LEARNING THE LESSONS
O F M O D E R N WA R
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LEARNING
THE
LESSONS
OF
MODERN
WA R
Edited by
Thomas G. Mahnken
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
S ta nford Unive rs it y P re ss
Stanford, California
© 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
“An Iraqi Perspective on the Invasion of 2003" is © 2020 by the Institute
of Defense Analysis.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mahnken, Thomas G., 1965– editor.
Title: Learning the lessons of modern war / edited by Thomas G. Mahnken.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020004559 (print) | LCCN 2020004560 (ebook) | ISBN
9781503612266 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503612501 (paperback) | ISBN
9781503612518 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Military art and science—History—21st century. | Military
history, Modern—21st century. | Afghan War, 2001- | Iraq War,
2003–2011.
Classification: LCC U42.5 .L43 2020 (print) | LCC U42.5 (ebook) | DDC
355/.02—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004559
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004560
Cover design: Kevin Barrett Kane
Cover photograph: Xenia800
CONTENTS
Acknowledgmentsvii
Contributorsix
Forewordxv
Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, U.S. Army (Retired)
Introduction
1
Thomas G. Mahnken
PA R T I
Learning Lessons from History
1
Learning Lessons: The Value of a Contemporary
Approach to History
7
Michael Evans
2 Thoughts on Lessons Learned in the Past
24
Williamson Murray
PA R T I I
Iraq and Afghanistan
3 Lessons of the Iraq War
51
Peter R. Mansoor
4 Operation Iraqi Freedom: Key Lessons from the
British Experience
Ben Barry
66
vi
Contents
5 An Iraqi Military Perspective on the Invasion of 2003
87
Kevin M. Woods
6 Afghanistan and the Crisis of Counterinsurgency, 2001–2014
102
Carter Malkasian
7 Britain’s War in Afghanistan, 2001–2014
122
Theo Farrell
8 Raising and Mentoring Security Forces in Afghanistan
138
T. X. Hammes
9 The Accidental Counterinsurgents: U.S. Performance
in Afghanistan
157
Todd Greentree
PA R T I I I
Lessons of Other Wars
1 0 Lessons of Modern War: A Case Study of the Sri Lankan War
181
Ahmed S. Hashim
1 1 Operation Enduring Freedom—Philippines: Lessons Learned
from a Special Warfare Approach to Counterterrorism and
Counterinsurgency
197
David S. Maxwell
1 2 Lessons from the War in Georgia
214
Svante E. Cornell
1 3 Russian Military Doctrine and Exercises
229
Phillip A. Petersen
1 4 Operation Cast Lead: “From Light Duty to Heavy Duty”
245
Scott C. Farquhar
1 5 An Incomplete Success: Security Assistance in Colombia
269
Douglas Porch
Conclusion
291
Thomas G. Mahnken
Index
295
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book grew out of a project sponsored and inspired by H. R. McMaster,
who was then serving as the commanding general of the Army Capabilities
Integration Center, which was meant to help the U.S. Army learn the lessons
of contemporary wars. The project culminated a workshop organized by
the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in October 2015
under the leadership of Greg Melcher, Chris Bishop, Joe Buche, John Nolen,
Nolan Sherrill, and the wonderful staff of APL. I would like to thank all
who participated in the conference, including not only the authors of the
chapters that appear in this book, but also those who contributed to the
workshop through candid discussion and debate, including Major General
Bernard Barrera, Eliot A. Cohen, Joseph J. Collins, Colonel E. J. Degen,
Lieutenant General Jim Dubik, Michael Eisenstadt, Jeffrey Friedman, Michael Hartmayer, Frank Hoffman, David E. Johnson, Rob Johnson, Phillip Karber, Tom Keaney, Hale Laughlin, Robert Leonhard, Paul Lubeck,
Thomas Lynch, David Maxwell, Anit Mukherjee, Lieutenant General Sir
Paul Newton, Colonel Joel Rayburn, Nadia Schadlow, Doug Winton, and
Lieutenant Colonel Matt Zais.
