Strategic Horizons: U.S. Counterinsurgency Still Fighting the Last War
By Steven Metz, on 08 May 2013, Column
When the Cold War ended in 1991, the U.S. military assumed it would no
longer be involved in counterinsurgency. The subject was dropped from the
curriculum of the military's professional educational system. None of the
armed services wrote new doctrine or developed new operational concepts. The
only lingering attention was a handful of war games with sideshow insurgency
scenarios.
Then the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the U.S. military and
other government agencies to relearn counterinsurgency. The military wrote
new doctrine and rebuilt its educational curriculum. Intelligence agencies
refined their insurgency-focused analytical tools. Even the State Department
and U.S. Agency for International Development developed guidelines to spell
out their role. Across the security community, war games, studies,
conferences, seminars and workgroups on insurgency proliferated.
Now with the United States out of Iraq and getting out of Afghanistan,
interest in insurgency is again ebbing. Still, unlike the 1990s, it has not
gone away entirely. While the Obama administration has indicated that the
U.S. military will no longer be configured for large-scale, protracted
counterinsurgency, there is little doubt that insurgency will continue to
threaten America's partners and that the United States will offer some sort
of counterinsurgency support. This continued interest is a good thing, but,
unfortunately, official thinking reflects old-style insurgency more than
emerging forms. The failure to adapt U.S. thinking to changing patterns of
insurgency leaves the country poorly equipped for the next conflict.
Modern insurgency emerged in the middle of the 20th century when leaders
like Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh learned how to mobilize peasants, workers
and intellectuals around nationalism and in opposition to repression or
injustice. Those leaders developed a strategy that combined violence with
psychological and political actions. Their initial goal was to create
"liberated zones" where they could prepare for attacks on the government.
Their administration of the liberated zones was designed to show that the
insurgents were better at governing than the actual government. All of this
was intended to discredit and weaken the government and to build popular
support. When successful, this allowed the insurgents to defeat the security
forces and take over the state.
While it didn't always work, this method of insurgency was successful in
China, Vietnam, Algeria, Nicaragua, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Uganda.
It became the gold standard for overthrowing a government, spawning
emulators across Asia, Africa and Latin America. But eventually governments
figured out how to counter it. At the same time, Soviet bloc assistance to
insurgents ended, making it harder for them to develop conventional military
forces and run a government. Insurgents lost in Sri Lanka, El Salvador, the
Philippines, Indonesia, Colombia, Peru and Guatemala. The strategy of
insurgency first concocted by Mao changed history for half a century but
then became markedly less effective.
Still, the root causes of insurgency-anger, ineffective governments, the
appeal of violence-persist. Since the old methods no longer work, extremists
and revolutionaries are innovating and developing new strategies shaped by
globalization and the intense connectivity of the modern world. The contours
of this emerging form of insurgency are already clear. Most contemporary
insurgent movements, for instance, are transnational, with links to
like-minded organizations and individuals around the world. They are
increasingly self-financing, whether through donations or, more often,
criminal activities, including kidnapping, robbery, narcotics production and
trafficking, extortion, poaching, resource theft, counterfeiting, smuggling
and identity theft, among others. Rather than relying on arms and advice
from a state sponsor, contemporary insurgents buy weapons and expertise on
the global black market. Because it is now much harder to create liberated
zones that state security forces cannot penetrate, today's insurgents form
networks of loosely connected underground organizations that share an
overarching objective but are not centrally controlled. Rather than seeking
to progress from guerrilla attacks to conventional military operations like
20th-century insurgents, modern ones swarm, attack, then disperse before
security forces can concentrate against them.
Terrorism, which was an element of all 20th-century insurgency campaigns, is
central for modern insurgents. This is less because it is effective in
overthrowing a state than because it is relatively cheap and low risk, at
least for insurgent leaders. It takes much less time and effort to train a
disposable terrorist than a guerilla who can take part in relatively complex
attacks. Terrorists can be recruited from anywhere using the Internet and
diaspora networks. Terrorists don't have to be brought to a training
facility in a remote area and hidden from security forces while learning
their dark art. Because terrorists are easy to recruit, insurgent commanders
don't develop personal ties with them. Hence they are expendable and
replaceable. At the same time, technology amplifies the psychological impact
of terrorism. When insurgents in China or Vietnam used terrorism to, say,
assassinate local government officials, the fighters relied on direct
observation or word of mouth for psychological impact. Today's terrorists
capture every attack on video and upload it within minutes or hours. The
potential audience is global rather than local, thus adding to the
psychological impact.
The good news is that self-financing, networked, terrorism-based movements
without a state sponsor are unlikely to win outright the way that some
Maoist-style insurgencies did. Those that can get state support-the Libyan
insurgents and perhaps those in Syria-stand a chance. Those without it are
unlikely to march triumphantly into the national capital and raise their
flag.
The bad news is that this type of insurgent movement is devilishly difficult
to eradicate. Because they are transnational, if the insurgents are beaten
down in one place, they may pop up somewhere else with new recruits and a
web of new allies. Even if the insurgent organization is destroyed, its core
idea may survive and reappear-on the Internet, extreme ideas and myths are
often immortal. Because contemporary insurgencies are built as networks, no
single node is vital. And because they rely on terrorism, they have an
endless sea of angry young men to recruit from. Soon insurgents may be able
to crowdsource the development of methods and strategies from the global
pool of potential terrorists, thus tapping into deep wells of creativity
beyond their close contacts.
Despite the emergence of self-financing, networked, terrorism-based
insurgents, U.S. military doctrine for counterinsurgency and thinking within
the military's analytical and educational branches continues to focus on old
methods, assuming that insurgency is a competition for popular support and
that the key to defeating it is a more capable government. Even the
military's role as the lead element in U.S. counterinsurgency is more
appropriate for Maoist-style insurgent movements than the ones that exist
today.
This is a problem. To deal with it, the United States must look forward
rather than backward as it prepares for counterinsurgency. Most broadly, the
United States must stop thinking of insurgency as a type of war with the
military in the lead and understand it as a multifaceted, evolving challenge
that demands radically new ideas and entirely new organizations. Ultimately,
rapidly evolving threats demand innovative responses. The longer the U.S.
delays in realizing this, the more difficult coming up with those responses
will be.
==========================================
(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this
message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to
these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed
within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with
"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.
The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The
Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain
permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials
if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria
for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies
as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four
criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is
determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not
substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use
copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS
PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment