The Essence of Desperation: Accounting for Counterinsurgency Doctrines as Solutions to Warfighting Failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan William Bryan Riddle Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Planning, Governance & Globalization Gerard Toal Timothy W. Luke Joel Peters Giselle Datz May 4, 2016 Alexandria, Virginia Keywords: Counterinsurgency, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Geostrategic Reasoning, Narrative Analysis Copyright 2016 By William Bryan Riddle The Essence of Desperation: Accounting for Counterinsurgency Doctrines as Solutions to Warfighting Failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan William Bryan Riddle ABSTRACT Why does counterinsurgency emerge during periods of warfighting failure and in crisis situations? How is it conceptualized and legitimized? As the second counterinsurgency era for the United States military ends, how such a method of warfare arises, grips the military, policy makers and think tanks provides a tableau for examining how we conceptualize the strategy process and account for geostrategic change. This dissertation takes these puzzles as it object of inquiry and builds on the discursive- argumentative geopolitical reasoning and transactional social construction literatures to explore the ways in which the counterinsurgency narrative captures and stabilizes the policy boundaries of action. It conceptualizes strategy making as a function of defining the problem as one that policy can engage, as the meaning applied to an issue delimits the strategic options available. Once the problem is defined, narratives compete within the national security bureaucracy to overcome the political and strategic fragmentation and produce consensus. A narrative framework is applied to study counterinsurgency strategy during the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghan wars. This framework examines the symbolic power and positioning of COIN advocates, hegemonic analogies and commonplaces to legitimize COIN, and the romanticized language and imagery associated with COIN doctrine. These elements define the “who, what, where, and why” of the courses of action. Together these discursive resources serve as the building blocks for the counterinsurgency narrative and enable it to capture the geostrategic debate space. This narrative further defines how COIN is conceptualized in particular geostrategic contexts and how it is to be executed. The study concludes that by empirically tracing the ways in which the actors, analogies, and narratives are produced and deployed into war strategy debates the reasons for COIN’s emergence in crisis periods can be determined. This allows for a thicker analysis of wartime and crisis decision making and a broader view of the ways in which strategy and policy are actually produced within the national security bureaucracy. In conceptualizing military strategy and policy in this way, we are better able to understand how dramatic changes in strategy occur and map the dynamics which enable that change to occur. The Essence of Desperation: Accounting for Counterinsurgency Doctrines as Solutions to Warfighting Failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan William Bryan Riddle GENERAL AUDIENCE ABSTRACT Counterinsurgency is a military doctrine and strategy designed to win the population of an affected nation-state back to the government. Widely associated with the idea of “winning hearts and minds,” it is premised on the notion of clearing an area of insurgents, securing the population, and winning their loyalty through the provision of government services and socio- economic development and reform. Counterinsurgency, or COIN, is also associated with a continuing presence of military forces for long periods and significant aid expenditures. As such, it is a curious strategy to employ in the midst of wars seen as failing and when the population has often turned against supporting the conflict. This research examines the emergence of counterinsurgency doctrine and strategy in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan in order to understand how this strategy is employed in the midst of these perceived warfighting failures. In doing so, it thinks of strategy as narrative that describes how particular actions will result in better effects in the future. It examines the constituent parts of the competing strategy narratives to understand how counterinsurgency advocates are perceived, how historical analogies are employed to legitimize particular courses action, and how romanticized language and imagery are employed to support the narrative. In so doing, this research traces the ways in which strategy process works to overcome fragmentation and produce consensus. The study concludes that by tracing the ways in which the actors, analogies, and narratives are produced and deployed into war strategy debates, the reasons for counterinsurgency’s emergence in crisis periods can be determined. Further this approach enables a better understanding of the dynamics of the policy making process and for understanding how geostrategic change occurs. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who helped me with the journey that is the doctoral degree. First, and foremost, I want to say thank you to my wife, Julie, and son, Will, for all the absent Sundays, missed trips, and other times away. I cannot tell you how much your patience and support meant on what was most assuredly a marathon and not a sprint. I could not have made it without both of you. Your patience and inspiration were among the most important elements of getting me to the finish line and for that I cannot thank you enough. Second, I want to say thank you to my Mom and Dad for a lifetime of encouragement, support, and inspiration. You both have always been my heroes. This one is for you Dad. I would also like to thank my advisor, Dr. Gerard Toal, for all of the advice, support, and needless to say, patience, as this dissertation evolved from idea to proposal to manuscript. It was truly invaluable and I learned so much from our interactions and discussions. To Dr. Joel Peters and Dr. Giselle Datz, I cannot thank you enough for the helping me through this process, for the amazing courses that I was privileged to take, and the discussions in and outside of the classroom. Your insights have been of tremendous value to me and are central elements of this dissertation. To Dr. Tim Luke, thank you so much for generously sharing your time and knowledge. From the qualifying exam until the defense, your help has been an essential part of, and is reflected in, this research project. I was incredibly lucky to have each of you on my committee. I also would like to acknowledge LTCs (ret) John Nagl and Conrad Crane for graciously taking the time to speak with me about COIN and the debates over the war. Thank you for valuable insights and help. iv Thanks to all of my classmates and friends in the program. I learned a lot from each of you and appreciated the advice and support. As a classmate of mine in the Virginia Tech PG&G program said, with these inadequate acknowledgements, I will now speak briefly about my positionality. v PREFACE I have spent my entire adult life in and around the U.S. military and the Department of Defense. From undergraduate time at West Point, to serving in Hawaii and Oklahoma on active duty, in the world of defense acquisition for a brief period after I left the service, to my current job at a not-for-profit supporting the Department of Defense, the military has been the focus of my professional life. Indeed, when I first started the PhD program at Virginia Tech, I intentionally planned on not focusing on U.S. military topics in order to segregate my full time job from academic study. A series of events led me back to the fascinating topic of counterinsurgency and, in particular, its adoption at the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Having served in the Pentagon during the “Surge” in 2007 and beyond, it was truly an amazing time to watch the immense changes that came along with the decision to adopt COIN and employ it in Iraq. As with many, I watched the Surge unfold with fingers crossed to see if the war could actually be salvaged and an Augustinian “better peace” forged in its wake, and also engaged in sidebar debates about the war on multiple occasions. From my own perspective, the decisions to engage in the conflict in 2003 needed to be segregated from the decisions to continue it at the height of the violence in 2006. To me, the Pottery Barn rule mattered and Iraq was clearly broken and we had to buy it. That didn’t have to mean COIN, but it surely meant that we owed the Iraqis a chance to have some level of security. I freely admit that I didn’t have a better idea and no way to make it happen if I would have had one. I also continue to believe that the U.S. arrived at the height of violence in 2006 due to a failure of planning. Military operations are conducted in standard phases – Phase 0-V. Phase 0 is the steady state prevent or prepare period. Phase I is aimed to deter. Phase II is the seize the initiative phase. Phase III is the dominate or the period of Major Combat Operations as it has vi become known. Phase IV is the stabilize phase, and Phase V is the transfer to civil authority and redeploy phase. The focus in 2003 and still today, in my mind, remains focused on how to best execute Phase III instead of identifying what is required in Phase IV. Phase IV is the translation of operational success into to strategic advancement, something that the U.S. has not had great success with in recent times. I would argue that despite the widespread mantra of having no plans to “win the peace” in the aftermath of past conflicts, the lesson has not been learned and the door to insurgency is opened much wider in spaces and places where stability is not achieved.