Exum: “No One Who Understands COIN Really Wants to Do It”
I’ve been looking at the rise of “counterinsurgency” theory first to prominence, then to some influence in the Bush administration, and then via CNAS to influence within the Democratic Party and now the Obama Pentagon with a mix of hope and anxiety. Hope because I think the COIN mindset is a smarter way to think about 21st century security challenges than what you get from F–22 salesmen masquerading as strategists, but anxiety because it also sometimes seems to open the door to a vast new array of misbegotten imperialist adventures. So when Justin Logan recommended Andrew Bacevich’s skeptical take on the new memoir from COIN guru David Kilcullen I paid attention. But even more interesting than Bacevich’s take on Kilcullen was CNAS fellow and counterinsurgent Andrew Exum’s take on Bacevich’s take on Kilcullen:
One of the things I have always maintained is that realists of the Andrew Bacevich school and counter-insurgents of the David Kilcullen school have more in common than they realize at first glance. No one who really understands COIN wants to do it. Liberal interventionalists and neo-conservatives are likely to be much more enthusiastic than the practitioners themselves. Counter-insurgents, often knowing something of what they speak through practical and hard-won experience, realize all too well just how difficult and costly big schemes drawn up in Washington become when they have to be operationalized. Counter-insurgency is hard. Best to avoid it, actually.
I’m torn between wanting to write “I think this is true” and wanting to write “I hope this is true.” But the fact that Exum, who’s on the inside of the COIN clique looking out, is writing it makes me more hopeful that it actually is true. It’s always seemed to me that the clear implication of giving due consideration to the issue of how to eat soup with a knife is that you should do your damn best to avoid putting yourself in that kind of situation. In other words, if at all possible find something else to eat.
But at the same time that this has seemed to me to be the clear implication, I’ve also worried that actual practitioners may be disinclined to draw the implication in practice. After all, active engagement in counterinsurgency operations tends to boost demand for counterinsurgency experts while a foreign policy that aimed to avoid such scenarios might reach the conclusion that it can afford to simply ignore the subject. Thus you could see a certain structural bias in COIN circles toward wanting to see COIN-needed situations lurking under every rock.
The ongoing Afghanistan strategic review process will, I think, be a practical test of whether or not Exum’s ideas about a realist/counterinsurgent synthesis can be made to work. It seems to me that it’s a scenario in which we need to simultaneously apply COINish insights about the tactics employed by our troops (relying on manpower rather than firepower, seeing public opinion as a key center of gravity, etc.) with realist insights about the need to set priorities, define interests, and establish realistic goals. There’s a big risk of tumbling too far into one side or another—either pulling back and just lobbing occasional bombs at bad guys in a manner that radicalizes the entire population, or else committing ourselves to an unnecessary and probably impossible decades-long effort to build a modern state structure in Afghanistan.
I think we’ll see soon enough how well the administration does on this score, but the blogging lifestyle has turned me into an impatient person.
17 Responses to “Exum: “No One Who Understands COIN Really Wants to Do It””
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
March 4th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Isn’t this just a more particular variant of the accurate observation that the people who want the wars are the politicians and ideologues, and that the people involved in making the wars tend to see it much more as something which at best is inevitable?
March 4th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
we need to simultaneously apply COINish insights…seeing public opinion as a key center of gravity, etc.) with realist insights about the need to set priorities, define interests, and establish realistic goals.
Can’t COIN acolytes fit well within the realist tradition? I have the sense, for some reason, that one of the first things COINers do is get real about the likelihood of various potential objectives. So, in Iraq, we’re no longer looking for whiskey-freedom, but for stability and–if possible–a native democratic sensibility (whatever that means) toward governance.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
In other news COIN is probably the worst acronym ever.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
As I mentioned elsewhere, a good deal of this debate is distilled by two of Exum’s commenters:
“Does anyone seriously believe that the United States is likely to commit itself to a 15-year effort in Afghanistan, in order to build the country up to the level of Chad?”
“With, of course, no guarentee you’ll get Chad. And a significant chance you’ll get much worse.”
And do we really even have a realistic idea of what it would require to implement this stuff? Get outside of Kabul, and “infrastructure” means apple orchards, poppy fields, & a few donkeys. 15 years is wildly optimistic.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I joined the U.S. Army in 1976, in the aftermath of Vietnam. The consensus among the officers I knew was that we wouldn’t do counterinsurgency ever again, except maybe for sending the Green Berets to some low-intensity conflict.
