From ‘shock and awe’ to ‘hearts and minds’: the fall and rise of US counterinsurgency capability in Iraq

Abstract

This article recounts the initial difficulties of the US occupation of Iraq that enabled the growth and maturation of the Iraqi insurgency. The focus will be on how the US military adapted, while in combat, to a situation for which its prior training and doctrinal focus had left it ill prepared. The article will explain the challenges faced by military leaders to move from a hierarchical, cold war-designed approach to warfare, to a more adaptive, decentralised mode of operations that requires distributed authority and decision making. The story will be told from the perspective of two strategic planners who helped shape the campaign plan for the coalition forces in Iraq, including the challenges they encountered when attempting to unify all elements of US national power against the Iraqi insurgency.

Notes

1 Harlan Ullman is Senior Adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. See HK Ullman & JP Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1996. See also H Ullman, Unfinished Business: Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Beyond—Defusing the Dangers that Threaten America's Security, Kensington, KS: Citadel Press, 2002; and Ullman, Finishing Business: Ten Steps to Defeat Global Terror, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.

2 AS Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

3 Interviews by author, Baghdad, July – August 2005 and Fort Knox, KY, 11 July 2006.

4 W Branigin, ‘Bush, Rumsfeld pledge to protect troops’, Washington Post, 9 December 2004.

5 MR Gordon & BE Trainor, cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, New York: Pantheon, 2006; and TE Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, New York: Penguin, 2006. For an overview of the growing number of memoirs and personal accounts by participants and journalists, see T Dodge, ‘How Iraq was lost’, Survival, 48 (4), 2006 – 07, pp 157 – 172.

6 PW Chiarelli & PR Michaelis, ‘Winning the peace: the requirement for full-spectrum operations’, Military Review, July – August 2005; and MR Gordon, ‘101st Airborne scores success in reconstruction of Northern Iraq’, New York Times, 4 September 2003.

7 T Shanker, ‘General discusses goals of his return to Iraq’, New York Times, 20 November 2006.

8 For example, see the 1982 and 1986 versions of US Army, FM 100‐5, Operations, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

9 ‘Iraqis take up security in own hands amid insurgency’, Washington Post, 3 October 2006.

10 TE Ricks, ‘US military is still waiting for Iraqi forces to “stand up”’, Washington Post, 1 October 2006.

11 JD Waghelstein, ‘Post-Vietnam counterinsurgency doctrine’, Military Review, 65 (5), 1985, pp 42–49; and US Joint Forces Command, Joint Warfighting Center, ‘Irregular warfare special study’, Suffolk, VA, 4 August 2006, pp v – vi.

12 T Lasseter, ‘Sides blur for US troops trying to secure Samarra’, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 19 February 2006.

13 D Miles, ‘City's liberation showed coalition intentions, proved Iraqi capabilities’, American Forces Press Service, 21 March 2006.

14 Interview by author, Taji, Iraq, 12 December 2005.

15 AP Brill, Jr, ‘Three-block war,’Sea Power, November 1999, pp 44 – 46.

16 TA Marks, ‘Colombian army adaptation to farc insurgency’, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, 2005.

17 J Record, ‘The American way of war: cultural barriers to successful counterinsurgency’, Cato Institute Policy Analysis 577, 1 September 2006.

18 Author's notes, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1991.

19 MJ Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947 – 1952, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (oeec) was set up to co-ordinate the Marshall Plan. With the cessation of aid in 1950, it continued to operate as a focus of economic co-operation among the governments of Europe. The oeec changed its name to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) in 1961. The USA and Canada joined the oecd. Through its Development Assistance Committee (dac) the oecd increasingly began to act as a vehicle for the distribution of foreign aid from North America and Western Europe to the so-called developing nations of the Third World. See also MT Berger, The Battle for Asia: From Decolonization to Globalization, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, ch 1.

20 T Daly, letter to author, San Francisco, 16 September 2006.

21 E Lake, ‘Baker's panel rules out Iraq victory’, New York Sun, 12 October 2006.

22 US Department of Defense, Joint Pub 1‐02: Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 16 October 2006.

23 JD Fearon, Testimony to US House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations on ‘Iraq: democracy or civil war?’, Washington, DC, 15 September 2006.

24 D Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military, New York: WW Norton, 2003.

25 C Lord, ‘The role of the United States in small wars,’Annals (American Academy of Political and Social Science), 541, September 1995, pp 88 – 89.

26 Quoted in RM Cassidy, ‘Back to the street without joy: counterinsurgency lessons from Vietnam and other small wars’, Parameters, Summer 2004.

27 R Kaplan, ‘How we would fight China’, Atlantic Monthly, June 2005.

28 Quoted in J Record, ‘Vietnam in retrospect: could we have won?,’Parameters, Winter 1996 – 97.

29 JD Waghelstein, ‘What's wrong in Iraq? Or ruminations of a pachyderm’, Military Review, January – February 2006, p 116.

30 US Army, General Orders 100, ‘Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field’ (Lieber Code), The Adjutant General, Washington, DC, 24 April 1863.

31 Interviw with author, Mosul, 4 August 2005.

32 D Pike, Viet Cong, Cambridge, MA: mit, 1966.

33 E Luttwak, ‘Notes on low-intensity warfare’, Parameters, December 1983.

34 GF Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900 – 1950, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1950.

35 Luttwak, ‘Notes on low-intensity warfare’.

36 Ibid.

37 ‘A marine reports from Iraq’, Washington Times, 22 November 2005.

38 Author's notes, Counterinsurgency Survey, Baghdad, July – August 2005.

39 Author's notes, Taji, 13 November 2006.

40 Author's notes, Boston, MA, 29 March 2003.