- Reaction score
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As I cannot see any angels walking about, I am rushing in ...
To pick up on Old Sweat’s thoughts:
• Counterinsurgency is not a static concept. I doubt that there is or can be a stable and detailed doctrine for it. Each insurgency, in each place and time is sui generis except for the fact that, by definition, it is an attempt to overthrow the established order of things. This is one of the reasons so many people caution so many others to not put too much emphasis on Britain’s victory over the Malay/Chinese insurgents around 50 years ago or America’s defeat at the hands of Vietnamese insurgents about 30 years ago: neither can provide a blueprint for other counterinsurgency campaigns.
• In addition to the common aim (overthrow the established order/replace it with something different) most (all?) insurgencies are also characterized by the society (culture) within which they occur. Thus an insurgency in intensely tribal Afghanistan or in the Balkans in likely to be quite different from one in, say, homogeneous Vietnam. Insurgencies may also be characterized (differentiated) by the role of religion – ranging from essentially irreligious insurgencies (Malaya and Vietnam) to those in which religious differences (and deeply held historic elements) constitute a key factor (Balkans (1990s), India (1940s) and Ireland (1970s/80s)). It is all too easy to use religion against foreign forces – as has been/is being done in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Speaking of Afghanistan, the Balkans and Iraq: it can be hard to tell when an insurgency turns into a full fledged civil war - in which each side has a firm territorial/political-economic base. When that happens any foreign forces may have some difficulty figuring out which side they ought to be on and which side they really are on.
• Our American friends have done some first rate thinking, I think, on counterinsurgency, but, I fear a tendency (which exists, broadly, throughout the West) to take first rate thinking to an extra, unnecessary level and try to institutionalize it into some sort of all encompassing doctrine. My favourite example is the so called Powell Doctrine. Gen (Ret’d) Powell was, certainly, right to argue that America should, always, avoid "halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support."1 To suggest, as many have done, that, pursuant to the Powell Doctrine, America must eschew peacekeeping and nation building is to use doctrine to emasculate foreign policy.
"The answer [to the uprising] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people."
FM Sir Gerald Templer, cited in End of Empire, Brian Lapping, 1985
I think we do have an insurgency in Kandahar – a Pashtun uprising against a Pashtun led government in Kabul. Absent an el supremo (à la Templer in Malaya circa 1953) the counterinsurgency must be the business of the Government of Afghanistan, especially the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. The foreign troops can, at best, support and sustain the Afghans and help create concrete achievements (see below) that will, in their turn, help “win hearts and minds.”
I would argue that “winning hearts and minds” is, still, the key to counterinsurgency. The “will of the people” is what is at stake and it is, in a manner of speaking, a beauty contest pitting the ideas, ideals and concrete achievements of the insurgents against those of the government (or established order of things). Clearly, to win, “we” (the Afghan counterinsurgents – supported and sustained by ISAF/NATO) must have and be able to communicate/demonstrate ideas and ideals and concrete achievements. This is why the 3D strategy needs to work.
The insurgents can and, traditionally, do use terrorism to “clear the field” so that they can communicate/demonstrate their ideas, ideals and achievements. For a whole host of reasons “we” (the liberal, democratic West) have decided that terrorism is not a “good” (useful or morally acceptable) tactic, so we have to “clear the field” in other ways – mostly off by driving the insurgents off the field, which is very, very hard to do if, as I believe to be the case in Afghanistan, the insurgents are locals who retreat not to the hills or across a border but, rather, into their own homes which are right on the “battlefield.”
Afghanistan Kandahar is not Malaya in the ‘50s, where ethnic Chinese were trying to subvert a popularly representative Malay government; it is more like Vietnam in the ‘60s in which an indigenous insurgency is trying to overthrow an indigenous government as part of a larger civil war.
Conclusion: let’s, all of us, Mr. Gates included, help the Afghans to develop a strategy/doctrine/system/tactic/whatever to accurately characterize this particular insurgency and then win the counterinsurgency campaign so that the Afghans may get on with running their own country in their own way – without allowing it to be used as a base from which enemies may attack us.
