The Death of COIN, or the Death of Strategic ("C") Thought?

Recently Col. Gian Gentile USA (h/t to ZP) came out with yet another well-written short article on the dilemma facing the US military today. Which other US officer would one put in the same category as Gian Gentile? Good question . . .

In Coin is Dead: US Army Must Put Strategy Over Tactics, Gentile takes issue with the Counter-Insurgency (COIN) response to the Global War on Terror. He's done this in the past and I posted an analysis of a 2009 article he wrote. In that earlier post I dealt with Gentile's critique of COIN and expanded on that. In this one I rather leave COIN to Gentile but expand into the larger issues I see as at stake.

I organize this post the same way I did the earlier one, providing a list of Gentile's main points, but with fewer this time since this essay is much shorter. I then provide a following list of my own.

The first of Gentile's main points is that "tactical objectives have been used to define victory". This linked with the simple fact that both Afghanistan and Iraq have been "characterized by an all-emcompassing obsession with the methods and tactics of counterinsurgency".

Second, American strategic thought has lost the ability "to link cost-effective operational campaigns to core policy objectives, while taking into consideration American political and popular will".

Third, having learned nothing from the strategic defeats in both wars, "the American military has embraced the idea that better tactics can overcome serious shortcomings in strategy and policy".

The Fourth, following the third, is that the "US military is in dire need for a conversation on strategy, one that looks critically at the past 10 years of war and asks hard questions about the operational methods employed".

Fifth and finally, the future will not necessarily be like the past, unless the national political and military leaderships stumble into another incoherent war and the failure to even attempt to learn from the past will condemn "the US Army and Marines to strategic irrelevance in the years and decades to come".

Gentile is repeating an argument here he as made before, that concentrating on COIN while at the same time ignoring the political dimension in which war operates only condemns the US military to making the same mistakes they made in the past. It could be that the actual threats the country faces in the future are more of a conventional nature and thus requiring quite a different military than one well-versed in COIN, but at the same time having lost the knack for early 21st Century conventional warfare.

While I applaude Gentile's forthrightness in speaking out as a serving US Army field grade officer, I don't think he goes quite far enough in his critique. Mine is very much the opinion of a US civilian strategic theorist rather than a serving US military officer and should be taken as such. I agree with Col. Gentile's views as expressed in the article, but I make no assumption that he would in turn agree with what follows.

So from my own Clausewitzian perspective, let me add my own points which I hope will expand on and in some cases provide some possible political context to Gentile's points.

First, tactics has become the sole focus for the simple fact that the government has been loath to define what the actual political purposes/policy goals of the wars conducted were/are. This was particularly true for Iraq. The military was essentially given a list of propaganda themes (WMDs, overthrow a terrible dictator, inflict punishment for 9/11, ensure our security) and told that they were the political goals, when in reality the actual goals were the overthrow of the Iraqi government and the establishment of a US client state, bases for US force projection throughout the area, domination of Iraq's national resources and economy. That US economic interests/corporate players botched the last two goals should come as no surprise. They were too busy chasing the no-risk war $$$ . . .

So the disconnect between political purpose and military aim was intentional and reflected the rank dishonesty of the US government guided by our political/economic elite. Had the goals been more modest in nature, this might have not been a crippling problem, but given the radical nature of our policy goals (essentially the remaking of the Middle East and of various Muslim political identities) and the massive material and moral resources necessary, these military adventures were doomed to failure from the start. This was/is the fundamental reality of the situation: pre-ordained failure, if for no other reason then simply that these radical goals were not achievable through military means. Essentially instead of simply the confusion of COIN, for us the very concept of strategy (as in military means attaining a military aim to support a coherent political purpose) itself has been lost.

