It's all the rage: why mechanization doesn't explain COIN outcomes

A recent article, ‘Rage Against the Machines’, does a disservice to the debate over what explains counterinsurgency (COIN) success. While it establishes a negative correlation between the diffusion of military mechanization in the state system and COIN success, its theoretical argument does not hold up under close scrutiny and its micro-case comparison of two units in Iraq during 2003–2004 ignores obvious counter-examples and factors that influence COIN success, such as leadership. A deeper inquiry would have revealed that there is much more to COIN success than simply not having access to vehicles.     

India: Fleeting Attachment to the Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy

India’s success in dealing with insurgency movements was based on adherence to four key rules of engagement: identifying a lead counter-insurgent force, launching population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, non-use of excessive force and confining the role of the COIN operations to preparing a ground for a political solution. While the country does not yet have a COIN doctrine, these four rules of engagement do constitute what can be referred to a COIN grand strategy. Analysis of the several continuing insurgencies, however, reveals the country’s inability to adhere to the grand strategy. Political considerations, incapacity to manoeuvre through the demands of various stake holders, and even the wish to expedite the decimation of insurgent outfits through a force-centric approach has produced a long history of failures in dousing the fires of discontent.     

Colonial violence and its ‘Small Wars’: fighting the Kuki ‘guerillas’ during the Great War in Northeast India, 1917–1919

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the lesser known British counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Northeast frontier of India during the First World War. Officially known as the ‘Kuki Operations’, it was considered as part of the Great War. Carried out in isolation from press and public, and shelved in colonial archives, the event remained invisible until today. Yet, it registers a critical case of colonial COIN doctrine where the ‘moral effect’ doctrine was employed without being questioned. It unleashed enormous amount of organized violence, ranging from shoot at sight to indiscriminate burning of villages, wholesale destruction of property and livestock, prevention of cultivation and rebuilding of villages, forced mass displacement in jungles or in ‘concentration camps’, and collective punishment (communal penal labour and payment of compensation) after the war. This paper argues that the theory of ‘minimum force’ and the practicability of the ‘moral effect’ doctrine as applied by the Empire, sit oddly with each other at the frontier, where violence was seen both as a natural and moral orders. Violence as an ‘imperatively necessary’ method to bring order in a disorderly frontier, in the opinion of colonial state, informs and registers Northeast India as geography of violence.     

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 and the limits of state-building: An analysis of Colombia's policy of territorial consolidation, 2006–2012

Since 2002 the Colombian government has been implementing a series of policy initiatives that have sought to coordinate state resources in a neo-classical counterinsurgency approach to fight the country's main insurgent group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and recover and consolidate the territory. Despite impressive operational successes against the insurgency and other illegal groups, the government has been unable to reassert its control and build legitimacy via the state-building effort known as ‘Consolidación’, in some of the most recalcitrant areas of the country. This article examines two areas where government efforts at consolidation appear to be failing to discuss the limits of COIN theory and practice.     

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.     

Minimum force in British counterinsurgency

With strategic success in Iraq and Afghanistan far from certain, comforting beliefs about Britain's superiority at counterinsurgency have come under increasingly sceptical scrutiny. This article contributes to the debate with particular reference to the supposedly pivotal principle of minimum force. After discussing the recent literature on the subject, the article critiques the methodology employed by advocates of the traditionalist view on British COIN, arguing for a more rigorous historical approach based on primary sources. Following these historical matters, it is argued that conceptually, minimum force should be analysed dialectically in relation to practices of exemplary force, and above all, on the evidence of what happens in a conflict. Arguably the value ascribed to doctrine in strategic analysis has become unduly inflated, and we must look beyond it to understand war and political violence.     

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.     

Imperial nostalgia,the liberal lie,and the perils of postmodern counterinsurgency

Since 9/11, counterinsurgency is back in fashion; the ‘war on terror’ has even been branded a ‘global counterinsurgency’. However the context within which counterinsurgency originally arose is critical to understanding the prospects for its present success; the radically changed environment in which it is currently being conducted casts into considerable doubt the validity of the doctrine's application by many national militaries currently ‘rediscovering’ this school of military thought today. Above all, classical counterinsurgency was a profoundly imperial, state-centric phenomenon; consequently it only rarely faced the thorny issue of sovereignty and legitimacy which bedevils and may doom these same efforts today.     

Don't stop with Joint Forces Command … cut AFRICOM too

Abstract

The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been a military success but a strategic messaging failure. The United States’ relationships across Africa cannot be boiled down to military affairs. This paper argues that Africa has many more opportunities than challenges and thus requires a more balanced foreign policy solution from Washington DC than a new military command. For the military engagement that does need to take place, a more low-profile approach would benefit the United States in Africa.     

Operation Motorman (1972) and the search for a coherent British counterinsurgency strategy in Northern Ireland

The role of the British Army in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner (1969–2007) is an instructive case study of counterinsurgency operations as well as an important chapter in recent British military history. Given troops deployed to the province as aid to the civil power, it is particularly useful in discussions about the principle of minimum force. This article seeks to explore the issue of minimum force through the example of Operation Motorman, the Army's successful attempt to remove the barricades, which had established so-go areas for the security forces in Northern Ireland.     

The strategic utility of New Zealand Special Forces

In 1955, the New Zealand government authorised the creation of a Special Forces unit to operate with British forces in Malaya to counter a communist-inspired guerrilla insurgency. Drawing upon the operational experiences of the New Zealand SAS largely taken from the Cold War period, and underpinned by Colin Gray's Special Forces essentials of ‘economy of force’ and ‘expansion of choice’, this article will show how New Zealand's SAS is now accepted not only as a respected and relevant part of the nation's military capability, but also empowers its political decision-makers with the confidence to take on significant, and at times difficult, strategic foreign-policy choices.     

