Perspectives on the American way of war: the U.S. experience in irregular conflict

KEYWORDS:

• Irregular warfare
• insurgency
• counterinsurgency
• terrorism
• counterterrorism

Strategically, adaptation to insurgent challenges invariably proves difficult. Not only must the precise nature of the threat be discerned, but adaptation must occur even as the conflict develops. Too often, focus is upon immediate, tactical quick-fixes rather than reform realized through correct strategy and operational art.

Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare¹

Significantly, the passage above, which spoke to Colombia’s successful effort, went on to observe that there were two salient features of the case. First, whatever the particulars of the insurgent threat, which in this instance was the criminally enabled Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, the parameters of meeting an insurgency built upon terrorism remained ‘classic’ in their essence. Correct implementation by Bogotá, therefore, resulted in success as defined by the goals laid out for the project. Second, though the strategy and its implementation, especially in its operational art, were Colombian, the Americans played a consistent and important role. All the more puzzling, therefore, was Washington’s ‘partial success’ experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Left unsaid was the obvious point: how could the United States demonstrate such a schizophrenic understanding of irregular warfare?

Therein lies the heart of this special volume: Perspectives on the American Way of War: The U.S. Experience in Irregular Conflict, with the theme emerging clearly in the contribution by Jeanne Godfroy and Liam Collins on Iraq, 2003–2011: ‘Succeeding to Fail.’ It would be difficult to craft a more apt description of recent American irregular efforts. Their tactical successes have at times reached the point of near-legend, even as their strategic drift if not outright failure has become an ongoing subject for both condemnation and speculation.² The former requires little explanation, but it is the latter that is intriguing, if for no other reason than the harsh reality that recent misfires have emerged from an institutional, professional, and academic context which regularly produces evidence that there is in fact no lack of understanding of both irregular challenges and correct responses.

Examining the past

It is difficult to note definitely in history when challenge to the existing order became a matter not merely to be crushed but to be explained and hence responded to in holistic fashion in order to preclude having to do it all over again. Certainly, the discussion was placed on the record, both extensively and in a fashion noteworthy for its acuity, as early as the American Revolution. Extensive material from that rebellion turned revolutionary war, predictably mainly in English but some also in German and French, highlighted the reality that revolt stemmed from a political opportunity structure that did not mediate grievances.³ Such specific terminology did not emerge until the 1960s, when, ironically, the United States asked itself why its cities were exploding in riots; but the point was hammered home not only in painfully accurate assessment by Patriot theorists but in their powerful campaign of information warfare. Disseminated both at home and abroad, particularly in Britain itself, Patriot positions established a dominance that London proved quite incapable of countering. To do so would have required a comprehensive focus upon political rather than military response.⁴ Turn the clock forward, and we find the United States substituting for the British.

Both London (then) and Washington (now) have mistaken violent challenge as necessitating violent response. The specialists for this – especially when matters grow beyond the local armed representatives of the state, the police – are found in the military. It is for this reason that violent politics so readily leads policymakers to summon their men at arms, whether the task at hand is containment or suppression. The soldiers, in turn, classify what they are about as warfare of an irregular type, because it is obviously not what they regularly do, which is to face their peer rivals. That certain facets of regular conflict may well be irregular (in fact, almost invariably are) has been recognized formally as early as Alexander the Great and later the Romans, doctrinally by the British (hence Americans) as early as the period of the Seven Years War and American Revolution.⁵ What security studies professionals have failed to fully recognize, even today, is that what is at issue is not warfare suffused with politics but rather the very opposite, politics suffused with warfare. The two are far from the same.

The act of rebellion is always political, but it does not rise to the level of insurgency, as per the modern usage of the term, unless the rebels become aware of the structural issues at stake. Such knowledge makes clear that it is no longer sufficient to change personalities, replacing the bad with the good, instead to create a new-order. This order requires a strategy that removes in all its facets the power that sustains the old-order. It was no accident that the American Patriots deployed a sweeping propaganda effort alongside their steadily improving deployment of force. That force, in turn, was a hybrid of what was known: regular and irregular tactical forms deployed in operational art that consistently baffled the British. If the strategy was Fabian, the design of the project was offensive. Only the reality of its intangible nature provided suitable concealment. It struck at British tangible might to the extent necessary to free up the political space required for local and regional, hence national, domination of human terrain.