The journey from workshop to edited volume was a long one that would
have ended in failure were it not for the assistance of Leah Pennywark of
Stanford University Press and the hard work of my talented research assistant,
Connor Barniskis.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank H. R. McMaster, ever
the soldier-scholar, for bringing this project into being and seeing it through
to the end.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Ben Barry is Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies (IISS). Ben comments and writes on the higher management
of defense, military strategy, operations and tactics, military innovation and
adaptation, modern warfare, and land warfare, in particular. Ben joined the
IISS in 2010, before which he served in the British Army. As well as training in
Germany, France, Cyprus, Canada, Portugal, and New Zealand, and operational
service in Hong Kong and Northern Ireland, he commanded both an armored
infantry battalion and a multinational brigade on UN and NATO operations
in Bosnia. He was Director of the British Army Staff in the U.K. Ministry of
Defence and author of the Army’s lessons-learned analysis of post-conflict stabilization of Iraq. He is the author of Harsh Lessons: Iraq, Afghanistan and the
Changing Character of War (IISS, 2017) and The Road from Sarajevo: British
Army Operations in Bosnia, 1995–1996 (The History Press, 2016).
Svante E. Cornell is a Swedish scholar specializing in politics and security issues in Eurasia, especially the South Caucasus, Turkey, and Central Asia. He
is a director and co-founder of the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and
Development Policy, and Research Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program (CACI), and joined the American Foreign
Policy Council as a Senior Fellow for Eurasia in January 2017.
Michael Evans is the General Sir Francis Hassett Chair of Military Studies
at the Australian Defence College and a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. Previously, he was head of the
x
C o n t ribu tors
Australian Army’s Land Warfare Studies Centre at the Royal Military College,
Duntroon, and served in Land Headquarters and the Directorate of Army
Research and Analysis. He has held numerous visiting fellowships, including
a Sir Alfred Beit Fellowship in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
Scott C. Farquhar is an army civilian at the Mission Command Center of
Excellence. A retired infantry officer, he served tours overseas in Germany,
Iraq, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia as well as exercises in Egypt,
Japan, and Israel. Mr. Farquhar is a former instructor at the U.S. Army’s
Command and General Staff College and military historian at the Combat
Studies Institute. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Providence College and
a master’s degree from Kansas State University in history. Writings include
Back to Basics: A Study of the Second Lebanon War and Operation CAST
LEAD (editor); several chapters in “A Different Kind of War”: The US Army
in Operation Enduring Freedom, October 2001—September 2005, the U.S.
Army’s first study of its campaign in Afghanistan; the monograph Legacy of
Langres; and numerous studies, articles, and papers for CALL, the United
States Institute for Peace, and the Society for Military History.
Theo Farrell is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He was previously a professor and head of the Department
of War Studies at King’s College London. He is a fellow of the U.K. Academy
of Social Sciences, and Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services
Institution. Professor Farrell served on a number of strategic and campaign
reviews for U.S. and British commanders in Afghanistan. His most recent book,
Unwinnable: Britain’s War in Afghanistan, 2001–2014 (Vintage, 2018) was
named “Book of the Year” by the Sunday Times and the Evening Standard.
Todd Greentree is a research associate with the Changing Character of War
Centre at Oxford University and teaches National Security at the University
of New Mexico. A former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, his political-military
experience in five wars began in El Salvador during the early 1980s. Between
2008 and 2012, Dr. Greentree served in Afghanistan with Task Force Warrior
in Regional Command—East, with 5/2 Stryker Brigade in Kandahar Province,
and as director of the Strategic Initiatives Group with the 10th Mountain
Division in Regional Command—South. He taught Strategy and Policy at
the Naval War College and was a visiting scholar in the Merrill Center for
CONTRIBUTORS
xi
Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is currently writing The Blood of
Others, a book about the wars at the end of the Cold War in Angola, Central
America, and Afghanistan and what they have to do with us today.
T. X. Hammes is a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. In his thirty years in
the Marine Corps, T. X. Hammes served at all levels in the operating forces,
including commanding an intelligence battalion, an infantry battalion, and the
Chemical Biological Incident Response Force. He participated in stabilization
operations in Somalia and Iraq as well as training of insurgents in various
places. Hammes has a master’s degree in historical research and a doctorate
in modern history from Oxford University. He is the author of two books,
seventeen book chapters, and over 150 articles. He lectures extensively on
the future of conflict, strategy, and insurgency in the United States, Europe,
Asia, and the Middle East.
Ahmed S. Hashim is an associate professor of strategic studies in the Military
Studies Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. His research focus extends from Southwest Asia to Southeast Asia. Among his latest publications is The Caliphate
at War: Operational Realities and Innovations of the Islamic State (Oxford
University Press, 2018).
Thomas G. Mahnken is president and chief executive officer of the Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a senior research professor at the
Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at The Johns Hopkins University’s
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He served as
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning from 2006–2009.
