Critics gone wild: Counterinsurgency as the root of all evil

Abstract

The Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a heated polemic concerning the merits and demerits of counterinsurgency – the operational approach underpinning both campaigns. The two books reviewed here provide a good summation of the arguments against counterinsurgency: it is not a strategy and will fail when mistaken as such; its theory does not make intervention and war significantly easier; and even the most successful counterinsurgency campaigns have been bloody, violent, and protracted. Yet as this review highlights, beyond these central points, criticism of counterinsurgency is too often off the mark in its approach and totalizing in its pretentions. There is much to criticize and an urgent need to learn from past campaigns, yet bold claims and broad generalizations can mislead rather than enlighten. The analysis is particularly unhelpful when the definition of the central issue at hand – counterinsurgency – is being unwittingly or deliberately distorted. In the end, these two books form a poor basis for the debate that must now take place, because they are too ideological in tone, too undisciplined in approach, and therefore too unqualified in what they finally say.

Keywords::

• Abizaid
• Afghanistan
• Briggs Plan
• Counterinsurgency David Galula
• David Petraeus FM 3-24
• Gian Gentile
• Muqtada al-Sadr
• Douglas Porch
• Gerald Templer
• Iraq

Notes

^1.Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 96.

^2.US Department of the Army and US Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency, 1–20.

^3. John A. Nagl, ‘The Age of Unsatisfying Wars’, The New York Times, 6 June 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/opinion/the-age-of-unsatisfying-wars.html.

^4. A curious etiology is at work in Porch's lengthy undressing of various French paragons of counterinsurgency: Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, Joseph Gallieni, and Hubert Lyautey. The original chapter on the three appeared in the 1st edition of Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, 1943) and was authored by Jean Gottman. Porch authored the chapter of the same title in the 2nd edition, edited by Peter Paret (Princeton, 1986), Ch. 14 (376–407), ‘Bugeaud, Galliéni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare’. Though it seeks to debunk the notion that there was a ‘hearts and minds’ essence to the French approach, the chapter is concerned primarily with issues of historiography (as opposed to strategy) and avoids altogether the hortatory tone that is a hallmark of both Porch's book under review and its foreshadowing in this journal: Porch, ‘Dangerous Myth’.

^5. US Army and Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency, 1-20–21.

^6.Burke, ‘The Wrong Debate’.

^7. US Army and Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency, 1–28.

^8.Black, Rethinking Military History, 19.

^9. Respectively, see e.g. Marks, ‘Colombian Military Support’; Andrade, ‘Westmoreland was Right’; Andrew Sanders, ‘Operation Motorman’.

^10. See Hack, ‘The Malayan Emergency’, 404, passim.

^11. On the dispersal of troops and its effects, see Ucko, ‘Countering Insurgents’.

^12.Mackay, The Malayan Emergency, 117.

^13. For an evolution of Army operations, see Sunderland, Army Operations in Malaya.

^14. It seems almost superfluous to note that one of the major challenges for modern soldiers has been the need to assume various civilian roles concurrent with more traditional military tasks precisely because infrastructure is generally lacking.

^15. Interview with Thomas A. Marks, Washington, DC, 30 March 2006.

^16. For more on these initiatives, see Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era. See also Serena, A Revolution in Military Adaptation.

^17. See Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War.

^18.Brown, Kevlar Legions, 441–2.

^19.Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War.

^20. White House, ‘President's Address to the Nation’, Washington, DC, January 10, 2007.

^21. Abizaid uses this analogy in Michael R. Gordon, ‘Debate Lingering on Decision to Dissolve the Iraqi Military’, TheNew York Times, 21 October 2004. Casey is quoted as using the same analogy in a book authored by his Chief of Operations at MNF(I). See Major-General Jim Molan, Running the War in Iraq, 144.

^22. For more detail, see Ucko, ‘Counterinsurgency after Afghanistan’, 5–6.

^23.Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro. ‘Testing the Surge’, 17–18.

^24. Seventy-five percent ‘of Baghdad IDP [internally displaced persons]… would like to return to their places of origin’ most often because of ‘improved security’. See International Organization for Migration, ‘Baghdad Governorate Profile July 2009’, 5–7.

^25.International Crisis Group, Iraq after the Surge I, i. See Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro, ‘Testing the Surge’, for a good initial take on micro-level dynamics during the surge.

^26.Ollivant, Countering the New Orthodoxy, 2.

^27. Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro, ‘Testing the Surge’, 25.

^28. Ibid., 26.

^29.Baker et al., The Iraqi Study Group Report, 15.

^30.Department of Defense, Measuring Stability in Iraq.

^31. Ibid.

^32. See Ricks, The Gamble, Chapter 7.

^33. See Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars.

^34.Schneller, ‘Do Surges Work?’, 152–3.