In contrast, the British did what ruling powers had always done when faced with the lowers charging at their superiors: they deployed tangible force, made all the more ineffective by tactical regularity, albeit the presence of certain irregular units.⁶ This brings us to our subject in ways that are perhaps not immediately evident. It was, after all, a failure of the British to imagine new constructs of imperial association that doomed them to plunging forward in an all or nothing manner⁷; and it is just such terms of incorporation which, in the final analysis, separate nation- from empire-building. This distinction between the two lies not in the process of construction itself but rather in the end-state sought; respectively, to rule all as one through a single body of law in a unified polity, making no discrimination between the parts, or to maintain division so that the center can benefit from the exploitation of the periphery.

Reality can be messy indeed, but the process of post-Second World War decolonialization, in particular, has created a false picture of potentialities. Had any of the great empires sought actually to implement their ideologies and achieved success, we might well think differently of them. France and Algeria, for example, were not so far apart in geography but instead, as De Gaulle assessed, in their separate socio-cultural systems, with never the twain to meet. The same could be seen from Senegal to Indochina. America and the Caribbean were outliers in the British imperial approach, with London’s actions in India being more typical. There, unlike the French in their verbiage, there was not even the pretense of one system for all. The same was true of the Netherlands. The Portuguese stood out among the late-imperial Europeans for their attempt, at least at the bitter end in Africa, to embrace integration. This assessment, though, is contested, and upheaval at home left reality a hypothetical. Japan’s empire had been destroyed in the world war itself, while that of China had in some respects been given a new basis for renewal. Both these great East Asian empires are of interest here precisely because of their astonishing brutality in ensuring the construction of a certain imperial unity. Only the Chinese still, notably in Tibet and Xinjiang, and the Russians, wherever they are involved, have continued to behave as though no advance in consciousness has occurred as to what is permissible of an imperial ruling power.

If we turn, then, to classic texts of counterinsurgency, we see played out just that: how to incorporate those absorbed into the polity, be it intended as nation-state or empire. The French, for instance, claimed Algeria as a department of France but Indochina as a part of the empire. Similarly, the British saw settler-colonialists in North America and the Caribbean as fellow members of the British nation but Indians and Africans (regardless where they were) as something altogether apart (hence the riveting opening episode in the film Gandhi⁸). It was the French who led the way doctrinally, with the works of Joseph Gallieni and Hubert Lyautey the best known, even as it has been demonstrated they were in essence products of an approach pioneered by others.⁹ This approach posited simply that incorporation through development in its socioeconomic sense was a more viable strategy for governance than privileging force. Considerable debate attends reality, but this is perhaps to miss the forest for the trees. Ultimately, it was the lack of a political exit strategy that doomed French governance abroad, not the specifics of their strategy.

Ironically, the superior characteristics of French ideology in the matter have been brushed aside in irregular war studies, because it was the post-World War II British who upended their own political beliefs and fought their wars of decolonization not to keep empire but to determine the terms of reference in what they left behind. Malaya, to cite only the most celebrated example, provided a counterinsurgency model only because the British admitted political defeat from the start by announcing their intention to grant the colony its independence. In contrast, they had every intention of staying in India, yet ultimately, faced with the sheer scope of the task, simply walked away, leaving behind a staggering human catastrophe largely of their own making. The Dutch were run out of the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia); Portugal collapsed at home; Spain finally gifted to Morocco its last remaining slice of an empire which for more than three centuries had been unparalleled in extent and wealth in human history; and Japan had lost all through its lack of success in challenging its Western imperial rivals for the right to brutalize those resident in its own conquests, in the process fostering what now is three-quarters of a country of enmity in some cases, continued estrangement between Seoul and Tokyo being but one of the most prominent illustrations.