The guys who started as lieutenants when I served, and made a career, are now generals. Doing counterinsurgency.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I think the most likely answer is that COIN is no fun. Or at least, it is less fun than sitting in your plane or your tank and blowing up a vastly inferior enemy. Your soldiers die in COIN, and they die in gruesome ways. You become friends with people only to later learn that they’re the enemy, or to see the enemy cut off their heads. And then you’re not allowed to go blow up the beheaders from your plane or your tank.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I was not aware that there was an insurgency within the United States requiring counterinsurgency tactics. There are insurgencies going on in other countries … but those are other countries.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Counter-insurgency is killing and terrorizing civilians. It’s torture. It’s death squads. It’s jailing all males of military age. It’s ineffective in the long run.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Another day, another post tacitly supporting an interminable military occupation of a third world country that gently fails to shed any light on what the United States is supposed to be achieving in that third world country. I think we need to set up a debate between Matt Yglesias and Matt Yglesias circa 2005.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
wiley – wrong! You have been watching too many Oliver Stone Vietnam movies. That is counterinsurgency if you want to fail.
I am not sure why everyone thinks counterinsurgency is more expensive in blood and treasure than high intensity conflict (HIC). We have fought several succesful counterinsurgencies in our history (the West, Philipines, Vietnam 70 – 72). I agree that Afghanistan is not worth fighting for but we went in there to destroy an al-Queda safe haven, did it, and are now wrestling with the tar baby. The trick is to put an Afghan face on the operation. Their Army is coming along but their police are terrible. Ultimately the police have to be effective to make any head way. We have not put anywhere near the number of boots on the ground if we want to succeed. Keep in mind that Afghanistan is the size of TX. Many of our allies are not up for what really needs to be done and their sectors have become de-stabilized. If we get Pakistan and Iran signed on to cut the weapons and supply flow then we will see some improvement. As long as the insurgent has a safe haven in Pakistan with the ability to re-supply we will be humping up and down hills forever.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The problem with COIN warfare as opposed to conventional warfare is that there is no really strategically defined vicory without any political settlement. The French technically won the war in Algeria and the United States was successful in the later phases of the Vietnam War. But the Americans and the French lost these wars because they did bot have a political alternatives for the native population. If the US military becomes more oriented to COIN than they will believe that somehow the US can impose a political solution through using successful military tactics. However if the American military was more structured in a conventional way military leaders would probably want the state department to seek political solutions towards internal conflict such as those in Afghanistan. The military had this mindset in the seventies and eighties and prevented the US from being involved in conflicts in the developing world.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
The Taliban is an expression of the political will of a large chunk of the Afghan population. Lots of Pathans really are wacko fundamentalists. And there are lots and lots of Pathans. They know we’re going to go home eventually, so they’re not going to quit.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Danceswithgoats – how many times do I have to compliment his handle for being appropriate? – says we did “successful” counterinsurgencies in the West, the Phillipines, and Vietnam.
Vietnam was a success? Hmmm, I didn’t get the memo.
The Phillipines? HOW many people were butchered there?
The West? Oh, yeah, Native Americans called that a success.
“If we get Pakistan and Iran signed on to cut the weapons and supply flow then we will see some improvement”
Good luck.
“We have not put anywhere near the number of boots on the ground if we want to succeed.”
That number is estimated to be 400,000.
Good luck.
The reality is that COIN CANNOT be conducted by foreign troops in a country that has no stable state, has no history of having a stable state, where the insurgents have a safe haven and the support of a significant number of the population, and where the foreign troops do not understand the language or the culture.
There is NO FUCKING WAY you can do COIN in those circumstances.
This is where the COIN advocates are running their mouths and lying. They KNOW these facts are true, but as Matt says, they’re getting the career benefit of ignoring them.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:55 am
CNAS as an acronym for an organization that talks about counter insurgency strategies:
And the candidates are:
The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS)
China National Accreditation Service (for Conformity Assessment)
Center for North American Studies
Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies
Center for a New American Security <— my vote after careful analysis
Casei Nationale de Asigurari de Sanatate
College of Natural & Applied Sciences
Centre for North African Studies
April 9th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
This is very up-to-date info. I think I’ll share it on Facebook.