Bandwagonistas: rhetorical re-description, strategic choice and the politics of counter-insurgency

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore how a particular narrative focused on population-centric counterinsurgency shaped American strategy during the Autumn 2009 Presidential review on Afghanistan, examine the narrative's genealogy and suggest weaknesses and inconsistencies that exist within it. More precisely our ambition is to show how through a process of ‘rhetorical re-description’ this narrative has come to dominate contemporary American strategic discourse. We argue that in order to promote and legitimate their case, a contemporary ‘COIN Lobby’ of influential warrior scholars, academics and commentators utilizes select historical interpretations of counterinsurgency and limits discussion of COIN to what they consider to be failures in implementation. As a result, it has become very difficult for other ways of conceptualizing the counterinsurgency problem to emerge into the policy debate.

Keywords:

• Surge
• counterinsurgency
• FM 3-24
• COIN lobby
• rhetorical re-description
• population-centric
• Afghanistan

Notes

 1. Bandwagonista is a play on the phrase COINDINISTA, the term used to describe a number of influential warrior scholars, academics and commentators who have been involved in developing the US counterinsurgency Field Manual 3–24 and shaping US counter-insurgency policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, see http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/30/the_coindinistas.

 2. Tully, ‘The Pen is a Mighty Sword', 7–25.

 3. This shortcoming is evident in FM 3–24. According to one criticism: ‘The new doctrine assumes a close alignment of interests between the United States and its host government: The manual assumes that our role is to enable the host government to realize its own best interest by making itself into a legitimate defender of all its citizens’ well-being … But if local leaders put self-interest ahead of public interest and rank currying favor with local elites above economic development or broad political legitimacy, then unconditional aid will often be misdirected and governing legitimacy sacrificed in favor of short-term personal expediency.' Biddle, ‘Is It Worth It?’.

 4. This definition is taken from Judith Butler and quoted in Colwell, ‘Deleuze and Foucault’.

 5. Skinner, ‘Rhetoric and Conceptual Change’, 62.

 6. Skinner, ‘Rhetoric and Conceptual Change’, 66–7.

 7. Austin, Philosophical Papers, 220–222.

 8. The role of ‘intellectuals’ and other policy experts in developing and sanctioning the counter-insurgency strategy and techniques of the Vietnam-era has achieved a good deal of scholarly attention. For an overview of RAND research on counter-insurgency during this period, see: Long, On “other war”. However, for a more general overview of American intellectuals' relationship with policymakers during this period, see: Kuklick, Blind Oracles; Marquis, “The Other Warriors'; Gilman, Mandarins of the Future. Other important works which expound on this theme include: Clemis, ‘Crafting non-kinetic warfare’; Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy, 185–205; Deitchman, The Best-laid Schemes. For a history of Michigan State University's various programs in South Vietnam, including its police assistance program, see: Ernst, Forging a Fateful Alliance.

 9. See for example, Gonzalez, American Counter-insurgency; Network of Concerned Anthropologists, The Counter-Counter-insurgency Manual.

10. Rempe, ‘An American Trojan horse?’.

11. The Eisenhower administration had pursued a number of similar programs within a global Cold War paradigm. What made the efforts of the Kennedy administration different was the way in which development was linked to the theoretical construct of Modernization Theory. For more on this see, Birtle, US Army Counter-insurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976, 224; Latham, Modernization as Ideology; Maechling, ‘Insurgency and Counter-insurgency’, 32.

12. The classic and influential work explicating this view is: Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth.

13. Quoted from a 1959 speech by sociologist Edward Shils found in Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 1.

14. Milne, America's Rasputin, 87–89; Protheroe, ‘Limiting America's Engagement’; Currey, Edward Lansdale, 218–219, 259–282. It should be noted that although Rostow was initially content to support a limited US advisory presence as the most effective means of waging counter-insurgency, he also later supported bombing North Vietnam. His advocacy for bombing can be attributed to his idea, also known as the ‘Rostow thesis’, that the US military needed to target the external support for insurgency. (Milne, America's Rasputin, 134–157) Similarly, his October 1961 proposal to send 25,000 South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) troops to South Vietnam was intended solely to protect the borders from infiltration. (96).

15. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Vol. I, 620.

16. Historian Russell F. Weigley writes that: ‘When the United States felt obliged to assist a state threatened by Communist subversion and guerrillas, Kennedy and McNamara believed, it would not be wise to respond by dispatching large numbers of American troops’. See, Weigley, History of the United States Army, 542.

17. Rosenau, US Internal Security Assistance to South Vietnam; For a more general study on this topic, see: Kuzmarov, ‘Modernizing Repression’.

18. National Security Action Memorandum No. 182. ‘Counter-insurgency Doctrine’. 24 August 1962. The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Vol. 2, 689.

19. US Overseas Internal Defense Policy, 23.

20. A collection of documents detailing Special Group (CI) correspondence can be found in: Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Vol. VIII, 253–257, 305–307, 352–355, 464–467, 494–497.

21. Birtle, US Army Counter-insurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 227.

22. Freedman, Kennedy's Wars, 289–290.

23. Currey, Edward Lansdale, 229; Quote can be found in: Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, 133.

24. For a description of the use of police forces in South Vietnam and the turf war between those sensitive to Modernization Theory and those in favor of a more conventional military response see also Shaw, ‘Policemen versus Soldiers', 62. See also Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, 131.

25. Two classic studies dealing with the US Army in this regard are: Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam; Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.

26. A ‘civilian’ view of the consequences of over-militarization can be found in: Komer, Bureaucracy at War, 41–52. See also Krepinevich The Army and Vietnam and Nagl, Learning to eat Soup with a Knife for details about the way cultural factors influenced US Army performance.

27. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold War Crises, 133.

28. The CORDS program was initiated in 1967.

29. We more formally define the nature of the COIN Lobby in section 3 of this paper.

30. Contrary to the rhetorical thrust of his title, Mack argues that the asymmetric nature of COIN produces a strategic context in which big nations lose small wars because of domestic pressure. See Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars?. An overview of other prominent arguments on this topic can be found in: Record, ‘Why the Strong Lose’.

31. See for instance: Nagl, Learning to eat Soup with a Knife, 151–181.

32. Nagl, Learning to eat Soup with a Knife, preface.

33. It has been argued that the ‘intellectual’ underpinnings of the eventual shift in priorities towards ‘pacification’ can be found in the March 1966 Army report entitled ‘A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam’ (PROVN). For instance, see: Sorley, ‘To Change a War’. A contrary view that emphasizes Westmoreland's ‘search and destroy’ strategy as being integral to counter-insurgency can be found in: Birtle, ‘PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians’.

34. For an overview of the historiographical debates dealing with this period, with specific focus on historians’ views of the ‘hearts and minds’ emphasis, see: Hess, Vietnam: Explaining America's Lost War, 112–131.

35. Leaving aside the many critical portrayals of the Phoenix Program, even the more positive ones still paint a picture of a very deadly program. For one recent study, see: Rosenau and Long, The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counter-insurgency. As this study notes, ‘According to the CIA, anti-infrastructure operations – including those carried out by the PRUs, the National Police, and allied conventional military units – were responsible for capturing, killing, or persuading to defect (“neutralizing” in the somewhat sinister language of the time) more than 80,000 cadres during 1968–1972’ (13). In a curious omission, FM 3–24 does not mention the Phoenix Program at all in its generally positive treatment of CORDS, which it describes as ‘a useful model to consider for other COIN operations’ (74–75). As an example of dubious scholarship on this issue, it is interesting to note that David Kilcullen has called for a ‘Global Phoenix Program’ (40) in the 30 November 2004 version of his ‘Countering Global Insurgency’ article which is posted to the Small Wars Journal website, and can be found at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen.pdf. In this version, he refers to the Phoenix Program as ‘unfairly maligned (but highly effective)’ and that ‘Contrary to popular mythology, this was largely a civilian aid and development program, supported by targeted military pacification operations and intelligence activity to disrupt the Viet Cong Infrastructure’. By contrast, in his peer-reviewed Journal of Strategic Studies article of the same name, which was published in August 2005, the term ‘Phoenix’ has been replaced by ‘CORDS’ (611). Thus, he calls for a ‘Global CORDS Program’. His only source for this sympathetic portrayal of Phoenix and CORDS, which he describes as providing a ‘detailed discussion’ (617) is a 1995 paper by Steven Metz entitled Counter-insurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American Capability, which not only makes no reference at all to the Phoenix Program, but makes only the following minor and negative reference to the value of CORDS: ‘The Viet Cong political infrastructure was too entrenched, the South Vietnamese regime too corrupt and illegitimate, and the American public too alienated to win the conflict. And even CORDS could not substitute for coherent counter-insurgency strategy’, Metz, Counter-insurgency, 9.

