I've appreciated Gentile as a foil to the COINistas and I'm actually glad to have him around as an iron to forge their ideas against.
I actually agree (partially) with his point that the Army (big A) should not be completely overtaken by COIN doctrine, less they be only ready for the 'last war.'
However, here he seems to be selling his book too much. Does he fear that COIN will overtake Army doctrine in general or is he now trying to discount totally the current COIN doctrine. If it's the latter, then what is his alternative?

btw, I say David Kilcullen last night at the Priztker Military Library and when he was asked to recommend three books on counter insurgency, Galula's was #2. (Seven Pillars was the first, rolled right out of his mouth. #3 was "Managing Savagry"...look it up, it's an interesting source.)

ElamBend: There should be alternatives in the American Army’s repertoire of how it goes about dealing with problems of instability and insurgency throughout the world other than the counter-maoist, population-centric method that is essentially FM 3-24. In strategy, the population-centric method might be appropriate at times, but it should not be our only choice, yet it has become just that. Go read FM 3-24 and tell me where it gives direction on how to do counterinsurgency in any way other than nation building.

Tom: Check your history! The British did not belatedly, or after the fact, come to conclude that they, as you imply, should have done Galula in the colonies via the population centric method. In fact General Howe in 1776 very much had the “population-centric” method on his mind and sought to use more of persuasion than coercion in winning the colonists back to the Crown. The battle of Long Island is a classic example of a colonial power trying to use force only so carefully, not hurting too much, with the idea that if you hurt them too much you would alienate them further. Arguably, Howe had the chance to crush Washington’s Army at the Battle of Long Island in late August 1776 but chose to let it go because he believed that if he did crush it, such coercive measures would do more harm than good in winning the colonists back over to the Crown. In short, the British tried the population centric method in the American Revolution, at least in the early years, and it obviously did not work for them.

You are more than welcome to come up and sit in on our history classes on the American Revolution if you wish.

Well, It seems to me that "population-centric" is not well understood. It's not just trying not to hurt too much. It is more akin to what Tom quoted: "assist the good to subdue the bad" (which is also the theoretical foundations of Galula's doctrine). But, even if it is sufficiently intuitive to explain why British gen. Robertson expressed this view, it is not sufficient to say that population-centricity in US COIN doctrine has nothing to do with Galula. On the contrary, this maxim and principle is mostly from Galula, seen as a metonymy of French COIN in Algeria (often reduced as "guerre révolutionnaire"). Even if US thinkers relied on other sources (like Thompson) and on their own experiments at the beginning of the 1960s, the adoption of the "classic" doctrine of COIN was the work of Galula and his mentors in the US military establishment.
Another point to highlight: population-centricity in French counterinsurgency doctrine and practices can be traced back to the 1840s in Algeria. At this time, french officers were confronted to two challenges: a conceptual one (what was the "center of gravity" in this kind of conflict where tribes waged a mobile war on the French?) and a tactical one (how to fight the mobile cavalry of Arabs?). The response was twofold: consider the population and its subsistence to be the center of gravity (policy of razzias or raids to devastate encampment, harvests and cattles), and use the Arabs Bureaus to co-opt the tribe and collect intelligence data.
Voilà
Best
Stéphane Taillat

Stéphane, I think you're making assumptions about what COL Gentile understands, in re population-centric COIN.

The essay which I recently sent to you -- and from my personal discussions I've had with Gentile -- suggest that he understands the full mix of coercive and compelling methods used within a population to achieve the counter-insurgent's ultimate goal of hooking the terrorist fish and yanking him from the school in which he swims.

COL Gentile typically would make the point that Galula only repeated old ideas and unfortunately left out some of the
most pertinent lessons taught by French commanders. Aspirational U.S. commanders then whipped these Galula-inspired bromides into a rich broth and served it up in FM 3-24.

I think COL Gentile would agree with you not only on the importance of the French "razzia" efforts in 1840s Algeria, but the very interesting COIN conducted by later commanders in Madagascar in the 1890s (par la méthode de la tache d’huile).

It seems to me that he's trying to reintroduce the pragmatic notions pawned from Galliéni and Lyautey rather than rely on what's become dogmatic Galula worship by a coterie of COINdinistas. Talking to Gentile, it seems as if he's probably more comfortable in the tradition of Kitson than perhaps Galula.