He also served as a member of the congressionally mandated National Defense
Strategy Commission and on the staff of the 2014 National Defense Panel, the
2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, and the Commission on
the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction. He is the author of The Gathering Pacific Storm: Emerging U.S.China Strategic Competition in Defense Technological and Industrial Development (Cambria University Press, 2018); Arms Races in International Politics
from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford University Press,
2016); Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present and Future of Regional Security
(Stanford University Press, 2014); Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century:
x ii
C o n t rib u tors
Theory, History, and Practice (Stanford University Press, 2012); Technology
and the American Way of War Since 1945 (Columbia University Press, 2008);
and Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–1941 (Cornell University Press, 2002); among other works. He is
a recipient of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service
and the Department of the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal.
Carter Malkasian is the author of War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of
War in the Afghan Frontier (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Illusions
of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Islamic State (Oxford University
Press, 2017). From 2015 to 2019 he was the senior advisor for strategy to
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford. He has extensive experience working in conflict zones. The highlight was nearly two years
in Garmser district, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as a State Department
political officer. Before that, Dr. Malkasian deployed twice to Iraq as a civilian
advisor from the Center for Naval Analyses to Iraq, mostly in Al Anbar in 2004
and 2006. Other field assignments have been to Honduras, Kuwait (OIF-1),
Kunar (2007–2008), and Kabul as the political advisor to General Dunford
(2013–2014). Other publications include A History of Modern Wars of Attrition (2002); The Korean War, 1950–1953 (2001); and “War Downsized:
How to Accomplish More with Less,” in Foreign Affairs (2012). Dr. Malkasian
completed his doctorate in history at Oxford University. He speaks Pashto.
Peter R. Mansoor, Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.), is the General Raymond E.
Mason Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University. A 1982
distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point,
he earned his doctorate from The Ohio State University. He assumed his
academic position in September 2008 after a twenty-six-year military career
that included two combat tours and which culminated in his service as the
executive officer to General David Petraeus, Commanding General of MultiNational Force-Iraq. He is the author of The GI Offensive in Europe: The
Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941–1945; Baghdad at Sunrise:
A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq; and Surge: My Journey with General
David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War, and has coedited (with
Williamson Murray) Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from
the Ancient World to the Present and Grand Strategy and Military Alliances.
David S. Maxwell, Colonel, U.S. Army Special Forces (Ret.), is a senior fellow
at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a thirty-year veteran,
CONTRIBUTORS
xiii
retired in 2011 with his final assignment teaching national security strategy at
the National War College. He is a graduate of Miami University and holds an
MMAS degree from CGSC and SAMS and an MS degree in National Security
from the National War College. He served on the ROK/U.S. Combined Forces
Command staff, where he was coauthor of the original ROK JCS—UNC/
CFC CONPLAN 5029–99. He commanded 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces
Group in Okinawa, including the first deployment to Mindanao for OEF-P in
2001–2002. He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force—Philippines in 2006–2007. He is on the board of advisors for Spirit of America and
is a member of the board of directors for the Committee for Human Rights in
North Korea (HRNK), the Small Wars Journal, and the OSS Society.
Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, U.S. Army (Retired), is the Fouad and
Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Bernard and Susan
Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institution, and a lecturer at Stanford
University School of Business. He chairs the Center for Military and Political
Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. He was the twenty-sixth
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. McMaster served as
an active duty Army officer for thirty-four years after graduation from the
United States Military Academy. He holds a PhD in history from the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Williamson Murray is professor emeritus at The Ohio State University. He is
the author of numerous books, the most recent of which is America and the
Future of War.
Phillip A. Petersen has a 1985 PhD in political science from the University
of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (dissertation title—Images as Defense
Policy Determinants in the Soviet-American Military Relationship Since
1945), a 1974 master’s degree in political science from Western Michigan University (thesis title—Systemic Adaptation: Can the Soviet System
Accommodate the “Democratic Movement”?), and a 1969 bachelor of
science degree in education from Central Michigan University. For fifteen
years he served as a United States Army officer, an intelligence analyst for
the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a policy analyst in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and at the National Defense University. Upon leaving
government service with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Dr. Petersen
joined The Potomac Foundation as a senior fellow. From December 2015
until December 2017 he served as Potomac’s Vice President for Studies,
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C o n t rib u tors
until becoming president of the Centre for the Study of New Generation
Warfare.
Douglas Porch is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former chair of the
Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in
Monterey, California. A PhD from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, his books include The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to
Desert Storm (1995); The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the
Legendary Fighting Force (1991), which won prizes both in the United States
and in France; The Conquest of the Sahara; The Conquest of Morocco; The
March to the Marne: The French Army 1871–1914; The Portuguese Armed
Forces and the Revolution; and Army and Revolution: France 1815–1844.