36. In contrast to the narrative of successful US pacification efforts in South Vietnam, it has also been argued that the ultimate reason for the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975, had less to do with the cut-off of US supplies, and more to do with the fact that South Vietnam had not actually been pacified in the first place. According to this view, ‘Pacification, as a political-military strategy aimed at both the people and the adversary, had to ultimately be judged on its ability to foster a political community in South Vietnam capable of mobilizing the people advantageously into the political process and ultimately immunizing the society against communist subversion … Saigon lost the war because it could not build a political community in South Vietnam’. See: Grinter, ‘How They Lost’, 1116–7.

37. There is also a similar absence in the current discourse of any interest in examining the counter-insurgency methods employed by the Iraqi or Afghan security forces. For instance, it is a common complaint heard among Afghans that they need protection not from the Taliban, but rather from the Afghan police. Likewise, there have been numerous reports of abuses by Iraqi security forces, none of which figure into the ‘population-centric’ narrative of the Iraq surge.

38. This population-based quantitative approach is very different from the insurgent-based approach used in Vietnam where it had become ‘an accepted rule of thumb that … there must be 8 to 15 counterinsurgents for every guerilla put into the field if one wishes to go from a not-losing situation to one that will produce victory by attrition’. Fall, Vietnam Witness, 336–7.

39. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, keeping the large US military presence sustained has required an enormous logistical chain that utilizes the road network. In both cases, insurgents have placed considerable emphasis on roadside bombs. Countering roadside bombs requires increased protection for convoys which creates additional problems and raises costs. In Afghanistan, for instance, keeping US forces supplied often requires paying off warlords, and in some cases, the Taliban.

40. Shafer, Deadly Paradigms.

41. Shafer, ‘The Unlearned Lessons of Counter-insurgency’, 75.

42. To take the example of alignment of interests between the US and the host nation government, though not referring to Shafer's argument directly, Biddle's critique of FM 3-24 similarly notes that ‘the manual assumes that the role of the United States is to support and defend a threatened government that has a presumptive claim to legitimacy. It may be necessary to persuade that government to reform in order to strengthen this claim to legitimacy, but the manual presupposes a powerful alignment of interest between the United States and the host government’. See: Isaac, ‘Review Symposium’, 348.

43. Shafer, The Unlearned Lessons, 60–1.

44. Kilcullen, Accidental Guerilla.

45. Kilcullen, Accidental Guerilla, 267–8.

46. See cables prepared by US Ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry in November 2009 dealing with US strategy options in Afghanistan, Eikenberry, ‘Ambassador Eikenberry's Cables on U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan’.

47. Abrashi, ‘Petraeus: Afghan Tribes Needed to Fight Militants’.

48. Long, Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, 1.

49. Tully, ‘The Pen is a Mighty Sword’, 10–11.

50. Due to limited information, this study avoids any examination of Congressional staffers in advancing particular views, such as William S. Lind's promotion of maneuver warfare in the 1980s while serving as a Senate staffer. Unlike the Congressional Military Reform Caucus of that period, in which the legislature played a highly visible role in the US defense debate, no similar group exists today. For more information on the military reform movement, see Wheeler and Korb, Military Reform, 17–38.

