Reflecting on Neo-COIN and the Global Insurgency, Part I.
Read a very interesting theoretical paper critiquing the merits of “Neo-Classical COIN” contrasted with the concept of “Global Insurgency” by Dr. David Martin Jones and Dr. M.L.R. Smith in The Journal of Strategic Studies, which drew a sharp rebuttal from Dr.John Nagl, the president of CNAS, and Brian M. Burton in defense of a universally applicable COIN paradigm (big hat tip to Steve Pampinella).
The papers deserve much wider circulation and I encourage you to find yourself a copy. Unfortunately, they are behind an irritating subscription wall, so we have to do this in 20th century, stone-age, fashion….
David Martin Jones* and M.L.R. Smith**. “Whose Hearts and Whose Minds? The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency”. The Journal of Strategic Studies. Vol. 33, No. 1, 81-121, February 2010.
*University of Queensland, Australia. ** King’s College London, UK.
John A. Nagl and Brian M. Burton. “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Modern Wars – A Reply to Jones and Smith. The Journal of Strategic Studies. Vol. 33, No. 1, 123-138, February 2010.
Center for New American Security (CNAS), Washington, DC, USA.
Jones and Smith are dissecting “the extraordinary renaissance of counter-insurgency thinking within the U.S. military establishment” which they argue has “produced two distinctive schools of thought about counter-insurgency”; the “neo-classical” which constructs a framework for waging COIN from the historical understanding of Maoist guerrilla warfare, and “global counterinsurgency” which is “post-maoist”, conceptual and networked rather than territorial and hierarchical and centered in the ideological turmoil or radical salafist-jihadi Islamism. Together, the two schools comprise “neo-COIN” which yields an “incoherent” and “confused and contradictory understanding” of insurgency which is rooted in a hostility and miscomprehension of Clausewitzian thought.
The breezy summary above was, by the way, a gross simplification of a forty page, heavily footnoted, academic argument, which really needs to be read in its entirety.
Jones and Smith go into considerable depth investigating the intellectual orgins of “neo-COIN” and the leading personalities who shaped the doctrine, including Nagl, Sewall, McFate, Kilcullen, Hoffman and commanding generals like Petraeus and Chiarelli.
Of the two schools, the authors find greater flaws on the neo-classical approach to COIN:
….Ultimately though, excessive deference to Maoist theories of guerrilla warfare led neo-classicism into a strategic, Iraq-centric, cul-de-sac….
….Such crude reductionism, ultimately leads to a cdrude Maoist/Counter-Maoist paradigm that assumes holding on to physical territory, no matter the cost, is the ultimate goal of any combatant. This neo-classical reductionism not only implies that any withdrawal of forces from an occupied territory represents a defeat, it also risks inducing the kind of certainties that influenced the French approach to COIN during the Algerian War with manifestly disastrous consequences
But the global insurgency school, while more accurately conceptualizing the transnational nature of the enemy in the view of Smith and Jones, is not without problems either:
However, when it comews to identifying the drivers of jihadism, global COIN theorists are surprisingly coy. Significantly, global neo-COIN writing goes to great lengths to dismiss the religious and ideological motivation for Islamist activism. Instead, it focuses upon organizational characteristics, social networks, psychological profiling, and patterns of recruitment to understand the new global threat….Like the notion of a War on Terrorism, global counter-insurgency denotes an amorphous threat, conceals hidden assumptions and obfuscates the object of the war, namely militant, ideologized Islam or Islamism.
This “negation of ideological motivation” identified by Jones and Smith in global counter-insurgency, is blamed on two sources. First, Dr. David Kilcullen, the deeply influential Australian Army officer and anthropologist who has been the COIN adviser to the Departments of State and Defense and CENTCOM, who argues for the primacy of “sociological characteristics” as drivers to jihadism; secondly, on a fear of the implications of Clausewitzian theory that causes neo-COIN advocates to purposefully “misunderstand” On War:
From a political perspective, however such neo-COIN misunderstanding is not so strange at all. McFate evidently recognizes Clausewitz’s central premise that ‘War is a continuation of political intercourse, carried on by other means’. It is this recognition though, that unsettles COIN theorists. The reluctance to attribute religious motives to jihadist action, the emphasis on post-Maoism and the dismissal of Clausewitz, all evince a profound neo-COIN discomfort with the political dimension of war. It is the politics of modern jihadi resistance that contemporary counter-insurgency theorists wish to avoid: for politics denotes complexity, particularity, ambiguity, controversy and the need to challenge or defend specific value systems.
COMMENTARY:
Smith and Jones have identified some real weaknesses in COIN theory, a useful service. However, either they commit the same error in diagnosing the inability of COIN theorists to wrestle frankly with Islamism as they accuse Kilcullen, Nagl, McFate etc. of having made and do so for the same reason, or they evince a childish understanding of politics. I lean toward the former.
