I read an article today about David Kilcullen that rang a big bell. Kilcullen is an Australian outsider who has recently made it into the inside of policy being made in Iraq. More about him in a second.
Here is the aha - When the rules of war change, the establishment get struck in their old mindsets and only the outside "amateurs" have a chance of getting you unstuck.
In the 1914 - 1918 war, there was deadlock. No one could find an answer to the defense. All they could do was to increase the weight of the effort. The French and British and later American Leadership were trapped by their doctrine and by the fact that they could all draw on immense manpower that they could easily lose.
The Australians and the Canadians were very different. Both fielded volunteer armies ( Both had large Corps of over 100,000 men) Their men were not urban factory workers or rural peasants. They were extremely self sufficient and bloody minded who did not take to authority. They came from big lands but small populations. They could not be wasted.
Above all they were lead by gifted amateurs. Australia by John Monash, a son of Prussian and Jewish parents who was an Engineer. He had been in the militia since 1884 and in 1914 was a Colonel. Arthur Currie lead the Canadians by 1917 and was the planner for Vimy Ridge. Currie had been a not very successful real estate salesman, echoes of Grant, and also had been in the militia where he began the war as a Colonel in the artillery.
Both men understood that the simple application of mass, think Iraq, was not going to do the job. Both could rely on the quality of their men to take a much more fluid approach. Both also used artillery like a scalpel and not simply a hammer. If you are interested in the detail here is a paper on the Currie revolution that I wrote for Veterans Affairs.
By 1918, a totally frustrated Lloyd George was planning to replace Haig with these two men. Currie's work as point for the allies when the Canadian Corps pushed across the Canal de Nord and broke through the Hindenberg line ended the war before this took place.
I think that Iraq & Afghanistan are deja vu all over again. Our military leadership are stuck somewhere in Northern Europe still fighting the Soviet Union. They cannot break the mindset of applying force and just as bad of force protection. They don't have infinite manpower but they have access to infinite money and to technology. Intellectually they may "get it" but in their hearts they don't.
But now we are in "post Somme" Iraq and there is a realization that we are stuck - the time when the amateur from away can be heard.
Kilcullen's main theory (Wikipedia) is that a Kinetic approach (like the first day of the Somme) cannot prevail against an enemy whose order of battle is organic and cultural:
Counterinsurgency in its traditional guise is based on systems
analysis. But Cartesian systems analysis cannot handle the complexity
inherent in counterinsurgency. Fortunately, since the 1960s scientists
have developed new approaches to systems analysis, based on the
emerging theory of Complexity, which does provide means for handling
this complexity. Therefore complex systems analysis of insurgent
systems may be the tool needed to develop a fundamentally new version of counterinsurgency for this War.
Applying the branch of complexity theory that deals with organic systems, the paper develops a model of insurgencies as biological systems.
This model identifies key system elements and means to attack them. It
also allows insights into the systems dynamics of global insurgency,
the enabling role of culture in insurgent systems, evolution and
adaptation in insurgent groups, insurgent ecosystems, and the nature of
the Islamist ‘virtual state’. A historical survey of five previous
counterinsurgency campaigns provides a tentative validation of this
systems approach. Applying this model generates a new strategy for the
War on Terrorism – Disaggregation. Like Containment in the Cold
War, a Disaggregation strategy means different things in different
theatres or at different times. But it provides a unifying strategic
conception for the War. Disaggregation focuses on interdicting links
between theatres, denying the ability of regional and global actors to
link and exploit local actors, disrupting flows between and within
jihad theatres, denying sanctuary areas, isolating Islamists from local
populations and disrupting inputs from the sources of Islamism in the
greater Middle East.
This gives rise to an operational concept: the aim of
counterinsurgency (hence the war aim in this campaign) is to return the
insurgency’s parent society to its normal mode of interaction, on terms
favourable to us. This demands an understanding of what ‘normality’ is
for a given society, and a realisation that military measures only
create preconditions for other elements of national power to resolve
underlying issues. The systems model also generates practical insights
– the need for a common strategic understanding, a constitutional path
to address legitimate grievances, understanding of the global insurgent
ecosystem and our role in it, a tailored analysis of each insurgency,
and improved cultural capability.
Kilcullen has argued in most of his works for a deeper cultural and
linguistic understanding of the conflict environment, an approach he
has recently begun calling "conflict ethnography". In May 2007 on the Small Wars Journal website he argued that:
- The bottom line is that no handbook relieves a professional
counterinsurgent from the personal obligation to study, internalize and
interpret the physical, human, informational and ideological setting in
which the conflict takes place. Conflict ethnography is key; to borrow
a literary term, there is no substitute for a “close reading” of the
environment. But it is a reading that resides in no book, but around
you; in the terrain, the people, their social and cultural
institutions, the way they act and think. You have to be a participant
observer.(My emphasis) And the key is to see beyond the surface differences between
our societies and these environments (of which religious orientation is
one key element) to the deeper social and cultural drivers of conflict,
drivers that locals would understand on their own terms.
I think that we are here again. Kilcullen is the consummate outsider as were Monash and Currie. He is not trapped by tradition and he also has a keen mind and a different kind of experience (The Australian).
But when the invasion of
Iraq was being planned, Kilcullen was one of a handful of senior
military advisers in the coalition of the willing to voice a dissenting
view. "I was one of a bunch of people ... who said 'Iraq is going to be
a lot harder than you people seem to think, based on 20 years of
experience doing it and studying it. It's going to take a lot more than
you seem to be willing to commit."'
It was a view that then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld
rejected out of hand, saying Kilcullen didn't know what he was talking
about.
But now, after more than four years of entrenched conflict with no
end in sight, Kilcullen's doctrine of counterinsurgency prevails in
Washington and on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it provided
the foundation for the surge strategy the Bush administration says is
beginning to succeed.
Kilcullen is one of the most influential Australian military minds
of his generation. He grew up on Sydney's north shore, the son of
academics. He studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Duntroon, served
for more than 20 years in the Australian Army and was awarded a PhD in
political science from the University fo NSW for a thesis on Indonesian
insurgent and terrorist groups and counterinsurgency methods. He has
been a military adviser to the Indonesian Special Forces in
counterinsurgency, taught counterinsurgency tactics at the British
School of Infantry, and served in peacekeeping operations in Cyprus and
Bougainville. Kilcullen also commanded an Australian infantry company
in counterinsurgency operations in East Timor and trained and led East
Timorese forces after the independence vote in 1999. He was a special
adviser for irregular warfare to the 2005 US Quadrennial Defence Review
and is Rice's chief strategist on counterinsurgency and
counter-terrorism, working in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of
Africa and Southeast Asia.
His no-nonsense guide to fighting insurgents, The 28 Articles:
Fundamentals of Company-Level CounterInsurgency, is used by the US,
Australian, British, Canadian, Dutch, Iraqi and Afghan armies as a
training document.
It is now time to find more Kilcullens, Monash's and Curries
.
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