51. It is claimed that the politics of this group is bi-partisan. See Luban and Lobe, ‘Neocon Ideologues Launch New Foreign Policy Group’; Bender, ‘Husband and Wife Take Stage in Debate on Afghanistan’; Lozada, ‘The “It” Think Tank’.

52. The reference to ‘odd fraternity of experts’ was used by Sarah Sewall to describe the participants of a February 2006 meeting at the US Army Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas who gathered to discuss the new counter-insurgency field manual. She described them as ‘an unusual crowd of veterans of Vietnam and El Salvador, representatives of human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations, academic experts, civilian agency representatives, journalists, and active duty US and foreign military’. See: Sewall, ‘Modernizing U.S. Counter-insurgency Practice’, 103.

53. According to Petraeus, ‘In the fall of 2006, AEI scholars helped develop the concept for what came to be known as “the surge.” Fred and Kim Kagan and their team, which included retired General Jack Keane, prepared a report that made the case for additional troops in Iraq … it became one of those rare think tank products that had a truly strategic impact’. Petraeus, ‘The Surge of Ideas’.

54. Ucko, The New Counter-insurgency Era, 116.

55. Gordon, ‘US Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least ’09'.

56. Ackerman, ‘So Who Were the Advisers for McChrystal's 60-Day Afghanistan Review?’.

57. Lubold and DiMascio, ‘Putting the Band Back Together’.

58. This point is highlighted by the sponsored trips provided to Michael O' Hanlon, Max Boot, and Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. The upbeat assessments can be found in the following articles: O'Hanlon, ‘Vision for Victory in Afghanistan-Part I’; Boot, ‘Give McChrystal a Fighting Chance’; Boot, Kagan and Kagan, ‘Yes, We Can’. In the case of Iraq, one of the most controversial op-eds in this regard followed a trip sponsored by Petraeus' command: O'Hanlon and Pollack, ‘A War We Just Might Win’.

59. The sort of knowledge / power nexus that we are referring to can best be seen in the way General McChrystal's command has cited academic works such as those produced by Lyall and Wilson, see: Barnes, ‘In Afghanistan, less armor may be more’. The study in question is Lyall and Wilson, ‘Rage Against the Machines’.

60. The concession is made that Special Operations Forces were retained. See Nagl, ‘Let's win the wars we're in’, 1; Mansoor, ‘From Baghdad to Kabul’.

61. For Keane reference, see: Petraeus, Amos, Nagl, Sewall, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counter-insurgency Field Manual, xiv.

62. Rotmann, Tohn, Wharton, ‘Learning Under Fire’.

63. According to John Waghelstein, the head of US counter-insurgency efforts in El Salvador in the early 1980s, ‘Security, training and advisory assistance are the keys to success in counter-insurgency and, if utilized early enough, will preclude the need for the deployment of US troops in a role for which, given our present conventional preoccupation, we are inadequately trained and doctrinally unsuited … We should not, as has generally been the case, send conventionally oriented officers to create a miniature US defense establishment’. See: Waghelstein, ‘Post-Vietnam Counter-insurgency Doctrine’. Waghelstein could have added that it was not simply a matter of inadequate resources or doctrine, in other words purely ‘military’ concerns that had made counter-insurgency ‘virtually a non-subject’, but that political considerations and public opinion also played a large part in determining the goalposts of US military intervention.

64. Research on US counter-insurgency thinking during this period can be found in: Klare and Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare: Counter-insurgency, Proinsurgency and Antiterrorism in the Eighties; Shultz, ‘The Low-Intensity Conflict Environment of the 1990s’; Downie, ‘Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine and Policy’; Sarkesian Scully, US Policy and Low-Intensity Conflict: Potentials for Military Struggles in the 1980s ; Mockaitis, ‘A new era of counter-insurgency’.

