups, their goals, and their means. Others have speculated that the US and the Taliban would agree neither on fundamental political concerns – such as the Taliban’s renunciation of international terrorism and their support of a peace process – nor on normative issues – such as human rights and other social norms. On the whole, opinions on the prospects and dangers of negotiations differ widely, and evaluations of possible conclusions range from emphasising their necessity for establishing peace in Afghanistan to voicing concern about the return to Taliban rule in the country. Despite this variety in assessments, a fundamental difficulty of talks with the Taliban has been neglected: Even successful negotiations may not be enough to have a positive impact on the country.

After all, a negotiated agreement with the Taliban would only solve one of the many problems faced by Afghanistan – and such an agreement would also, miraculously, need to satisfy the various stakeholders inside and outside the country. And stakeholders there are many. Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly insisted that his government must have the lead in any negotiations with the Taliban, he faces considerable criticism from a number of different factions within his country opposing a potential power-sharing agreement. The Taliban leadership (Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura) is in a comparable position, having to accommodate hardliners and different factions (such as Hezb-e-Islami and the Haqqani Network) in a settlement, and convince field commanders that they will be provided for even in peace. On top of this already intricate setting, Pakistan has repeatedly revealed that, while it supports talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban, it has a strategic interest in the outcome and cannot be expected to sit idly by during the process. Similarly, the US government has expressed its own interests in talks. It supports negotiations with the Taliban in principle, having adapted its Afghan strategy to “fight, talk, build”, and hopes that a negotiated settlement will foster greater stability in Afghanistan and reduce the threat of Taliban terrorist attacks following the withdrawal of coalition troops by the end of 2013. The original cause for the international involvement in Afghanistan, al Qaeda, seems to have broken its ties to the Taliban as well as to Afghanistan and will likely not intervene in any negotiations.

But apart from the negotiations, Afghanistan faces a number of unsettling challenges in the near future that could impact the country’s future dramatically – and perhaps influence its course more than the pending talks with the Taliban. Most imminently, the Afghan government needs to prepare for the impending withdrawal of coalitions troops in 2013, which could leave a gaping hole in the Afghan security architecture if no provisions are made before then. Currently, coalition forces still provide much of the country’s security as well as substantial training for police and military. Afghan military and police alone will not be able to provide comprehensive civil and military security, which would include continuing the fight against insurgents. Instead, a provision needs to be established for the post-withdrawal period that would allow foreign forces to remain in the country in a support capacity. Yet, attempts to achieve exactly that through a strategic partnership with the US, for example, are stalled because disagreements have arisen on topics such as the execution of night raids and the handover of detention centres – a discussion suggesting notably different expectations in Washington and Kabul on how specific issues should be handled. Additionally, the increase of violence against NATO personnel by their nominal Afghan allies, particularly in the past weeks in response to the burning of Qurans on Bagram Air Base, has horribly demonstrated the lack of mutual trust and respect between foreign trainers and local trainees. More violence should be expected after the killings of at least 16 Afghan civilians by a rogue American soldier on Sunday. Moreover, with the end of international military involvement in 2014, Afghanistan needs to secure further financial assistance, which may plummet with the end of the coalition’s official commitment. While many countries have already pledged further assistance to Afghanistan, it will be difficult for the country to sustain the degree of international assistance it currently receives and needs in order to maintain its large government and security apparatus.

Regionally, the withdrawal of coalition troops carries a certain risk of reviving old rivalries between regional powers, such as India and Pakistan as well as Pakistan and Iran, in which Afghanistan is a token in a broader struggle for influence. For instance, India’s strong financial involvement in Afghanistan wakes fears of isolation for India’s historic enemy, Pakistan. For this reason, Pakistan has in the past tolerated and supported Afghan Taliban groups to represent Pakistani interests over India’s commitment in Afghanistan. And Iran’s protection of Shiite and Persian minorities, such as Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmen, against the powerful Sunni and Pashtun Taliban disgruntles Pakistan. The reduction of foreign involvement in Afghanistan opens the door for these antagonisms to grab a hold of Afghanistan again.

Furthermore, Afghanistan as well as its allies need to prepare for a change in Afghan political leadership in 2014, as President Karzai has stated repeatedly that he would not seek a third term. In such instance, Afghanistan not only has to prepare for the transition of responsibilities from the coalition forces to Afghan leadership, but also it needs to prepare a new Afghan leadership to handle these challenges. Considering the country’s current levels of ethnic regionalism, factionalism, corruption, and cronyism, a transition of leadership is in itself a challenge and potentially destabilising. Depending on the quality of the election, the transition process, and the new leadership, the security situation in the country may be under systematic threat in the near future. The inclusion of further contestants from the Taliban through a negotiated power-sharing agreement may complicate this process even further.

Given that these factors all come together in Afghanistan, the impact even of successful negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban is questionable. While the adoption of an agreement is only a matter of time, its nature may not be favourable to some of the non-Afghan stakeholders – and perhaps even to the Afghan population. Concessions will have to be made to reach an agreement. The Afghan government can only hope that offering positions of influence to members of the Taliban through a power-sharing agreement will indeed have the anticipated effect – an end to the fighting and an improvement of the overall security in the country. It is this aspiration, however, that makes talks with the Taliban necessary. With the coalition forces withdrawing from the country and the Afghan security forces lacking the necessary capabilities to fill the gap, ending the insurgency through the marginalisation, disbandment, or elimination of the Taliban becomes a distant prospect. Under these circumstances, refusing to engage the Taliban in negotiations would risk prolonged violent conflict that would impede the country’s stabilisation and development. Accordingly, a potential agreement with the Taliban presents an important piece of the Afghan puzzle; yet it remains only one step along the way. In the immediate future, more looming issues may have a greater impact on the country’s stability and growth.

______________________

Claudia Hofmann is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Her current research concentrates on non-state armed actors, civilian approaches to conflict management, and criminal networks.

