Escaping the iron cage: the institutional foundations of FM 3-24. counterinsurgency doctrine

ABSTRACT

Continuing the focus on military doctrine in this special issue, this essay explores institutional mechanisms that enable otherwise rigid bureaucracies to innovate. Rather than focus on organizational and strategic culture, the piece explores the role of pragmatic officers using incubators and advocacy networks to escape their iron cage. The piece traces the institutional origins of the US counterinsurgency doctrine between 2003 and 2006 to highlight the role of special study groups and cross-cutting bureaucratic coalitions in creating a space to deliberate over how to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

KEYWORDS:

• Military doctrine
• counterinsurgency
• innovation
• operational concepts

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Magnus Petersson and his colleagues at the Norwegian Defence University College for reviewing the manuscript and continuing to champion academic work on military doctrine.

Notes

¹ For a discussion on British military thought related to counterinsurgency in the eighteenth century, see Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy: The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press).

² For an analysis of British counterinsurgency operations during the Malaya emergency, see Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989).

³ FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency (Washington: Department of the Army December 2006).

⁴ This theme is captured in Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1984); James Q. Wilson Bureaucracy (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 219–21; Karl W. Deutsch ‘On Theory and Research in Innovation’ in Richard L. Merritt and Anna J. Merritt (eds) Innovation in the Public Sector (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985); Marhall W. Meyer, Change in Public Bureaucracies (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

⁵ Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), 198–200; Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974); and Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

⁶ Thomas Mahnken, ‘Uncovering Foreign Military Innovation’, Journal of Strategic Studies 24/4 (1999), 26–54; Thomas Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

⁷ For an analysis of the importance of overcoming routines to enable innovation as a form of learning, see the work of Chris Argyris, Reasoning, Learning, and Action (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982); Strategy, Change and Defensive Reform (Boston: Pitman, 1985); Overcoming Organizational Defenses (Needham: Allyn and Bacon, 1990); On Organizational Learning (Cambridge: Blackwell Business, 1993).

⁸ Gordon R. Sullivan, ‘Army Imperative in Peacetime: Keep the Edge’, Army Times (January 6, 1992), 2.

⁹ J.F.C. Fuller, The Conduct of War 1789–1961 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1961), 254

¹⁰ Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine. A variation of the civilian intervention thesis concerns how civilian leaders design security institutions and delegate authority as a key determinant of the capacity of military actors to innovate and develop new doctrine, ‘The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine: Hegemons in Peripheral Wars’, International Studies Quarterly, 37/4 (1993).

¹¹ This is the core argument Barry Posen uses to explain doctrinal innovation in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom between World War I and II; Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine.

¹² William A. Owens, ‘Creating a U.S. Military Revolution’, in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (eds), The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 205–20; Colin S. Gray Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 1–7; Peter Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz, Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry (New York: Columbia University Press), ix–xiv; Andrew F. Krepnevich ‘Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions’, The National Interest, 37 (Fall, 1994), 30–43.

¹³ Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington: Brookings Institute, 1975), 40.

¹⁴ Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1993).

¹⁵ Samuel Huntington, ‘Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed Services,’ The American Political Science Review, 55/1 (1961) 40–52.

¹⁶ This approach therefore prefaces officers as pragmatists not as bound by organizational or strategic culture. On the relationship between organizational culture and doctrine, see Farrell and Terriff (eds), The Sources of Military Change; and Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). On the relationship between strategic culture, ways of war and paradigms, see D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); and Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977).

¹⁷ On time pressure and goal clarity, see Richard Cyert and James A. March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963).

¹⁸ J.T. Hage, ‘Organizational Innovation and Organizational Change’, Annual Review of Sociology, 25 (1999), 597–622; Matthew Evangelista, Law, Ethics, and the War on Terror (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988). Later generations of organizational theorists expand the institutional requirements for innovation to include how information is processed and the division of labor.

¹⁹ The concept is drawn from work on policy change in Europe, specifically the idea of programmatic actors and advocacy coalitions. On programmatic actors, see William Genieys The New Custodians of the State: Programmatic Elite in French Society (New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers, 2010); and William Genieys and Marc Smyrl, Elites, Ideas, and the Evolution of Public Policy (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). On advocacy coalitions, see Paul Sabatie and Hank Jenkins-Smith (eds), Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993). Note, these approaches have not been systematically applied to the question of military reform.

²⁰ Adam Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 29/5 (October 2006), 905–34

²¹ Susan L. Marquis, Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding US Special Operations Forces (Washington DC: Brookings 1997).

²² Gregory A. Engel, ‘Cruise Missiles and the Tomahawk’, in Bradd C. Hayes and Douglas V. Smith (eds) The Politics of Naval Innovation (Newport, RI: US Naval War College 1994), 18–22.

²³ Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier. A Social and Political Portrait (New York/London: Free Press, 1964); Stephen Peter Rosen, ‘New Ways of War’, International Security, 13/1 (1988): 134–68; Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

²⁴ Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Emanual Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 3/3 (1997); Peter Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, International Organization Special Issue, 46/1 (Winter, 1992). Dima Adamsky also highlights the importance of senior military leaders as norm entrepreneurs. See Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 135.

²⁵ This premise implies that resources, as organizational slack, are an insufficient explanation of innovation. What matters is not always budget, but the ability to elites to advocate concepts developed in the incubator across the broader organizational communities. On organizational slack and its relationship to innovation, see Cyert and March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm; and Scott W. Geiger and Luke H. Cashen, ‘A Multidimensional Examination of Slack and its Impact on Innovation’, Journal of Managerial Issues, 14/1 (Spring 2002), 68–84.