Second and very much related to this was/is the assumption by US policy makers that force and violence were/are the preferred means of attaining their strategic (political) goals, and with the level of force and violence the US was/is able to wield, there was/is no question of failure. I include the present tense here to indicate that this dubious assumption is still very strong in spite of the obvious reality to the contrary. It is in fact driving our current policy in regards to Iran. The assumption among a large swath of the US political elite is that violence is not only a means, but an end. Simply massive destruction is what war is about and when you have destroyed all the enemy target sets you have identified, victory follows. Warfare is simply deploying and manipulating, usually high tech and very expensive, weapons systems to maximum effect. There is no consciousness of war being a social interaction, where the enemy reacts, there is no understanding of a necessary connection between the military aim and the political purpose. "Strategy" is simply causing large explosions in the enemy's backyard while the "warriors" back home watch on TV and feel ever so proud and secure.

Back in 2003 the attitude was, hit the Iraqis hard enough, so the neocon thought went, and the US would be able to achieve anything, even the remaking of the Iraqi political identity. Would anyone argue today that that had any possibility at all of success? Yet we see essentially the same thing in regards to Iran.

There is a decidedly "Marxist" as in exclusively materialist view in all this. Political values stand for nothing in comparison to either unrestrained violence or potential economic prosperity. Make it worth their while, allow the magic of the market do its work, and the conquered peoples would become happy consumers in no time. What could possibly be their reason to resist the corporate bounty offered them? Violence as the unstoppable force, followed by simplistic notions of economics with both displacing politics.

Third, COIN provided an answer to two quite different problems. First, it was the basis of domestic propaganda/information operations whereby the war was repackaged as something quite different then it had been initially. General David Petreaus, "the father of COIN" became the "man with a plan", so the focus shifted from a lack of resources committed to "giving the plan a chance to succeed". Also the Iraqi "surge" provided the basis of the "we won" meme which has been more of less dominate among many Americans since 2007. I would argue that domestic information operations by the US military has become one of the legacies of these wars and will only become more important in the future since it in effect constitutes the military's only success story. This brings up another characteristic of the US as being "too big to fail" notion mentioned above. As long as the public supports the, that is any war, then that war continues, the US only having to worry about "us defeating ourselves as happened in Vietnam". The curious mix of a high level of material/financial resources versus a low level of moral and physical resources necessary to fight these wars particularly stands out; war as endless domestic financial shakedown.

COIN also provided for an unending operational commitment to both wars, since as long as the US was operating in the field, the reality of the strategic failures we had actually suffered could be ignored, actually discounted. COIN allowed for the "can" - and the political decision to withdraw from a couple of lost wars - "to be kicked down the road" indefinitely. In fact President Obama's decision to withdraw from Iraq leaves him open to being tarred with having "lost the war" since he ends military operations there and thus must now deal with the strategic reality (which has been there all along, as in Iran being the prime benefactor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq). This long ignored strategic reality also drives the current lurch to war with Iran, since a new war allows for another throw of the geo-strategic dice: Deep in the hole, is our political elite simply "throwing with their fingers crossed"?

Fourth and finally, while I agree with Gentile in his view of COIN, the actual strategic discussion we should be having involves not how the military should be structured, but rather how the political dysfunctions of our political system should be addressed and radically dealt with. The focus on what's wrong with the military is a symptom of a much larger and serious problem. I fear that all the discussion in regards to COIN or no COIN is a distraction from what we should be dealing with, especially regarding the 2012 election . . .

How to conclude?

Allow me to make three comments:

First, this whole time that we live in could be seen as simply the latest link in a long line of social history, that of attaining "human self-awareness" which I would define as the ability to govern and regulate ourselves without any type of ideology. Long ago our species came to the conclusion that the only way to unite large numbers of people was through a "Weltanschauung" or spiritual worldview, something that made sense of the whole in terms of existence. We've in the West essentially burned through religion, and politics and are now at economic system, which is the threadbare rag that we attempt to hide naked self interest. Consider that we do possess the capacity to negotiate, administer and salvage this planet to the adequate betterment of all. Whether we will or not is another question.

