Mapping Out a Counterinsurgency Campaign Plan: Critical Considerations in Counterinsurgency Campaigning1

This paper argues on the basis of a series of historical examples that include the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaya and Northern Ireland, that there is no perfect counterinsurgency model and that each counterinsurgency campaign is different. Counterinsurgents need to have a series of basic tenets to wage successful war against guerrillas and insurgents. These include: a clear political policy from the government under insurgent attack, a strategy to keep the population safe, successful intelligence gathering, a recognition that successful counterinsurgency is manpower intensive and a high priority on the destruction of the insurgent infrastructure. This paper urges that in period of peacetime it is essential that militaries develop a Standing Counterinsurgency Concepts Unit that can conceptualise past and present insurgent patterns and build this into military and strategic planning.     

Critics gone wild: Counterinsurgency as the root of all evil

The Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a heated polemic concerning the merits and demerits of counterinsurgency – the operational approach underpinning both campaigns. The two books reviewed here provide a good summation of the arguments against counterinsurgency: it is not a strategy and will fail when mistaken as such; its theory does not make intervention and war significantly easier; and even the most successful counterinsurgency campaigns have been bloody, violent, and protracted. Yet as this review highlights, beyond these central points, criticism of counterinsurgency is too often off the mark in its approach and totalizing in its pretentions. There is much to criticize and an urgent need to learn from past campaigns, yet bold claims and broad generalizations can mislead rather than enlighten. The analysis is particularly unhelpful when the definition of the central issue at hand – counterinsurgency – is being unwittingly or deliberately distorted. In the end, these two books form a poor basis for the debate that must now take place, because they are too ideological in tone, too undisciplined in approach, and therefore too unqualified in what they finally say.     

Multinational counterinsurgency: the Western intervention in the Boxer Rebellion 1900–1901

This article proposes a case study of the multinational counterinsurgency operations that occurred in China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900–1, to provide a better understanding of the political and military dynamics specific to this type of mission. The study focuses primarily on the nature of the cooperation on the ground, the various national approaches to counterinsurgency, and the asymmetry of strategic approach between the Westerners and the Chinese. A discussion is also proposed, highlighting that combined counterinsurgency is not per se an obstacle to the unity of command, but that politically international coalitions create unique challenges to counterinsurgency operations.     

Unnecessary or unsung? The utilisation of airpower in Britain's colonial counterinsurgencies

Making extensive use of primary archival documents, this article seeks to explore whether airpower in three of Britain's most significant post-war colonial counterinsurgency campaigns, Malaya, Kenya and South Arabia, was an unnecessary part of British strategy, offering little useful military force due to the futility and strategic damage rendered by offensive bombardment, or whether airpower was indeed an unsung factor that provided operational flexibility through its effectiveness in a supply context, as well as its intelligence role in providing valuable aerial reconnaissance. In all three case studies the role played by the RAF in medical evacuations, in troop drops, in crop spraying during food-denial initiatives, and in providing ‘Voice Aircraft’ for the propaganda campaign, provide insights into an under-explored component of Britain's politico-military efforts in counterinsurgency in the 1950s and 1960s and suggests that the main strategic value of airpower in counterinsurgency, then and now, lies in its non-kinetic functions.     

Just How Important Are ‘Hearts and Minds’ Anyway? Counterinsurgency Goes to the Polls

Despite all the talk of ‘hearts and minds’ being the key to counterinsurgency, local public opinion is rarely studied and when it is, it often yields surprising conclusions. Through analyzing polling data from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, this article shows that public opinion is less malleable, more of an effect rather than a cause of tactical success, and a poor predictor of strategic victory. As a result, modern counterinsurgency doctrine’s focus on winning popular support may need to be rethought.     

Winston Churchill and the third front 1

The premise of most Western thinking on counterinsurgency is that success depends on establishing a perception of legitimacy among local populations. The path to legitimacy is often seen as the improvement of governance in the form of effective and efficient administration of government and public services. However, good governance is not the only basis for claims to legitimacy, especially in environments where ethnic or religious identities are politically salient. Some experience in Iraq suggests that in environments where such identities are contested, claims to legitimacy may rest primarily on the identity of who governs, rather than on how whoever governs, governs. This article outlines the intellectual foundations of existing policy and doctrine on counterinsurgency, and argues that development and analysis of counterinsurgency strategy would benefit from a greater focus on the role of ethnic and religious identity in irregular warfare.     

