IN THE NEWS
Armchair Generalist provides a pointer to this half-encouraging, half-alarming article about the US Army's efforts to provide counterinsurgency training for officers serving in Iraq. While I'm definitely glad to hear that this instruction exists, there are some details in the article that are troubling. The article provides only a very small window into this training, but little it shows, taken at face value, is a bit odd. For example:
- Why is the Army assigning a book written in 1964, David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare, when more comprehensive and recent studies exist? Believe me, I have no problem whatsoever in assigning the classic texts, as long as they're supplemented with other books that cover what scholars and practitioners have learned in more recent years.
- Why isn't the Army referring to its own history with counterinsurgency? For example, the course could include books or guest speakers covering the MILGROUP mission in El Salvador, the Vietnam War, and other conflicts.
- How will this training translate into a different theater, operational, and tactical strategies in Iraq? As Andrew Krepinevich's shows in The Army and Vietnam, similar courses existed in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the training had nothing to do with how the conventional-minded US Army chose to fight the "big unit war" in South Vietnam.
At least the Army is working on a new counterinsurgency manual with the Marine Corps and the British Army, both of which have extensive experience in this field. While the course may not change US strategy in Iraq immediately, it may help create enough discontent that eventually, some change will occur.
Still, it sounds as if the US Army is re-inventing counterinsurgency yet again. As frustrating as it is to face that conclusion, I still wish the trainers at Fort Leavenworth all the luck in the world. They have a big, big institution, headed by a Secretary of Defense with no visible knowledge of counterinsurgency, to change.
I'm reading Roger Trinquier’s classic "Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency" right now - got it on a loan from a colleague. It's disturbingly direct and clear on his view of how to handle the insurgents - with an iron glove and clear objectives. It both notes why large-scale sweeps, isolated ambushes, and outposts don't work (American military leaders must have missed that part) and states very clearly how to lock down on the public, if you want to win the fight. I'm still only half way through, so I'm sure there are more gems in this book. Good Parameters article addressing both Trinquier's book and Galula's book here -
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04spring/tomes.htm
I think the reason why the Army likes these books is because they emphasize the point that an army can win against a counterinsurgency, if it has the right strategy, resources, backing, and (most of all) time. Not sure if this is blinding them to the larger strategic goal or not - maybe that's not their concern, they just want to know what operational and tactical methods are required to meet the administration's strategic objective. And that is what good Army officers train to do, but it's unfortunate in the sense that even their studies won't help if the national strategy and its goals are flawed.
Posted by: J. | 01/24/2006 at 06:26
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