BOOK REVIEW Counter-insurgency, then and now A Question of Command by Mark Moyar
Reviewed by Brian M Downing
In Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, an operation on the fictional
island of Anopopei comes to a successful conclusion, but owing to the
campaign's intricacies, no one is quite sure why. Headquarters writes a report
crediting the commanding general and in time it becomes official history. Many
campaigns might be a bit like Anopopei.
Counter-insurgency thinking is once again much discussed, as it was 50 years
ago. In the early 1960s, the United States was reeling from Fidel Castro's
seizure of power in Cuba and uncertain how to deal with Maoism and its apparent
offshoots in Southeast Asia. The John F Kennedy administration sought a way to
prevent
more Cubas and thought it had found the answer in the doctrine of
counter-insurgency.
Ideas from counter-insurgencies in Malaya, the Philippines and Algeria informed
US special forces and Central Intelligence Agency operations in Laos and
Vietnam throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Though successful in places,
supporters ran into problems with nationalism, corrupt officials and
institutional barriers in the US military. The Vietnam War led to the military
being vilified at home, brought disciplinary problems inside the once proud
institution and ended ignominiously. Counter-insurgency foundered as generals
felt that expertise in it would encourage politicians to put it to use in
another quagmire.
In recent years, the US has found itself facing sizable insurgencies in Iraq
and Afghanistan and smaller ones in Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines.
Veterans with experience in counter-insurgency are few and far between - and
mostly long retired. The military is racing to build doctrines and cadres for
these new wars.
Moyar, a professor at the US Marine Corps University and author of a
re-examination of the Vietnam War, presents a perspective on counter-insurgency
that will find audiences in and out of the military. He posits three
counter-insurgency schools. The Population-Centered approach seeks to
understand the roots of an insurgency and then develop and implement programs
to win popular support. The Enemy-Centered approach seeks to break the will and
capabilities of insurgents, principally through the use of political and
military power.
Moyar presents a third way. The Leader-Centered approach sees insurgent warfare
as a contest between opposing elites - insurgent and counter-insurgent - to win
popular support. There are social grievances, often profound ones, but
grievances are seen as the issue in a violent, organizational contest - a point
that nicely distinguishes the author from many who see insurgents as having the
high ground on grievances.
The basic principles of such warfare are straightforward and largely
undisputed: construction of local intelligence networks; cooperation between
political and military personnel; local popular support; local self-defense
forces; and the protracted presence of counter-insurgency programs and
personnel. The elite with superior personnel in the field - those with
initiative, flexibility, creativity, judgment, empathy, charisma and
sociability - will put these principles to work and emerge victorious. This
muddles the counter-insurgency approaches, but that's social science and
Moyar's argument merits better consideration than quibbling about definitions.
The bulk of the book comprises nine case studies ranging from the American
Civil War (parts of which were indeed insurgencies) to the ongoing wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Moyar's accounts are necessarily brief but no one will doubt
he has done a great deal of research, though points of disagreement are
inevitable.
An obvious problem in his cases will occur to many. Moyar sees insurgent
warfare as a contest between two elites, but his cases examine, almost
exclusively, only one side of the contest. Most accounts give vignettes of
counter-insurgent leaders and important engagements, leaving readers to
conclude that they outwitted their insurgent foes and that the superior elite
won out. That might be unavoidable given the subject matter and some issues are
too pressing to wait a decade or two until more data accumulate. But more
emphasis on the complexities of insurgent warfare would have been helpful.
Where do we get such men?
Moyar sees leadership as part nature and part nurture but believes that
military organizations - or at least the US military - can groom sufficient
numbers of officers with the critical attributes to win. He provides an
appendix with a series of questions aimed at identifying ideal officers for
counter-insurgency.
We would do well to dismiss the caricature of American high-ranking officers as
unimaginative martinets, but there are institutional obstacles to developing
the type of officers Moyar advocates. There has long been conflict between
advocates of counter-insurgency and those who see conventional orientations
(armor, mechanized infantry, air superiority) as the appropriate posture for
the US military. Counter-insurgency advocates lost out during the Vietnam War,
but apparent successes in Iraq and years of directionless efforts in
Afghanistan have given them the upper hand in the Pentagon.
Nonetheless, the military is an organization with a strong preference for
predictable methods and unwavering respect for the chain of command. The
independence and creativity of counter-insurgency efforts, tailored to
conditions in specific locales and not to expectations back at headquarters,
will not interact smoothly with the organizational structure. Special forces
personnel in Afghanistan complain of having to clear even small operations with
higher-ups - a time-consuming and stifling procedure.
Advisors in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, owing to their remoteness from
Saigon, enjoyed a great deal of leeway, but today's communications allow local
ops to be supervised by provincial commanders, officers and embassy personnel
and consultants in Kabul, and even their superiors back in the US. Generals do
not easily relinquish operational control.
Moyar's emphasis is on senior officers - General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam,
General David Petraeus in Iraq and Afghanistan. Counter-insurgencies, however,
depend greatly on junior officers - lieutenants and captains are critical - who
deal with locals, build intelligence networks, provide the backbone for
militias in their early stages and see to it that aid arrives in the villages.
It is the brass that Moyar sees identifying the new breed of officers and
deploying them throughout the theater of operations. But no general, however
astute and persevering, can impose his ideas and expectations all the way down
the chain of command to the company and platoon levels, and training programs
back at Fort Bragg and Marine Corps Base Quantico cannot produce this new breed
in large numbers.