It also seems to me that he's seeking to return to the practice of warmaking the thinking of Clausewitz. He's concerned about doctrine (or, really, bumper-sticker aphorisms disguised as doctrine) driving strategic and geo-political decision-making, an inversion of the proper order, and one that could prove disastrous if force structure is altered based on half-learned "lessons" from our campaign in Iraq.

These sorts of mistakes wouldn't be made by supple commanders such as Galliéni and the British Sir C.E. Callwell, perhaps because they were more comfortable within a grand tradition of small wars and never lost sight of the fact that their COINtastic warmarking wouldn't work against peer foes.

In this, I'm not exactly sure Con Crane disagrees with Gentile. While I've never spoken to the outstanding professor, I would suggest that he's probably uncomfortable with many of the excesses of COINdinista thought, and probably would waggishly refer to himself as "Coin-fused."

Which is to say, he is most likely fully in the "hybrid" school of thought which suggests U.S. units consider COIN a core function, but not the sole function they should learn to respond to a wide spectrum of potential threats.

I believe Gentile and Crane concur on this point, but with the colonel "cheating" toward more traditional conventional skills because he believes 1) They're harder to learn and perfect than COIN in many ways; 2) These full-scale "kinetic" capabilities often are essential, indeed sometimes existentially important, to defeating an enemy force in the first place; and, 3) U.S. and other units across the globe have historically shown a greater ability to adapt to COIN rather than the other way around.

He posits the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War as perhaps a handy case study.

Most persuasively, it seems to me, Gentile is elaborating on his research into other episodes in American history when doctrine drove strategy, most especially the apriori assmuptions about the capability of U.S. airpower before and during WWII.

He's seen this sort of population-centric hubris before, and continues to insist that the real genius of Callwell, Galliéni and Lyautey isn't the specific tactics that they recommend, but rather their appeal to commanders to be ever pragmatic, nimble and "elastic."

Or, as Lyautey once wrote to his subordinates:

"But good people, my friends, you don’t get it, and you never got it! There is no method, there is no cliché of Galliéni; there are ten, twenty – or, if there is a method, its name is suppleness, elasticity, adaptability to place,
time, and circumstances."

If anyone is defining a theory too narrowly, it is Ricks. But Ricks, like me, is a journalist, and that's what we do.

Gentile, true to his nature, is an historian, and the resulting essays are what he does.

Stephane:

Agree that Galula was not at all original and he drew on a much longer tradition of French imperial military operations that go as far back as the Razia in Algeria. Here I draw on the excellent work by scholar Thomas Ridd in this field. Of course Begeaud was more akin to Douhet in that his development of the Razia was designed when it first began to inject French military power directly into the local population in Algeria with fire, destruction, and death. Begeaud, interestingly, was closer to Douhet than he was to Galula; but as I tried to argue in my article there is a line of continuity between Douhet and Galula, and by implication Begeaud with their interesting focuses on populations as the key to victory in wars.

I have a much less elevated view than much of the rest of the American Army in addition to Tom Ricks toward Galula. David Galula’s book and extended essay were only important in that they took a long standing tradition of French counterinsurgency and imperial military efforts and boiled them down into a simple set of procedures that were given heightened credibility because he weighted them with his own experience. Plus, Galula wrote his book in English. It was this fact that made him appealing to a small cluster of American military officers and defense analysts in the early 60s who were hungry for a concise foreign explanation of counterinsurgency warfare. Galula met that demand, and then, once there was no more demand, he went on to different endeavors. A smart and thoughtful man was Galula, yes; but an original and committed thinker to the theory and practice of war, hardly. He should be read and understood in that light and not elevated to the level of oracle by the likes of the owner of this blog.

Carl:

With regard to Kitson I actually do not see much difference beyond emphasis in tactics, techniques, methods, procedures etc from the cluster of other Counterinsurgency writers of the day like Thompson, Galula, Trinquier, etc. I tend to focus on pointing out their similarities because the American Army seems to have started its historical understanding to the theory and practice of small wars and counterinsurgency at 1945. “Counterinsurgency,” as a type of small war or war in general for that matter, should be seen as a historically contextualized term that came out of a very specific set of conditions. But if one takes a longer view of small wars and imperial warfare this period of “counterinsurgency” warfare that had its heyday from 1950 to 1970 is actually part of a much longer and more textured history of these kinds of military and political operations. And if one takes this longer view the historical “counterinsurgency” can be seen in its historical context and perhaps then the American Army might see the limitations to using it as a model for action today and in the future.

