https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8031-9262
![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Are some conventional military units better equipped to conduct counterinsurgency (COIN) operations than others? COIN theorists and practitioners disagree about mechanization’s impact on COIN effectiveness. We suggest that mechanization is not the critical determinant of COIN effectiveness. Rather, mechanization’s effects vary based on a unit’s force employment approach within local scope conditions. To test our hypothesis, we explore how mechanization impacts COIN operations in Ramadi and Basra and find that force employment is the critical determinant in COIN effectiveness. We introduce an adaptive force employment hypothesis that outlines how mechanization includes costs to exposing dismounted troops and benefits in information-sharing, conditional on local insurgent strength. This hypothesis suggests that mechanized forces provide significant benefits to counterinsurgents when clearing high strength insurgents, outweighing benefits from dismounted civilian interaction. Following successful clearance operations when government control is increased and insurgent strength is reduced, requirements for armored protection decrease while civilian tips become increasingly important to target remaining insurgents. In the hold and build stages, counterinsurgents can increasingly rely on dismounted troops.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Yuri Zhukov, James Morrow, John Ciorciari, Stephen Biddle, Max Margulies, A.J. Glubzinski, Kyle Wolfley, Hannah Smith, Antony Palocaren, Jack Farris, Sam Wilkins, John Gilliam and participants in the Conflict and Peace, Research and Development Group at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Social Sciences Research Lab at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, for helpful comments and suggestions that improved this paper. A version of this paper was presented at the 2019 NATO Operations Research and Analysis conference in Ottawa, Canada, the 2019 International Studies Association-International Security Studies Section Conference in Denver, CO, and the virtual 2021 Irregular Warfare Initiative Conference.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The insurgent violence data that support the findings of this study are openly available at the Empirical Studies of Conflict website, under the ‘ESOC Iraq Civil War Dataset (Version 3)’, at https://esoc.princeton.edu/data/esoc-iraq-civil-war-dataset-version-3, and originally cited in Eli Berman, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Joseph H. Felter, ‘Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq’, Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 4 (August 2011). https://doi.org/10.1086/661983. The U.S. and U.K. unit rotation data are available from Dr. Carrie A. Lee’s ‘Iraq Order of Battle Dataset’, upon reasonable request. The merged data combining the above two data sets and introducing the new measure on mechanization is available at the Harvard Dataverse at the following link: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/E9NX1Y
Notes
1. Cadieu, “Canadian Armor in Afghanistan,” 25.
2. Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq, 175.
3. McKinney, Elfendahl, and McMaster, “Why the US Army Needs Armor,” 129; Smith and McFarland, “Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point,” 41–52; Russell, “Innovation in War: Counterinsurgency Operations,” 595–624; Rayburn and Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War, 368; Haight, Laughlin, Bergner, “Armor: Key to the future fight”.
4. Lyall and Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines,” 67–106.
5. Cancian, U.S. Military Forces in FY2020: The Struggle to Align Forces with Strategy, 16; Congressional Budget Office, The U.S. Military’s Force Structure: A Primer, 2021 Update, 23; Cancian, “Don’t Go Too Crazy, Marine Corps”; Burgoyne and Marckwardt, “War it All Just a Dream? Revisiting ‘The Defense of Jisr-Al Doreaa’ Ten Years Later”.
6. Michaels and Ford, “Bandwagonistas: rhetorical re-description,” 363 and 375.
7. Scarinzi, “Force structure and counterinsurgency outcome,” 204–225; Caverley and Sechser, “Military Technology and the Duration of Civil Conflict,” 704–720; Smith and Toronto, “It’s all the Rage: Why Mechanization Doesn’t Explain COIN Outcomes,” 519–528.
8. Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, 2.
9. Hazelton, “The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy,” 80–113.
10. Berman and Matanock, “The Empiricists’ Insurgency,” 443–464; Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One; Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency; Berman, Felter, and Shapiro, Small Wars, Big Data, 10–18. We argue the ICM, and ECM represent force employment models at the tactical and operational levels of war. These are not distinct COIN ‘strategies’.
11. Hazelton, “The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy,” 81.
12. Ibid., 80–83.
13. Ucko, “‘The People are Revolting’: An Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency,” 41–45.
14. Lee, “Counterinsurgency Myths and Methods,” 1–5.
15. Ibid., 30–34.
16. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, 50–55.
17. For a helpful review of the ICM, see: Berman and Matanock, “The Empiricists’ Insurgency,” 443–464; Berman, Felter, and Shapiro, Small Wars, Big Data, 55–81; Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War, 7–20.
18. Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency; Barno and Bensahel, Adaptation Under Fire, 195–215.