After some intensive research (read: googling for a few minutes) I learned that that Eskimos do not in fact have hundreds of words for ‘snow’. Nor, in case you were wondering (which you probably weren’t), do Arabs have dozens of words for ‘sand’.

This makes for an amusing contrast with the plethora of English words we have for conflicts that could be classed as ‘insurgencies’ (or conflicts very close to insurgencies). I’ve noticed the use of a range of words by different authors during my research, but never really stopped to think about quite how many we really had. Not until the other day when, to pass some spare time, I started to idly jot them all down in a notebook:

• Irregular Warfare
• Unconventional Warfare
• Guerrilla War
• Terrorism
• Counter-Terrorism
• Insurgency
• Counterinsurgency
• COIN
• Partisan Warfare
• People’s War
• Revolutionary War
• Limited Warfare
• Low Intensity Conflict
• Revolt
• Uprising
• Insurrection
• Rebellion
• Revolution
• War of Independence
• Small War
• Non-traditional warfare
• Resistance
• Savage Wars
• Wars Amongst the People
• Fourth Generation Warfare
• Maoist Warfare
• Post Maoist Warfare
• Focos
• Coup
• Putsch
• Riot
• Mutiny
• Violent Protest
• Assymetric Warfare
• Retrograde Warfare
• Hit and Run Attacks
• Colonial Warfare
• Anti-Colonial Warfare
• Anti-Bandit Campaigns
• Popular Warfare
• Protracted War
• Wars of Pacification
• Freedom Fighting
• Emergency
• Resistance
• Civil War
• Civil Strife
• Civil Disturbance
• Violent dissent
• Class Warfare
• Hybrid Warfare
• Compound Warfare
• War of the Third Kind
• Anti-Thesis to Industrial War

New additions:

• Occupation (Jared)
• Armed Rebellion (A.E. Stahl)
• Troubles (Ed (The Real One))
• Sedition (Me)
• Dead Ending (Perry)
• Military Aid to the Civil Power (Alex)
• The Long War (Alex)
• Tactical Use of Armed Struggle (Alex)
• Three Block War (Jill Sargent Russell)
• Surgency (The Faceless Bureaucrat)

(While many of these do not technically describe exactly the same thing, but instead reflect subtle differences, they are nonetheless often used to describe the same or similar events/conflicts)

With the recent withdrawl from Iraq and the winding down of operations in Afghanistan, I think we can rest proudly that – no matter what else we may or may not have achieved – we have come up with a heck of a lot of words to describe that kind of conflict. And people have pretty strong feelings about the use of some of these words too, as shown here, there, here, there, here and finally there.

As we enter a period of reflection about these recent conflicts, it seems to me like the very first step we need to take to adopt a simpler selection of words. Some diversity is useful, but if we keep using as many words as those listed above, we’re just going to become/remain confused. Some analysts  will talk about ‘insurgencies’, others will talk about ‘terrorism’, yet more will talk about ‘wars amonst the people’, and no one will really know exactly what anyone else is talking about.

I think we need a more straight forward way of talking about these conflicts. Eskimos don’t need hundreds of words for snow, and we don’t need hundreds of words for ‘insurgency’ either.

P.s. Did I miss any?

My expectation is you will have ignored all the words save the last and checked out this post for the COIN content. Don’t worry; on that score you will not be disappointed – eventually. To get there, however, you first must indulge the military historian to present a reintroduction of some old documents. The general historical commentary thereon will be made tolerable by a bit of fun about a dog, and who won’t enjoy that? Then, we’ll address the COIN content of the documents.

The documents in question are a series of correspondence between Generals William Howe and George Washington in October 1777. At that time the British Army is in occupation of the Colonial capitol of Philadelphia, and the substance of the letters deals with the Continental Army’s disabling of several grain mills in the vicinity of British acquisition. Welcome to a very fine example of logistics warfare. Before leaving you to read them for yourself, I offer the recommendation that you do so out loud – the drama of the language certainly benefits from it.

To GENERAL Washington:
Head Quarters, 3 October 1777.

Sir, Your Parties having destroyed several Mills in the adjacent Country, which can only distress the peaceable Inhabitants residing in their Houses, I am constrained from a Regard to their Sufferings, and a sense of the Duty I owe to the Public, to forewarn you of the Calamities which may ensue, and to express my Abhorrence of such a Proceeding. At the same Time I am inclined to believe, that the Outrages already committed have not been in consequence of your Orders, and that this early Notice will engage you to put an effectual Stop to them; If not, I do in the most direct Terms disclaim any share in creating the general Scene of Distress among the Inhabitants, which such Destruction must inevitably cause. With due respect, I am, &c.

W. HOWE.

***

To SIR WILLIAM HOWE
Head Quarters, 6 October 1777.

Sir: I cannot forbear assuring you, that I am somewhat at a Loss to understand the design of your Letter of the 3d. instant. I can hardly believe you to be serious in remonstrating against a proceedure [sic] fully Authorized by the common practice of Armies, countenanced by the Conduct of your own Troops at Trenton, and obviously calculated to answer a purpose very different from that of distressing the Inhabitants and increasing the common calamities incident to a State of War. If this is a consequence of it, it is an unavoidable one, and had no part in producing the Measure.

I flatter myself the Public is sufficiently sensible, that it is not my wish nor aim to distress, but to protect the Inhabitants, and know how to interpret any thing, that with respect to Individuals, may seem to deviate from this end. Nor will they be easily persuaded to consider it, as any injustice or Cruelty to them, that my parties should have rendered useless for a time a few Mills in the Neighbourhood of your Army, which were so situated as to be capable of affording them no inconsiderable Advantages.