Second, be clear that this is basically a despicable betrayal. This is NOT what was sold to the citizenry as OUR country. The usurpers attempt to blind us with our own values, but they themselves are at heart hopelessly corrupt. Ad hoc structured cynical opportunism built on flimsy stands, essentially broken shards of glass pieced together collapsing before your eyes. Besides fear of not believing, what's left? 2008 came and went with no change. Still the old elite continue, but they are not anything near capable of pulling off what they are now attempting . . .

Finally, language itself has escaped us. We no longer enjoy the rather common place ability of describing our own political relations and conditions. Intricate concepts involving complex social systems/relations are reduced to one simple cause, usually dealt with by means of violence. That this stupid and self-defeating approach to strategy - or even basic existence - that this has led to consistent institutional failure does not matter in the least. Instead, we use language drained of all useful meaning. Clear communication is basic to survival of a group which makes me wonder if what we see today is predominately dead language used by essentially a dying political community blubbering its last shrieking gasps . . . Sad.

More than sad, tragic. Tragedy is something our grandparents would have understood.

On the most personal level, I, my generation and myself, imo, stand disgraced before our grandparents. They are the ones that I, for one, actually answer to, in this very specific case, since they did more to define my values than my parents did, however hard my parents may have tried.

We've lost it big time as a political collectivity somewhere along the line. "C" stands for communal. That's the very simple message of this post. If I were still a Christian, I would tell you all to pray, but since I am now an agnostic, I simply would recommend to hang on tight and hope for the best. That, and perhaps consider immigration.

Gian Gentile's Strategy of Tactics and the Ghost of Reinhold Niebuhr

A matter of semantics has to be cleared up before preceeding further. It is unwise to concede to Mao Tse-tung that the revolutionary's opponent is a "counterrevolutionary", for this word has come to be synonymous with "reactionary", which has not always been, nor will it always be, the case. Therefore, one side will be called the "insurgent" and his action the "insurgency", on the opposite side, we will find the "counterinsurgent" and the "counterinsurgency". Since insurgency and counterinsurgency are two different aspects of the same conflict, an expression is needed to cover the whole: "revolutionary war" will serve that purpose.

David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, xii

Colonel Gian Gentile has produced a thoughtful - and I would add given the political siutation in the US - heroic interpretation of the current state of not only the US Army, but the whole US way of war, or what it has become. Today the all encompassing concept is COIN or population-centric counterinsurgency, which for Gentile is the problem.

Let me start with an outline of Gentile's main points and his conclusion with my own comments at the end. Gentile's article has 10 main points:

1. "Population-centric Counterinsurgency" or COIN has become an all encompassing concept for the Army which precludes choice as to other methods and approaches.

2. The American "way of war" (counter to Russell Weigley) has historically been of "improvisation and practicality", not an "ideological attachment to seeking out the next Austerlitz". The American way of war is thus pragmatic . . . not ideological . . .

3. COIN is not a military strategy, but at best an operational doctrine and at worst a "strategy of tactics", or simply an "intellectual straightjacket", which blinds the practitioner to not only other options, but its inherent limitations.

4. This total focus on a single method leads to self-deception: "appearing to apply David Galula's principles (Galula provides the "historical how-to text") while at the same time ignorance of military strategy.

5. What lead us to this crisis point was first of all a false (and for the Army self-serving) reinterpretation of the Vietnam War. Abrams the good (using COIN) following Westmoreland the bad (the conventional approach), but the politicians and public losing "their will" when the Army could have won in the end.

6. The second cause, and the more recent, has been the victory narrative associated with the 2007 Surge in Iraq, which Gentile describes as "hubris run amuck". Here he repeats his well-known argument that the Surge was simply one of numerous causes for the decline of violence in Iraq. The Surge did contribute to the change, but was not the main cause of it. He then implies a broader argument that the Surge in fact was a tactical measure that compromised strategic success.

7. The US military is unable to think in a historical context. The term the Army uses - "counterinsurgency" - is "so loaded with historical context, assumptions, myths, and absurdities that it has become almost meaningless". This can also hide a whole range of political purposes which are rather left unsaid, since COIN can be "used to define and judge any small war, imperial war, or insurgency".