Only the Americans, with much less over which to contend, emerged less scarred. Indeed, in honoring its pre-war promise of independence to the Philippines, then remaining in truncated but ultimately salutary form to assist in quelling the so-called Huk Rebellion, Washington gained influence which was potent through some four post-World War II decades. That this was so stemmed from the emphasis of key personalities, notably Ed Lansdale (see below), upon utilizing wide-ranging, innovative approaches to support local impulse for self-governance. Lost in many discussions of the effort was its essence: a variety of political responses were implemented to deal with political challenges. Violence, for all its interesting tactical aspects, was only the enabling mechanism.

Back to the future

It is at this point that we return to this volume. Our intent is not simply to revisit well-trod ground, extracting lessons learned; instead to provide fresh examination of a transition and deepening of trends which have seen the United States increasingly diverge from the generally positive legacy illustrated by its involvement in the Huk Rebellion. The timing is certainly appropriate as the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy calls for the opposite, a shift from focusing on ‘terrorism’ as the primary concern for U.S. strategy to inter-state competition.¹⁰ Allowing for the confusion of terminology – U.S. doctrine well understands the distinction between insurgency using terrorism as method and the divorce from purported social base which produces terrorism as logic – there remains the imperative to avoid normal American ‘all or nothing’ approach as some claim animates the document. As Frank Hoffman has correctly observed, ‘The strategy does not overlook the various forms that warfare may take in the future. Peacetime competition, “gray zone” tactics, Small War or hybrid combinations are not dismissed.’¹¹

Indeed, as Max Boot so adroitly argues in his 2002 work, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, ‘If you want to see what lies in store for the armed forces in the future, you could do worse that to cast your gaze back to the past.’¹² Irregular conflict is not going away, whatever our military proclivities. What needs to be sharpened is our understanding of the phenomenon.

At the strategic level, irregular warfare is a contest of governance but not in the manner so often portrayed. Rebellion erupts from the perception, more often than not grounded in reality, that the political opportunity structure – society’s terms of incorporation and empowerment – is failing to deliver justice. This is true whether we are describing Filipinos, who sought redress by backing various communist efforts at establishing a new-order, or Nigerian Muslims who support Boko Haram, a violent radical Islamist option. The role played by tangible factors (greed and grievance) is of a piece with the intangible assessment that the existing order is failing to deliver.

Deliver what? Therein lies the rub. Simply because a particular end-state is desired does not make it proper, right, or just – the Islamic State has reminded all of that – but neither does it mean popular impulse, however misguided, can be wished away. Politicians are rarely at one with supporters, but they end up leaders, because they speak to the desires and aspirations of their potential followers. Coercion always plays a role in this process. We delude ourselves in not recognizing that it comes in any number of socioeconomic-political forms. It is into this reality that the United States has in modern history intruded, increasingly not with political approaches buttressed by self-defense but with military power enjoined to keep politics in mind as it engages in ‘warfighting.’

Irony therefore informs our title. The American way of war – which necessarily as per our particular strategic culture means the military’s approach to warfighting, regardless of level under consideration – leads and often is nearly the entirety of modern U.S. experience in irregular conflict. The category is of our own analytical making. The conflicts under consideration are irregular only in the sense that the challengers to the existing order must engage in asymmetric approaches, from strategy to tactics. To do otherwise would be squarely and foolishly to face our regular warfighting finesse. This makes them, to our mind, irregular. We have proved more than adept at responding tactically. No longer is the SAS the stuff of legend and movies, not even Delta, rather SEALS and, more controversially, drone strikes. The end is remarkably the same, however: succeeding to fail.