I am happy to find you express so much sensibility to the sufferings of the Inhabitants, as it gives room to hope, that those wanton and unnecessary depredations, which have heretofore, in too many instances, marked the conduct of your Army, will be discontinued for the future. The instances I allude to need not be enumerated, your own Memory will suggest them to your imagination, from the destruction of Charles Town in the Massachusetts, down to the More recent burning of Mills, Barnes and Houses at the Head of Elk, and in the vicinity of the Schuylkill. I am etc.

***

To SIR WILLIAM HOWE
6 October 1777

General Washington’s compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar, appears to belong to General Howe.*

The dog bit was good, right? The second and third letters run in order in the Papers volume, so one reads of the dog immediately after being immersed in the fraught interchange between two generals at war, and if only for that reason it is such a researcher’s delight. However, it also provides an entry point to engage with the first important aspect of these documents, which is their tone. While their focus is on the substantive matters at issue in the letters, the two Generals are earnest and indignant with each other, if at times also a bit sarcastic. Of course, there is nothing too overt with the last, because within the discourse they remain locked in what I can only describe as the honors and humility Death Match style that governed communications at the time. Each seeking to outdo the other in respect given, it is as if victory went to the party able to abase himself the more to the other. It is not a style one is accustomed to any longer given the acid tone that has overtaken political discourse generally, not to mention that which might proceed between two adversaries.

Next I have to wonder what each hoped to achieve in the exchange. It is as probable as anything else that the direct content of the letters was not the primary purpose for which they were written. Howe had no real standing to make his complaints despite his “sense of Duty…to the Public,”(1) and Washington’s critique of British Army depredations would have had little effect. Thus, we are left to consider what other objectives the letters might have served. Was Howe’s intent to let Washington know that he was aware of the Continental Army’s efforts to block his army’s attempt to live off the local economy? (2) Was it to probe the scope of Washington’s knowledge of his army’s activities, to determine whether such actions were isolated incidents or part of a larger campaign? Or did he just want to tweak his opposing general a bit with the chiding? Washington’s response provides similar room to posit these questions. But really, there’s nothing better than his passage regarding British Army depredations, where he writes that “the instances I allude to need not be enumerated, your own Memory will suggest them to your imagination,” after which he goes on to list the most egregious. Whether “they need not be enumerated,” apparently Washington decided that some amount of emphasis was appropriate.

A third point of consideration regarding the correspondences concerns their political content and how that contrasts with contemporary standards. First there are the technological and bureaucratic changes in the day to day diplomacy of war. In the past century, the advent of mass and rapid communications have enabled the transfer of much of this level of exchange out of the hands of generals and into the hands of professional diplomats and political representatives. But imagine, for example, if Ike and Rommel had maintained a regular correspondence. What might each have learned about the other (as individuals and as representatives of their respective armies), and how might this knowledge have shaped the conduct of the campaigns in Normandy and Western Europe campaigns? While we might imagine without much difficulty that scenario, the idea of COMISAF (3) chatting on a regular basis with the head of the Taliban’s forces is entirely implausible. As well there is the issue that communication with the enemy bestows legitimacy upon their forces and cause. Although this was true in the late 18th century, I would submit that the issue has become more important in the intervening centuries given the increase in the mass politicization of war in the intervening years. Inasmuch as Washington would have been tried as a traitor were the Colonists to fail in their bid for independence (or, for the British audience, disrespectful act of armed rebellion) within the arena of conflict and these exchanges Howe had not the least problem according him the respect of his billet as Commander in Chief of an army.

On a sorry note, however, this means that future historians will not benefit from such sources. My sense of current communications practices in the US military is that official and high level correspondence will be useless in terms of substantive content. These exchanges are boring, brown-nosing, or so domestically politically aware as to contain nothing of use. More dismal still, I just shudder for future PhD researchers slogging through the PowerPoint archives. Not to fear, however, as there will be quality materials, to be found within, among similar sources, the e-mail caches of the officer ranks from senior Captain (post command) to junior Colonel (in/pre command), and their NCO equivalents. The personnel in this echelon have a lot to say, and now, with the internet, they also have a variety of platforms across which to do so. In that vein, I am having visions of the giddy electronic excavation of Doctrine Man’s Facebook wall by future ancient historians.

I also have to add a few words on the fact that the American War for Independence is largely AWOL within these shores. No, the American is NOT pouting that “her” war is missing. This is no mere nationalistic pique being expressed, this is a serious scholarly concern. First, I feel keenly the absence of the perspective of the British side of the war. I think the narrative of the whole event would be vastly more interesting, and I would be a significantly better scholar, were there a clearer, more detailed view of this story. Second, although I understand the reticence to wade into the events of a disappointed past, that’s not a good enough reason for the silence. The shelves of book stores south of the Mason Dixon Line in the US are crammed with the narratives and interpretations of that erstwhile perfidious region’s inglorious military past. (Apparently the Yankee military historian has an opinion or two on that war.) And the Vietnam War is a perennially popular subject for research by American scholars, to give a more contemporary example of a willingness to hash out military failures and flailing. Third, what has been foresworn in military knowledge by this avoidance? The pragmatic decision regarding North American Colonial policy – to cut losses in a conflict not bound to bring strategic and political benefit – might have benefitted the generals of later wars. (4)

I’m sure others could generate more questions or comments regarding the letters – and I hope to see them suggested here in the commentary. The unending prospects for intellectual interrogation comprise the enchanting thing about history, about the documents and the limitless stories that can be explored through them. It is truly an elephant of monstrous proportions. (5)

But I promised you COIN. And that is what you shall get. Or maybe this is about insurgency? I’m not entirely certain which pertains better, but I do know it’s about the strategic importance of popular sentiment towards the armed forces and the governments in war – or as we now call it, Hearts and Minds – and the American War for Independence’s long battle over the support (and resources) of the citizenry local to the migrating theaters of the conflict.

Among the more difficult concepts – to comprehend as well as execute – in COIN theory and doctrine is Hearts and Minds. It may seem an affectionate moniker, but in contemporary western military experience it has been, to put it kindly, an awkward romance. In war, the struggle over the will and support of a local population is a challenge to pursue when the natural preference of any army is for kinetic and coercive tactics. Even many who willingly follow the holy writ on COIN can roll their eyes at the mention of H&M.