²⁶ These protection structures can be viewed as ‘rackets’. The price of elite protection is often the distortion of the original construct to fit the senior leader’s view of the problem and, by proxy, the optimal solution implied by doctrinal reform.

²⁷ Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 82

²⁸ For an overview of the some of the conferences sponsored by USMC Combat Development Command, see USMC Training and Education Command and United States Naval Academy, ‘Pedagogy for the Long War: Teaching Irregular Warfare’.

²⁹ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 88.

³⁰ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 108–16.

³¹ Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington: Department of Defense, 6 February 2006), 2–11.

³² David Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2009), iiiv.

³³ Defense Science Board, Transitions to and from Hostilities (Washington: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2004).

³⁴ Defense Science Board, 5.

³⁵ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 119

³⁶ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 120–21

³⁷ For an overview of the Army and its resistance to, but eventual acceptance of the stability operations mission, see Jennifer Taw, Mission Revolution: The U.S. Military and Stability Operations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); and Thomas S. Szayna, Derek Eaton, and Amy Richardson, Preparing the Army for Stability Operations: Doctrinal and Interagency Issues (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2007).

³⁸ Department of Defense, ‘Directive 3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations’, (November 28, 2005).

³⁹ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 133.

⁴⁰ Bob Kerr, ‘Meet the press: New Combined Arms Center commander discusses Iraq, training, leaders, lessons-learned, Fort Leavenworth Lamp, August 28, 2003, http://www.tradoc.army.mil (homepage), date accessed 30 November 2014.

⁴¹ Tom Clancy and Fredrick Franks, Into the Storm: A Study in Command (New York: Berkley, 2004), 125

⁴² Donald P. Wright and Timothy R. Reese, The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003-January 2005: On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign (Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute, 2008), p. 78–80.

⁴³ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 133.

⁴⁴ Field Manual Interim 3-07.22 Counterinsurgency Operations (Washington: Department of the Army, 2004).

⁴⁵ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 136.

⁴⁶ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 104–5

⁴⁷ Kalev Sepp, ‘Best Practices in Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (May-June, 2005), 8–12.

⁴⁸ For a detailed overview of the establishment of the COIN Academy, see Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era, 75–80.

⁴⁹ James Russell Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, 2005–2007 (Pal Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011).

⁵⁰ For a tactical level perspective on operations in Tal Afar, see Jay Baker, ‘Tal Afar 2005: Laying the Counterinsurgency Groundwork’, Army (June 2009), 61–68; and Christopher Hickey, ‘Principles and Priorities in Training for Iraq’, Military Review (March-April 2007), 22–32.

⁵¹ Multi-National Force Iraq (MNFI), Counterinsurgency Handbook (Iraq, Camp Taji: Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence, May 2006).

⁵² MNFI, Counterinsurgency Handbook, 2.

⁵³ MNFI, Counterinsurgency Handbook, 6; David Kilcullen ‘Twenty-Eight Articles Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency’, Small Wars Journal, 1/2 (March, 2006).

⁵⁴ MNFI, Counterinsurgency Handbook, 3.

⁵⁵ MNFI, Counterinsurgency Handbook, 2.

⁵⁶ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 137.

⁵⁷ Octavian Manea ‘Reflections on the ˮCounterinsurgency Decadeˮ: Small Wars Journal Interview with General David H. Petraeus’, Small Wars Journal (September 1, 2013).

⁵⁸ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 137.

⁵⁹ Measuring the Humanitarian Impact of War Workshop (Washington, DC: Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, 8–9 November 2004); Working with Civilian Actors (Arlington, VA: Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (5–6 April 2004).

⁶⁰ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 140; Adam Joyce, ‘A Revolution from the Middle: How the U.S. Army Transformed its Way of War’, International Studies Association panel, Concepts at War (April 3, 2013).

⁶¹ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 143–44.

⁶² David H. Petraeus, ‘Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq’, Military Review (January/February 2006).

⁶³ Eliot Cohen, Jan Horvath, Conrad Crane, and John Nagl, ‘Principles, Imperatives, and Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (March/April 2006), 49–53.

⁶⁴ For an overview of the conference see Chapter Two, ‘How to Fight This War’, in Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).

⁶⁵ John Nagl, ‘Constructing the Legacy of FM 3-24’, Joint Forces Quarterly, 58/3 (2010), 118.

⁶⁶ Nagl, ‘Constructing the Legacy of FM 3-24’, 118

⁶⁷ Kaplan, The Insurgents, 23

⁶⁸ David H. Petraeus, Commanding General Multi-National Force-Iraq, interview with Alexander Alderson (14 June 2007); Alexander Alderson, ‘US COIN Doctrine and Practice: An Ally’s Perspective’, Parameters (Winter 2007-2008), 33–45.

⁶⁹ David H. Petraeus, ‘Preface’, Military Review Special Edition (October 2006).

⁷⁰ FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency.

⁷¹ FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, 1-1.

⁷² FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, 1-23.

⁷³ For an example of the how the shift influenced a Marine regiment, see Bing West, One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War (New York: Random House, 2015).

⁷⁴ Stantley A. McChrystal “It takes a Network: The New Front Line of Modern Warfare” Foreign Policy February 21, 2011.

⁷⁵ For an overview of the backlash, see David Ucko “Critics Gone Wild: Counterinsurgency All Evil” Small Wars and Insurgencies 25:1, 161–79, 2014.