To engage with this reality, we begin with Craig Deare on the Mexican War. A puzzling choice if considered in its normal position, as but a minor if interesting run-up to the Civil War, with key figures experiencing their first taste of major combat, the conflict in reality was a harbinger of challenges to come. The central question should be less why America won as why the national legacy of more than three centuries of successful Spanish military effort in North America lost. The answer lies in the unrealized nation-building that followed a revolutionary experience utterly unlike our own, despite ample effort to portray the Latin American wars of independence as but the southern branch of our own war of independence. Put directly, Latin American states would have been unlikely to emerge had Napoleon’s invasion of Spain not decapitated the empire and thrust to the fore the latent questions of who was to govern and how. The decades of sorting out the matter meant a half-formed Mexico faced an expanding, assertive America, which was driven in its tactical particulars by innovative tactical leadership at the head of profoundly racist manpower. That the occupation which followed major combat provided salutary lessons learned in dealing with guerrillas rather than a Vietnam-like litany of quagmire eventuated from the conscious designs of military leadership steeped in the same Napoleonic dynamic that had produced our opponent. Winfield Scott, a student of history, saw the agony of the Spanish peninsula as a salutary admonition to achieve realizable objectives and depart rapidly before matters took on a negative life of their own as the local resistance forces mobilized. The United States chose to leave issues of state-building and governance to the Mexicans themselves, while annexing the sparsely populated (by any measure, indigenous or settler population) half of ‘Mexico,’ in reality, a particular remnant of Spanish empire.

It was a wise move, The Philippine pacification is well known, as are the so-called Banana Wars, less so our next transitional case, that of American support for Greece as treated by Andrew Novo. As neither conquest nor expansion was sought, the way forward could build upon the salutary lessons gained in successful occupation and reconstruction of nations in Europe. Those lessons, while they put on display extensive and consistent application of American power, economic and social deployed behind a military shield, were in the final instance built upon local particulars that emphasized state strengths even as the opponent and his supporters committed fatal errors. Seen by contemporaries as but part of the larger effort to rebuild Europe and swept away in salience by the emerging communist threat in Asia, the case had little impact on American approach beyond the individual level.

At the institutional level, the post-World War II years thrust forward consideration of just who was to fight these new wars, proxy or locally-inspired. Though it was this bifurcation of inspiration that was to absorb decades of national effort and profoundly distort our decision-making with respect to irregular challenges, this was to come. In the moment, the issue was combat of a new variety. Thus, it was a new organization that entered this ‘gray zone.’ The means at hand, as detailed by Dave Oakley, was provided by the Central Intelligence Organization (CIA). This resulted, from the very beginning, in an organization torn between two missions, production of intelligence and clandestine warfighting (in the most kinetic sense). That American security agencies produced no strategic as opposed to operational lessons goes almost without saying.

Lessons are the topic with which Rufus Phillips deals in his revisiting of Vietnam, a subject he knows well, both operationally and academically. A member of what was often termed simply ‘the Lansdale team,’ he has already produced a much-lauded exploration of the Vietnam conflict.¹³ Here, he revisits the essence of the Lansdale approach and why it could not be transferred from the Philippines to Vietnam. As Novo notes with Greece, the context is all-important. Lansdale, observes Phillips, understood that, but he was unable to get the system to do likewise. What was required was a political approach to nation-building. This, though, would have meant grappling with Vietnamese on their own terms and supporting their efforts to build their own new, noncommunist world. So often denigrated, noncommunist nationalism in South Vietnam is now better understood, but the moment that this matters is long gone. Reduced to its essence, as pointed out by the Nationalist Chinese advisory effort, this meant it was never enough simply to fight against something. Rather, one needed to know what one was fighting for.¹⁴

It may be assessed that a failure to appreciate this point was the greatest casualty of Vietnam. Robert Komer, as a key player, addressed the matter from an organizational angle in barbed commentary,¹⁵ but it was other perceived lessons that informed subsequent American approaches in Afghanistan and Iraq. From the beginning, it was clear that the revised American approach to irregular challenge, embodied in the so-called ‘Petraeus manual,’¹⁶ was written based upon the mistaken premise that the military, particularly the Army, had misunderstood the nature of the Vietnam War and thus failed to engage in a population-centric approach. Ignoring the parameters of conflict, though, was not the issue. Misapplication lay in the area of implementing the armed shield behind which South Vietnam could engage in nation-building with U.S. assistance. The never-resolved conundrum posed by the communist side’s main forces could not be resolved, and they could never be driven from the field to such extent as to allow the South Vietnamese to focus upon local security. By the time a proper balance between military operations and pacification was arrived at, American will was no longer there to sustain the effort.¹⁷

