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I very much  like the turn toward the publication of short interviews with experts occurring of late at SWJ BLog, for example the COIN series by FP’s Octavian Manea. To toot my own horn for a moment, I did an early one for SWJ when I interviewed Tom Barnett.

There are two new ones up right now that I recommend:

Octavian Manea – Thinking Critically about COIN and Creatively about Strategy and War An Interview with Colonel Gian Gentile

Q: To what extent should Algeria be a warning for present?

A: The warning it should provide is that you should never think that improved tactics, whether it is a conventional or a counterinsurgency war, can rescue a failed strategy or policy. Sun Tzu offers one of the most profound statements on the relationship between tactics and strategy: Strategy without tactics is the slow road to victory, but tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Another historical example comes to mind. The German army up to a certain point in WWII was arguably one of the finest tactically fighting armies in history. But it lost. The warning is to be careful how much faith you place in the idea that better tactics can save a failed strategy or policy (or in the case of the Vietnam War – better tactics rescuing a war that was unwinnable in the first place)

Mike Few –A Conversation with Dr. Douglas Porch Relooking French Encounters in Irregular Warfare in the 19th Century

A:  Alas, Arquilla’s representation of these incidents as primitive versions of modern concepts are a stretch, when not total misrepresentations. At worst, his examples are lifted from context, include material factual inaccuracies, and misconstrue reasons for French “success.” (The “successes” themselves are debatable.) Finally, Arquilla perpetuates the fundamental COINdanista heresies that tactics can rescue flawed policy and defective strategy, while “modernizing” Western occupations will be perceived as “liberation” by indigenous societies. I will take each of Arquilla’s examples in turn to explain their context, in the process illustrating why an incomplete history can lead to misleading results.

Under Suchet, Aragon did in fact enjoy the reputation as the most pacified Spanish province in Spain. But Suchet’s achievement was temporary, contingent and a “success” only when contrasted with the overall catastrophic outcome of Napoleon’s Spanish project. Aragon and the sliver of bordering Catalonia over which Suchet had charge only shines in context: The French totally lost the narrative in Spain. Napoleon’s deposition and imprisonment of the Bourbon Ferdinand VII — whom he replaced with his brother Joseph Bonaparte in 1808 — established a government regarded as illegitimate, not only in Spain, but in Europe and Latin America as well. The obligation imposed by the Napoleon that the Spaniards pay the costs of occupation meant high taxes and requisitions of Church lands. “Modern” French secular ideas taken from the French Revolution were an affront to the values of conservative Spaniards, who were horrified that Napoleon had imprisoned two Popes and annexed the Papal States to the Roman Republic. The fact that Napoleon was unable to vanquish Great Britain, and the presence

Kudos to Bill and Dave! Keep’em coming!

Remember this much ridiculed visual monstrosity?:

Excessively complex representations, much less the bureaucratic systems in practice, are poor vehicles for efficient communication of strategic conceptualizations to the uninformed – such as those downstream who must labor to execute such designs. Or those targeted by them for help or harm.  In addition to the difficulty in ascertaining prioritization, the unnaturally rigid complexity of the bureaucracy generally prevents an efficient focus of the system’s resources and latent power. The system gets in it’s own way while eating ever growing amounts of resources to produce less and less, leading to paralysis and collapse.

Does it have to?

Here’s an interesting, very brief take on analytical simplification from a natural scientist and network theorist Dr. Eric Berlow on how to cull simplification – and thus an advantage – out of complex systems by applying an ecological paradigm.

Cognitive simplification will be a critical strategic tool in the 21st century.

An important announcement from my colleague, Lexington Green:

Lexington Green – (1) RESTREPO Monday, 11/29/10 at 9PM ET/PT; (2) Maj.Gen. Scales on Small Unit Dominance

This is the television premier of this extraordinarily film. I wrote about seeing this film here.

Restrepo chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, Restrepo, named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: The cameras never leave the valley; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 94-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.

I highly recommend this film to all of our readers.

An information page for Restrepo is here, including video.

RESTREPO, an award winning documentary, was based on (or more precisely, closely related to) the book WAR by Sebastian Junger, which told the story of the war against the Taliban in the Korengal Valley, waged by the soldiers of the 2nd Platoon of Battle Company.

I previously reviewed WAR here and the movie RESTREPO here.

