Gentile vs. COIN at VMI

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Monday, May 24, 2010 - 7:16 AM Share

I spent part of the weekend with several hundred of my favorite military historians at VMI. Great fun, and I got to meet authors of books I've been reading. For me, seeing guys like Brian Linn, Timothy Nenninger, Richard Kohn, Joseph Glathaar, Mark Stoler, and Edward "Old Army" Coffman is like meeting rock stars. By coincidence, I'd read Stoler's terrific biography of Marshall just last week, and also had bought Glathaar's new book on Lee's army. And I left Lexington with my car sagging under the weight of books I bought.

I got there too late for Col. Gian Gentile's talk, but he nicely sent me a copy. He argued that the U.S. Army is concentrating too much on counterinsurgency, at the expense of other operational concepts. "Good strategy... demands the consideration of alternatives, yet the American Army's fixation on population-centric COIN precludes choice." He also worries that the concept of victory inherent in the COIN concept is "the never-ending process of counterinsurgency." 

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EXPLORE:HISTORY, MILITARY
 

SOLDIERSDIARY

12:48 AM ET

May 25, 2010

DoD

@Gian:
Got your view on the Army, but I would like to get your view on DoD as a whole. Specificaly aquasitions, and what equipment the US will have over the coming years that leads you to believe we will not be prepared for a major fight.
In addition, what is your view on the latest doctrine? Does design lend itself to Major Combat Operations, or is it specifically COIN centric?

 

JIM KING

7:59 AM ET

May 25, 2010

There is some truth to this

I believe there is some truth to what COL Gentile is talking about and I don't think he is the only one out there that thinks this. My unit was supposed to do 2 CTC rotations before we deployed, one on full spectrum operations and the other on COIN. This was supposed to help round our unit out and ensure we still stayed sharp on our skills in major combat operations. We were not able to do this because our unit had its deployment timeline accelerated by almost a year and we were only able to do one rotation, the COIN one. As we draw down in Iraq and units begin to have more time between deployments this 2 CTC rotation concept should be looked at more closely as a possible way to ensure that our Army stays capable of fighting both types of conflicts. While understanding COIN is important to today's combat operations we can't forget about fighting major wars because those types of conflicts won't go away. Most future wars in my opinion will be a mix of both concepts.

 

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008.

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