Wars of Empire, part of the Cassell History of Warfare series, appeared in
October 2000 and in paperback in 2001. The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II, a selection of the Military History Book
Club, the History Book Club, and the Book of the Month Club, was published
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Macmillan in the United Kingdom in May
2004 as Hitler’s Mediterranean Gamble. It received the Award for Excellence
in U.S. Army Historical Writing from The Army Historical Foundation. His
latest book, Counterinsurgency: The Origins, Development and Myths of the
New Way of War, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013 and
has been placed on the Army Chief of Staff’s reading list for all officers. He
spent 2014–2015 as Academic Visitor at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and
Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Programme.
At present, he is researching a book on French combatants in World War II.
Kevin M. Woods is a defense analyst and historian, and deputy director of
the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses
(IDA). Prior to joining IDA, Dr. Woods was a U.S. Army aviator and served
for more than twenty-one years in a variety of global assignments. He has a
PhD in history from the University of Leeds. Dr. Woods is the lead author of
several books on the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. As a senior analyst,
Dr. Woods has also led numerous multidisciplinary research projects, ranging
from historical lessons-learned studies, joint concept development, military
experimentation, operational analyses of recent conflicts, and Red Team studies for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community.
FOREWORD
Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, U.S. Army (Retired)
Professor Don Higginbotham, an extraordinary historian and fine man,
said upon my completion of the written exam in history at the University of
North Carolina, “Congratulations, you now know more history than you
will ever know.” While historical knowledge is useful, the most important
benefit to studying history is learning how to think. How to ask the right
questions. How to trace events back to their causes. How to appreciate the
complex causality of events. How to do as nineteenth century philosopher
of war Carl von Clausewitz suggested—break what seems fused into its
constituent elements. And how to understand historical events and circumstances on their own terms, without the burdensome imposition of theory.
If there is one lesson of history on which all historians might agree, it is to
avoid simplistic analogies or unsophisticated, linear thinking about complex
problems. The historians’ tendency to qualify the application of historical
lessons is consistent with Sir Michael Howard’s observation that we ought
not to study history to “make us cleverer for the next time,” but instead to
help make us “wise forever.” In 2014, Tom Mahnken and I initiated this
study to help inform the design, doctrine, training, and education of the
future U.S. Army. The idea was to convene some of the very best military
historians to deepen our understanding of recent and ongoing wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan and to place the American experience of those conflicts in
context of other wars. The result exceeded our expectations. In the intervening years the essays have stood the test of time. We are happy to share them.
xvi
Fo re wo r d
The reader might view these excellent essays as a way to mature his or
her own theory or understanding of war and warfare. The scope of the essays is consistent with the approach to the study of military history that Sir
Michael Howard suggested in his seminal 1961 essay. First, to study in width;
to observe how warfare has developed over a long period. Next to study in
depth; to study campaigns thoroughly with an eye toward understanding the
complex causality of events as well as the human and psychological dimensions
of war. And last, to study in context; to understand wars and warfare in light
of their social, cultural, economic, moral, and political dynamics, because as
Sir Michael observed, “the roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought
far from the battlefield.”
The contributors to this volume are humble; their efforts to connect historical knowledge and understanding to contemporary strategic and operational
problems are rational and nuanced. A common theme is how recent difficulties
that the United States encountered in strategic decision-making, operational
planning, and future force development have stemmed, at least in part, from
the neglect or obvious misuse of history. It is not too ambitious to suggest
that this volume might serve, in part, as a corrective to flawed thinking about
war. The essays expose a tendency to neglect continuities in war and warfare.
During the decade prior to the mass murder attacks against the United
States in September 2001, thinking about emerging threats to national security explicitly rejected continuity in favor of change. Instead of making a
grounded projection into the future, thinking about defense was driven by a
fantastical theory about the character of future conflict. Proponents of what
became known as defense transformation argued that a revolution in military
affairs based on advances in surveillance, communications, information, and
precision strike technologies would deliver “dominant battlespace knowledge”
and permit U.S. forces to achieve “full spectrum dominance” against any opponent in future war.
The language was hubristic. Concepts with names like network centric
warfare, rapid decisive operations, shock and awe, and full spectrum dominance embraced what increasingly appeared as a faith-based argument that
future war would lie mainly in the realm of certainty and therefore could be
won quickly and efficiently at low cost, by small forces. Indeed, many believed
that “leap ahead” technological capabilities would even prevent conflict because adversaries would not have the temerity to challenge the United States.