At least in the American (if not the western) military tradition I can see several reasons for this skepticism about policies directed at gaining and maintaining the support of local civilians. First, it’s such a fuzzy concept with very few hard and fast means or methods. It often requires that the fight must be sacrificed at times. (By this I mean the destruction of the enemy forces might have to come second to helping, protecting, or otherwise serving the needs of civilians.) Within the effort it can be difficult to mark progress, and even a job well done can take a very long time to manifest results. And sometimes you will need to take a bloody nose in their pursuit. (6) None of these characteristics function well in the rationalistic and prescriptive western military system that has dominated the second half of the 20th century and seems poised to continue at least for a little while, popular though insurgency seems to be these days.

It’s not fun, I get it. Nevertheless, no matter the difficulties one might find with the concept or its implementation, it does no good to try to dismiss the pursuit as something beyond the traditional purview of the armed forces. (I’m talking to the “the point of an army is take the field of battle and fight and defeat the enemy” crowd out there.) The exchange clearly proves that both Howe and Washington made the matters of their armies’ interactions with the civilian communities and how they were treated as strategic, operational, and tactical concerns in their respective commands. (7) And in fact, both generals (and armies) were engaged continuously in activities to sway, coerce, protect, and make use of the populations local to their quarters and battlefields. Dislike it though you might, this concept has historical legs.

I might even go so far as to argue that in the American Revolution and War for Independence the civilians were a decisive front. The disaffected (or just plain greedy) patriots, undecided moderates and outright loyalists provided fertile ground over which the armies could contend. Whether it was political/military support, resources, intelligence or billeting, the local population could sell or submit valuable commodities to the armies – or deny the same to the other. This period of the war is, in fact, exemplary for Washington’s efforts in attention to these issues. In the fall of 1777, his correspondence reflect that he was concerned with the dual problem of denying supplies to the British Army without angering too great a proportion of the local population. His letters to commanders in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland direct them to secure, move, or otherwise dispose of any supplies at risk to the British Army. However, mindful of the sensitivities of the people, he often relied on local magistrates to carry out the actual seizures. (8)

Decisive though it may have been, I would also argue that the civilian front operated differently for each combatant. For the British the objective would have been to gain their support – the popular will was their game to actively pursue and win with an effective seduction. On the other hand, Washington, the Continental Army, the patriot cause, had to work not to alienate the people in the fight against the British Army, and hence it was their game to lose. On balance it is clear that Washington put in the better, more effective effort into his courtship than the rather indifferent and clumsy British.

The importance of this aspect of warfare having thus emerged in the form with which we are familiar today would endure and grow. Its next appearance was fewer than three decades later in the Napoleonic Wars. In the Peninsular War Wellington clearly understood the reasoning behind Washington’s hearts, minds, and agriculture practice, for he takes into account their importance in his planning at Torres Vedras. It is a truism to note that warfare has always included the targeting of sources of food/wealth. However, beginning with Washington, affirmed by Wellington, and remaining true to this day, in the modern era some account of the people’s temper must be taken in such campaigns. This is Washington’s intent when he writes, “I flatter myself the Public is sufficiently sensible, that it is not my wish nor aim to distress, but to protect the Inhabitants, and know how to interpret any thing, that with respect to Individuals, may seem to deviate from this end.” Wellington behaved similarly, particularly as he had, in certain respects, to rely upon the willingness of the civilians to support his campaign to deny the French Army the support and subsistence it required on campaign. (9)

The tendency to take a relatively ahistorical view with respect to COIN and its attendant tactics reflects a curious trend to do so in many areas of defense/military policy. There is always much said about how valuable history is, but very often it gets left out or abused in decisions regarding policy. (10) As concerns COIN, I think there is a sense (a willful deception? desperate hope?) that these are modern, 20th century constructs, and are thus disconnected from the institutional and experiential legacies of contemporary armed forces – and certainly won’t remain important. I can make no guarantees for the future, but the past is unambiguous on the heritage of this component of warfare.

Next time, it will be a discussion of a US Naval Institute’s Proceedings article on limeade at Guadalcanal. Epic stuff indeed. (11)

* The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition: Revolutionary War Series (16 June 1775–14 January 1779): Volume 11 (19 August 1777–25 October 1777), Theodore J. Crackel, Editor in Chief, pp. 384, 409, and 410.

1 Does anyone think that the Crown and Parliament (or their agents) represented the Colonists at this point? No? Good. Even if the war had ended victoriously for the British at that point some form of political dissolution would have been the result.

2 The issue of local sourcing remains important today. Although this logistics plan eliminates certain obstacles, most importantly transport requirements, it can create others. Inflation and local shortages for the civilian market are the most significant effect of army purchasing upon civilians. At the Naval War College, in the Joint Military Operations core course, the Operational Logistics module warns of this to students who are prone to assume that purchasing in-theatre is the most benign (and perhaps even beneficial) logistics plan. For a wealthy army like the British in the American War for Independence this would not have been much of a problem – and it still would have been less costly than bringing it from home or other colonies. Of course, it made Continental Army acquisition that much more difficult, especially as the British could offer the farmers and merchants gold, which was vastly preferred to the increasingly devalued Continental Dollar. For a time the British Army was a financial benefactor to the Continental Army. With the surrender of General Burgoyne’s force at Saratoga and the creation of the Convention Army the British were by treaty required to provide for the subsistence of their soldiers, which they did in gold payments. Of course, the Americans used the gold for its own military acquisition and paid for the rations with Continental money. It took a while, but the British finally caught on to the fact that they were subsidizing the American war effort and provided for the subsistence of their soldiers directly.