"And if one takes this longer view the historical 'counterinsurgency' can be seen in its historical context and perhaps then the American Army might see the limitations to using it as a model for action today and in the future."

To which I might add the words of another:

"Fools say they learn by experience; I prefer to learn by other people's experience. That experience, far wider than any of us can hope to acquire for ourselves, is contained in history. It is ours for the finding, if we only look for it thoroughly enough. We need to see clearly and remember the real lessons of the last war, but we can only achieve this if we have a good background."

The bloke who typed that went by the name of "Liddell Hart," and he was writing about the future of infantry tactics six years before events pitched his nation into WWII.

He wasn't much persuaded by the heady prognostications of the air-power advocates yapping about taking total war to the people; those who wanted to return to the static lines of the earlier war; or even those who were long on colonial experience and short on imagining the skills required -- and horrors to be experienced -- by those waging high-intensity combat.

When he clacked out those words, the former infantry captain was a defense correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, so I suppose it can be done.

influence on warfare, Liddell-Hart plagiarised Bismarck. Cheers, old boy.

The thing is that Liddell-Hart's emphasis on the "indirect approach", in fact all of manoeuvre warfare, can be seen as a natural predecessor of COIN: both are obsessed with finding ways to avoid smashing into the enemy head-first. 3GW seeks to outflank the enemy, break his will, etc. So does COIN. The methods are different, but the goal is the same: decisive victory through means other than physical destruction. By this, we can see that COIN and "conventional" warfare really aren't that far apart. All you do is adopt whatever is the most effective means required to defeat the enemy.

In fact, it would be ironic to quote Liddell-Hart contra COIN, since the man railed against men who were fixated on fighting the previous wars rather than the current and next ones. Sounds like Iraq circa 2004 to me. If anyone's made a cogent argument that "hybrid warfare" is on the way out and something else is on the way in, I have yet to hear it.

It's easy to forget why FM 3-24 came about. There was a war to be won. There still is. We can tie ourselves in knots about Galula this, Liddell-Hart that, Kitson's your mum, but in the end, it's about what will be most effective in the present and the future, not the past. Thinkers and their theories are there to be dissected on the table, scrounging for what's useful, discarding what isn't. They are not to be worshipped (even - especially - Clausewitz). I believe that's one of COL Gentile's main arguments: we mustn't worship at any altar; we mustn't listen exclusively to a small clique of thinkers of who all happen to be friends and mostly agree with each other. And the COINdinistas hear him, agree with this argument, and are eager to debate best practices.

As for these best practices, the failure of the COINdetractors has been to formulate plausible alternatives to COIN as successful means. I can only think of three alternatives that have been suggested right now:
1) the "Roman Method".
2) Avoidance.
3) Containment.

The first is a non-starter, since mass killing is not a feasible option for liberal democracies (in the IR sense, not the socialist bugaboo sense).
The second is relatively hard to grapple by military people, since avoiding COIN situations comes down to the decisions of politicians, not Marines/soldiers. All the military can do for that option is to make COIN look as unappetising as possible. But what if the politicians doggedly insist on committing forces to a COIN environment? Iraq, for instance. In that case, the military better have a way of succeeding in such environment. I suppose one could argue that the military shouldn't do COIN well because it will make politicians more likely to engage in COIN ops, but try selling that to the politicians, and I doubt anyone here is arguing that.

The third option, containment, remains the final frontier of successful military strategy, both "conventional" and "unconventional". This may be the most viable alternative, but I don't think anyone has yet been able to solve this problem: if we're not there on the ground, the bad guys take over. We can be there 18 hours a day, and the bad guys can still run the place. So how will "offshore balancing" do the trick? And once the bad guys run the place, they can recruit more members, train more effectively, and conduct operations overseas thanks to Expedia and Hotwire. The occasional raid won't change that, and non-military options won't work because Western-backed civilians who enter such areas will die. Once we solve that little puzzle, I'm sure containment will become more feasible.