65. An interesting counterfactual here would be to suggest that if the current COIN Lobby was transplanted back in time to the early 1980s, and truly believed it was necessary to defeat the ‘insurgency’ in El Salvador, just as they do today in Afghanistan, whether they would have advocated sending tens of thousands of US troops there, or would they have preferred the relatively small-scale approach that was actually used.

66. There was considerable discussion during the Eisenhower presidency about the prospects of large-scale military intervention in Vietnam, though military leaders such as General Ridgeway were opposed on strategic grounds. For more information on senior military officers who argued against large-scale intervention, and their rationales for doing so, see: Buzzanco, Masters of War. Following the US escalation beginning in 1965, the increasing deployments to Southeast Asia forced the US Army to transfer key units from the ‘central front’ in Germany. Taking too many of these troops out of the ‘front-line’ was considered too risky, and there was also concern about sending US-based units to Vietnam that were otherwise expected as reinforcements in Europe should war erupt there. See: Trauschweizer, The Cold War US Army, 162–94.

67. Flynn, Pottinger, and Batchelor, Fixing Intel.

68. For a fuller discussion of this point, see: Michaels, ‘Agents for Stability or Chaos’.

69. The key text that examines this renewed emphasis on institutionalizing counter-insurgency is: Ucko, The New Counter-insurgency Era. Ucko dates early 2004 as the beginning of the ‘reorientation’ to counter-insurgency. See page 169. Throughout this book, Ucko uses the term ‘community’ to refer to the military and civilians who were ‘versed’ in these types of campaigns, and who led the conceptual efforts to promote counter-insurgency within the military. While the term ‘community’ provides a useful adjective, we feel the term ‘lobby’ is more appropriate to describe many of the individuals Ucko refers to given their active role in the policymaking process that we outline in this article.

70. In the case of FM 3-24, it has been argued by critics that the decision by the University of Chicago Press gave the new doctrine undue academic sanction. Likewise, in their efforts to bolster the credibility of the doctrine, proponents of FM 3-24 often note that the process of writing it was a collaborative effort between the military, academics, NGOs, etc.

71. This view was most clearly expounded by Kilcullen, see: Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’,. More recently, it has been suggested this approach be embraced by the Obama administration, see: Hoffman, ‘A Counterterrorism Strategy for the Obama Administration’. General Petraeus has also argued this point publicly, stating that ‘counterterrorism actually requires a counter-insurgency approach, not countering terrorism’. See: Petraeus, ‘Striking a Balance: A New American Security’.

72. According to one account, National Security Adviser General James Jones told US commanders in Afghanistan in late June that President Obama was reluctant to send more troops. See: Woodward, ‘Key in Afghanistan’. As an example of the concern shown by counter-insurgency advocates in response, see: O'Hanlon, ‘We Might Still Need More Troops in Afghanistan’, The Washington Examiner.

73. Three detailed accounts of the strategy review are: Kornblut, Wilson and DeYoung, ‘Obama pressed for faster surge’; Baker, ‘How Obama Came to Plan for surge in Afghanistan’; Parsons and Barnes, ‘Obama Homed in on an Afghanistan Pullout Date’. Also, see Eikenberry, ‘Ambassador Eikenberry's Cables on U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan’.

74. During a high-level meeting to discuss Afghanistan strategy options, McChrystal reportedly said that ‘no alternatives had been offered besides “the helicopter on the roof of the embassy,” a reference to the hasty American withdrawal from Saigon in 1975’. This comment came in response to Eikenberry's concern that the strategy debate was too focused on US troop levels, with little attention devoted to the risks sending more troops would have on deepening the dependence of the Afghan government on the United States. See: Landler and Zeleny, ‘Among Obama Aides’.