At SWJ Blog:

Octavian Manea – Pros and cons on Galula model

In response to the interest raised on the relevance of the Galula model for understanding and dealing with today’s insurgencies, I conducted a brief inquiry with key experts on the topic – Peter Mansoor, Steven Metz, David Betz, and Alex Marshall.

Dr. Peter Mansoor

The Galula model applies in those cases where the population of a country is more concerned about the effectiveness and legitimacy of its government than in its sectarian or ethnic make-up. “Classic” counterinsurgency efforts to improve the legitimacy of a government are then operative. In those cases where sectarian or ethnic identity trumps other factors (e.g., Sri Lanka or Chechnya), then protecting the people will avail the counterinsurgent little in the way of gaining their trust and confidence. In these cases, other strategic or operational approaches need to be considered….

Dr. Steven Metz

To me, the Cold War/Maoist model of insurgency applied in situations where new segments of a society were becoming politically aware or mobilized and thus made demands on the state which it could not fulfill. These demands were both tangible–infrastructure, security, education–and intangible (a sense of identity). That’s why I think it has very little applicability to current insurgencies. Granted current insurgencies attempt to emulate the Maoist strategy because it worked in the past, but I think this will lead to failure.

Dr. David Betz

The work of the French officer David Galula was clearly very influential on the thinking of the authors of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency. There is certainly a lot to like. For one thing, his book Counterinsurgency Warfare is less than 150 pages long which makes it an easy read-four cups of tea and a Sunday afternoon will get you through it. For another, it’s written in a very aphoristic style which is highly memorable. So if you’re trying to get across to a large number of people a number of ‘best practices’ or paradoxes of COIN then Galula is a very good assigned reading. The truth is though that most COIN best practice would fit on a bumper sticker. In fact the new UK Field Manual on COIN comes with a laminated credit card sized aide memoire on one side of which are printed the principles of COIN and on the other ISAF’s game plan for stabilizing Afghanistan. I’m not criticizing-I think it’s a handy thing; my point is rather that Galula and his interpreters sometimes sound a bit like Kipling’s ‘Just So’ stories. In practice, it’s complicated, as one sees in Galula too if you read his longer, messier, more ambiguous and more rewarding book Pacification in Algeria. Anyway, to get to the point I have three main reservations about Galula…..

Dr. Alex Marshall

My issue with the Maoist Paradigm is really two-fold.

My first reservation, as a historian, is that we lack a definitive English-language study of Maoist insurgency itself beyond some fairly stereotyped notions of a three-stage or five-stage revolutionary process (from political agitation to guerrilla conflict to regular warfare). Galula and Thompson were great generalizers, but one can scarcely call their work proper historical studies-their general view was that Maoist-style insurgencies involved a degree of mass brainwashing for example. We possess some interesting case studies of how Maoist mobilization worked in practice on the ground, in individual villages or Shanghai for example, but there is so much more that could be done. Thus Western writing during the Cold War in general generated a shorthand stereotype, when in reality insurgency practice was often more diverse. The reason was simple I suggest-most successful insurgents aren’t particularly pithy writers (Guevara and Mao were exceptions), most unsuccessful ones are very quickly dead.

My second concern is more overarching however. The majority of discourse on COIN doesn’t take into account the strategic context, remaining locked into the operational level instead…..

Read the whole thing here.

A very productive piece by Manea and the gents above. Galula’s historiographic importance in COIN should be undisputed and his contribution to theory acknowledged and respected. Application of Galula’s framework (or, really, anybody’s) for understanding COIN, in analyzing insurgencies should be used cautiously or lightly until there is enough of an emprical understanding of the structure and motivations of the insurgents and the political deficiencies of the state, to see to what extent the model fits, before the operational assumptions of a military bureaucracy and theater command harden into place.

Lacking the reliable contingency of a superpower patron on an ideological crusade in the 21st century to impose a stamp of identity and tactics on it’s proxies, insurgencies are likely to be as diverse as La Familia is from FARC, the Taliban or the Real IRA.

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice

SWJ Blog has been featuring Octavian Manea talking to COIN experts about counterinsurgency godfather David Galula:

Interview with Dr. John Nagl

“Counterinsurgencies are after all learning competitions.”

What is the legacy of David Galula for US Counterinsurgency doctrine? Is he an intellectual father?