Ultimately, this self-delusion about the character of future conflict undermined
F O R E WO R D
xvii
U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq as war plans and decisions based on flawed
visions of war confronted reality.
The authors demonstrate the value of contemporary history in informing
policy and strategy. As the historian Carl Becker observed in his annual address to the American Historical Association in December 1931, “memory
of past and anticipation of future events work together, go hand in hand in a
friendly way, without disputing over priority and leadership.” In recent years,
however, those anticipating future events were dismissive of the memory of the
past. It is up to readers to draw their own lessons from these essays and help
ensure that history does not, as Becker warned, lie “inert in unread books”
as flawed, ahistorical memories of the past or visions of the future go unchallenged. In wartime, the neglect or superficial understanding of history can be
dangerous, dangerous to the national interest and dangerous to those who
bear the brunt of the fighting.
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LEARNING THE LESSONS
O F M O D E R N WA R
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INTRODUCTION
Thomas G. Mahnken
This book uses the study of the recent past to illuminate the future. More
specifically, it examines the lessons of recent wars as a way of understanding
continuity and change in the character and conduct of war.
Because the test of arms is the only true test of a military’s effectiveness,
and because wars are both occasional and unique, knowledge of military affairs must combine theory and practice. Imagine a surgeon who studies his
profession diligently by reading the most up-to-date medical journals, observing others in the operating room, and practicing using the latest training aids,
but only enters the operating room a couple of times during his career, if at
all. Imagine also that that surgeon learned from professors and interned under
surgeons who had themselves studied and performed only a few procedures.
And imagine that each surgical procedure is different, on a different patient,
and under unique circumstances. That, metaphorically, is the military profession, and that metaphor highlights the critical importance of theory and
history for the military profession. It is thus fitting that this book’s authors
are a group of scholar-practitioners from across the globe.
The first section of the book discusses the importance and the challenges of
learning lessons from military history.1 In the chapter that opens the section,
Michael Evans makes a powerful case for a contemporary and interdisciplinary approach to history, one that is fully engaged with considerations of the
profession of arms, to help soldiers and scholars navigate through the fog of
2
T homas G . M ahnken
peace to apprehend the future of warfare. In the chapter that follows, Williamson Murray examines attempts by military organizations to learn lessons
from history over the past two centuries. His survey reveals a decidedly mixed
record, a tangible reminder of the challenges that await those who seek to
learn from history and of the importance of cultivating history-mindedness
in the profession of arms.
The second section of the book explores the lessons of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, two protracted irregular wars that have shaped a generation of
American, allied, and coalition soldiers individually and collectively.2 We are
as human beings both informed and burdened by our personal experiences.
If history is a guide, the lessons the military leaders of today and tomorrow have learned (or mis-learned, ignored, or forgotten) from these conflicts
cannot help but shape decisions they will make for decades to come. In the
section’s first two chapters, Peter Mansoor discusses the lessons of the Iraq
War and Brigadier (Retired) Ben Barry offers a British perspective on the war.
In the chapter that follows, Kevin Woods draws upon the treasure trove of
Iraqi archival materials seized by coalition forces in 2003 to provide an Iraqi
military perspective on the invasion of Iraq as a reminder of just how much
an adversary’s perceptions can differ from our own. Woods’s chapter also
provides a useful reminder that any account of a war that does not adequately
give voice to the adversary’s perspective is incomplete and likely misleading.
This book’s chapters on Afghanistan, written in 2015, illustrate the challenges of learning from an ongoing war. Carter Malkasian discusses the challenges that coalition forces faced as they sought to formulate and implement
a counterinsurgency strategy, whereas Theo Farrell provides an evaluation of
Britain’s performance in the war through 2014. T. X. Hammes focuses on the
importance of building the capacity of local forces for security in Afghanistan.
More specifically, he focuses on the challenge of raising and mentoring Afghan
security forces. Finally, Todd Greentree’s chapter provides an assessment of
the overall U.S. government performance in Afghanistan.
The book’s final section examines the lessons of other recent wars from
across the globe. Ahmed Hashim discusses the course and outcome of the Sri
Lankan civil war, which featured an insurgency, and an approach to counterinsurgency, that differed greatly from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Similarly, David Maxwell’s chapter on Operation Enduring Freedom—Philippines reveals a very different approach to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency from that employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, one based upon a light
I ntroduction 3
U.S. presence and dedication to building the capacity of capabilities of local
security organizations.