3 This is not nearly so satisfying an acronym as COMUSMACV (Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam).

4 I’ve heard some say that the American Colonies and War for Independence were not that important to Great Britain at the time or for the succeeding history of the empire. This means they were smart enough to cut their losses – this is no inconsequential achievement and deserves attention to understand better the government’s (ultimately) sensible decision-making, as such does not always characterize policy-making in war. And although it did not take too many bloody noses the first time to get the British Army out of Afghanistan, nor the Soviet Army, today we are 10 years into Afghanistan 3.0 in the modern era. If nothing else, the English might have learned something important about the tenacity of their contemporary alliance partner.

5 No, not the awkward elephant in the room, but rather the elephant of the parable, which, when grasped by eight blind men, was described differently according to the characteristics of the specific part each had examined.

6 My personal take on COIN is that the willingness to take hits for the “people” is so influential to the cause that it is a requirement. We ask military personnel to put their lives at risk in their service, so is not so egregiously cold hearted as it seems. It is no easier, kinder, or more honorable to compass a soldier’s death storming a gun position than protecting a civilian.

7 Let’s be clear; I don’t mean to assert that Howe liked the people. I don’t really know how he felt. However, I do know he realized that the war could be won (the fighting ended) if the rebels (patriots) lost enough popular support.

8 Although he endeavored to use civilian authority where possible, nevertheless to deny supplies to the British Army Washington was willing to be quite as ruthless as he felt necessary. However, when it came to impressments for the support of his army Washington was beyond conservative in his caution. In fact, this reluctance is cited as one of the few time he can be characterized as defiant towards Congressional authority.

9 John Morgan’s article on the logistics plan for Napoleon’s campaign in Spain describes the nightmare encountered by the French as they tried to live off the land in Catalonia. Napoleon’s idea to have “war feed war;” i.e., for Spanish agriculture and taxes to support his army, was a dismal failure. (“War Feeding War? The Impact of Logistics on the Napoleonic Occupation of Catalonia,” JMH, 73, (Jan 2009), pp. 83-16.)

10 For example, clearly someone forgot to do some research prior to OIF – our own experience of throwing off dictatorship clearly demonstrates that nobody likes a foreigner to do the job for you. Here’s the kicker; that lesson was aptly demonstrated by none other than the French in the American War for Independence. And, I think it’s the originating story for the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme.

11 If you’re wondering why there are so many footnotes for this thought piece, I should confess I have very many colleagues who quite enjoy them, so I wanted to have a little fun.

Yesterday, Jack McDonald and I from Kings of War visited the British Army’s Force Development and Training Command for a show and tell about their vision and work to date for the Army in the post-Afghanistan and post-Iraq World. This event was aimed in part to demonstrate how the Army has been working to address the concerns raised during the run up to the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review about the Army’s failure to innovate and think. 

I’m writing this post separately to Jack, as we both took different things away from the day, and so a point by point comparison would be fairly…pointless? (cue sound of two elephants falling off the edge of a cliff). Instead, I’m going to zero in on what struck me on the day, which is mainly that I thought things seem very hopeful. While realities are often hard to achieve, the Army is beginning to develop a vision – and a belief in that vision – of how it can improve over  the coming years. So, here is a short list of the things that struck me as promising:

-> The process is being spearheaded by a dynamic and intelligent group of senior and mid-level army commanders - particularly Lieutenant General Paul Newton – who are prepared to challenge establishment thinking and really push the upper echelons of on some of the most important issues facing the British Army today. This is undoubtedly a good thing.

-> They are attempting to drive forward methods of internal learning, and find practical, workable ways of managing these process. For example, promoting post-operations briefings that bring together forces on the ground with other key players such as equipment designers and doctrine writers. Imagine a scenario in which an infantry commander who wears a flak jacket on patrol can feedback directly to the jacket designer that the item felt too cumbersome or didn’t provide enough protection. This is shockingly sensible stuff! Similarly, the Army is developing an evaluation process during which its members are asked to talk back through elements of an action, including the original objectives, a step by step description of what actually happened, if they were aware of other things going on around them, whether or not they felt they achieved their goals, and what future adjustments they would recommend, all accompanied by state-of-the-art analytical tools. Evaluation is more my wife’s topic than mine, but from what little I’ve gleaned from her, this sounds like a good quality process that rivals what we are trying to do in mainstream civilian institutions.

-> They are searching for and drilling into the issues that matter. For example, they have identified that just 5 to 20 percent of shots have been hitting the target during live fire tactical training, a stunningly low figure. They have identified why this occurs (firing training is often viewed as box ticking exercise) and why it matters (COIN campaigns require precision shooting to ensure we accurately hit the targets we want to and avoid collateral damage against non-combatants). They have even thrown a little history into the mix: drawing a fascinating parallel between the recognition of low small arms expertise during the Boer War, the subsequent focus on firing training afterwards, and the high quality of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914.

-> They want to invest more in people, not in terms of money or numbers, but rather by helping their officers to develop improved intellectual capacity, so that they can contribute more original thinking, critique established ideas and generally pursue a more informed approach in their work. Possibilities included seeking to engage potential recruits better at the university level, offering more higher education opportunities earlier (and potentially linking these to promotion, as per equivalent civilian industries) and supporting – rather than impeding – officers with undertaking PhDs.

-> Finally, they are reaching out to academics for input, commentary and feedback. And these are not limited to the same old people, with whom they have built up established – and possibly overly comfortable relationships – but are instead to fresh commentators (the invitation of authors from Kings of War is a case in point). At the end of the day the entire group was told to talk or write about the event as much as we wished and to be as critical as we wanted, even though the day itself had been splendidly frank and candid.

Now, my glowing comments thus far might suggest that I have been brought off by a free lunch and some coffees, which is of course not remotely true (although I must say that their sandwiches were stellar and their biscuit range impressive). It’s more that I honestly believe that they are going in the right direction. We have here a group of senior staff who are seriously critiquing the army and challenging establishment norms. This is no mean feat. The Lieutenant General told us that one of the very first questions he has to answer is: ‘Why?’ I am very happy that it is him, not me sitting with the Army’s leadership and having to answer that particular question!