The ignorance of irhabi-salafist radical religious ideas and internal debates is a very serious analytical problem for the United States. Few scholars or analysts can boast of simultaneously having fluency in critical langues, a deep understanding of Islamist theology and expertise/experience in terrorism/counter-terrorism studies. And really, to make astute judgments, you need to have a grasp on all three. Avoiding the religious ideology dimension is a serious error on the part of COIN thinkers and Smith and Jones are right to call them out on it. It would be very helpful, if COIN theorists in crafting doctrine, would avail themselves of the deep understanding of Islamism offered by a Gilles Kepel or an Olivier Roy.
That said, the religious ferment of Islamism applies more to the “professional” and not the “accidental” guerrilla. To the recruiter, ideologists, operational planner and other senior leaders of al Qaida and the Taliban and far less to the rootless cannon fodder, idle adventurers, middle-class losers, itinerant tribals and other flotsam and jetsam who compose the foot soldiers of modern jihad. Applying social network analysis or organizational theory adds a useful perspective to understanding to the mass-movement characteristics of violent Islamist groups.
That is not why Kilcullen or Nagl de-emphasize religious motivations though. It is not that COIN gurus at CNAS do not understand or are uncomfortable with political dimensions or are mystified about Islam and Islamism. That’s an absurd assessment. To the contrary, they understand politics exceptionally well. COIN advocates downplay the religious motivations of Islamist terrorists and insurgents because emphasizing them will cost COIN strategy the political support of many liberal-left Democrats in Congress whose PC ideology cannot tolerate such arguments to be heard, the facts be damned. To make such an analysis, before a group that is not overly supportive of the war to begin with, is to be tagged an “Islamophobe” or a “racist” (even though the latter insult makes no sense whatsoever).
For the same reason, academia having its own PC fetishes to an even greater degree than politicians, Smith and Jones do not specifically identify the domestic political incentives COIN advocates have for ignoring religious ideology.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Indeed. The most useful application of Clausewitzian theory is to understanding what kind of war you yourself are in. That means understanding your own political situation. As A.E. pointed out in his recent paper:
War is a direct continuation of domestic political intercourse, with all of its pettiness, contradictions, and imperfections, with the added complication of violence. It is the peculiar current political constellation that creates some of the Byzantine twistings of American COIN. For example, if the United States was ruled by one powerful political party whose world view enabled Linebacker II style bombing of Islamic radicals wherever they lurked, there would be little need to understand the subtleties of Islamic culture and politics. Complicated cultural and political understanding would be replaced by high explosive. That, however, is not the case, for good or for ill. You go to war with the politics you have, not the politics you want.
February 27th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Hi J.F.
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"Indeed. The most useful application of Clausewitzian theory is to understanding what kind of war you yourself are in. That means understanding your own political situation"
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Exactly. I found the contention that Petraeus, Nagl & co. do not understand politics because they are "dismissing" Clausewitz to be proundly weird. Few groups of military officers in US history have understood American politics as well; only Marshall -Eisenhower and maybe the antebellum clique around Winfield Scott navigated the currents of the USG more effectively than have the COINdinistas ( whose career arcs are not yet over).
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I have to attribute this argument to the distance of observing the situ from the UK/Australia and not having sufficient knowledge of how things work over here. I don’t comment much on the intricacies of the relations between the British Army and Whitehall policy because I don’t have the granular mastery of British politics and institutional culture required.
February 27th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
All too true. The reverse is also true. Many Brits have a less than subtle grasp of American politics and culture. The commonalities of language and culture often blind them to the differences. They themselves need to develop greater cultural awareness of these American COINdinistas they’re examining.
When I watched Nagl on Jon Stewart a few years back and Nagl had Stewart eating out of his hand, I decided these guys had an unusual staying power. If the difference between reading Clausewitz and living Clausewitz is the ability to get a decidedly left of center talk show host to eat out of your hand despite the fact you represent something they are fundamentally opposed to, Nagl is living the full Clausewitzian life.
It’s interesting that Nagl’s central insight emerged from conventional war. After his experience in the Gulf War, Nagl realized that the U.S. had achieved its highest level of conventional military performance and that therefore no one was going to be dumb enough to fight us in the same way Saddam did ever again.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Joseph-
"After his experience in the Gulf War, Nagl realized that the U.S. had achieved its highest level of conventional military performance"
The First Gulf War was perhaps the most "Clausewitzian" of "recent" wars. As if the nature of Arab support for Bush I’s war didn’t indicate quite different tendencies than those popularized today . . .
Haven’t read any of the papers mentioned.
Still, from my Clausewitzian perspective, the first question would be who is on the strategic defense in this war, which side has been since the beginning? The answer to that question will settle the primary power relationships.
February 28th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
"the first question would be who is on the strategic defense in this war, which side has been since the beginning?"
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KSA.
February 28th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
Were that the case, the whole Global War on Terror would be the reflection of an internal Saudi power struggle . . . interesting. Still, which side would be on the strategic defense – defense defined by Clausewitz as the side that initiates resistance?