Regional Support for Afghan Insurgents: Challenges for Counterinsurgency Theory and Doctrine

After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, several thousand Afghan Taliban forces fled across the border to Pakistan, and the area became a safe haven for Afghan insurgents. In 2014, the transnational dimension of the insurgency is still highly prominent. Although regional support for insurgents is not uncommon, how to counter this aspect is mostly ignored in counterinsurgency (COIN) theory and doctrines. In this article, a regional counterinsurgency framework is developed, using the regional counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan as an example. The framework will facilitate the systematic inclusion of regional COIN measures in theory and doctrine.     

Kinetics in counterinsurgency: some influences on soldier combat performance in the 1st Australian Task Force in the Vietnam War

Counterinsurgency is often characterized by large numbers of small fire-fights interspersed with a few larger battles. Heavy firepower contributes to the outcome of the larger battles but the smaller contacts are often fought by infantry without heavy weapons support. Infantry combat performance in these fire-fights is therefore a key concern. It has been fashionable to discuss soldier combat performance in terms of ‘firers’, ‘non-firers’, and ‘posturers’, but we argue that other factors have a greater impact. We provide a detailed statistical analysis of a selection of combat factors, using combat data collected by the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) during the Vietnam War. An accepted measure of soldier lethality is the ‘shots per casualty’ ratio. Using this measure we are now able to describe the combat performance of the Australian infantry section in Vietnam in much greater detail than has hitherto been possible.     

Case Study Commentary and Analysis: The Moral Sword of Damocles

Case summary, by James Cook (Case Study Editor):

In the final issue of the 2015 volume of the Journal of Military Ethics, we published a case study entitled “Coining an Ethical Dilemma: The Impunity of Afghanistan’s Indigenous Security Forces”, written by Paul Lushenko. The study detailed two extra-judicial killings (EJKs) by Afghan National Police (ANP) personnel in an area stabilized and overseen by a US-led Combined Task Force (CTF). To deter further EJKs following the first incident, the CTF’s commander reported the incidents up his chain of command and used the limited tools at his disposal to influence local indigenous officials directly. Apparently, the ANP unit took no notice. In his commentary on the case study, Paul Robinson considered moral compromise in war more generally. Coalition troops in Afghanistan, for instance, have encountered not just EJKs but also sexual abuse of minors, killing of non-combatants, kidnapping, torture, and widespread corruption. What should the soldier on the ground do if indigenous personnel violate Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) with impunity? Refusing to serve will not right or prevent moral wrongs, while staying on to fight the good but futile fight will mire the soldier in moral compromise. “?… [S]oldiers faced with this dilemma have no good options. The systemic failings surrounding them mean that it is probable that nothing they do will help”. In a concluding note, I suggested that while an individual soldier may indeed have no good options, as Paul Robinson suggests, that soldier’s military and nation at large are obliged to do what they can. At least, they must keep to the moral high ground so as not to give indigenous security forces an excuse to misbehave, and determine the nature of crimes such as EJKs: are they outlaw acts or in fact endorsed by the indigenous culture and perhaps even government? Below Colonel Dave Barnes, himself a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, analyzes Paul Lushenko’s case study at “?…?the local, tactical level: If a commander is in this situation – where her unit witnesses an EJK or other war crime – what should she do?”     

All or nothing? The EU Global Strategy and defence policy after the Brexit

The public expects European governments and the European Union (EU) to deal with the security challenges in and around Europe. So does the US, whose strategic focus has pivoted to the Pacific. Washington, DC has made it clear that it will not, and cannot, solve all of Europe’s problems. The call for ‘strategic autonomy’ in the new EU Global Strategy of June 2016 does not come a moment too soon. But should the aim be EU strategic autonomy, without the UK, or can the aspiration still be European strategic autonomy, with the UK? Can nothing be achieved unless all are fully involved? Or are intermediate solutions possible? How EU Member States and the UK answer these questions will determine which degree of strategic autonomy the EU can achieve. With which degree of British involvement. And whether the UK itself will be left with any measure of strategic autonomy.     

Reinventing the Revolution: Technological Visions,Counterinsurgent Criticism,and the Rise of Special Operations

Two big ideas have shaped recent debate about military doctrine: the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Counterinsurgency (COIN). These ‘network centric’ and ‘population centric’ worldviews appear contradictory, but this is a false dichotomy. American forces have actively developed RMA concepts in COIN environments during recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the exemplar par excellence is innovation by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in doctrine, technology, and organization for counterterrorism. Ironically, SOCOM's reimagining of the RMA managed to both improve the strengths and underscore the weaknesses of the American military's technological prowess.     

Systems failure: the US way of irregular warfare

ABSTRACT

Since 9/11, the United States has achieved notable gains against al Qaeda, and also Islamic State (IS), all while avoiding another mass-casualty attack at home. Yet, institutionally, culturally, and in its capabilities, the US government remains seriously ill-equipped for the task of countering irregular threats. Partly as a result, Islamist extremism shows no sign of being defeated, having instead metastasized since 9/11 and spread. Why, given the importance accorded to counterterrorism, has the US approach remained inadequate? What is impeding more fundamental reforms? The article evaluates the United States’ way of irregular warfare: its troubled engagement with counterinsurgency and its problematic search for lower cost and lower risk ways of combating terrorism. It suggests needed reforms but acknowledges also the unlikelihood of change.