I do have some concerns, most notably that while the Army is attempting to learn backwards from its recent experiences to prepare itself for the future, including through improving their capacity for fighting hybrid conflicts and conducting urban warfare campaigns, they aren’t really connecting with the forward looking, blue sky thinking that they need to in order to really cover their bases.

I queried the Lieutenant General on this, and was told that that they are not attempting to undertake revolutionary new changes, but instead “reclaiming the right for the army to think for itself” and conducting “a rectification of absurdity”.

Admirable goals both. But this still doesn’t quite answer how the above changes will be useful if the threat we face turns out to be one that we don’t expect. And it is here, for me, that the army really needs to stop and think: How do we prepare for threats that we don’t yet know about? How do we avoid training our forces for one type of campaign (e.g. an urban focused ‘war amongst the people’) that ends up being an entirely different one (e.g. a war away from the people in the arctic)? Looking backwards is a good way to avoid repeating mistakes, but as the French have so learned so dearly, preparing for the wars of the past doesn’t necessarily mean being ready for the wars of the future (see Grandstander’s post towards the end).

Furthermore, How do we ensure that we don’t abandon our conventional methods in such great measure that in the event of a major new conventional war we are left totally unprepared? This isn’t quite as infeasible as it sounds. During the 1920s and the 1930s the British failed to focus on developing tank warfare because we believed our future wars would be fought in the colonies, not mainland Europe. Hitler proved us staggeringly wrong.

On top of all of the other work we do, we need to ensure that at the most basic level we don’t make this mistake again. You can lose a COIN war and survive intact – albeit painfully – you can’t lose a world war and do the same.

The British have a long history of stealing/saving (depending on your perspective) historical monuments from other cultures. The Elgin Marbles are a case in point.

However, I think we can all agree that we reached a new high of historical preservation/theft with the acquisition in 2003 of the buttocks from the iconic statue of Saddam Hussein by a (now former) SAS soldier, which he wants to auction to raise funds for wounded UK soldiers.

But now apparently the Iraqi government has demanded its return, claiming that the former dictator’s shiny metal ass is…wait for it…“a cultural antiquity”.

I have no doubt that in some ways it’s a very serious issue with lots of valid argumentation on both sides…but sometimes you really do just have to laugh!

Carl Prine had some not-so-kind words to say (5,500 of them) about my (1,500 word) article on Foreign Policy’s AFPAK Channel and about arguments he ascribes to me that I did not make.

I am going to address these issues point by point (in 1,400 words). I will address the arguments rather than the people making them in the hope they might extend the same courtesy to me and others in the future. It is important that we strive to have civil debate and discussion. Vitriol clouds otherwise reasonable arguments and entrenches people in their differences.

The core argument of my FP article was that we would be ill-advised to let our counter-insurgency capabilities and lessons wither because insurgency is not going to wither. While it is important to critically appraise the policy and strategic failures of the last decade, it is also important to learn the right lessons and maintain the right capabilities to deal with future irregular armed actors that challenge American interests. That is the discussion we must have, rather than keep rehashing the angry debates of the last decade that have produced more heat than light.

Neither Prine nor Major Mike Few have disagreed with that core argument either in Prine’s blog post or Major Few’s more level-headed response in FP.

Now, onto the angry debates of the last decade…

A) Service: Prine objects to my use of the word “served,” to describe my position with the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS). When I worked for HTS, BAE Systems hired people into the training program. We then went through the U.S. Army hiring process while in training. Those of us who made that cut “transitioned” to become Department of the Army Civilians before we deployed.

I took the same oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution that Prine and Major Few did. And I put my life at risk in service of that oath. I worked as an Army employee in Helmand, Afghanistan, carrying a weapon, wearing ACUs, going on foot and vehicle patrols alongside soldiers, and I saw combat. I have seen first-hand the human costs of war. I certainly saw it as service to my country, but others may make up their own minds as to what is and is not “service” as they understand it.

B) Not a newbie:  Because Prine has not heard of me before and did not like my article, he called me “new to the field” and ill-read in an effort to discredit me. Let me set the record straight. I have been close to these issues for the last decade as a student, scholar, and most recently practitioner of sorts.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to the study of insurgency/revolutionary warfare and counterinsurgency a decade ago by the great Sam C. Sarkesian (who sadly passed away this year) as a student at Loyola University Chicago, which is when I bought and first read the Small Wars Manual.

After a few years in DC, I went to London and received my MA from the King’s College War Studies Department where I was fortunate to engage with and learn from David Betz (who blogs here at KoW), John Mackinlay, Theo Farrell, and Michael Rainsborough, which is why I was amused when Prine suggested I familiarize myself with David’s and John’s work.

Contrary to Prine’s remarks, not only did I read John’s book, The Insurgent Archipelago, in draft and published form, but I am thanked in the acknowledgments. I had to read Callwell, Galula, Thompson, Kitson, Mao, Giap, Marighella, Debray, and several others in an excellent course run by David and John at King’s on the evolution of insurgency and counter-insurgency.

And as far as some of the other thinkers named at LoD, I drew heavily on Leites and Wolf in one of the studies I carried out for Task Force Helmand as an HTT Social Scientist. I adapted the report and presented it recently at the biennial conference of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, the world’s premiere organization for civil-military affairs. It is currently being adapted for publication. My other work has focused largely on Islamism and terrorism.

I won’t go through my own experience and familiarity with the other scholars on Prine’s extensive list. I don’t think I should have had to mention all of these people in my original article to avoid ridicule. Moreover, I had a word limit. Bloggers often don’t.

Equally relevant is my direct experience on the ground, in support of operations in Central Helmand Province, a very troubled place. And I do appreciate Prine’s kind words about a recent talk I gave last month on that troubled place (audio here).