8. Since 2006 there has been a lack of debate as to the way forward for the Army. Compared to 1976-82, when 110 articles appeared in Military Review, following the publication of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, there have been only a series of articles "touting the triumph of the Surge, a narrative that has steamrolled the American Army into accepting this new way of war".

9. COIN is assummed by its supporters (who fancy themselves as the "Young Turks" of the Army) as being "more difficult than conventional warfare", "more demanding", even more "political", although COIN is executed at a much slower pace with much more reaction time for commanders. In COIN since one has E-5s interacting with local villiage elders, it is assummed that this approach is in fact more "political", but policy has always existed at the lowest tactical level, [as the Communists well understood with their emphasis on constant education for not only cadre, but potential supporters - lack of historical context once again]. This focus on the political in the tactical also promotes this total focus on tactics, making for a "strategy of tactics" with no consideration of the link between tactics and strategy as a means to a political purpose, let alone of considering strategic effect. Gentile approvingly quotes Clausewitz at this point.

10. With the total emphasis on COIN, the Army has lost track of its conventional skills, which is another of Gentile's old arguments. He sees this as an unacceptable risk which could lead to serious consequences should the Army be called upon to military action at the other end of the conflict spectrum.

In conclusion he says that the Army would be better off studying the history of the British Empire of the latter half of the 19th Century where, "if nothing else" they understood the essence of strategy, that being the link between resources and means and ends. The British then, unlike the COIN supporters of today, did not see military operations as ends in themselves. What COIN boils down to is a form of "total war", the remaking of societies through military means, a ceaseless series of "crusades" sold as "nation-building" but which actually require the remaking of political indentites by outside force. How this supports the nationl interest or is let alone achieveable, or what the long-term costs would be is lost in the maze of tactical considerations, COIN having in effect "buried strategy".

What to add?

I think Gentile's assessment very accurate from a Clausewitzian strategic theory perspective. I would howerver add a few points which make the COIN position even more dubious.

First, not only does the current Army way of war lack the historical context of counterinsurgency, it lacks the theoretical context, having in effect cut and pasted what they liked from David Galula to fit their purposes. A careful reading of Galula's classic Counterinsurgency Warfare, would indicate how precarious the US position in the actual "wars on terror" is. Referring to the Galula quote above, which exactly is the revolutionary side? Who is attempting to impose their view on the local population, the Taliban, or the US/NATO? Galula also assumes that the Counterinsurgency begins from a position of institutional strength, possessing all the elements of a state in being. Even a colonial power would have had a functioning state system, there is no place in his theory for the outside actor (posing as the "counterinsurgent") starting a new state from scratch and imposing it on the locals (even officials of the former state) who then are labelled as "insurgents". The point here is that certain strengths that Galula assumes belong to the counterinsurgency do not exist in the two (or three) conflicts where COIN is being applied today, ditto for the assumed weaknesses associated with the insurgency.

Also in line with Galula's view, the political context sets the stage for revolutionary war. Prior to 1938 (see page 22) there were no successful insurgencies against colonial regimes, rather it was the crisis that Western and Japanese imperialism underwent as a result of World War II that ushered in the era of successful insurgency. Without the actions of Japan, Galula argues, the Chinese Communists never would have succeeded against the Kuomintang. For this reason, a Western state, even the lone super power, invading and establishing a client state given the current political context would be an exercise in futility for Galula, something which simply is not going to happen, that is his theory, the basis of COIN today, would not allow for it.

Second, this crisis of American strategic thought goes back a ways. I've put the beginning point as 1991. I have also argued that the similar notion of 4GW was Ludendorff's concept of Total War stood on its head. That is that war from this perspective "absorbs politics" and becomes theoretically something autonomous.

Third, Rupert Smith in his book, The Utility of Force argues that the US way of war is frequently "less an art than a search for the technical solution and a process" (page 88). This being an industrial process, industrial warfare having been the US way of war since the Civil War with a few exceptions. I think this emphasis for a technological solution part of US strategic culture, but that would apply more to the practical view that Gentile argues than the ideological view he associates with COIN. Also is not this search for a technical solution also influenced by the understanding that war is a test of opposing wills, that is traditional strategic theory?