Most of the personnel on counter-insurgencies are not officers; they are
enlisted men and women - privates, corporals and sergeants. It is they who will
have far more interaction with villagers than all the generals and colonels in
field headquarters or back in Kabul ever will. Most enlisted personnel are
young - many under the age of 22 - and carry along on their deployments many
predispositions and prejudices of upbringings back home. This raises the
possibility if not the near certainty of misunderstandings and conflicts with
villagers.
In Afghanistan today, many soldiers are on their fifth combat deployments, and
long experience from Anbar to Kunar has taught them that many locals are
sympathetic to insurgents - a perception, right or wrong, that will be
exaggerated and make them less likely to interact with locals in the manner
prescribed in field manuals and expected by distant officers. Generals cannot
prevent it, and inasmuch as most of them have never served in combat as junior
officers, they might not even understand it.
Problems in implementation: Nation, tribe and region
Even the best-led counter-insurgencies encounter problems with nationalism,
tribalism, corruption, geography, international support for respective sides,
cultural antagonisms and popular support back home. Though not absent in
Moyar's case histories, they are not sufficiently treated and we are left to
believe the proper personnel can deftly overcome them.
Nationalism is usually considered the exclusive asset of insurgents, but it
presents opportunities for counter-insurgents as well. The Vietcong insurgency
was based on local grievances. The introduction of American ground troops in
1965 resonated with the return of French troops 20 years earlier and infused
the insurgency with nationalist energies. But complexities abounded.
The US was able, in certain places, to build counter-insurgency programs that
successfully detached local populations from the insurgency. US programs built
irrigation systems, schools and roads, which eased nationalist resentments but
at the same time underscored the corruption and ineptitude of South Vietnamese
officials. It was clear to most villagers that the latter hoarded resources and
used them for personal gain. Acceptance of American personnel increased but
loyalty to the Saigon government did not.
Programs in Afghanistan face similar problems. Eight years after the Taliban's
expulsion, Western forces have failed to live up to earlier promises to help
rebuild the country and then leave and they now face nationalist-based
hostility - a sentiment strengthened by civilian casualties over the years.
Further, Western forces are increasingly seen as acting with northern peoples
to impose their rule on the Pashtun regions.
Tribalism presents a different environment from the ones in many
counter-insurgency cases. Negotiating with tribal elders has advantages in that
deals can be struck and then, through authority and entreaty, be imposed on
sub-tribes and clans. In many parts of Afghanistan, however, tribal authority
has been badly damaged by decades of war, leaving many to accept the Taliban as
the new ordering body. Even where tribal elders remain influential, Kabul and
Western forces are not held in high regard, though elders will listen to
programs that benefit them.
Success with one tribe will not necessarily spread into adjacent regions in the
classic oil-spot technique. Success with one tribe may lead to enmity from
another. Such was the case in the early 1980s when the cooperation of tribes in
Paktia province led to attacks from tribes in nearby Wardak. This is not to say
that tribal diplomacy will make little headway, only that success can sow the
seeds of opposition. And the Taliban are adroit enough to cultivate that
opposition. Indeed, they have a formidable head start in tribal negotiations,
and a daunting cultural advantage as well.
The Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the ongoing one there
now might offer insights on the relative importance of international context
and leadership. The mujahideen forces that fought the Soviet Union and its
Afghan allies to a standstill had little in the way of coherent leadership.
There were several major resistance groups under which there were scores of
bands only barely organized. Many groups, such as Hizb-i Islami (Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar), fought each other as much as they fought the Russians. Command was
determined by seniority and zealotry and kinship, not by organizational method.
The Soviet Union initially relied on brute force but in time adopted
counter-insurgency principles while the Kabul government negotiated with tribal
elders and got many to side with it.
Critically, the Soviet Union and its ally in Kabul had little if any
international support. The mujahideen enjoyed generous support from the United
States and Saudi Arabia; Pakistan offered sanctuaries and funneled arms and
money to the fighters; and much of the Islamic world sent money and volunteers.
Unable to maintain public support for the war, the Soviet Union withdrew in
1989 and cut off subsidies to Kabul a few years later. With neither effective
leadership nor common cause, the mujahideen suffered large-scale desertions and
began to fight each other.
Perhaps paradoxically, the international context today greatly disfavors the
successors to the mujahideen. The Taliban are opposed by most foreign powers,
including the US, India, Iran, Russia, China and the former Soviet republics to
the north. Only far-flung donors and Pakistan support the Taliban. The latter
now faces international pressure to nudge the Taliban toward a negotiated
settlement.
Emphasis on leadership will come naturally from military institutions. And no
one who has seen a tactful captain encourage a reluctant militiaman or dress
down a thieving police chief will doubt the importance of savvy officers. But
minimizing the intricacies that counter-insurgencies present will not
adequately inform policy makers and publics about the wars they have embarked
upon and will likely embark upon in the future.
Nor, outside of inspiring young officers, will it be especially helpful to
personnel who face educations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Most of those who
have already served in counter-insurgency operations have already learned those
hard lessons.
A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by
Mark Moyar. Yale University Press; 1 edition (October 20, 2009). ISBN-10:
0300152760. Price US$30, 368 pages.
Brian M Downing served with indigenous forces during the Vietnam War and
is the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and
The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to
Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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In recent years, the US has found itself facing sizable insurgencies in Iraq
and Afghanistan and smaller ones in Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines.
Veterans with experience in counter-insurgency are few and far between - and
mostly long retired. The military is racing to build doctrines and cadres for
these new wars.