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1. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3209
To pick up on Old Sweat’s thoughts:
• Counterinsurgency is not a static concept. I doubt that there is or can be a stable and detailed doctrine for it. Each insurgency, in each place and time is sui generis except for the fact that, by definition, it is an attempt to overthrow the established order of things. This is one of the reasons so many people caution so many others to not put too much emphasis on Britain’s victory over the Malay/Chinese insurgents around 50 years ago or America’s defeat at the hands of Vietnamese insurgents about 30 years ago: neither can provide a blueprint for other counterinsurgency campaigns.
• In addition to the common aim (overthrow the established order/replace it with something different) most (all?) insurgencies are also characterized by the society (culture) within which they occur. Thus an insurgency in intensely tribal Afghanistan or in the Balkans in likely to be quite different from one in, say, homogeneous Vietnam. Insurgencies may also be characterized (differentiated) by the role of religion – ranging from essentially irreligious insurgencies (Malaya and Vietnam) to those in which religious differences (and deeply held historic elements) constitute a key factor (Balkans (1990s), India (1940s) and Ireland (1970s/80s)). It is all too easy to use religion against foreign forces – as has been/is being done in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Speaking of Afghanistan, the Balkans and Iraq: it can be hard to tell when an insurgency turns into a full fledged civil war - in which each side has a firm territorial/political-economic base. When that happens any foreign forces may have some difficulty figuring out which side they ought to be on and which side they really are on.
• Our American friends have done some first rate thinking, I think, on counterinsurgency, but, I fear a tendency (which exists, broadly, throughout the West) to take first rate thinking to an extra, unnecessary level and try to institutionalize it into some sort of all encompassing doctrine. My favourite example is the so called Powell Doctrine. Gen (Ret’d) Powell was, certainly, right to argue that America should, always, avoid "halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support."1 To suggest, as many have done, that, pursuant to the Powell Doctrine, America must eschew peacekeeping and nation building is to use doctrine to emasculate foreign policy.
"The answer [to the uprising] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people."
FM Sir Gerald Templer, cited in End of Empire, Brian Lapping, 1985
I think we do have an insurgency in Kandahar – a Pashtun uprising against a Pashtun led government in Kabul. Absent an el supremo (à la Templer in Malaya circa 1953) the counterinsurgency must be the business of the Government of Afghanistan, especially the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. The foreign troops can, at best, support and sustain the Afghans and help create concrete achievements (see below) that will, in their turn, help “win hearts and minds.”
I would argue that “winning hearts and minds” is, still, the key to counterinsurgency. The “will of the people” is what is at stake and it is, in a manner of speaking, a beauty contest pitting the ideas, ideals and concrete achievements of the insurgents against those of the government (or established order of things). Clearly, to win, “we” (the Afghan counterinsurgents – supported and sustained by ISAF/NATO) must have and be able to communicate/demonstrate ideas and ideals and concrete achievements. This is why the 3D strategy needs to work.
The insurgents can and, traditionally, do use terrorism to “clear the field” so that they can communicate/demonstrate their ideas, ideals and achievements. For a whole host of reasons “we” (the liberal, democratic West) have decided that terrorism is not a “good” (useful or morally acceptable) tactic, so we have to “clear the field” in other ways – mostly off by driving the insurgents off the field, which is very, very hard to do if, as I believe to be the case in Afghanistan, the insurgents are locals who retreat not to the hills or across a border but, rather, into their own homes which are right on the “battlefield.”
Conclusion: let’s, all of us, Mr. Gates included, help the Afghans to develop a strategy/doctrine/system/tactic/whatever to accurately characterize this particular insurgency and then win the counterinsurgency campaign so that the Afghans may get on with running their own country in their own way – without allowing it to be used as a base from which enemies may attack us.
----------
1. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3209