My last point concerns the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Why? Rev. Neibuhr has been in the news of late with President Obama being described as "Niebuhrian" in his approach to morality, especially his comments on "evil" and even becoming "a war president". With all this name dropping going around (how many Americans even know who Niebuhr was or what his views were?) there must be something going on . . .

If one actually reads one of Niebuhr's classics, The Irony of American History, then one comes across a very intresting connection with Gian Gentile's view, showing us who is a "Niebuhrian" and who is not . . .

Long before the New Deal radically changed the climate of American political life the sovereign power of government had been used to enforce taxation laws which embodied social policy as well as revenue necessities; great concentrations of power in industry were broken up by law; necessary monopolies in utilities were brought under political regulation; social welfare, security and health and other values which proved to be outside the operations of the free market were secured by political policy. More recently, housing, medicine and social security have become matters of public and political policy. All this has been accomplished on a purely pragmatic basis, without the ideological baggage which European labor carried. The development of American democracy toward a welfare state has proceeded so rapidly partly because the ideological struggle was not unnecessarily sharpened.
page 100

Niebuhr found our emphasis of pragmatism over ideology as a great strength, perhaps our greatest strength and something which ensured the continued health of the American body politic which he saw as a Republic. This pragmatism was reflected in how we did things and how the country developed over time, how would Niebuhr see the changes that have shook this country since 1951? or more specifically in the points mentioned in the quote since the 1980s? That is a re-emphasis on ideology which in reality masks narrow political interest and an abandonment of one of our key American virtues.

This abandonment of our better pragmatic nature for the promise of superficial ideology has also inspired the current popularity of a new "way of war" which masks uncomfortable political realities. The current confusion in our strategic thinking reflects the larger confusion of our politics.

What He Said

I refuse to link to the steaming pile of geopolitical crazy the Usual Kagans pooped out this weekend at the WaPo. But Gian Gentile does so I don't have to.

I think we all can pretty much agree with what he says here:

"Sometimes it does seem that “wicked” tactical and operational problems in a place like Afghanistan requires not necessarily more experts and “scary smart” army officers to tackle them, but clear, astute, and resolute thinking about strategy and national interests."

My bottom line is that in the larger sense we are actually spending very little - both in treasure and in blood - to police the Paimirs. But the very notion that a faction of my nation's political elite and punditry believe that this is a good idea and we should do more of it and for a longer time...this, to me, is a powerful indication of the rot and corruption settling in at the heart of our nation.

You can argue that this is no different than the sort of manifest destiny rhetoric spounted to justify the Mexican War, the native American Endlösung, the Spanish American War and any number of shitty little wars in Central America and the Caribbean. And you'd be right; we Americans have never been the type to sing kumbaya and love peace and quiet.

But for nearly 200 years we DID believe that the lands beyond the seas were Other People's Business, and that the business of the United States was here, no further than our own Near Abroad. Now we seem to have a significant public for the idea that we need to fiddle-fuck around in places like central Asia. This sort of imperial meddling is always tempting to Great Powers and it seldom ends up benefitting the Powers in the long run.

I'm glad to see COL Gentile slap him some Kagans upside the head. This needs to happen more often. Because, as he reminds us:

"Afghanistan is a country wracked with internal problems; tribal conflict, backwardness, corruption, tension that produces endemic violence, bitter regional disputes, dysfunctional national boundaries, etc. So why do we think we can solve their problems in a matter of a few decades through foreign occupation? Could any outside force have come into the United States in the 1850s and resolved its internal conflicts at the barrel of a gun? Actually, the British tried to resolve internal conflict in North America about 80 years earlier during the American Revolution and lost, or gave up trying because strategy demanded for them that it became not worth the cost of trying to do it."

You get some, colonel. Because we need to remember that just because a fool of a Kagan says something doesn't mean we need to be fools and hearken to it.