Nor have all recent wars been solely or mostly irregular in character. Russia’s war in Georgia is the subject of Svante Cornell’s chapter, whereas Philip
A. Petersen views Russian views of contemporary war through the lens of
Russian military doctrine and exercises. The character and conduct of recent
wars in the Middle East has been different still. Scott Farquhar examines the
lessons the Israel Defense Force derived from the Second Lebanon War in his
chapter in this section. Douglas Porch examines one of the most successful
contemporary counterinsurgency campaigns, the Colombian government’s
war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC). Among other things, Porch’s essay
demonstrates the importance of having capable local security institutions for
implementing a counterinsurgency strategy.
Notes
1. See, for example, William C. Fuller Jr., “What Is a Military Lesson?” in
Strategic Studies: A Reader, ed. Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph A. Maiolo,
22–39 (New York: Routledge, 2014).
2. See also the U.S. Army’s excellent histories of the Iraq War. Colonel Joel D.
Rayburn and Colonel Frank K. Sobchak, eds., The U.S. Army in the Iraq War,
vol. 1, Invasion—Insurgency—Civil War, 2003–2006 (Carlisle, PA: Army War
College Press, 2019); Rayburn and Sobchack, eds., The U.S. Army in the Iraq
War, vol. 2, Surge and Withdrawal, 2007–2011 (Carlisle, PA: Army War College
Press, 2019).
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Part 1
LEARNING LESSONS
FROM HISTORY
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Chapter 1
LEARNING LESSONS
T H E VA L U E O F A C O N T E M P O R A R Y
APPROACH TO HISTORY
Michael Evans
History is not a cookbook which gives recipes; it teaches by analogy
and forces us to decide what, if anything, is analogous. History
gives us a feel for the significance of events, but it does not teach
which individual events are significant. . . . Certain principles can
be developed, certain understandings can be elaborated, but it is
impossible to predict in advance how they apply in concrete situations.
—Henry A. Kissinger1
If war is too important to be left to generals, then it is surely the case that
history is too important to be left to historians. As a discipline directly concerned with the processes of change, history cannot be quarantined from
contemporary matters nor can it be prevented from informing speculation
about the future. In the West, while most academic historians are interested
in the study of history per se, those occupied with government policymaking
and military affairs are drawn to focus on the uses of history to glean lessons
of value from the past to inform their actions in the present and the future.
When it comes to history, there is often a gulf of mutual incomprehension
and a lack of sympathy between academic purists and applied practitioners.
They represent two distinct approaches to historical knowledge, in effect two
8
M ichael E vans
camps which, in many ways, seem to resemble a variant of C. P. Snow’s “two
cultures.”2 In 1959, the English scientist and novelist wrote of an intellectual
polarization in Western society between a humanities culture of “natural Luddites” tied to the purity of the past and a scientific culture whose advocates
“have the future in their bones.” Snow believed that the consequence of a
growing division between the contemplative and the active strands in Western
civilization would be damaging to the social fabric. Such a state of affairs, he
suggested, would lead to a loss of consensus about both the processes of change
and the character of progress.3 Today, in an era of corrosive postmodern influences and rapid technological change, the concerns Snow raised over half
a century ago can easily be applied to the lack of consensus that now exists
over the meaning and purpose of the discipline of history as well as the very
notion of historical-consciousness.
This chapter examines the role that historical lessons play in thinking
about the conduct of warfare. Three areas are examined. First, in order to
establish context, the debate over the use of history for “lessons learned” is
sketched with the aim of highlighting the differences between the applied and
pure schools of thought that exist on the subject. Second, the chapter argues
that the most effective way to use history in the study of war is to develop
a contemporary approach to the subject. Such an approach emphasizes the
use of historically sophisticated war studies but seeks to employ these for
diagnostic purposes in an interdisciplinary framework of analysis. Third, and
finally, it is argued that, in the profession of arms, the use of history tends to
flourish when historians embrace an interdisciplinary perspective and when
they concern themselves with examining the interconnections between the
past, the present, and—most especially—the future of war.
