Well Tom as you quite imagine I think your assertion that the US Army isnt taking Coin serious enough is a bit off the mark to say the least. In fact it has taken Coin as pretty much the only thing, and for some good reasons due to the operational demands on the army with Iraq and Afghanistan.

I also think you draw on a trope instead of a better understanding of history. The trope being a reduction of the of the Weigley thesis that the Coin crowd has latched onto: that the US Army only wants to do big battles at the expense of irregular warfare. If you read Weigley in its entirety you would of course seen that what his book is really about is wrestling with the problem of utility of military force in the post world war II era of nuclear weapons. Too, Weigley wrote his classic as the US was just coming out of the Vietnam war where the question of utility of force in that war certainly was on his mind. Weigley's book in all of its brilliance has been seriously challenged recently by an excellent review of it by scholar Brian Linn in the April 2002 issue of the Journal of Military History. You may want to have a look at Linn's criticism of Weigley's work.

With regard to the American Army and Vietnam and Krepinevich's hugely important but deeply flawed book on it, shoot Tom there has been much scholarship done on the topic since his work was first published that seriously questions his thesis and argument. In fact a close reading of the scholarly literature of the history of the Vietnam War shows that the majority of scholarly historians are not in agreement with the Krepinevich argument. There is still a minority of historians who accept it, but they are in the minority. Suggest you have a look at Gary Hess’s excellent book-length historiographical sketch of the literature and also Andy Birtle’s award winning Journal of Military History article of last year titled “PROVN and the Historians.”

Lastly and with regard to Dave Johnson’s absolutely superb recent Rand analysis on Lebanon and Gaza I am not clear how you can end this post, Tom, questioning my concern about leaning too heavily toward Coin, and at the same time highlighting Dave’s piece since one of his main arguments is that the reason why the Israeli Army had problems in 2006 was due to an almost complete focus on Coin to the detriment of combined arms competencies.

One thing we are in agreement on is the excellence of SWJ blog.

gian

Gian,
There were other reasons why the IDF had problems other than the focus on Coin. Trying to implement EBO for example, the lack of strategic direction from the War Cabinet, lack of clear termination and end state, and so forth. I am sure you know this already. I always mention 34 Days as the best book on that war. What are your thoughts?

Soldiersdiary:

Yes to be sure there were other problems that contributed to their drubbing and not just a near-only focus on Coin. It was a significant cause but not the only one. My sentence in my previous post should have been qualified with the acknowledgment that there where other causes as you point out, EBO, and some cooky notions about post-modernist architecture which produced rediculous orders and mission statements to tactical commanders. "34 Days" to be sure is excellent. I also have been quite fond of Andrew Exum's excellent battle analyis of the war at the tactical level.

Thanks for clarifying.

gian

There is a reason we tend to forget about counterinsurgency: we don't like thinking about the bloody conflicts that accompanies it. Counterinsurgency, led by a foreign occupying force, is a relic of the imperial era. Related to this antipathy for drawn out conflict is the rationale for colonialism's collapse: It became easier and easier to mobilize against, largely because of economics, weapons, communications and nationalism. After bungling the post-invasion stage in both Iraq/Afghanistan, a US-manned counterinsurgency effort was probably entirely appropriate. But in Afghanistan it is just as possibly counterproductive. The US regained momentum in Iraq by helping balance the antagonists against each other, forcing them into a stalemate. In Afghanistan, we have no such clear opportunities or levers of influence. Hopefully by now, we realize that brute force is a suspect means of influencing any population. The parties are geographically separated much more so than those in Iraq (it appears to me--maybe I'm wrong) and consequently have lesser reason to back down or succumb to centralized authority. The Northern Alliance controlled wide swathes of the country for years under de facto Taliban sovereignty. The Taliban represent a majority ethnic group rather than an increasingly hopeless, violent minority (a la Sunnis). Afghanistan is admittedly complex, so it's hard to bash either administration for its decisions. But Afghanistan is not used to centralized authority--all the more if that authority is foreign. All each group is looking for--if not perpetual war--is a weak state in which all groups are restrained. In other words, the outcome might be "Chaosistan" regardless of our efforts. The US does not, and likely cannot, play such a unifying role. We're only at war with the people we disenfranchised. More and more, I'm thinking Afghanistan is a black hole. Unless the Obama team can do engineer a political transformation equally as crucial as the Sunni flip, I have little confidence. The Pakistanis are the major unknown variable: we don't know how far Taliban authority can spread without active Pakistani support from the highest levels. The public signs look good on that score, but I don't think the Pakistanis even understand this place.

Colonel Gentile:

You don't agree with the following as the sound definition of doctrine?: : = )

This space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. Now, you can stretch the boundaries of your interpretation, but not in an unlimited fashion, after all, it must be bound by physics, as it contains buildings and alleys. The question is, how do you interpret the alley? Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden
to walk through? This depends only on interpretation.

Matt Matthews, "We Were Caught Unprepared," page 25.

used as a part of a process that executes a strategy. That is where the issues lies over its modern utility.

Although I would ask that if TRADOCs echelon thinking with rigid vertical command, control and communications for the tank's use and with an archaic reliance on target identification by optics only fails to keep current with strategy then the tank becomes a tool with a mind no more advanced than when operating at the time of Patton.