No matter what Gentile and others wish, counterinsurgency just isn't going away

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By Col. Robert Killebrew, USA (Ret.)

Director, Best Defense office of Market Garden studies

Even
as the war in Afghanistan continues to boil, the defense intellectual crowd has
wandered into an unnecessary and counterproductive debate about whether the
United States can avoid being involved in future counterinsurgency wars. "Unnecessary and counterproductive" is an appropriate
description of a largely contrived argument that distracts brainpower from
focusing on the real issue -- the changing nature of warfare in the emerging
century.



Of course the U.S. is going to be involved in counterinsurgency
in the future, just as we will be involved in all kinds of wars, period.
Insurgency is one of the oldest forms of warfare -- an uprising against a
government. But the terms under which rebellions are put down are
changing fast. Until very recently, the Westphalian attitude of the times
reinforced the authority of governments to suppress internal rebellions without
too much regard to sensitivities or legal restraints; both the American revolution and Napoleon's war on the Iberian Peninsula, for example, featured
insurgencies that were brutally suppressed by regular forces, but there was no
thought of holding commanders -- much less governments -- responsible for brutal
reprisals.



All that is changing as the world is changing. Nuremburg mattered a lot.
The WWII Germans felt no need for a counterinsurgency doctrine -- their
reaction to resistance in occupied countries was just to round up hostages and
shoot them -- but after the war some commanders were held to account despite the
argument that they were only obeying orders, a legal landmark. Punishing
commanders for massacres was not only simple justice, but an indication that
civilians were no longer just an incidental backdrop to a war. Rather individuals
began to be regarded as having rights that continued even during warfare, and even when they rise against
their rulers. That principle of the universality of human rights in war
is a historic change that is now considered applicable even in modern struggles against the medieval brutalities of al
Qaeda or the Taliban. In the 21st century, international law is
struggling to replace the Westphalian compact as the new firebreak against
indiscriminate barbarism.



This is the nub of the challenge of counterinsurgency (or COIN, as it is known
by its unfortunate acronym). People may rise in rebellion against their
government, or against the government of a conquering power, but the
government's reaction can no longer be to slaughter them wholesale -- as is
happening now in Syria -- for two reasons. First, sanctions to punish
indiscriminate killing are spreading and increasingly effective, as the Syrian
leadership will eventually learn. This is the emergence of the new
sensibility of human rights, which will accompany widespread political changes
in the new century (as we are seeing today in the Arab world). Second,
and more practically, killing alone doesn't work against a determined
opposition -- never has, in fact. Insurgency, which stems from political
dissatisfaction, ultimately requires a political solution, so the greatest part
of any successful COIN campaign requires political solutions that address the
fundamental issue that started the insurgency in the first place, while
security forces -- both military and, increasingly, police -- try to contain
violence and drive it down to tolerable levels.



All this can frustrate soldiers when they get tasked to fight insurgents under
restrictive rules of engagement and with little backing from the political
class. An American military that in the 1990s trained for violent
high-tech short wars has been understandably frustrated to find itself bogged down
in an inconclusive, decades-long war that its political leadership has either
misunderstood or backed away from. The "COIN is dead" school of
military thought is a reaction to that frustration -- and to the damage that our
protracted focus on counterinsurgency has done to other, essential military
capabilities -- but it is wrongheaded for a number of reasons.



First, insurgencies aren't going away, and the United States will fight more of
them. For a variety of reasons, populations and individuals today are more
empowered than ever before, and governments are under more pressure to meet the
expectations of their people. Political dissatisfaction, mass migration,
widespread armaments, and crime are producing an international landscape that
will challenge weak governments for decades, and often insurgencies will be
supported by outside powers hostile to the United States or our friends.
Aggression by insurgency is an old strategy that will recur.



Second, because they're hard doesn't mean we can't win them. In fact,
insurgencies are more unsuccessful than otherwise. When states react to
insurgencies wisely, insurgents are usually defeated. Colombia is in the
process of defeating an insurgency that was threatening its survival a decade ago.
The once-inevitable revolution in El Salvador is long over. The
government of Iraq is consolidating power and looks to be on a success curve.
In all cases, political reforms marched hand with increasing military and
police capabilities and the collapse of the insurgency's outside sponsor. One
significant point for military planners is the degree to which military power
must be blended with the state's police and other civil powers, which until
recently was contrary to U.S. military tradition and practice. Nothing changes
tradition and practice, though, like hard lessons in the field.



Thirdly, American military (and political) planners and doctrine-writers must
understand that the U.S. is not, and never will be, the primary COIN force --
our best course will always be to work "by, with, and through" the host
country in the lead, with Americans playing a supporting role. This is a
profound change for soldiers who are trained to take charge of dangerous
situations. Even in Afghanistan and Iraq, where U.S. forces faced the worst-case
COIN scenario possible -- the absence of a government to support -- ultimate
success has not been, and will not be, possible until the local government
shoulders the load. We were far too slow to understand this in these two
theaters, and too slow to plan and resource local leaders once we did
understand it.



Finally, wars are never fought the same way twice, though armies invariably
prepare for the last one. The American military faces a daunting
challenge -- to correctly draw lessons out of a decade of experience in two wars
that will prepare them for the next one, without falling into the last-war trap
that a decade of war has prepared for us.   Additionally, the military
services know they will be the ones on the ground compensating for weaknesses
in the other branches of government. Getting this right in the manuals
will be very tough, and may challenge deeply-held Service beliefs and
organizational imperatives; a noted COIN authority is fond of reminding his
friends "counterinsurgency is more intellectual than a bayonet
charge."  That is certainly true -- but no reason to walk away from
it.