The Debate Over the Lessons of History
A historical lesson may be defined as an effort to establish useful knowledge
by study, experience, or teaching of the past with the aim of improving the
future conduct of human affairs. The belief that history yields enduring lessons for an unchanging human condition is an old subject and has been particularly influential in statecraft and the practice of war. Thucydides wrote
his History of the Peloponnesian War as a manual of instruction for those
“who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation
of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does
not reflect it.”4
L earning L essons 9
Thucydides’ vision of war as a recurring combination of human agency
and contingent events undertaken by actors, at once conscious of their acts
yet unconscious of their destiny, has echoed across the centuries in Western
political thought.5 In the early twenty-first century, the speedy rise of China
and its strategic implications for the United States has created a veritable cottage industry of forecasting that draws on Thucydides’ account of the struggle
between Sparta and Athens. The political scientist Graham T. Allison has gone
so far as to write of the existence of a “Thucydides trap” that represents a
timeless historical lesson on how inter-state war occurs. As he puts it,
If we were betting [about conflict between China and the United States] on the
basis of history, the answer to the question about Thucydides’ trap appears
obvious. In 11 of 15 cases since 1500 where a rising power emerged to challenge a ruling power, war occurred. Think about Germany after unification
as it overtook Britain as Europe’s largest economy. In 1914 and in 1939, its
aggression and the UK’s [United Kingdom’s] response produced world wars.6
The “Thucydides trap,” along with appeasement at Munich in 1938, has assumed the status of master analogy for policymakers who look to history for
what have been defined as predictive, prescriptive, and existential reasons of
statecraft.7 Similarly, in the profession of arms, the use of historical experience as magistra vitae—a field to be ploughed to yield lessons in preparing
for future armed conflict—has a long pedigree. Napoleon set the tone when
he declared that the secrets of military success for the future lay in the past
and could be learned by studying the “Great Captains” from Alexander the
Great to Frederick of Prussia.8 An applicatory approach to history received
further justification in 1935 when General Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. Army
Chief of Staff, wrote,
More than most professions, the military is forced to depend on intelligent
interpretation of the past for signposts charting the future. Devoid of opportunity, in peace, for self instruction through actual practice of his profession, the
soldier makes maximum use of the historical record in assuring the readiness
of himself and his command to function efficiently in an emergency.9
Not surprisingly, military practitioners have often been, and remain, impatient
with notions of academic purism. To possess value, manuscripts must serve
the ends of muddy boots, and many members of the profession of arms would
share Iago’s view of the theoretical soldier, Cassio, in Shakespeare’s Othello:
“Forsooth, a great arithmetician . . . that never set a squadron in the field, nor
a division in battle . . . Bookish rhetoric [and] mere prattle without practice is
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all his soldiership.”10 So it was that in 1943 when George S. Patton Jr., studied
the eleventh-century campaigns of William the Conqueror in Normandy, he did
so not as a disinterested scholar but as a professional soldier preparing himself
for the future Allied campaign in Western Europe.11 A belief in “practical military history”—for the purposes of gaining a better understanding of current
problems and future challenges—has never been confined to practitioners but
is shared by many theorists. For example, both Basil Liddell Hart and J. F. C.
Fuller endorsed the applied value of history in studying war. One of Liddell
Hart’s books was titled Why Don’t We Learn from History?—and throughout
his long career, he believed that analysis of past wars needed to be as rigorously scientific as possible. In this endeavor, he wrote, “the practical value of
history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the
present on to the screen of the future.”12 Similarly, Fuller in his writing was
explicitly utilitarian, suggesting that “unless history can teach us how to look
at the future, the history of war is but a bloody romance.”13 Despite greater
inroads by professional academic methods, an applicatory or “use of history”
approach as a means of intellectual preparation for future war continues
to dominate most contemporary Western military establishments. For many
military professionals, “mere prattle without practice” is to be avoided, and
the White Queen’s remark to Alice in Through the Looking Glass retains its
validity: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”14
The armed forces’ notion of the history of warfare as a “usable past” is
a philosophy seldom shared by academic military historians. The latter are
mostly purists who seek an understanding of the military past for its own
sake; they pursue a commitment to freedom of scholarly ideas rather than
adherence to the primacy of identifying relevant institutional lessons. “To
professional historians,” writes one soldier-scholar, “the idea of history having
a direct utility seems a bit odd, bordering on some form of historiographic
and epistemological naïveté.”15 Insofar as historians concern themselves with
the logic of historical thought, most tend to be skeptical of “lessons learned,”
seeing such an approach as a “didactic fallacy.” By inclination, they would
endorse Hegel’s view: ‘the only thing one learns from history is that nobody
ever learns anything from history.” Scholars often point to the difficulty of
identifying the right military lessons from a mass of historical information
and to the inherent dangers of engaging in historicism. Scholarly reluctance
