By George Friedman
The U.S. military for years has debated the utility of
counterinsurgency operations. Drawing from a sentiment that harkens back
to the Vietnam War, many within the military have long opposed
counterinsurgency operations. Others see counterinsurgency as the
unavoidable future of U.S. warfare.
The debate is between those who
believe the purpose of a conventional military force is to defeat
another conventional military force and those who believe conventional
military conflicts increasingly will be replaced by conflicts more akin
to recent counterinsurgency operations. In such conflicts, the purpose
of a counterinsurgency is to transform an occupied society in order to
undermine the insurgents.
Understanding this debate requires the understanding that
counterinsurgency is not a type of warfare; it is one strategy by which a
disproportionately powerful conventional force approaches asymmetric
warfare. As its name implies, it is a response to an insurgency, a type
of asymmetric conflict undertaken by small units with close links to the
occupied population to defeat a larger conventional force.
Insurgents
typically are highly motivated -- otherwise they collapse easily -- and
usually possess superior intelligence to a foreign occupational force.
Small units operating with superior intelligence are able to evade more
powerful conventional forces and can strike such forces at their own
discretion. Insurgents are not expected to defeat the occupying force
through direct military force. Rather, the assumption is that the
occupying force has less interest in the outcome of the war than the
insurgents and that over time, the inability to defeat the insurgency
will compel the occupying force to withdraw.
According to counterinsurgency theory, the strength of an insurgency
lies in the relationship between insurgents and the general population.
The relationship provides a logistical base and an intelligence
apparatus. It also provides sanctuary by allowing the insurgents to
blend into the population and disappear under pressure.
Counterinsurgency argues that severing this relationship is essential.
The means for this consist of offering the population economic
incentives, making deals with the traditional leadership and protecting
the population from the insurgents, who might conduct retributive
attacks for collaborating with the occupying force.
The weakness of counterinsurgency is the assumption that the
population would turn against the insurgents for economic incentives or
that the counterinsurgents can protect the population from the
insurgents. Some values, such as nationalism and religion, are very real
among many populations, and the occupying force's ability to alter
these values is dubious, no matter how helpful, sincere and sympathetic
the occupying force is.
Moreover, protecting the population from
insurgents is difficult. In many cases, insurgents are the husbands,
brothers and sons of civilians. The population may want the economic
benefits offered by the occupying force, but that does not mean citizens
will betray or ostracize their friends and relatives. In the end, it is
a specious assumption that a mass of foreigners can do more than
intimidate a population. The degree to which they can intimidate them is
doubtful as well.
An Alternative to Counterinsurgency?
There is of course another dimension of asymmetric warfare, which
encapsulates guerrilla warfare and special operations warfare. This is
warfare by which highly trained light infantry forces are deployed on a
clearly defined mission but are not dependent on the local population.
Instead, these forces avoid the general population, operating on their
own supplies or supplies obtained with minimal contact with the
population.
Notably, either side could adopt these tactics. What is most
important in considering guerrilla warfare from the perspective of the
counterinsurgent is that it is not merely a tactic for the insurgent; it
is also a potential alternative to counterinsurgency itself.
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that the U.S. military is
not very good at counterinsurgency. One could argue that the United
States should improve its counterinsurgency capabilities, but there is
little evidence that it could master such capabilities. There is,
however, another form of light infantry warfare to consider, and it is a
form of warfare the United States is good at. The alternative does not
seek to win over the population but is designed to achieve very
definable military objectives, from the destruction of facilities to
harassing, engaging and possibly destroying enemy forces, including
insurgents.
Special Operations Forces are highly useful for meeting these
objectives, but we should also include other types of forces. The U.S.
Marine Corps is one such example. Rather than occupying territory, and
certainly rather than trying to change public opinion, these forces have
a conventional mission carried out in relatively small unit operations.
Their goal is to assert military force in highly defined if limited
missions designed to bypass the population and strike at the
opposition's capabilities.
This is exemplified best in counterterrorist
operations or the assault on specific facilities. These operations are
cheap and do not require occupation. More important, these operations
are designed to terminate without incurring political cost -- the bane
of prolonged counterinsurgency operations. The alternative to
counterinsurgency is to avoid occupational warfare by rigorously
defining more limited missions.
To illustrate these operations, consider what we regard as a major
emerging threat: Non-state actors potentially acquiring land-based
anti-ship missiles. Globalism brings with it intensified maritime trade.