The most important thinker in the field is probably Mao whose doctrine of insurgency understood that insurgency is not a component or a precursor of conventional war but could by itself accomplish military objectives. The greatest thinker in my eyes in COIN remains David Galula who has the enormous advantage of having studied and seen the evolution of insurgency in France during WW2, then spending a great deal of time in Asia, and really having thought through the problem for more than a decade before he practiced COIN himself for a number of years. His book is probably the single biggest influence on FM 3-24, the COIN Field Manual. David Galula is the best COIN theoretician as Kennan was for containment.

Interview with Dr. David Ucko

What was the role of David Galula in shaping the mind of the US Army or the Army Concept? Could we see him as an intellectual founding father? And what specific beliefs do you have in mind when you assess his role in shaping the organizational culture of the US military?

As certain individuals and groups within the US military again became interested in counterinsurgency, this time as a result of the persistent violence in ‘post-war’ Iraq, one of the more immediate reference points for how to understand this type of political violence were the scholars and theorists who had marked the US military’s previous ‘counterinsurgency eras’, during the 1960s primarily, but also during the 1980s. In the former camp, the thinkers of the 1960s, David Galula stands as an intellectual forefather to much that was finally included in the US Army and Marine Corps’ FM 3-24 counterinsurgency field manual; indeed I believe his book is one of the three works cited in the manual’s acknowledgements. I think it is fair to say far fewer people have read than heard of Galula, and it would be an interesting study to go through his writings more carefully and see to what degree they apply to our understanding of counterinsurgency today. Nonetheless, even at a cursory level, Galula has been extremely helpful in conceptualizing some of the typical conundrums, dilemmas and complexities of these types of campaigns: the civilian capability gaps in theater; the political nature of counterinsurgency; the importance of popular support, etc. These were issues that US soldiers and Marines were confronting in Iraq and struggling to find answers to; Galula’s seminal texts were in that context helpful.

In terms of influencing US counterinsurgency doctrine, perhaps one of Galula’s main contributions is the emphasis on the political nature of these types of campaigns, and – importantly – his concomitant warning that although the fight is primarily more political than military, the military will be the most represented agency, resulting in a capability gap. Galula’s answer to this conundrum is explicitly not to restrict military forces to military duties, a notion picked up on in US doctrine, which also asks the US military to go far beyond its traditional remit where and when necessary. In a sense, this line of thinking is one of the greatest distinctions between the Army’s first interim COIN manual in 2004 and the final version in 2006: in doctrine (if not necessarily in other areas, such as force structure), Galula’s view of military forces filling civilian capability gaps had been accepted. Of course, it should be added that all of this is much easier said than done, and perhaps some of the implications of involving military forces in civilian tasks (agriculture, sewage, project management) have not been thoroughly thought through – do the armed forces have the requires skills, the training, and how much civilian capability can one realistically expect them to fill? Also, the danger with following Galula on this point is that by doing what’s necessary in the field, the armed forces may also be deterring the development of the very civilian capabilities they reluctantly usurp.

How relevant is Galula’s “Maoist Model” of insurgency anymore?

It is certainly possible for a Maoist insurgency to be successful in today’s world under the right conditions. This was proved, ironically, by Maoists in Nepal who managed to shoot their way, if not into power, into a peace agreement with other Nepalese political parties who united with the Communists to topple Nepal’s monarchy in 2006. Conditions were nearly ideal for an insurgent victory: Nepal is a poor, isolated, landlocked nation which had an unpopular and tyrannical king who was, at best, an accidental monarch; and who lacked an effective COIN force in the Royal Army. Nor was India, which passed for the Royal Nepal goverment’s foreign patron, willing to consider vigorous military intervention or even military aid sufficient to crush the rebellion. For their part, the Maoists were highly disciplined with a classic Communist hierarchical system of political-military control and were relatively-self-sufficient as a guerrilla force.

How well does such a “Maoist Model” of revolutionary warfare reflect conditions of insurgency that we see today in Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia or Yemen? Or in central Africa? 

Not very well at all.

For that matter, how relevant was “the Maoist Model” for Mao ZeDong in actual historical practice as opposed to retrospective mythologizing and theorizing that lightly sidestepped the approximately 4 million battlefield casualties inflicted on Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army? Prior to the invasion of China proper by Imperial Japan, Chiang Kai-shek’s “extermination campaigns” had a devastating effect on Mao’s forces and had Chiang been free to concentrate all his strength against the Communists, it is difficult to see how Mao’s revolution would have survived without significant Soviet intervention in China’s civil war.

If David Galula were alive today, I suspect he’d be more interested in constructing a new COIN model from empirical investigation than in honing his old one.