Which alternatives am I forgetting about?

At this stage, the current approach to COIN still looks like it's the most effective. The point about airpower approach and such was that it provided easy answers. Contrary to Gentile's insinuations, the population-centric approach doesn't provide easy or simplified answers - we're talking an approach so complex that it's incredibly hard to do proficiently (yet we've made great strides towards that proficiency). When much of the establishment adopts such an approach despite its messiness, that's usually a good sign. The establishment isn't always wrong. But it's good that people like COL Gentile keep it on its toes - because what's right today will eventually be wrong, whether tomorrow, next year, or in 2050.

PS: I'm glad that Kiszely's paper on post-modern challenges finally crossed the Atlantic in Army History's Spring issue. A good piece which illustrates the way military officers have to adopt their mindsets to modern operations. Seems quite relevant to this debate.

Toby:

Excellent argument.

I agree that Liddell-Hart is close to the Coindinistas with the indirect approach and also I might add with his love affair with Lawrence. But let's take Liddell-Hart one step further in a direction that you may not like. One can draw a fairly straight line between Liddell-Hart and Jomini in that he sought a science of war that if followed might preclude the slaughter that he saw firsthand in World War I and that he blamed largely on the mal-application of Clausewitz by European Generals. In a sense like Jomini, Hart wanted deep down to remove the friction from war so that if it ever was fought it would be done indirectly and avoid the big battles that he saw as so destructive in World War I. That line can also be traced from Jomini to Hart and to the current batch of Coindinistas. Yes FM 3-24 was needed, no argument about that, but it is a manual of prescriptions and methods. To be fair any good military doctrine is prescriptive by nature but FM 3-24 in a macro view is hyper prescriptive. Con Crane has told me over and over again that what the manual was really about was to teach the Army to learn and adapt. Well it certainly does do that, except any military unit that uses it must learn and adapt itself to nation building via the clear-hold-build method. That is the only approach that it offers. As long as the learning and adapting gets the Army to nation building as method then you get an A+ for FM 3-24 101. Any other alternative considered and pursued you fail.

As to your point about the alternatives to nation building ala FM 3-24, please, Toby my friend, stop throwing the Romans in there. Nobody who has called for alternatives to nation building or changing entire societies has ever called for scorched earth. That is a straw man that the coindinistas love to throw out there. Yet there are alternatives to counterinsurgency as nation building like limited and short military action, containment and avoidance, as you point out. Why, Toby, do you use those latter terms with implied derision. Why do you accept that the way for the United States and our allies in the years ahead is the prescribed long war with existential American ground combat presence in the worlds troubled spots to do, as John Nagl says, “change entire societies?” It never ceases to amaze me why the coindinistas (like you since your argument rang of that bevy) automatically choose protracted people's war as the only method for American military power in the years ahead.

The problem is not with the prescribed methods of population centric counterinsurgency but with Strategy. The coindinistas have so taken over the thinking on Astan and Iraq that they have mired the American Defense Establishment and policy makers as well in operations and tactics. It is strategy where the solution rests, and good strategy demands the considerations of alternatives, and then chooses a course of action that is most economical in achieving policy goals. Have we really done that in Astan with our population centric counterinsurgency blinders on?