Counterinsurgency or irregular warfare? Historiography and the study of ‘small wars’

This article argues that the history of irregular warfare provides a valuable analytical and critical perspective for the study of counterinsurgency campaigns and counterinsurgency doctrine. A focus on the history of irregular warfare highlights the close relationship between warfare in Europe and in the colonies. Moreover, it enables us to identify more exactly the intersection of multiple factors that lead to an escalation of violence in small wars. Finally, it also sheds light on the lack of strategic reflection on the use of irregular auxiliaries that is characteristic for many counterinsurgency campaigns.     

Panjwai: a tale of two COINs in Afghanistan

The US Army has two approaches to counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. One is hard, or combat-focused, and the other is soft, or development-focused. This study examines two US Army task forces deployed to Panjwai District, Afghanistan from 2012 to 2013. CTF 4-9 and 1-38 offer a meaningful comparison because they pursued these contrasting approaches among the same population and against the same enemy at the same time and place. The study compares each unit’s approach and finds that neither approach was successful absent the other. The article concludes by recommending further research into combining the approaches at the operational level.     

Size Still Matters: Explaining Sri Lanka’s Counterinsurgency Victory over the Tamil Tigers

The military effectiveness literature has largely dismissed the role of material preponderance in favor of strategic interaction theories. The study of counterinsurgency, in which incumbent victory is increasingly rare despite material superiority, has also turned to other strategic dynamics explanations like force employment, leadership, and insurgent/adversary attributes. Challenging these two trends, this paper contends that even in cases of counterinsurgency, material preponderance remains an essential—and at times the most important—factor in explaining battlefield outcomes and effectiveness. To test this, the paper turns to the case of the Sri Lankan state’s fight against the Tamil Tiger insurgency, a conflict which offers rich variation over time across six periods and over 25 years. Drawing on evidence from historical and journalistic accounts, interviews, memoirs, and field research, the paper demonstrates that material preponderance accounts for variation in military effectiveness and campaign outcomes (including military victory in the final campaign) better than strategic explanations. Additionally, a new quantitative data-set assembled on annual loss-exchange ratios demonstrates the superiority of materialist explanations above those of skill, human capital, and regime type.     

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.     

All Counterinsurgency is Local: Counterinsurgency and Rebel Legitimacy

Abstract

Although the concept of legitimacy is central to Western counterinsurgency theory, most discourse in this area black-boxes the concept. It hence remains under-specified in many discussions of counterinsurgency. Fortunately, recent research on rebel governance and legitimacy contributes to our understanding of the problems faced by counterinsurgents who want to boost state legitimacy while undermining that of the rebels. Taken together, this research illustrates that a rational choice approach to legitimacy is simplistic; that micro-level factors ultimately drive legitimacy dynamics; and that both cooption of existing legitimate local elites and their replacement from the top–down is unlikely to succeed. Western counterinsurgency doctrine has failed to grasp the difficulties this poses for it.     

Counterinsurgency as armed reform: The political history of the Malayan Emergency

Despite the emphasis in doctrine and academia that counterinsurgency is in its essence political, these operations are all too commonly discussed and approached as primarily military endeavors. Informed by the need to refocus counterinsurgency studies, this article revisits a foundational case of the canon – the Malayan Emergency – to discuss its political (i.e., not military) unfolding. The analysis distinguishes itself by emphasizing the diplomatic processes, negotiations, and deals that gave strategic meaning to the military operations underway. In so doing, the article also generates insight on the use of leverage and elite bargains in creating new political settlements and bringing insurgent conflicts to an end.     

The Wretched of the Empire: Politics,Ideology and Counterinsurgency in Rhodesia, 1965–80

This article examines the vital importance of political ideology in formulating effective counterinsurgency, by examining the case of Rhodesia between 1965 and 1980. During this period, the Rhodesian Front (RF) Government of Ian Smith adopted a radical right-wing ‘world-struggle ideology’ to justify settler resistance to African decolonisation. The RF's ideology, based on settler-status anxiety, upheld a conspiratorial interpretation of modern politics that emphasised virulent forms of Anglophobia, anti-communism, anti-internationalism and anti-liberalism. The Smith Government portrayed African nationalism not as an indigenous political phenomenon, but as an external instrument of world communism and Western appeasement. After 1972, when Rhodesia faced a protracted insurgency, many of the principles of RF ideology were applied to counterinsurgency warfare with disastrous results. Because the Rhodesian Government viewed African guerrilla warfare as unrelated to domestic politics, Rhodesian counterinsurgency lacked a realistic political dimension. The dictates of settler ideology blinded the Rhodesian Government to the vital need to win ‘hearts and minds’ by applying timely principles of political pacification and reform to its counterinsurgency effort. Instead a Rhodesian counterinsurgency campaign of maximum force was pursued. Such a campaign proved counter-productive accelerating strategic deterioration and leading ultimately to the political victory of the African guerrilla cause in 1980.     