Needless to say, I recognize COIN theory is not “new” as such. However, in 2006 and 2007 it was framed as “new thinking,” by many observers, officers, and scholars, including one of Prine’s favored scholars (who I also enjoy reading), Steven Metz.

C) Honest misunderstanding: Prine misunderstood what I wrote when I said Colonel Gian Gentile, COIN critic extraordinaire, “represents the first, second, and final strands of anti-counterinsurgency discontent” (I refer readers back to my article for the context). This is a fair mistake. I could have written it more clearly. I was referencing the prior paragraph where I presented “five inter-related drivers” of anti-COIN discontent.

Colonel Gentile’s critiques, which I have read for years with interest (if not always agreement), generally focus on the first, second, and last of these drivers. Prine disagrees with some of these – particularly the relevance of numbers (1) and (4).

D) Armor: I am also tweaked for noting that both Major Few and Colonel Gentile are armor officers, but not noting the same about LTC (ret.) Nagl. I did know Nagl’s branch and perhaps could have noted it, but Prine is reading way too much into this.

Major Few is not as public a figure as the other people mentioned in the article. I was providing background and one of the few things his Small Wars Journal bio states is that he is “an active duty armor officer.”

For the record, I saw armor used to great effect in Helmand by the US Marines, the Brits, and the Danes. I also served under and with some amazing British armor officers and had some fun riding around with armored cav units.

E) Defense Industry: I concede the points Prine makes in his 860+ words on contractors, costs, and the defense industry. His remarks bring context and perspective to the one sentence I devoted to the subject in my article.

F) Operations and Strategy: Prine states that when I draw on Theo Farrell’s “Campaign disconnect: operational progress and strategic obstacles in Afghanistan, 2009-2011″, I am proving my ignorance of military affairs. I disagree. One of the signal failures of our Afghanistan campaign is that despite substantial operational progress, we have not gotten much closer to what we could view as a victory. In other words, we have secured a lot of key populated rural valleys and district and provincial capitals and held them with the Afghan National Security Forces. But, as Farrell argues, there is an “operational-strategic disconnect” in our Afghan campaign.

G) We don’t disagree on much: Finally, Prine and Major Few make a mistake when reading my article. They overlook the central argument and focus on my critique of Few’s unfair and unkind words about the morality of those who have participated in or developed the ideas behind counter-insurgency, in the defense industry and think tank communities. One might even argue that he was demonizing them, which is what I stated in my much-maligned comment to his blog post. He mistook this observation for a personal attack on him (when actually, the subject of my remarks was his attack on third parties).

My FP article is not about Major Few, but this seems to have gotten lost in their responses. In fact, there is so little daylight between my own argument and Major Few’s in his response on FP.com, that I am having trouble figuring out where we disagree aside from the tone we prefer to use when we communicate with others on professional matters (no matter how personally we feel about them).

But I hope this will change in the future when we inevitably encounter each other’s work.

Correction: The “new thinking” quote was in the forward to Metz’s report, written by Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., the director of the Strategic Studies Institute. Another of people framing modern COIN as somehow “new” can be found here.

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The views and opinions expressed here do not represent those of the Department of the Army, Training and Doctrine Command, or the Human Terrain System.

It is ironic that my article, which lamented the ‘heated and overly personalized polemic’ about counterinsurgency, has now dragged me deep into it. I say ‘dragged’ because it is with reluctance that I reply to Carl Prine’s latest broadside against the article and my subsequent defence of it (following his initial assault). The reason I do so is Prine’s renewed attempt to undermine my integrity as a researcher – something I take seriously. Sure, my analysis can be wrong, but to accuse me of ‘cherry-picking the evidence’ is quite low. Prine, where I am wrong, kindly assume cock-up rather than conspiracy.

But that is exactly the point: Prine’s pre-existing bias about my work produces an almost ideological response. Prine refutes my suggestion that, having coined the terms ‘COINdinista’ and ‘COINtra’, he has come to view the counterinsurgency debate through this reductive lens. The terms were mere jest, he says; or perhaps he was ‘before the COINdinista and COINtra stuff before he was against it’. Regardless, Prine’s insistence in gluing his caricature of me to his caricatures of Nagl, Kilcullen and McMaster belies an undifferentiated understanding of our respective scholarship and an insistence on rejecting his prime ‘adversaries’ as an indistinguishable whole – as COINdinistas.

My crime, apparently, is writing a book on counterinsurgency that included a two-page foreword written by arch-nemesis John Nagl. This is sufficient for Prine to misinterpret the rest of my work as surge propaganda, even when my position is not so far removed from his own. For example, Prine seems to concede that local factors along with US inputs accounted for the decline in Iraqi casualties in 2006-2008, but when I say the same, he reads it as ‘COIN porn’. Prine notes that ‘tactical innovations likely helped matters’ and I write that ‘U.S. inputs were not the only or the main factor’ but nonetheless an important one. Prine, however, interprets my words as meaning ‘it was the “Surge” all along’. Clearly that is not what I said.

Why the distortion? It has to do with perspective. Prine is upset about those who glorified US inputs during the surge and overlooked local factors. I am concerned about those who consider only local factors and overlook US inputs – because I fear this will result in valuable lessons being lost and because I believe the two to be inextricably intertwined. Given our differing starting points, he approaches my scholarship with suspicion and a lot of sneer, even more so because he is convinced I am a card-carrying COINdinista with an agenda to sell.

Yet despite his suspicions and misgivings, his analysis must in the end base itself on what I actually wrote and it is here that he gets himself into trouble. The article in question is far more balanced and nuanced that he realises and if he just gave me the benefit of doubt, I suspect he would find many of my views not so far removed from his own. Anyone who reads my article carefully (please do) and then reads Prine’s tearing apart of it will notice his many factual mistakes and somewhat febrile (I used the word once, Carl, not twice so here is another one to make up the difference) interpretation of the subject-matter. Again, this is all part of this problem of polarization that stunts this conversation, not just between Prine and I, but in general.