gian

Carl, Gian: agree with you both. I would add the following.
French COIN doctrine and practices since the end of the 1960s (recently institutionalized under the "stabilization phase" doctrine) was more framed by practices on the field in Chad, Western Africa, Central Africa and the Balkans. From the 1980s onward, more and more units have rotated for overseas operation under UN Mandate or International actions or as permanent troops in our former colonies. Not surprisingly, these practices are closer from Lyautey and Gallieni than the "guerre revolutionnaire". Indeed, I can go so far as to say that the "guerre revolutionnaire" paradigm was an exception, not on the tactics used against insurgents neither on the "population-centric" approach, but in its explanation of the causes of insurgencies. Proponents of "guerre révolutionnaire" have been waging war against the Vietminh when they were captured and submitted to "brainwashing" in VM Camps (read Pouget, le manifeste du Camp n°1.. My wife has also written her Master's dissertation on this subject at the end of the 1990s). Consequently, they tended to accept the maoist WeltAnschauung and to see the perverse hand of world communism behind every insurgency. For most of them, the insurgents were playing on the "internal contradictions of the society" in order to gain full support of the population. Counter-terror and population control, associated with a better governance through the SAS program, was the key to challenge the FLN dominance on hearts and minds (one part of this paradigm was the "action psychologique", hence propaganda and misinformation). Unfortunately, if this explanation, as biased as it may be, can apply to most of "liberation wars", it is not the case today. More importantly, "guerre révolutionnaire" was challenged by others approaches in Algeria. SAS were the resurgence of Arab bureaus and the Fifth bureau (en charge of the "action psychologique") was not as powerful as its detractors used to say in Paris. Last but not least, "guerre révolutionnaire" was forged in a specific context of civil-military relations, with the political power giving no clear and straight objective or strategy to the military in Algeria (officially, the mission was to reestablish the legal order). Thus, many officers tended to forge their own mission. In a reformist way, they saw themselves as reformers of both Algerian (Muslims + Europeans) and French Society that they considered to be threatened by communism and leftism.
After the war, civil-military relations became more pacific due to the passage "from warriors to managers" (the title of one of my professor's thesis). That explains why actual doctrine is more pragmatic compared to the American one.
BUT, there is a tendency to isomorphism among Western military. Some French officers (Gen. Vincent Desportes being the most influential) have begun to look at the US experience in Iraq in order to formalize a new doctrine. Hence the first edition of Galula in French, and several works on the "guerre révolutionnaire"......
Best
Stéphane
http://coinenirak.wordpress.com

I thought the art for this item was terrific! No comments on it?

COL Gentile,

First off, I suppose I should apologise in regards to fame of the Roman Approach. I seem to still overestimate Ralph Peters' influence. Maybe I should ignore that man/idea from now on. You're right, it screams of straw man. I'm wondering, though, if you also have a straw man wearing lipstick in the form of your parallels between airpower theorists and population-centric thinkers. You conveniently ignore the opposites - e.g. one focuses on quick destruction, the other on long-term construction. The population-centric approach seems to not ignore, but embrace friction. How would one describe the complex, unpredictable interplay of local politics and allegiances, development aid and JDAMs, porous borders and internet connections, IEDs and company-size ambushes, other than friction? COIN isn't smooth, it's clogged with sand, and I don't know anyone who thinks it's an easy answer. Population-centric warriors don't avoid the enemy to avoid ground warfare like the airpower people did. In fact, they know they can beat the living crap out of the enemy in a gunfight - they just believe they won't win anything in the long run. Moving on.

You are absolutely right that FM 3-24 et al. cannot simply become a cookbook. You don't just mix two tea spoons of CERP, half a dozen combat outposts, sprinkle in some Pashto-speaking 0311s, stick it in the oven and, voila, conflict solved. None of the current methods should be allowed to become "hyper prescriptive", because the negative results would be, amongst many other problems, that we would forget that the other side is just as human, just as smart, just as capable of countering each move. I suppose that's what you mean when you complain that the current approach threatens to ignore the enemy (surely the greatest hallmark of military hubris - see Don Rumsfeld).

On the prescription side, I've been surprised by how few young officers seem to have actually read 3-24. And the ROTC cadets I know don't seem to be exposed to it either. A hallmark of doctrinal hubris seems to be that it such doctrine is shoved down future leaders' throats. I'm not seeing that, but I may be suffering from tunnel vision. Am I just asking the wrong people? Is it becoming prescriptive at the higher level? And how do things stand at USMA with what is taught to the Cadets?

Another thing I'm glad you draw attention to, is that of there are "end of history" arguments among the COINdinistas who state that one form of warfare will prevail forever more. Of course that's hogwash. Change is inevitable, and we don't know when that change will happen. Hasn't 9/11 taught us that big changes are often completely unexpected? And that they're often unexpected because people get so stuck in one way of thinking or another? For all I know, we'll be fighting Germany in cyberspace, Alsace-Lorraine or subspace in 2019.