This was also the fate of American and allied efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Were systems diagrams of those misguided adventures to be constructed, they would appear as one with Vietnam. Only details would need to be altered as appropriate to the cases. Matt Dearing examines the misadventures of nation-building in northern Afghanistan, where a search for a foundation upon which to build the new-order has slowly sunk in the soft soil of warlordism and its attendant criminality. Jeanne Godfroy and Liam Collins delve into similar concerns with respect to Iraq. Both cases, their unique aspects notwithstanding, serve to bring home the point made earlier: Armed efforts in irregular warfare – counterinsurgency, in these cases – exist for the purpose of creating the conditions for politics to operate. Violence is a shaping mechanism, and what unfolds is first-past-the-post. The winner gets to dictate the politics that follow. As outsiders, the American role was to assist in creating a context for governance so that a handoff could occur to civil processes and local security forces. That much was understood in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington’s hubris lay in thinking today’s practitioners understood the process (and its reduction to doctrine) better than practitioners in the past.

In reality, as the articles of Dearing and Godfroy/Collins bring home powerfully, it was the same inability as outsiders to conceptualize and implement viable approaches to state-building (aka nation-building) that proved a bridge too far. That the rebels in both cases, inspired by a mix of resistance to occupation and ideology wrapped in the idiom of political Islamism, were objectively ‘on the wrong side of history’ was quite irrelevant. Rebels invariably are – but only so long as they are not victorious. Leaders, to return to the point made earlier, are not followers, and for armed politicians to mobilize followers requires conditions which demand resolution. That particular solutions proffered, whether those of the Islamic State or the Khmer Rouge, are odious is a matter for counter, but that counter can only emerge from a cause that itself is worthy of support. Legitimacy is not a zero-sum decimal but the fluid basis for mobilization in support of one political option over another. Indeed, when the state is either unwilling or unable to mediate grievances of those for whom the political opportunity structure is closed, it ceases to have legitimacy among the masses.

Where we as outsiders fit in is painfully clear. It is stated by all authors in this volume and reiterated for the recent case of Niger (and Africa writ large) by Joe Guido. What approach is to be pursued if that which is being supported is at variance with our values? Governance exists to provide the three basics sought by any population – sustenance, security, and meaning. Its particulars stem from the political opportunity structure that it embodies. Though much has been written snidely condemning ‘the liberal peace’ that is the focus of international bodies and the United States and its allies, in particular, the argument that there are ‘other options’ is spurious. At least one would hope not to see the United States openly aligning itself in support of systems as odious as those espoused by authoritarian and outright dictatorial regimes. The present political orientation of Washington has ripped loose the sheet-anchor of devotion that ties the United States to the tenets of liberal democracy, but this serves only to thrust forward the point. What strategy can emerge, asks Guido, if not only the ends but the very end-state sought are unclear? All becomes but application of tactical finesse.

Values and ideologies are the very stuff of soft-power. The willingness of partners and local populations to throw in with us stems, at a most elemental level, from shared commitment. This may be as fundamental as sustenance and security, but more often than not motivation emerges from the quest for meaning, and the fact that the mechanisms of interest aggregation and articulation embodied in liberal democracy – which is the popular will enabled but also restrained by the rule of law – are those which ultimately are sought by populations.¹⁸ Absent such partners, we as outsiders are unable to proceed, either tactically in operations or strategically in terms of crafting and implementing an approach that results in handoff and exit. Steve Miska and Sam Romano assess our failure to take this reality to heart by protecting the soft networks upon which all save the most direct kinetic action is based.

The pages above hardly make for uplifting reading. This may astonish but it does not surprise. The time is out of joint. As a nation we have become a population that has as little idea of what it wants as it does of how to get it. Small wonder, then, that in armed politics, the U.S. military has experienced what David Ucko, in the conclusion to this volume, calls ‘systems failure.’ Unable to harness means in ways appropriate to achieve ends, we have increasingly fallen back upon that which we do best, tactical action. Whether ‘nights raids’ – search and destroy for the 21st Century – or drone strikes – ‘jungle bashing’ in every way save the presence of better intelligence – the end is the same, ‘long war’ gone endless, because there is no political end-state towards which the action is directed. In this, we see strategic bankruptcy on full display.