Moving Beyond Population-Centric vs. Enemy-Centric Counterinsurgency

Historically, insurgency is one of the most prevalent forms of armed conflict and it is likely to remain common in the foreseeable future. Recent experiences with counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan offer many lessons for future counterinsurgents, but the discourse on the subject continues to be mired in a traditional dichotomy pitting population-centric approaches to counterinsurgency against enemy-centric approaches. Historical analysis suggests that this traditional dichotomy is not a sufficiently nuanced way to understand or plan for such operations. Instead, discussions of counterinsurgency should focus on two dimensions: actions (use of physical force vs. political or moral actions) and targets (active insurgents vs. insurgent support). This perspective divides the space of possible counterinsurgency efforts into four quadrants, suggesting that effective counterinsurgency campaigns find a balance of effort across the four quadrants that is well matched to the specific context.     

Concepts of Legitimacy: Congruence and Divergence in the Afghan Conflict

ABSTRACT

Revisiting the US-led counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, we examine to what extent the concepts of legitimacy of the Taliban and the US counterinsurgents showed congruence with pre-existing Afghan notions of legitimacy. We move beyond dominant approaches of social contract theory and materialist legitimacy by using a threefold model of legitimacy to assess the different concepts of legitimacy. Both the Taliban and the US, we argue, diverged markedly from historically developed notions of legitimate rule. The article demonstrates that counterinsurgents need to be aware of and adapt to local norms. Moreover, we point towards relevant norms in the case of Afghanistan.     

The unnecessary uprising: Jeju Island rebellion and South Korean counterinsurgency experience 1947–48

This paper systematically analyzes the causes of the escalation of violence during the initial stages of the Jeju Island Rebellion and the failure of South Korean counterinsurgency operations. It is argued that four interrelated factors provided the conditions for armed insurgency in the small island of Jeju: inter-agency tension between the Korean National Police (KNP) and the Korean Constabulary; the mainlanders' misinterpretation of the insurgency; the effect of systematic police brutality; and the role of youth groups. Consequently, two counterinsurgency lessons will be drawn from this study: that inter-agency cooperation and coordination at the tactical level between security branches and the incorporation of local population at the micro-level is essential in conducting efficient and effective counterinsurgency operations.     

Defeating Balkan Insurgency: The Austro-Hungarian Army in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1878-82

The occupation and pacification of Bosnia-Hercegovina by Austro-Hungarian forces between 1878 and 1882 constitutes a politico-military rarity: a major colonial-style campaign waged in Europe. Yet Vienna's 1878-82 operations in Bosnia - including a hard-fought, multi-corps invasion followed by a sustained counterinsurgency campaign to put down lingering resistance to Habsburg rule - remain little known even among scholars of the region and counterinsurgency experts. However, their strategic lessons are of import today, as Vienna's battlefield successes in Bosnia brought a degree of peace and stability to the region that it has rarely known in modern times. Moreover, Austro-Hungarian military leaders waged a victorious campaign in the field that strengthened political objectives, and provided a textbook example of how to vigorously wage a counterinsurgency campaign against religiously-inspired foes in harsh terrain without undermining the occupier's political legitimacy.     

Goodbye to all that: On small wars and big choices

This article reflects on a decade of British counterinsurgency operations. Questioning the idea that lessons have been learnt, the paper challenges the assumptions that are being used to frame future strategic choice. Suggesting that defence engagement is primarily focused on optimising overseas interventions while avoiding a deeper strategic reassessment about whether the UK should be undertaking these sorts of activities, the article calls for a proper debate on Britain's national security interests.     

A best practice for assessment in counterinsurgency

In September 2011, the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan directed the Afghan Assessment Group to redesign the way in which ISAF was assessing the status of the war, and to be ‘revolutionary’ in so doing. The resulting assessment paradigm was novel, non-doctrinal, and effectively addressed the unique complexities of the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and the needs of the ISAF Commander. It had a two-tier structure consisting of both strategic and campaign assessments. The former focused on answering a set of strategic questions in narrative, analytic form to address the strategic environment, while the latter used a set of standards and accompanying narrative responses to gauge accomplishment of campaign tasks. Both tiers captured the current state of the war while maintaining an eye on future challenges and opportunities. The two assessments and their associated processes were designed to stimulate discussions leading directly to decisions by senior leaders on actions they could take, direct, or request. While any assessment paradigm will have advantages and disadvantages, an examination of the pros and cons of this assessment paradigm makes clear that it should be considered a ‘best practice’ in the field of counterinsurgency assessment.