March 1st, 2010 at 12:52 am
[…] of John Nagl and Clausewitz, Zenpundit posts on Reflecting on Neo-COIN and the Global Insurgency, Part I. There is apparently a battle between two English academics and Nagl. These furrin’ academics […]
March 1st, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Mark,Excellent criticisms, and I second Joseph Fouche’s comments.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:45 am
"Still, which side would be on the strategic defense – defense defined by Clausewitz as the side that initiates resistance?"
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Ah, my mistake. That would be the Arabs. Started on the day Bush showed "Uncle" Baldor the tactical plans for the invasion of Iraq.
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How does Clausewitz define strategic offence, the one that initiates momentum?
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:05 am
[…] asked this interesting question in a couple of Zenpundit comments: Still, from my Clausewitzian perspective, the first question […]
March 12th, 2010 at 2:50 am
"Still, which side would be on the strategic defense – defense defined by Clausewitz as the side that initiates resistance?"
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There could be a case made that the USA was the first to initiate resistance. It took a long time, because of political conditions, but some real resistance formed after 9/11.
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If Clausewitz defines strategic defense as the side that initiates resistance, then offense and defense must mean nearly the same thing, strategically, once war actually becomes something other than politics.
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One only had to look at the hands of Collin Powell to see the resistance needed to rip the roots of terrorisim out of Af/Pak, as he talked about what was going to happen to those in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, if Pakistan tried to stop us), before the invasion, and on TV.
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As resistance is defined as voltage (the energy of the potential of the Taliban) divided by the current (the US forces streaming into Afghanistan) then the resistance of the Taliban was minimal at best. And besides, they were not the ones initiating the resistance, the US was, finally.
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This goes with my understanding of war as a movement (distribution) of energy from potential, to kinetic and back again in cycles. Which also means it is probably unending.
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"COIN advocates downplay the religious motivations of Islamist terrorists and insurgents because emphasizing them will cost COIN strategy the political support of many liberal-left Democrats in Congress whose PC ideology cannot tolerate such arguments to be heard, the facts be damned."
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The COIN advocates do not only downplay the religious motivations of Islamist terrorists and insurgents because of the left. They also downplay it because of the right. While there was little harm in telling Bush it was a religious war in Iraq, Afghanistan was quite different. Iraq represented many fronts with gaps to cross, but Afghanistan is a center of a religious movement without gaps.
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The COIN advocates want the center to develop into a controllable potential, not make it worst by bring-in the center-forming right of the civilian US population. COIN advocates would want the religious movement to be killed by connecting to a population influenced by the COIN advocates, not a population influenced by another religious movement.
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For the Afghan population to be influenced by another religious movement would take Modern Warfare similar that which was under-taken by the US military against the Native Americans and not COIN.
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:33 am
This was an interesting debate, thanks for highlighting it. I overcame the subscription wall and got hold of these articles. Fascinating discussion and very different from the usual assessments of COIN. I decided to leave a comment because my reactions were very different from Zen’s, whose review, from my reading, mischaracterizes the exchange (sorry, Zen). First, I didn’t detect in the Smith/Jones’s article that they were criticizing neo-classical COIN more than global COIN. Clearly they had more beef with the latter, which is evident at the outset in the main title. They seemed especially critical of the way that global COIN seeks to apply a Malayan COIN template on a world scale. Very good points, I thought.Also, in contrast, Nagl/Burton’s reply was pedestrian. It didn’t touch on many of the themes Smith/Jones raised, being tangential at best. If the downplaying of politics and religion in COIN thinking is due to all sorts of domestic political considerations to keep liberal Democrats onside then they should have pointed this out themselves, rather than have Zen second guessing their motives. Another minus point.Finally, the review, and some of the comments, were too much "us" (we Americans) vs. "them" (non-Americans), pointing out that they were English academics. Are they English, I don’t know? One of them is London based and the other is somewhere in Australia. What has this got to do with anything? I didn’t detect that they were antagonistic to America in anyway. Quite the reverse, they seemed to hold Nagl, McFate, Petraeus etc in high regard and had more disdain for the vacuous left-wing global COIN ideas promoted by theorists in the UK/Europe.This is why I can’t understand the review and some of the comments. Smith/Jones had some very pointed observations, yet Nagl/Burton in their reply, and Zen also to some extent, seem to mock them simply for being academics, and not American ones at that. I suggest people should give these interesting articles another read and concentrate more on what the writers have to say rather than where they come from.
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Hi Arne,
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You wrote:
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Finally, the review, and some of the comments, were too much "us" (we Americans) vs. "them" (non-Americans), pointing out that they were English academics. Are they English, I don’t know? One of them is London based and the other is somewhere in Australia. What has this got to do with anything? I didn’t detect that they were antagonistic to America in anyway.
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I’m not certain why you have inferred this.
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I "pointed out" where Smith/Jones were from because I was giving readers an academic citation. Moreover, David Kilcullen, who is or was a CNAS fellow and close collaboator with John Nagl, is himself an Australian academic. "Antagonism toward America" is absent from both their article and my review of it. Nor am I mocking them for being academics.