Principles of Modern American Counterinsurgency: Evolution and Debate by Janine Davidson the Brookings Institution
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Principles of Modern American Counterinsurgency: Evolution and Debate By Janine Davidson The Brookings Institution Brookings Counterinsurgency and Pakistan Paper Series Insurgency and counterinsurgency are not new to Americans. People often forget that the American Revolution was an insurgency by colonists against the British crown. In South Carolina, Frances Marion, the so-called “Swamp Fox” who hid with his band of guerrillas in the woods and led raids against British troops, is considered an American hero. Likewise, during the American Civil War, southern “partisans” such as John Mosby, of Mosby’s Rangers, became infamous for their successful guerrilla tactics against Union soldiers.1 Americans have an even more extensive history as counter-insurgents –with a mixed record of success.2 Early American expansion led to a number of bloody engagements between the Army (and sometimes the Marines) and various Native American tribes in the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), in the Creek and Seminole Wars that followed in the South, and in the many famous clashes with the Sioux, the Comanche, and others in the West throughout the 1800s. Many of the lessons learned through trial and error on the American frontier were handed down through word of mouth by soldiers who brought their personal experiences from one fight to the next. This nearly uninterrupted string of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operations informed the U.S. military’s approach in later conflicts, including the guerrilla elements of the Civil War and its aftermath; the Mexican-American War of 1846-48; the Spanish-American War and the long struggle against Filipino insurgents from 1898 to at least 1910.3 The Marine Corps leveraged the only doctrine the Army had up to that point (Small Wars and Punitive Expeditions)4 in the so- called Caribbean “Banana Wars,” and ultimately recorded its lessons learned from that experience as doctrine in the 1940 publication of the Small Wars Manual.5 By the 1940s and through the 1980s, most of this knowledge was lost to the mainstream American military, which had completely re-focused its efforts on the challenge of winning WWII and then preparing for a conventional clash with the Soviets. Throughout the Cold War, foreign internal defense (“FID”) and occasionally small-scale unconventional warfare (“UW”) or counterinsurgency was practiced by Army Special Forces; but for the most part, the U.S. military focused on honing its technological edge over the Soviet Union and preparing for large-scale conventional war-fighting. During the Vietnam War, the military re-learned counterinsurgency, but took so long in adapting to the Vietnam environment that, although U.S. Forces arguably 1 See John Singleton Mosby Living History Association’s website: http://www.mosbysrangers.com/ 2 Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine 1860-1941, Center for Military History, United States Army, 1998. 3 Janine Davidson, Learning to Lift the Fog of Peace, PhD dissertation, University of South Carolina, 2005. 4 Keith Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corps Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001. 5 Small Wars Manual, United States Marine Corps, 1940. defeated the Viet Cong guerrillas by 1972, they failed to defeat the North Vietnamese regular forces before the American people began to call for withdrawal.6 In the years following the Vietnam War, counterinsurgency thought, theory, and practice was again relegated to the special operations community, whose focus was primarily on small-scale FID and sometimes, UW. A string of humanitarian and peace operations in the 1990s, including Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans, generated debate among national security leaders about the relevance of the military’s overwhelming emphasis on large-scale conventional war and the appropriate use of the United States’ armed forces in general. A generation of military troops gained experience in complex urban conflicts, where a focus on protecting populations and working with civilian agencies and non-governmental organizations over waging conventional battle against enemy forces became the key to success. This on-the-ground experience, combined with the many institutional learning systems put in place after the Vietnam War, were key factors in the American military’s adaptation to counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.7 When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, existing doctrine for counterinsurgency was slim. The Special Forces community had doctrine for foreign internal defense and low intensity conflict, but it was not widely disseminated and was narrowly focused. In the fall of 2005, over two and a half years into the struggle to stabilize Iraq and 4 years into the operation in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus partnered with Marine Corps General James Mattis to lead a year-long effort to craft a new Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM-3-24). This new doctrine, which was edited by counterinsurgency expert Dr. Conrad Crane, drew heavily on current operational experiences as well as historical case studies and “best practices” of past counterinsurgencies. The final draft of the manual was published in the fall of 2006, but prior drafts had been distributed liberally via email throughout the writing and editing process contributing to the bottom-up learning process among troops at various levels.8 The manual’s popularity resulted in the University of Chicago Press publishing it in the spring of 2007 with a new introduction by Sarah Sewall, the Director for the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a Clinton-era former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Humanitarian Operations and Peacekeeping. In this thought-provoking essay, the human rights expert discussed how much of a radical departure this new doctrine was for the conventional American military. “The counterinsurgency field manual challenges all that is holy about the American way of war. It demands significant change and sacrifice to fight today’s enemies honorably. It is therefore both important and controversial. Those who fail to see the manual as radical probably don’t understand it, or at least don’t understand what it is up against.”9 Sewall also pointed out that the manual was “written by the wrong people.” …it emerged – of necessity – from the wrong end of the COIN equation. Because counterinsurgency is predominately political, military doctrine should flow from a 6 Andrew Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988; Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Harcourt, 1999. 7 Janine Davidson, “Introduction to the University of Michigan Edition of FM 3-07 ‘Stability Operations’ Next Generation Doctrine,” University of Michigan Press, 2009. 8 John Nagl, "Forward to University of Chicago Press Edition," in The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 9 Sarah Sewall, "Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition," in The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). broader strategic framework. But political leaders have failed to provide a compelling one.10 Sewall’s call for political clarity on “when and why the United States will conduct counterinsurgency” requires that civilian political leadership have a core understanding of the basic principles of COIN. Understanding what is involved in such campaigns will give civilian leaders more realistic expectations when contemplating intervention. It was with this goal in mind that the State Department published a condensed U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide in 2009. This guide was written by representatives from various government agencies, including Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Treasury, Justice, and Homeland Security, USAID and the intelligence community, reflecting the requirement for multiple non-military expertise in a successful COIN campaign. Importantly, it warns policy makers, that “historically COIN campaigns have almost always been more costly, more protracted and more difficult than first anticipated.”11 The U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide highlights the fact that the United States is most likely to be an external actor – an intervening third party – in a counterinsurgency campaign conducted in a foreign country. The assumption is that the United States will be in a supporting role to the affected government or host nation (HN). Ironically, this reality is not highlighted very well in the Army’s doctrine, FM 3-24, which was published two years earlier. Drawing heavily from many “classic” theorists and historical works on counterinsurgency, such as the French military officer, David Galula, FM 3-24 often conflates the role of the host-nation and that of the intervening force when it uses the term “counterinsurgent.” The fact is that these two roles are not the same. While the host nation and the intervening force may be working toward a common objective – quelling the insurgency – they have slightly different roles; and these roles change over time as the host nation begins to build the capacity to protect the population and defeat the insurgents. The State Department’s Guide makes this perfectly clear. These two publications, along with hundreds of other articles, books, and internet blog-posts, have informed the American dialogue on the conduct and purpose of counterinsurgency.