19. Berman, Felter, and Shapiro, Small Wars, Big Data.
20. See above 14.
21. For an example of this framing, see Hazelton, “The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy,” 80–113.
22. Paul, Clarke, Grill, Dunigan, “Moving Beyond Population Centric vs. Enem,” 1019–1021.
23. Scarinzi, “Force structure and counterinsurgency outcome,” 220.
24. In the US military’s force structure, there are three distinct unit types, light infantry (dismounted troops), motorized infantry (troops mounted in wheeled vehicles) and mechanized (troops mounted in armored vehicles); see: U.S. Army, Supplemental Manual 3-90 Force Structure Reference Data; U.S. Marine Corps, MCRP 5-12D, Organization of Marine Forces.
25. Lyall and Wilson, “Rage Against the Machine,” 67–106.
26. Ibid., 91.
27. Ibid., 101. These case studies omit OIF mechanized units during the same timeframe that successfully implemented ICM tactics-like the 1st Armored Division; and OIF dismounted units that failed to adapt ICM tactics-like the 82nd Airborne Division; For 1st Armored division, see: Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise, 105–150; For the 82nd Airborne Division, see: Long, The Soul of Armies, 182.
28. The authors specify that poorly coordinated combined arms could favor rebels as “combined arms doctrines expose ineffective militaries.” Caverley and Sechser, “Military Technology and the Duration of Civil Conflict,” 708.
29. Smith and Toronto, “It’s all the Rage,” 521.
30. Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam; Combat Operations Research Group, Evaluation of US Army Mechanized and Armor Combat Operations in Vietnam; Cadieu, ‘Canadian Armor in Afghanistan,’ 25.
31. Lyall and Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines,” 68.
32. Russell, “Innovation in War,” 604–609; Smith and Toronto, “It’s All the Rage,” 521; Smith and McFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 41–52; Barno and Bensahel, Adaptation Under Fire, 174–195.
33. Barno and Bensahel, Adaptation Under Fire, 174–195; Fitzgerald, Learning to Forget, 142–45. For an alternate perspective, Long suggests conventional militaries are not well suited to adapting to COIN’s unique demands; see Long, The Soul of Armies, 170–206. We lack the space here to explore the separate but important research question of why some units successfully innovate, while others do not. For example, Zais suggests the intelligence and innovation in Battalion and Brigade Commanders played a significant role during OIF, see: Zais, “Patchwork War: Command Human Capital, and Counterinsurgency”.
34. Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era, 68–80; Russell, “Innovation in War,” 604–609.
35. Fitzgerald, Learning to Forget, 157–162.
36. Ucko, ‘“The People are Revolting,”’30.
37. Galula acknowledges the necessity of government coercive strength when he delineates between two types of counterinsurgent units: “the mobile ones fighting in a rather conventional fashion, and the static ones, staying with the population in order to protect it and to supplement the political efforts”; Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, 65.
38. ECM scholars also support sequential clear-hold-build models. Lee’s findings offer contemporary empirical support for the effectiveness of the sequential, ‘security first,’ approach in Iraq from 2004–2008.
39. Hansen, Horn, Sahel, Rift: Fault-lines of the African Jihad, 25–34. Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for pointing us to Hansen’s work and its applicability to our argument.
40. Ibid., 17–20.
41. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 89–91.
42. Ucko, ‘Beyond Clear-Hold-Build,’ 532–534; Hazelton, “The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy,” 89–93; Lee, “Counterinsurgency Myths and Methods,” 9–10. This is a point that is also recognized by many ICM advocates who note that security and services are complements, rather than substitutes: Berman, Felter, Shapiro, Small Wars, Big Data, 157–58.
43. In other research, we analyze empirical evidence which suggests that mechanized units are significantly associated with lower levels of civilian casualties during OIF. See Van Wie and Walden, “Excessive Force or Armored Restraint?”, working paper.
44. For an example of light units increasing lethality to combat high strength insurgents, see Biddle, “Allies, Airpower, and Modern Warfare,” 161–175.
45. See above 41.
46. In certain cases, where there is still a robust residual insurgent strength following clear operations, mechanized units may be preferable during the hold phase.
47. For early examples of mechanized units implementing ICM tactics, see: Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq, 105–109. Also see then COL McMaster and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiments successful adaptation of ICM tactics in Tal Afar: Rayburn The US Army in the Iraq War, Volume 1, 450.
48. Levy, Whose Life is Worth More?, 108–109.
49. Van Wie and Walden “Excessive Force or Armored Restraint?”
50. Humphreys and Jacobs, “Mixing Methods: A Bayesian Approach,” 653–673; and George, “Case Studies and Theory Development,” 191–214.