75. Although McChrystal had presented one high-end COIN option that would include increasing troop levels by 80,000 troops, political considerations dictated that the COIN Lobby press for a ‘middle’ way that raised the deployment by only 40,000–45,000 personnel. Throughout the course of Obama's strategy review in the Autumn of 2009, the COIN Lobby mounted a determined defence of COIN, and waged an assault on an alternative ‘counter-terrorism’ approach. The COIN Lobby would ultimately prove victorious in this policy battle. Following Obama's 1 December West Point speech outlining the new US strategy, the ‘triumph’ of the COIN Lobby was palpable. In an op-ed Eliot Cohen wrote that in his acceptance of the McChrystal formula Obama had, ‘…made his choice: COIN warfare’. See Cohen, ‘Obama's COIN Toss’. A partial list of op-eds from this period authored by members of the COIN Lobby includes: Kagan and Kagan, ‘The Cost of Dithering’; Kagan, Kagan and Dubik, ‘The Afghan Illusion’; Boot, ‘Give McChrystal a Fighting Chance’; Boot, ‘We Can't Downsize to Success in Afghanistan’; Boot, ‘There's No Substitute for Troops on the Ground’; O'Hanlon, ‘Vision for Victory in Afghanistan-Part I’; O'Hanlon, ‘Vision for Victory in Afghanistan-Part II’; O'Hanlon, ‘A Blue Line in Afghanistan’; Kagan and Kagan, ‘How Not to Defeat al Qaeda’; Brooks, ‘The Afghan Imperative’; Biddle, ‘Is There a Middle Way?’.

76. Riedel and O'Hanlon, ‘Why we can't go small in Afghanistan’.

77. Although the term ‘War on Terrorism’ fell out of official favour when the Obama administration came into office, the justification of ‘counter-terrorism’ is still provided to explain US military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. As a part of the discourse in which members of the COIN Lobby advance their case, particularly with regards to Afghanistan, references to that country returning to a pre-9/11 Al Qaeda sanctuary are often invoked. For instance, according to General Petraeus: ‘A comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy is what is required to keep Afghanistan from becoming once again a sanctuary for transnational extremists as it was prior to 9/11’. Petraeus, ‘Striking a Balance: A New American Security’, 2009.

78. Biden's notion of a ‘counter-terrorism’ approach evolved considerably during this period. Initially, it was reported Biden favoured a drawdown of US force levels, concentrating on special forces, drone attacks, and advising the Afghan security forces. Subsequently, Biden became associated with the ‘minimal’ option to increase US force levels by 10,000–15,000 troops. However, as this still represented a defeat for the COIN Lobby, who backed McChrystal's plan for some 40,000 troops, Biden's plan continued to be derided as a ‘counter-terrorism’ approach, whereas they argued a population-centric counter-insurgency strategy was what was required. For examples of this criticism, see: Boot, ‘Give McChrystal a Fighting Chance’; or, Boot, ‘We Can't Downsize to Success in Afghanistan’.

79. It is interesting to note that in response to Obama's March decision to send ‘only’ 21,000 additional US troops, there was no discussion of this being a ‘counter-terrorism’ approach, nor did any members of the COIN Lobby criticize this policy using the term ‘counter-terrorism’ in a derogatory way. Rather, they discussed it in terms of a ‘counter-insurgency’, with the reservation that more troops would probably be required later.

80. In critiquing FM 3-24, Stephen Biddle makes a brief reference to a debate over ‘the comparative merits of waging COIN with large conventional forces as opposed to small commando detachments (the manual mostly concerns the former)’, but provides no further elaboration. See: Isaac, ‘Review Symposium’, 347.