I also would add to your arguments about strategy that much of our current writing describes the Taliban as a series of small units, rather than an army with its own versions of generals and brigades. Focusing on tactics alone and simplifying the higher levels to "well, they want to take over the country" is a wasted opportunity - although in my tired state I'm not sure for what. As for strategy, well, what is that these days? People like Smith seem to argue that strategy and tactics have melded into a...hybrid. We're witnessing the democratisation of violence, from the strategic Corporal to the strategic lone gunman. A lot of responsibility has been pushed downward, and the strategy side hasn't adapted yet. How should it? How will it? I don't know yet.

And I remain adamant that avoidance in particular can only be decided at the political level. It may indeed be the case that by doing COIN well - and feeling confident about our approach - we will encourage politicians to engage in further COIN operations. Politicians do what they can, and we do what we must; they have their own priorities and tell us what they want. There are some ways to mitigate that: for instance, it is possible for a military establishment to make war as unpalatable to politicians as possible. But I don't believe U.S. military culture, with its masculine warrior ethos, will be willing to adopt that viewpoint. For every Shinseki, there are many more men itching for a fight. And Bush didn't listen to Shinseki. Ultimately, how could we prevent politicians from liking what they see? And wouldn't that prevention be the real hijacking of politics by the military, since we would set out to shape politicians' views, rather than let their actions be affected by our successes and failures without any filters? Another big question mark for the military sociologists.

The military must be prepared to do whatever is demanded of it, and do it well. The ruthless side of me has no desire for more COIN. Even with Afghanistan, I worry that we are bleeding energy - wasting precious, shrinking resources in order to gain a little security which costs far more than any terrorist attacks ever would, and thereby accelerating the decline of the American empire in the 21st century. But as with Bacevich's comments at the CNAS conference, my final thought on this is "probably correct, but the priorities of our politicians are what they are, and we've got to make the most of the demands placed upon us by finding the best-possible solutions to our masters' concerns".

Which brings me to population-centric COIN. I'm happy to strip away all the Gaulloise-smoking Frenchmen, Swiss men with French names, Rhodes scholars and Waltzing Matilda singers. I'm willing to ignore the lessons of Malaya and even Iraq. And what I find is that, yes, I seem to still be quite fixated on the population-centric approach. And I suppose that once I dig to the heart of my myopic view, I am ultimately left with a simple question: well, what else is there? Yes, the belief that the population is the key to victory is a narrow. It sounds simple in an age where there is never a single answer (see the surge -which was an important ingredient, but whose singular importance I thoroughly agree has been exaggerated and may indeed cloud our perception in the future. Keep at it). But it makes fundamental sense: do what is proven to stand a good chance of decreasing the strength of the enemy. What viable alternative is there? Well...

...Speaking of enemy-centrism, I hope you follow up the Army History article with another on how the enemy-centric approach can succeed in the long run (when even the population-centric approach barely can, one might add. The population-centric approach may lose its effectiveness sooner rather than later anyway. We'd better bring backup). So far, we've tried the enemy-centric approach in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere, and it failed. In fact, population-centric COIN rests itself on the cliché that "we [military force x] tried just killing the enemy and it didn't work". But maybe the technology wasn't there yet? Or the right methods weren't there yet? I don't know a Marine, soldier or (especially) airman who wouldn't be delighted by a convincing argument that the best way to win in Afghanistan is to kill bad guys.

Finally, I offer you the holy grail that we should all seek together: the melding of conventional and unconventional warfare training and doctrine that makes us stronger at both. I give you CLICs and Gen. Mattis' hopefully fruitful efforts to increase the independence and capabilities of small units as examples of developments which will greatly strengthen the military's ability to win in any kind of conflict.

Toby "it was midnight when I started writing this" Bonthrone

PS: Ref. "changing entire societies", Kilcullen's account of Kunar et al. tells me that, if anything, the key to quick success in Afghanistan isn't changing Afghan society, but bringing select areas back into balance by empowering traditional hierarchies. The other guys are trying to change everything. So, some of the COINdinistas are contradicting each other. That's fairly normal in a chaotic intellectual environment. Nevertheless, I do believe it's best for COINdinistas to keep their options open because of the sui generis dictum: sometimes we change society, sometimes don't. Depends.
PPS: Stéphane's point about isomorphism begs for further discussion. What will the repercussions be?

How could anyone assume I was using Liddell-Hart to buttress -- or refute -- an analysis of COIN? It seems patently obvious that his words were directed at the utility of history as a tool to understanding any sort of warfare, in this case one that was frozen in Hart's historical moment.