It was neither our intention to produce such a conclusion nor to hold up U.S. inadequacy. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that there have been alternatives. We began by observing that the Colombian case achieved its more satisfying trajectory with full participation of American players.¹⁹ The same is true of cases such as Thailand (against the CPT), the Philippines (against the CPP/NPA/NDF), and Peru (against Shining Path).²⁰ El Salvador now appears less lustrous as an exemplar than it once did, but it cannot be ignored as a salutary economy of force effort that resulted in what for a time was a rather more laudable democratic polity than now extant.²¹ What such cases share is the primacy of democratic politics as strategic focus in actuality as opposed to only verbiage. In none of the cases, though, did this come immediately or in an off-the-shelf form that could achieve quick results. Controversy, too, was a constant, but all saw emergence of an end-state that allowed the U.S. role to be drawn down in a satisfactory fashion. That would seem to be a fitting counterpoint to the thrust presented here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the US government.

Notes

1. Marks, “Regaining the Initiative”.

2. Though not focused on this topic specifically, the larger issue, as presaged by its title, is treated extensively in the superb recent work by Nolan, The Allure of Battle.

3. Every political system is comprised of a structure that either speaks to and facilitates individual and group opportunity – or does not. For democratic systems, legitimacy is essential; for authoritarian systems, power is central. Intellectuals consume themselves endeavoring to theorize on and demonstrate the extent to which democracy exists through mystification and building an intangible structure of false consciousness. Gramsci remains a particular favorite of this genre, and he offers a great deal that is useful; but the vulgar Marxism that holds individuals are incapable of exercising agency due to systemic entrapment founders whenever adequate safeguards are in place to allow the exercise of free will (e.g., secret ballots, a free press, the rule of law). Benchmark original work on the political opportunity structure is Eisinger, “The Conditions of Protest Behavior,” 11–28.

4. An astute assessment can be found in Canfield, “The Futility of Force,” 62–79.

5. For superb discussion of the first, see Holt, Into the Land of Bones; for the second, Cheesman, The Auxilia of the Roman, also Meyer, The Creation, Composition; for the third, see the recent Cusick, Wellington’s Rifles.

6. Mandatory reading for both the Revolutionary War and the tactical state of the irregular art at the time is the work by the German partisan participant, Ewald, Diary of the American War; see also Ewald’s, Treatise on Partisan Warfare, which was originally published in 1785; for theoretical and operational context, see Heuser, ed., Small Wars and Insurgencies.

7. For an excellent recent treatment of the subject, see Hay, “An End to Empire”.

8. In which Gandhi is brutalized for his effrontery in claiming equal rights legally (as a British citizen) and in terms of status (he was a lawyer) when resident in Durban, South Africa; see Gandhi (Columbia, 1982); available at Amazon.

9. Best single work on both individuals and the sources of their system is Finch, A Progressive Occupation.

10. Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States, 1. Available at https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf (accessed 5 November 2018).

11. Hoffman, “Sharpening Our Military Edge”.

12. Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace, xxiv.

13. Phillips, Why Vietnam Matters.

14. For Chinese observations see A. Marks, Counterrevolution in China.

15. Komer, Bureaucracy Does its Thing.

16. Army FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency.

17. For the strategic conundrum, see Andrade, “Westmoreland was Right”; for proper balance, Andrade and Willbanks, “CORDS/Phoenix”; for nonmilitary approaches, Hunt, Pacification; for present state of knowledge on the nature of the conflict, O’Dowd, “What Kind of War is This?”

18. This would seem to be the oft-misunderstood point of Fukuyama, The End of History.

19. The most comprehensive treatment to date of what the U.S. actually provided to support the Colombian effort is Berrios, “Critical Ingredient”; for assessment of conflict outcomes at this point, see Ospina et al., “Colombia and the War-to-Peace Transition”, as well as Ospina and Marks, eds., ¿FARC: Derrota Militar y Victoria Política.

20. Originally treated in articles which appeared in Small Wars and Insurgencies, these cases were consolidated in Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam. Incorporation of expanded treatment of the U.S. role for the first case may be found in Marks, “Thailand: Anatomy of a Counterinsurgency Victory”.

21. See Ucko, “Counterinsurgency in El Salvador”.