81. The drone attacks in Pakistan have come under attack by some members of the COIN Lobby who argue that it reflects an enemy-centric or counter-terrorism approach, in which too many civilians are killed, thereby alienating the local population, rather than protecting them. For an elaboration of this argument, see: Kilcullen and Exum, ‘Death from Above, Outrage Down Below’; Exum, Fick, Humayun and Kilcullen, Triage: The Next Twelve months in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

82. We do not suggest that cases of small-scale COIN are nowhere to be found in the discourse of the COIN Lobby, but rather that fundamental questions about how these cases can serve as alternative models to large-scale COIN, particularly in relation to force levels, are never raised. An example of this can be found in: Boot and Bennett, ‘Treading Softly in the Philippines’. In this article, the authors describe the Philippines case as a ‘tiny success story in Southeast Asia that may offer a more apt template than either Iraq or Afghanistan for fighting extremists in many corners of the world’. Yet they then go on to dismiss this case's relevance for Iraq and Afghanistan, saying that it ‘cannot be replicated everywhere’ by arguing that ‘To make this approach work requires having capable partners in the local security forces’. According to this logic, as long as the host nation has ‘capable partners in the local security forces’, then the US can adopt a small-scale approach, but there is no further mention of what qualifies as being a ‘capable partner’. Nevertheless, it is revealing that this is the sole criteria that is offered by which to choose between large-scale and small-scale COIN.

83. A classic example of this narrative can be found in: Kagan, The Surge. See also: Boot, ‘Déjà vu in Kabul’.

84. According to one RAND study, ‘the central improvements in security have resulted from fractures between insurgent groups rather than a major change in US operations’. See: Long, Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, 26. For a dissenting critique of the surge, Stephen Biddle undermines the narrative's claims about the centrality of additional forces and ‘population security’ tactics in the reduction of violence. As he notes: ‘Nor is the CLC (Concerned Local Citizens) phenomenon that has been so instrumental in the current reduction of violence chiefly a product of the hearts-and-minds logic at the root of the manual. The availability of more US troops to provide population defense was certainly important, and this emphasis on population security is clearly consistent with the manual's prescriptions. But the surge itself was far too small to secure all of threatened Iraq in itself, and cannot in itself account for the growth in negotiated ceasefires. At least as central to the latter was a dramatic change in Sunnis’ perceived military prospects following their defeats in the wave of sectarian violence after the February 2006 bombing of the Askariya Mosque'. Biddle goes on to claim that the ‘strategic interest calculus of the Sunni insurgency’ also underwent a change due to the brutality of their ‘erstwhile Al Qaeda allies’. Moreover, Biddle stresses that the reduction in violence ‘hardly represents the winning of Sunni hearts and minds by the Shiite government through the provision of services and government security’. See: Isaac, ‘Review Symposium’, 349–50. Despite these reservations about the ‘surge’ narrative, Biddle still believes it is necessary to pursue a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan. A detailed explanation of his reasoning can be found in: Biddle, ‘Is it Worth it?’.

85. There is little discussion of the increased use of airstrikes during this period, ‘often in densely populated areas’. See: Londoño and Paley, ‘In Iraq, a Surge in US Airstrikes’.

86. ‘Petraeus: Iraq-Style Surge Wouldn't Work in Afghanistan’.

87. According to one report, the ‘Petraeus Doctrine’ simply refers to FM 3–24. See: Sennott, ‘The Petraeus doctrine’.

88. Wright and Reese, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign, 125–6.

89. Wright and Reese, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign, 126; Grossman, ‘Measuring Casey's progress’; Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 392–4.

90. Ricks, ‘US Counter-insurgency Academy Giving Officers a New Mind-Set’.

91. The ‘consensus’ view among US political elites, as espoused in the Iraq Study Group report, provided a number of arguments against adding more US troops. See: Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report.

92. For a detailed description of the reasons for McKiernan's dismissal, see: Chandrasekaran, ‘Pentagon Worries Led to Command Change’.

93. Praise for McKiernan can be found in: Nagl, ‘Surge in Afghanistan Can Work’; Boot, Kagan and Kagan, ‘Yes, We Can’.

94. O'Hanlon, ‘Playing for Keeps’.

95. Exum, ‘McKiernan Out, McChrystal In’; Kilcullen, ‘For Answers to the Afghanistan-Pakistan Conflict, ask: what Would Curzon Do?’.

96. Boot, ‘Obama's Right on Target in Afghanistan’.

97. Kolko, Anatomy of a War, 145.