IDPs, Surge and Security

That is not to say there are no substantive differences. One relates to the significance of IDP and refugee returns for the surge. In the article, I pointed to the 34,000 Baghdadis who had returned to the city by 2009 to challenge the notion that Baghdad had been stabilized through ethnic cleansing. If this were the case, these returning Baghdadis would probably not want to return and, if they did, they would again face their cleansers and violence would continue. To my mind, a better explanation lies in the security gains that occurred during the time of the surge. In other words, it wasn’t simply that ethnic cleansing had divided the two communities and thereby created a peaceful ‘separation of forces’.

Prine takes me to task for focusing on these 34,000 instead of the three million Iraqis still displaced by the fighting. Prine argues that the return rate is puny and therefore not indicative of anything. Worse, he argues that by focusing on the 34k I am ‘cherry-picking the evidence’.

First, I will concede I made a mistake: I wrote 34,000 ‘Baghdadis’ when in fact the statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) spoke of 33,196 families, that is to say nearly 160,000 individuals. Prine might argue that this number is still too small to say anything about why these people left and subsequently returned to the city. Yet the IOM study also notes that in 2009, more than 78% of the ‘nearly 140,000 IDP families still displaced from Baghdad’ intended to return to the city. That accounts for another 700,000 returnees, excluding the 160,000 already mentioned (i.e. a total of 860,000 people). Suddenly we are no longer talking about ‘nearly 34,000 IDPs’.

On the basis of interviews with displaced Iraqis, the IOM also shows that most of those who returned to Baghdad did so because of ‘improved security’ (and IOM isn’t even a COINdinista organization!). So, as in the article, if Baghdad was stabilized through ethnic cleansing in 2006-2007, why did 860,000 Baghdadis feel safe to return or intend to return by 2009, citing ‘improved security’? Furthermore, 87.1%’ of the returnees said they would like to ‘return to their original homes within Baghdad governorate’. Maybe it is because security had actually improved, not through ethnic cleansing, but because the surge and other local factors, from late 2006 onwards, had stopped the cycle of violence.

Now, Prine will still compare the number of actual and future returnees to the millions of Iraqis still displaced. But Prine is talking about displaced people from Iraq as a whole, whereas I was talking specifically about Baghdad. Why? Not because I was cherry-picking, but because this was an article about the surge and the surge occurred mostly in Baghdad. The broader problem of Iraqi refugees and IDPs is serious and any pretense that all was milk and honey in post-surge Iraq would truly be obscene. But I never made that case and this was not my focus.

(Even then, there are some interesting commonalities: the UNHCR in 2011 found that ‘the majority of Refugees Returnees site [sic] the improved security/ political situation in their area of return as the primary reason for permanent return to Iraq’. Again this challenges the notion that the completion of ethnic cleansing caused violence to drop: if security was merely a product of combatants having been separated, conflict would naturally ensue as soon as this separation ceases to be. But I digress).

Prine also criticizes me for not responding to some of his other charges, so I will do so now.

DC Politics and the Surge

Prine says that I do not get DC politics. What I wrote was that ‘parochial concerns… within the American political scene’ colour the prevalent understanding of the surge, as it was an idea promoted by the Bush administration and resisted by Democrat lawmakers. Prine counters and suggests these Democrats eventually went along with it, lending their support to the military rather than to George Bush. I agree, though the noisy grandstanding by Democrats during the spring and autumn 2007 Petraeus hearings should not be forgotten. Even so, nothing here challenges the original point, namely that Democrats are less likely and Republicans more likely to view the surge favorably, even today, because of domestic party-political reasons. Views on the surge are therefore influenced not only by what happened in Iraq but by, as I put it, more ‘parochial concerns’. This, as I argued, makes it more difficult to have an honest discussion of the surge. Apologies, if this was not clear in the text.

The ‘old COIN bromides’

I do not actually mention the Malayan Emergency in my article yet both Col Gian Gentile and Carl Prine react to it by attacking my previous scholarship on this campaign. Very odd. Prine says I present a ‘fairytale’ version of the campaign. Gentile makes all sorts of outlandish assertions as to what I do and do not say about it. Neither of them appears to have read anything I have written on the topic. Until their allegations are more specifically based on what I actually say – and not their interpretation of it – I do not know how to respond. Certainly I have never denied, as Prine seems to suggest, that the British used violence in its campaign against the rebels, even a lot of violence at times. I do not know where Prine gets this idea from.

As to the ‘verities’ derived from this and other campaigns, substitute ‘minimal use of force’ for the ‘appropriate use of force to meet mission objectives’ and the increase in violence during the surge becomes more consistent with the counterinsurgency principles. This also goes some way toward explaining my view on the use of force in most of the Malaya campaign. Still, I will concede I should have made that substitution from the outset.

The rest of Prine’s latest text repeats accusations I feel I dealt with adequately in my last post.

That leaves just one last, last word on this issue

Prine accuses me of including a ‘nasty slur’ and the ‘cheapest ad hominem attack imaginable’ in my last post. Frankly, I do not know what he is talking about. For those of you who read the post, where is this attack? Help me out… This is actually important to me, because ad hominem attacks are not my style. To the contrary, I wanted to make it clear in my last post that ‘I still like Prine’.

On this topic, though, Prine is at his best when he attacks the arguments I and others make, not when he targets my earnestness and integrity as a researcher. I enjoy discussing my research, fiercely even, and am not married to any of my preconceptions or findings. But I find it less fun to be accused of cooking the books, purposefully manipulating information and deceiving my readers. It does not provide for a constructive discussion but entrenches pre-existing positions and creates enmities. It follows that whatever ‘slur’ Prine divined from my text was certainly not intended and I would greatly appreciate it if, in any follow-up to this post, my integrity as a researcher is not once again dragged through the mud.