At war with social theory: Instrumental and communicative action in US military doctrine during the War on Terror

As US counterinsurgency campaigns draw to a close, doctrine for asymmetric warfare written during the War on Terror has come under heavy criticism. While many have argued that this shift to ‘winning hearts and minds’ is evidence that the United States is taking humanitarianism and nation-building seriously, others argue that a wide gap exists between US counterinsurgency doctrine and the protection of civilians afflicted by conflict. In this article, I show that the latter is true by comparing theories of instrumental and communicative action to US doctrine for operational design, stability operations, and counterinsurgency. I argue that these texts treat the people as an object to be manipulated for the achievement of pre-determined self-interested strategic goals rather than members of a community that jointly designs operations to fulfill shared objectives. However, US doctrine does contain communicative elements that, if prioritized, would better support humanitarian and state-building objectives otherwise subordinated in the War on Terror.     

The Long and Winding Road: The US Army Managerial Approach to Command and the Adoption of Mission Command (Auftragstaktik)

The purpose of the current paper is to examine the adoption and adaptation process of mission command (Auftragstaktik) in the US Army. This concept, developed by the Prussians, denotes a decentralized command approach wherein superiors dictate their intent and allow subordinates to formulate their operational plans independently and change it according to the emerging situation. The paper examines the US command approach prior to the adoption of mission command. It argues that it was heavily influenced by corporate management practices which inherently contradict mission command approach. It continues and investigates how the US Army endeavored to emulate the approach in its doctrine and in major operations.

While it has officially incorporated mission command into its doctrine, it has been less successful in utilizing it in operational situations. This state of affairs has to do with the cultural legacy of the managerial approach to command that still persist. Despite the partial success, the US Army has recently reaffirmed its commitment to this approach.     

Operational idealism: doctrine development of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army under Soviet threat, 1969–1989

This article analyses the doctrine development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) coping with the Soviet military threat between 1969 and 1989. In the 1970s, the PLA applied a doctrine of ‘active defence and luring the enemy into depth’ based on its traditional operational art. In 1980, the PLA decided to focus its doctrine on positional defence. In 1986, the PLA introduced ‘integrated operations and prioritised strike’, a generalised doctrine that originated from its war history. Many organisational and intellectual challenges in peacetime doctrine development contributed to the PLA’s operational idealism, including its aging leadership, command structure, attitude towards its previous experience, limited analysis of contemporary military developments, and failure in test and validation of doctrines. In the post-Cold War decade, many of these challenges persisted in spite of military modernization efforts. The ongoing military reform has to address these challenges and improve the PLA doctrine development in peacetime.     

What is the global landpower network and what value might it provide?

US national security guidance, as well as the US Army’s operational experiences since 2001, emphasizes the importance of working closely with partner countries to achieve US strategic objectives. The US Army has introduced the global landpower network (GLN) concept as a means to integrate, sustain and advance the Army’s considerable ongoing efforts to meet US national security guidance. This study develops the GLN concept further, and addresses three questions. What benefits can the GLN provide the Army? What are the essential components of the GLN? What options exist for implementing the GLN concept? By developing the GLN concept, the Army has the opportunity to transition the GLN from an often ad hoc and reactive set of relationships to one that the Army more self-consciously prioritizes and leverages as a resource to meet US strategic objectives.     

The sources of the Australian tradition in irregular warfare, 1942–1974

This article had its genesis in a background study for the development of a new Australian Army counter-insurgency doctrine. Archival research showed that the Australian counter-insurgency doctrine employed in such post-1945 conflicts as Burma, Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam originated in the jungle campaigns of the South West Pacific Area during World War II. The historical record also showed that the Army's counter-insurgency doctrine, as with its World War II-jungle warfare doctrine, was a pragmatic amalgam of Australian experience and British doctrine. The article traces this process through the development of a series of doctrine manuals. It also considers the contribution of key individuals to both counter-insurgency theory and practice. This distinctively Australian approach to the development of doctrine was responsible for producing a highly successful manual, The Division in Battle: Pamphlet No. 11, Counter-Revolutionary Warfare (DIB 11), which the Army used during its involvement in Vietnam.     

An Evolving View of Warfare: War and Peace and the American Military Profession

The Western way of warfare has not prepared the US Army or American society for appreciating an approach to national security that does not yield decisive and measurable outcomes. This proclivity may have significant consequences given the changing nature of the international security environment in the twenty-first century. In order to preserve national security and global stability, American strategic thinkers must understand the evolution of the national strategic culture. Then adjustments must be made to deal effectively with the challenges of a changed world order. Rather than limiting the use of force to decisive means and outcomes, the American military profession must be seriously prepared for success in less dramatic stability and support missions.     