Which is to say, the role infantry would play in the next great war.

I would be very surprised to read anything Liddel-Hart wrote on the nature of counter-insurgency. He didn't need to do so. The primers for his age already had been written by Callwell, Gwynn, et al.

Gotta love blogs.

"I don't know a Marine, soldier or (especially) airman who wouldn't be delighted by a convincing argument that the best way to win in Afghanistan is to kill bad guys."

Nothing more needs to be said about the chance of COIN taking over U.S. military doctrine.

"I can only think of three alternatives that have been suggested right now"

Good gravy, these sound like the words of a grad student working out the rudiments of IR.

Gentile is an historian. He's not interested necessarily in the taxonomy of comparative possibilities, only the tangible indications of historical reality.

Who would take the instruction of ROTC candidates at a single post-secondary institution to be anywhere close to the reality of TRADOC training an entire ground force to conduct counter-insurgency operations in two distinct nations?

"In a sense like Jomini, Hart wanted deep down to remove the friction from war so that if it ever was fought it would be done indirectly and avoid the big battles that he saw as so destructive in World War I."

Oh, come on, Gian. Hart had witnessed (and suffered through wounds) the slaughter of an entire generation of men in the trenches of the continent. Rather than try to discard the "friction" of war, he sought to find pragmatic means to prevent another generation of generals from wasting another generation of troops as they confronted the reality of industrialized warfare.

Liddell-Hart and his contemporary, Fuller, appear today NOT as oracles for a "frictionless" warfare, but rather realistic voices foretelling alternatives to massacre. As for the "indirect approach," in reality how different was it from the earliest thoughts of Bonaparte?

"Yes FM 3-24 was needed, no argument about that,"

I think I can make a compelling argument to the opposite, Gian, and the first thing I might suggest was that a measure of a text's usefulness can be established by checking to see if the prescriptions it implied were followed in successful operations.

I humbly submit that what is interesting about FM 3-24 isn't what it says, but rather that what it didn't say became largely the model for success in Iraq -- bribery, a lotta stick compared to the carrot, a decision to turn our backs on the "government" to find alternatives to pacification, and ultimately a reliance on the "Roman" methods of non-state actors who weren't necessarily our allies to do the dirty work.

But to reach those sorts of damning conclusions about FM 3-24, one actually would need to look at the Iraqi "lessons" learned in OIF, and not those issued by PAO press releases from 2007 through 2009.

"automatically choose protracted people's war as the only method for American military power in the years ahead. "

Oh, come on, Gian. The circumstances often choose the tools that come from the kit.

First, political overseers have seemed to have mandated nation-building and pop-centric COIN in OEF. Therefore, the military must do it. I know that you don't disagree with that compulsion.

Second, case studies would suggest that in longterm insurgencies that seem devoid of charismatic leaders (but rather are blessed with protean models for stewardship) and sprawl across large areas that include safe harbors we can't reach, the only options left to us are 1) Leaving; 2) Siding with one or several of the many forces contesting for power and using our limited assets in CT or enemy-centric COIN without the intention of permanent pacification; or, 3) Longterm, pop-centric COIN designed to rebuild a nation, spur competent governance and secure the "population" from coercive goals of the putative enemies.

Whereas geo-strategic considerations likely should inform this decision (good luck there, mate), even if doctrine wasn't driving strategy we might end up with the unfortunate third option.

Stéphane, as always we find ourselves in complete agreement.

"the key to quick success in Afghanistan isn't changing Afghan society, but bringing select areas back into balance by empowering traditional hierarchies."

Oh, you mean like the deeper sediments (notice the Levi-Strauss allusion, S, that was for you) of tribalism in Iraq?

One might argue that the tribal structures actually were dated and that by puffing them into existence in their present form the US-led coalition actually was reverting to a relatively recent strategy employed by the Baathists in Iraq, first during the early years of war with Iran to gain drafts of cannon fodder from reluctant Shiites, later to pacify disgruntled Sunni Arab cities (Ramadi and Fallujah especially) by co-opting new and improved "tribal" leaders.

If by "old" one meant "well, 20 years old," then the structures were there to be used. But they weren't exactly the Iqta.

