The Challenge of Counterinsurgency

By David Eshel
Defense Update, March 2008

Edited by Andy Ross

For a majority of Americans, these days mark the fifth anniversary of the start of an Iraq war that was not worth fighting, one that has already cost thousands of lives and over half a trillion dollars. But for the Bush administration, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that seems to signal a change of fortune and has started to show signs of success.

In the spring of 2007, as the first wave of new combat brigades arrived in Baghdad to execute President George W. Bush's troop surge, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling, who served two tours in Iraq, wrote an article in the Armed Forces Journal, criticizing U.S. military leadership in Iraq.

The debate that followed Colonel Yingling's article reveals a growing unrest within the U.S. Army's officer corps in the conduct of counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare in Iraq and in Afghanistan. In his article, Colonel Yingling argues that the U.S. general corps needs to be overhauled because it failed to anticipate the post-invasion insurgency in Iraq, and because of its reluctance to admit the onset of such an insurgency in 2004. He likens Iraq to Vietnam.

Because Vietnam was commanded by different generals than Iraq, he concludes that the U.S. generalship as an institution has failed. Generals, in his opinion, need to be more creative, as well as better understand the history of war, international relations, and foreign cultures.

The colonel spares no words: "Events over the last two decades demonstrate that insurgency and terrorism are the most likely and most dangerous threats our country will face for the foreseeable future. Our enemies have studied our strengths and weaknesses and adapted their tactics to inflict the maximum harm on our society."

Counterinsurgency refers to methods of warfare used to divide a civilian population's political and sentimental allegiance away from a guerrilla force. From the start of the Iraq war, a cadre of warrior-thinkers in the military has questioned the use of tactics that focus more on killing enemies than giving the Iraqi population reasons not to support terrorists, insurgents and militias.

"We don't just talk about the enemy, we talk about the environment," explained Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, until recently the corps commander in Iraq, in a lecture at the Heritage Foundation. Even the staunchest critics assert that early use of a sound COIN strategy could have won the Iraq war.

There are critical lessons that the COIN proponents believe need to be applied, first in Iraq and Afghanistan and then throughout the entire military establishment. To them, institutionalization is key. During the Clinton era, the Pentagon focused on buying more high-tech jet fighters, sophisticated communications systems, and sensors, all geared towards high intensity conflict, while placing very little emphasis on the tactical needs in low-intensity warfare, which was already in the cards, in the turn of the new century.

Within the U.S. Army, there are signs of change. General David Petraeus, an officer with considerable experience in COIN warfare, has become a significant figure opting for profound changes in the army's tactical and operational doctrine. Before the general left for his overall command in Iraq, Petraeus established the first COIN course for young officers. Also, the U.S. Army recently raised stability operations to equal importance with offensive and defensive operations in its official operations manual. But it takes time to make new operational concepts to be fully accepted within a deeply conservative and highly institutionalized organization like an army.

The COIN strategy still encounters opposition within the army. Lieutenant Colonel Gian Gentile, who served two tours in Iraq commanding an armored cavalry squadron, says the military is undergoing a "titanic shift" in favor of counterinsurgency with little debate over its implications. "I worry about a hyper-emphasis on COIN and irregular warfare," he says in another article in the Armed Forces Journal, and claims: "with less mechanization, less protection and more infantry on the ground walking and talking with the people, it's a potential recipe for disaster if our enemies fight the way Hezbollah did against the Israelis in the summer of '06."

That realization turned Gentile from an ardent COIN practitioner to a COIN skeptic. Counterinsurgency, he now believes, has a role in a modern military, but an excessive focus on it ignores the fact that the U.S. military is not omnipotent. He agrees with Andrew Bacevich, a former army colonel and international relations professor, who contends that Iraq is an irredeemable strategic mistake and points out the limits of what American military power can accomplish.

Striking that balance is the central question in U.S. military circles in 2008, and the COIN community is at the heart of it. Yingling speaks for many who assert that the U.S. military must embrace principles of counterinsurgency if it is to triumph in the multifaceted fight against global terrorism. The two colonels agree on the need for a rigorous debate about what kind of threats we face and how to defeat them.
 

AR  Worth a few U.S. billions to get this issue right, I'd say.