How to rethink war: Conceptual Innovation and AirLand Battle Doctrine1

This article examines the role of ideas in US Army innovation after the Vietnam War. It challenges the view that failure, changes in the strategic environment or technology are the sole drivers of military innovation and analyses the role of ideas and identity in the army's development of AirLand battle doctrine. It highlights how the reform in ideas led to a ‘re-conception’ of the strategic environment, the nature and dynamics of warfare and a change in self-understanding. The organisational reforms embodied these ideas and led to a new way of war practised in the first Gulf War.     

Basra's not Belfast: the British Army, ‘Small Wars’ and Iraq

This article examines British Army operations in Iraq. It focuses on the causes of the army's apparent failure to live up to its reputation for the conduct of small wars. The paper discusses the British experience of small wars in the context of Iraq, the influence of doctrine and strategy, and the political and moral factors that shaped the army's performance. The paper's conclusions suggest that the Iraq War may cause a significant reappraisal, not just of military doctrine and strategy, but also of Britain's role in future small wars.     

Countering Insurgent-terrorism: Why Nato Chose The Wrong Historical Foundation For Cimic

History teaches that counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns have never been won through purely military action. Defeating an opponent who avoids open battle, but who uses force to reach his goals, including terrorist action, requires a combination of police, administrative, economic and military measures. As a counterinsurgency campaign should pursue a comprehensive political objective, it requires high levels of civil–military cooperation. However, current NATO doctrine for Civil–Military Cooperation (CIMIC) as it emerged from the 1990s is founded in conventional war-fighting and outdated peacekeeping doctrine. CIMIC's focus is on supporting military objectives rather than enabling the military to make a coherent contribution to political objectives. This makes CIMIC unfit for the Alliance's main operational challenges that have expanded from peace operations on the Balkans to countering insurgent terrorism in Afghanistan. When developing CIMIC, the Alliance obviously neglected the historical lessons from counterinsurgency campaigns.     

India's Military Instrument: A Doctrine Stillborn

For six years, India has sought to implement an army doctrine for limited war, ‘Cold Start’, intended to enable a Cold War era force optimised for massive offensives to operate under the nuclear threshold. This article asks whether that is presently feasible, and answers in the negative. Doctrinal change has floundered on five sets of obstacles, many of which are politically rooted and deep-seated, thereby leaving the Army unprepared to respond to challenges in the manner envisioned by the doctrine's architects.     

Chinese Theater and Strategic Missile Force Modernization and its Implications for the United States

The People's Republic of China (PRC), no longer content with its longstanding ‘minimalist’ nuclear posture and strategy, is enhancing the striking power and survivability of its theater and strategic missile forces and rethinking its nuclear doctrine in ways that may pose serious challenges for the United States. Although the modernization of Chinese nuclear and missile forces may ultimately result in greater strategic deterrence stability, this change will not come about immediately or automatically. Indeed, it is entirely possible that China's growing missile capabilities could decrease crisis stability under certain circumstances, especially in the event of a US–China conflict over Taiwan.     

Spaghetti: systems thinking and the US Army

In the mid-2000s, the United States Army was embroiled in counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan that required deeper understanding of local social systems. The Army turned to systems thinking and design thinking to model and understand the world, define problems, and develop approaches to strategic and operational challenges. However, the Army’s approach as expressed in publications and doctrine encourages the development of complicated, unsupported, and unfalsifiable hypotheses. The risk is that the Army will act on incorrect assumptions and develop plans that are fragile.     

‘Full spectrum dominance’: Donald Rumsfeld,the Department of Defense,and US irregular warfare strategy, 2001–2008

This article examines the evolution of US irregular warfare (IW) doctrine and practice from 2001 onwards. It argues that, after 9/11, top-tier civilian policymakers in the US Department of Defense (DoD) and across the US government developed a heightened awareness of asymmetric threats and non-conventional forms of warfare, especially those shaped by contemporary globalisation. The result was a gradual turn towards irregular warfare, led by Rumsfeld and the DoD, designed to ensure ‘full spectrum dominance’ across all modes of conflict. This pre-dated the insurgency in Iraq and the promotion of counterinsurgency in the US Army by General David Petraeus and others. Policymakers' reluctance to acknowledge the insurgency in Iraq was not down to a failure to understand the concept of IW, but because they had viewed Iraq in conventional terms for so many years and were reluctant to admit their mistake.     