Now it sounds swell to posit as a formula that it's best to use traditional forms of leadership (non-Baathist, I assume, and perhaps non-Taliban or non-Warlord in Afghanistan), but it would help if the actual practices employed showed that sort of fidelity to the text.

Carl:

If you look at the history of military thought in modern times there is an underlying imperative that often weaves through much of it to discern a science of war, from which principles and practices can be developed. I think that the brilliance of Clausewitz in contradiction to what came before, and often after, was the root realization that although science and derivative principles where essential in the study and practice of war, that was not enough. One must understand the whole, its nature, which was essentially one of friction, fighting, and genius. I do not think it a stretch to see in Hart's writing, especially in his refutation of Clausewitz, a deep inner desire to establish the science of war so that it could be practiced to perfection and for Hart that would mean the avoidance of destructive battles. An indicator of this thinking becomes clear in Hart's treatment of Sun Tzu and at least in my mind his mis-reading of him to where he characterizes Sun Tzu as the father, or the Hart anticipator, of the in-direct approach, or the avoidance of battle. My reading of Sun Tzu is that he is much closer to Clausewitz than Hart. But it is this desire to avoid battle through indirect measures which at its heart attempts to remove the friction from war because it is in battle, or in war's more fundamental essence of fighting, that friction occurs. It is also the core principle in population centric counterinsurgency that removes the enemy as the primary focus in war and replaces it with the population. In this formulation since the enemy and thus fighting are no longer central to what war is, the inherent friction produced through fighting the enemy is removed. I am talking about the nature of war here, and not its milieu of processes, procedures, and methods that Toby used to argue that FM 3-24 embraces the notion of friction.

No, Carl, I do think nowadays in the American Army that protracted people's war--or population centric counterinsurgency with all of its emphasis of focusing on the population and a long term approach--has become automatic, and as I have argued dogmatic. I am not sure if policy has directed nation building in Afghanistan; perhaps it has. But if the goal of strategy is the consideration of alternatives and if the American Army because of its consumption with FM 3-24 and nation building has only offered that as the way ahead in Afghanistan then I wonder if we truly have a useful civil-military condition in the formulation of strategy where the American Army presents and considers options.

Agree that we might end up with the third option of long-term population centric nation building and we should be prepared to do it (which arguably after the last seven years we are getting fairly good at it) the other options should be considered too. This has been my point all along; that FM 3-24 does prescribe only the third option and pays no attention at all to the others. And since it has had such a permeating effect on the Army when it comes to strategy, I fear, that our only possible course in the years ahead will be the third option over and over again.

Toby:
It is a huge reduction to the point of simplistic caricature to say that the American Army in Vietnam was “enemy-centric.” Arguably, Westmoreland, understood population-centric counterinsurgency better than most at the time. Historian Andrew Birtle’s new work on counterinsurgency in the American Army and on Vietnam gives a much more nuanced historical explanation of that war that finally moves away from the flawed interpretations of Nagl, Sorley, and Krepinevich.

My reading of van Creveld suggests that Hart and Sun Tzu were closer to reality than Clausewitz. But that's just me, Gian.

Hart's central case against Clausewitz wasn't necessarily the confusing, antiquated notions of triangular social relations but rather the blind faith so many generals held in the Prussian officer's reduction of warfare to a philosophical science (see also Jomini).

To Liddell-Hart, staff generals on both sides on the trenches had boiled Clausewitz's "On War" down to a series of aphoristic notions of massing troops and firepower against each other while forgetting the cardinal virue of Bonaparte's concepts of mobility and surprise.

And, to be precise, Liddell-Hart said that Clausewitz wasn't always to blame for this absurd reductionism, but rather castigated his acolytes in uniform. You know, the fellows who decided that attrition in places like Verdun was the way to win wars.

"Friction" and the trumping of physical considerations by the moral, the focus on the political goals -- those parts of Clausewitzian thought actually appealed to Hart. To Liddell-Hart, however, the psychology of the actual ground soldier was interesting, usually determinative of a battle's outcome, and therefore what should be studied, not necessarily the cool calculations of the staff commander writing op orders from his dogeared Clausewitz.

Since I'm thoroughly Fussellian on these notions, I think Hart had a point.