Has a Svengali mesmerized the Pentagon?
The war in Iraq is more than five years old and even though the end is not in sight, the lessons of the war are already being debated within the military.
National Public Radio has a story this morning about the sharpening disagreement in the US Army over how great a role counterinsurgency tactics should play. The story is prompted by an internal Pentagon report that suggests the Army is excessively focused on counterinsurgency training and neglecting conventional force capabilities such as field artillery. The report asserts that 90 percent of artillery units are "unqualified to fire artillery accurately."
We have of course paid a great deal of attention in this space to the rise of counterinsurgency doctrine within the military, since our publication in book form of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Not only is it interesting to see some Army strategists question whether the pendulum has swung too far in the COIN direction, but some of the commentary would seem to implicate our own role in bringing the COIN manual to a wider audience.
NPR reporter Guy Raz quotes a recent lecture by Gian Gentile, chairman of the history department at West Point:
Gentile, who served two tours in Iraq, is perhaps the most outspoken internal critic of what he calls the Army's dangerous obsession with counterinsurgency.
"The high public profile of the new counterinsurgency manual, combined with the perception that its use and practice with the surge in Iraq has lowered the violence, I think has had a Svengali effect on us," Gentile said during the lecture. "It's almost like we have a secret recipe for success now involving counterinsurgency and irregular war."
A five year war would, on the face of it, go quite a ways toward proving that no "secret recipe for success" has been found. But then counterinsurgency is always messy and slow.
Listen to the audio of the NPR story. The discussion will undoubtedly continue at the Small Wars Journal blog.
Comments
Yes it has, although I would define your term 'the Pentagon' to more specifically imply the American Army.
Consider the paradoxes of the COIN manual in the first chapter. They are so clear and articulate, so easy to understand in their simplicity, so clever in their formulations that they make counterinsurgency seem simple and easy to accomplish in a place like Iraq. But what if counterinsurgency in Iraq--a country that is much more than a counterinsurgency, a country that is racked by a multi-faceted civil war--is impossible? The Svengali-like hypnosis by the manual and its paradoxes makes the Sisyphean attempt at doing counterinsurgency in Iraq appear possible. It is almost like we have convinced folks that it is possible for man to jump off of a cliff and fly if the right precepts are followed.
FM 3-24 that your Press published and provided wide public dissemination for is actually narrowly conceived in terms of its theoretical premise. It is essentially built on the back of Galula's population-centric theory of counterinsurgency and exclusive of other theoretical bases; like CE Calwell's enemy-centric theory. Now I understand all of the debates that were had about which one to go with etc. But the fact of the matter is that FM 3-24 has pushed the American Army into dogmatism. We lack the creative ability to think clearly about future wars and conflicts.
For example, a number of leading counterinsurgency practitioners in the US Army like Colonel Pete Mansoor have stated in so many words that in any counterinsurgency the "people" are always the prize, or what the American Army calls the center of gravity.
Why does that have to always be the case?
And in turning this population-centric theory into principle we derive a certain law in COIN that the people must always be protected; from there we derive the dogmatic tactical method of requiring large numbers of boots on the ground establishing Galula-like dispersed positions throughout a given area. This approach might--might--be correct in some cases, but certainly not all. Unfortunately, because we have become mesmerized by our new doctrine we are unable to think otherwise.
Ironically by focusing America's counterinsurgency theory on the "people" we have become like the early 20th century air power theorist Douhet. He wanted to avoid another World War I in the trenches by going to what he saw as the heart of the matter, the enemy population. In this way for Douhet, the people would crumble quickly through air attack and the war would be over much more quickly because large ground battles would be avoided. But as history showed, the opposite was the case where millions and millions of people were killed by airpower in war during the 20th Century. In the case of American counterinsurgency theory, by focusing on the people as the center of gravity and thereby deriving an operational and tactical method requiring large number of boots on the ground trying to "protect" them we may, sadly, be killing more than we might be saving.
gentile
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May 7, 2008 06:53 AM