Meanwhile, we have seen the dissemination of many weapons to non-state
actors. It is easy to imagine that the next stage of diffusion would be
mobile, land-based anti-ship missiles. A guerrilla group or insurgency,
armed with such weapons, could take advantage of land cover for mobility
but strike at naval vessels.
In fact, we have already seen several
instances where groups employ this strategy. Hezbollah did so in
operations against Israel in 2006. Pirates off the coast of Africa are a
non-state threat to maritime shipping, though they have yet to use such
weapons. Likewise, we see this potential in suicide boat bombs launched
from the coast of Yemen.
The world is filled with chokepoints, where the ocean narrows and
constricts the flow of ships into corridors within range of land-based
anti-ship systems. Some chokepoints, such as the Strait of Hormuz, the
Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Gibraltar, are natural, while
others, such as the Panama and Suez canals, are man-made, and they are
vulnerable to weapons far less sophisticated than anti-ship missiles.
These chokepoints, as well as other critical coastal waters, represent
the vulnerabilities of the global economic system to state and non-state
actors. Occupying them is the logical next step up from piracy.
Providing naval escorts to protect commercial vessels would not solve
the problem. The escorts would not be in a position to attack the
land-based attackers, whose location would be unknown. Airstrikes are
possible, but as we have learned in places like Kosovo, camouflage is an
effective counter to airstrikes despite its shortcomings.
These are the circumstances under which scalable, self-contained
units would be needed. U.S. Marines, who have forces of sufficient scale
to engage attackers in relatively larger areas, are particularly well
suited for such missions. Special operations teams would be useful
against identified and static hard targets, but amphibious light
infantry in various sized units would provide the ability to search,
identify and destroy attackers who are constantly moving or redeploying.
Because these would be land-sea operations, cooperation between naval
forces and ground forces would be critical. These clearly are Marine
missions, and potentially urgent ones.
This is one mission among many that can be imagined for smaller-unit
operations against non-state actors in a hybrid war scenario, which
would avoid the obvious pitfalls of counterinsurgency. Most of all, it
would provide boots on the ground distinguishing between targets,
camouflage and innocent victims and still be able to deploy unmanned
aerial vehicles and other assets.
The issue is not between peer-to-peer conflict and counterinsurgency.
While increasingly rare, peer-to-peer conflict still represents the
existential threat to any country. But the real problem is matching the
force to the mission without committing to occupation -- or worse still,
the social transformation of the country.
Scale and Mission
The type of government that Afghanistan has is not a matter of
national interest to the United States. What is of national interest is
that terrorist attacks are not planned, practiced or launched from
Afghanistan. Neither occupation nor transformation of the social
structure is necessary to achieve this mission. What is necessary will
vary in every conflict, but the key in each conflict is to contain the
commitment to the smallest level possible. There are three reasons for
this. First, doing so defines the mission in such a way that it can be
attained. This imposes realism on the mission.
Moreover, minimizing
commitment avoids the scenario in which prudent withdrawal is deemed
politically unacceptable. Last, it avoids the consequences of attempting
to transform an entire country.
Military intervention should be a rare occurrence; when it does
occur, it should be scaled to the size of the mission. In the chokepoint
scenario addressed above, the goal is not to defeat an insurgency; an
insurgency cannot be defeated without occupying and transforming the
occupied society. The goal is to prevent the use of land-based missiles
against ships. Missions to destroy capabilities are politically
defensible and avoid occupational warfare. They are effective counters
to insurgents without turning into counterinsurgencies.
These missions require a light force readily transportable by
multiple means to a target area. They should be capable of using force
from the squad level to larger levels if necessary. Forces deployed must
be able to return as needed and remain in theater without needing to be
on the ground, taking casualties and engaging in warfare against
non-essential targets and inevitably against civilians. In other words,
the mission should not incur unnecessary political costs.
The key is to recognize the failure of counterinsurgency, that
warfare is conducted on varying scales of size and that any force must
be able to adapt to the mission, ideally operating without large onshore
facilities and without moving to occupation.
The current debate over counterinsurgency opens the door to a careful
consideration of not only the scalability of forces but also the
imperative that the mission includes occupation only in the most extreme
cases. Occupation leads to resistance, resistance leads to
counterattacks and counterattacks lead to counterinsurgencies. Agile
insertion of forces, normally from the sea, could beget disciplined
strategic and operational planning and war termination strategies. Wars
are easier to end when all that is required is for ships to sail away.
Not all wars can be handled this way, but wars that can't need to be
considered very carefully. The record for these wars does not instill
optimism.