Global counterinsurgency and US army expansion: the case for recruiting foreign troops

Given the nature of global counterinsurgency operations, the demands of military expansion, and the need for cultural, linguistic, and regional expertise, the United States Army should evaluate the establishment of US-led foreign troop units for its evolving force structure. This article proposes the creation of an American foreign legion based upon the recruitment of US-led, ethnically homogeneous tribal force units to meet the grist mill of counterinsurgency operations. This structured approach would be more beneficial than the current reliance on a de facto American Foreign Legion, represented by private military contractors (PMCs), many of them comprised of foreigners. These PMCs carry a number of oversight, accountability, and legal risks not found in a fully integrated, and US-officered foreign legion. The British Brigade of Gurkhas, the South-West African Police Counter-Insurgency Unit (Koevoet), and the Kit Carson Scouts serve as relevant historical examples where foreign troops were used to supplement national manpower resources.     

Misapplying lessons learned? Analysing the utility of British counterinsurgency strategy in Northern Ireland, 1971–76

This article examines the British Army's deployment in support of the civil power in Northern Ireland. It argues that the core guiding principles of the British approach to counterinsurgency (COIN) – employing the minimum use of force, firm and timely action, and unity of control in civil–military relations – were misapplied by the Army in its haste to combat Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorism between 1971 and 1976. Moreover, it suggests that the Army's COIN strategy was unsuccessful in the 1970s because commanders adhered too closely to the customs, doctrine, and drill applied under very different circumstances in Aden between 1963 and 1967, generally regarded as a failure in Britain's post-war internal security operations. The article concludes with a discussion of the British government's decision to scale back the Army's role in favour of giving the Royal Ulster Constabulary primacy in counter-terrorist operations, a decision which led ultimately to success in combating IRA violence.     

The dangerous myths and dubious promise of COIN

Counterinsurgency (COIN) has again emerged as a topic of both contemporary and historical interest in the age of what has been called a global counterinsurgency. However, little attention is being paid to the historical lineage of a COIN doctrine that is being rediscovered and promoted by an enthusiastic group of military intellectuals and commanders as the basis for US Army and Marine Corps doctrine. This article argues that historical claims for COIN success, based on courting popular gratitude by improving economic conditions, are at best anchored in selective historical memory, when not fantasy fabrications. The first argument of this article is that COIN does not constitute a distinct form of warfare, but merely a sub-set of minor tactics. Second, ‘hearts and minds’, so-called population-centric warfare, has seldom been a recipe for lasting stability. Rather, historically counterinsurgency succeeded when it has shattered and divided societies by severely disrupting civilian life. In fact, COIN is a nineteenth century legacy of empire whose uniqueness and impact was mythologized in its own day, and that is unlikely to prove a formula for strategic success in the twenty-first century.     

Auxiliary Force or National Army? Afghanistan's ‘ANA’ and the Counter-Insurgency Effort, 2002–2006

Afghanistan's fifth effort to form a central army started in 2002, following the fall of the Taleban regime. Mainly run by the US armed forces, the formation of the so-called ‘Afghan National Army’ run into several difficulties, ranging from initially slow recruitment, low educational level of troops and officers, high attrition rates. As the new army began to take shape, it lacked many of the characteristics which had been associated by the promoters with a ‘national’ army. It also showed a low level of commitment and a lax discipline. As of 2006, it looked more like an auxiliary force at the service of the US army and its allies than like a ‘national’ army.     

Counterinsurgency American style: Considering David Petraeus and twenty-first century irregular war

This article examines the complex legacy of David Petraeus who was a key figure in the emergence of the US military shift towards counterinsurgency doctrine in the years after 2006. Although Petraeus has been perceived by critics as a publicity seeker, he can be credited with laying the foundations for a more serious commitment to COIN involving in particular in integrating conventional and Special Forces in arenas like village stability operations. The article looks a Petraeus's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan: it concludes that, in the case of Afghanistan, it is too early to assess whether counterinsurgency has had a decisive impact of the outcome of the war against the Taliban.     

The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Smart Power Quandary in Southeast Asia

Abstract

China has a strong interest in pursuing a smart power strategy towards Southeast Asia and has worked laboriously to engage with regional countries economically, socially, and politically. But China has been only partially successful in achieving its goals in the region. This paper argues that China’s security policy towards Southeast Asia significantly contradicts many other objectives that Beijing wishes to accomplish. Given the deep-seated, narrowly-defined national interests of the Chinese military in the South China Sea disputes, it is likely that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will continue to pose the main obstacle to the effective implementation of a Chinese smart strategy in Southeast Asia.