51. Berman, Shapiro, and Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds be Bought?,” 766–819; Lee, “Counterinsurgency Myths and Methods”.
52. George, “Case Studies and Theory Development,” 191–214.
53. For an overview of 1/1 AD’s deployment to Ramadi and the unit’s tactical adaptation, see Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War, Chapter 4. For other works on highlighting tactical adaptation in Ramadi, also see Fitzgerald, Learning to Forget, 157–162; Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era, 68–80.
54. Mansoor, Surge, 131; Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro, “Testing the Surge,” 23–26.
55. Fitzsimmons, Governance, Identity, and Counterinsurgency: Evidence from Ramadi and Tal Afar, 21–23; Rayburn and Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War, Volume 1, 355.
56. US Army Combat Studies Institute, “Interview with COL Sean MacFarland,” 25.
57. Ibid., 21.
58. Rayburn and Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War, 357.
59. Zais, “Patchwork War: Command Human Capital,” 53.
60. Smith and McFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 41–52. McFarland’s tactics were similar to COL H.R. McMaster and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s successful efforts to re-install Iraqi government control in Tal Afar the previous year, another prominent example of a mechanized unit succeeding in COIN.
61. Russell, “Innovation in War,” 604–609.
62. Reviewing ESOC’s data on Coalition caused civilian casualties (CIVCAS), there were 52 Coalition-caused CIVCAS incidents during 2/28ʹs 12 months in Ramadi while there were 35 during 1/1ʹs eight months in Ramadi. The similarity between both figures is surprising since 2/28 largely stayed out of Ramadi during its deployment and speaks to 1/1ʹs ‘courageous restraint’ during intense urban fighting. ESOC Data derived from: Berman, Shapiro, and Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds be Bought?” 766–819.
63. Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War, 117–18.
64. This approach is notable given Multinational Force Iraq’s directive for Coalition forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities onto large bases away from cities. See Rayburn and Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War; and Mansoor, Surge, 128.
65. SIGACTs data for this graph was compiled from Berman, Shapiro, and Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds be Bought?” 766–819. Unit rotation data was compiled from Lee, “Counterinsurgency Myths and Methods”. Mechanization data was compiled from Ryan Van Wie and Jacob Walden, “Excessive Force or Armored Restraint?”
66. U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, “Interview with COL Sean MacFarland,” 10.
67. Russell, Innovation, Transformation, and War, 114–22.
68. Smith and McFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 41–52; Deane, ‘Providing Security Force Assistance,” 80–90.
69. Smith and McFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 50–51.
70. Russell, “Innovation in War,” 604.
71. U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, “Interview with COL Sean MacFarland,” 39–41; Smith and McFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 50.
72. For additional reviews of The Surge and the importance of the Sunni Tribal Awakening, see: Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro, “Testing the Surge,” 36–40; and Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 142–145.
73. Ucko, “Lessons from Basra: The Future of British,” 142–143.
74. Rayburn and Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War, 355–360.
75. Ucko and Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis, 142, 147.
76. Ibid., 146.
77. Ripley, Operation Telic – The British, 346–347.
78. Ibid., 341.
79. Ibid.
80. Data for this graph was obtained from the same sources as above.
81. Ucko and Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis, 69. The Iraqi 14th Division replaced the Iraqi 10th Division, which was ineffective. See also Elliot and Radin, “Iraq Security Forces Order of Battle.”
82. Ucko and Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis, 69.
83. Rayburn and Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War, 360.
84. Ucko and Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis, 69.
85. Ibid., 70.
86. Ripley, Operation Telic, 346–350.
87. Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam; Combat Operations Research Group, Evaluation of US Army Mechanized; Cadieu, “Canadian Armor in Afghanistan,” 25; Caverley and Sechser, “Military Technology and the Duration.”
88. Zais, “Patchwork War: Command Human Capital.”
89. Cancian, U.S. Military Forces in FY2020, 16.
90. The U.S. Military’s Force Structure, 23; Cancian, “Don’t Go Too Crazy, Marine Corps”.
91. Burgoyne and Marckwardt, “War it All Just a Dream”; Vrolyk, “Insurgency, Not War is China’s”.
92. Zhang, “Heavyweights on the Battlefield.”
93. Pettersson, Högbladh, Öberg, “Organized violence, 1989–2019,” 589–594.
94. Berman, Felter, and Shapiro, Small Wars, Big Data, 10–17.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Ryan C. Van Wie
Ryan C. Van Wie is a U.S. Army Infantry Officer currently serving as an assistant professor of international affairs in the Social Sciences Department at the United States Military Academy. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy and earned his Master of Public Policy from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Jacob A. Walden
Jacob Walden holds a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan Political Science Department. He currently works at Bain and Company.