to provide easy answers to practical military problems raises the question of
the relevance of academic military historians. As historian Jay Luvaas noted
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over thirty years ago, “if military history cannot provide such [practical]
answers, why study it?”16
Many military historians have sought to escape what might be styled the
“relevance trap” by emphasizing the importance of professional methodology. They have highlighted the context-dependency of past events and sought
intellectual autonomy through increased specialization. Many have also argued
that causal factors are so complex that the military penchant for attempting
to theorize general lessons from unique historical events is not only unwise
but also decidedly unprofessional.17 As John Tosh puts it, “the underlying
principle of all historical work is that the subject of our enquiry must not be
wrenched from its setting.”18
In the military field, historians can point to any number of instances when
a form of Procrustean wrenching of the timber of humanity has occurred to
illustrate their ongoing fear of unprofessional activity. Two examples from
the 1990s suffice to make the point: both the Tofflers’ neo-Marxist theory of
information-age “Third-Wave Warfare” and the equally deterministic concept
of “Fourth-Generation Warfare” were guilty of misrepresenting the historical
record for contemporary purposes.19 Both cases are a reminder of General
Bronsart von Schellendorf’s observation: ‘[I]t is well known that military history, when superficially studied, will furnish arguments in support of any
theory or opinion.”20 The prevailing wisdom in the historical profession on
“lessons learned” is perhaps best summed up by the view that it is the historian’s business to know the past and not the future. When historians dabble
in any form of prophecy, determinism, or futurology, “we may know with
certainty that something has gone wrong with their fundamental conception
of history.”21
The ongoing division between applied and pure schools of thought on
the proper use of military history is a powerful reminder that soldiers and
scholars inhabit entirely different professional worlds. It is not for nothing
that, in Greek mythology, Clio the gentle muse of history—who dwells in quiet
contemplation away from earthly concerns in the clouds of Olympus—is the
polar opposite of the fiery Ares, the god of war who intervenes in human affairs and whose bosom companions are Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror).
For reasons of methodological purity and because of Snow’s “natural Luddism,” Clio, in the form of a majority in the contemporary historical academy,
has refused to throw in her lot with Ares. The reluctance of many military
historians to speculate about the future of war should have created a vacuum
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of knowledge at the heart of modern strategic studies. That it did not do so
can be attributed to the willingness of historically minded social scientists to
step into the breach.
In the world of strategy, it is often social scientists that fulfill Snow’s
requirement for engaged scholars who have “the future in their bones.”
This is particularly true of political scientists. For the latter, history is the
narrative study of particular events, while political science is the analytical effort to generalize about them.22 The prevailing attitude of many in
political science toward history is perhaps best summed up by Martin
Wight’s statement, “Guicciardini was a historian; he described but did
not analyse.”23
Many political scientists tend to view historians as rudimentary positivists
allergic to any intellectual speculation that is not verified by archival evidence.
Unlike historians, political scientists have few qualms about using history
both to form military theory and to identify lessons for the policy world.24
These are the kind of contemporary priorities which most historians prefer to
shy away from “like vampires confronted with crosses.”25 As a result, Colin
S. Gray has justified his frequent recourse to the use of history in studying
the evolution of strategic theory by writing acidly, “It is now unfashionable
among historians to profess belief in the possibility of deriving lessons from
history. Fortunately, because the author is a social scientist, he can ignore that
fashion.”26 There is little doubt that the use of history by social scientists, particularly in the form of the case study method, has enriched our knowledge of
military affairs in both the academic and policy realms. One only has to study
the work of leading political scientists such as John Mearsheimer, Barry Posen,
Stephen Rosen, and Eliot Cohen—on subjects as diverse as deterrence theory,
military innovation, military doctrine, and leadership in war—to appreciate
the importance these scholars attach to history.27
If, as Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich have suggested, it is
“an unacknowledged conviction of too many of those responsible for national
security decisions, civilian and military, . . . that history has little to offer
today’s defense policy maker,” then the preference of many historians in the
academy for adhering to scholarly purism and the choice of a monastic style of
isolation is at least partly responsible for this situation.28 The retreat of many
academic historians from dealing with issues of contemporary warfare—largely
because of fears of being tainted by “presentism” and historicism—represents
a regrettable abandonment of social obligation.
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The result is that the history most relevant to contemporary concerns is
often left in the unqualified hands of current affairs programs and media commentators. The field of military history has yielded, and continues to yield,
vital ground to assorted journalists, pundits, and retired military officers. Bewailing this situation, in 2006, Roger J. Spiller, a former George C. Marshall
Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College,
issued a challenge to academic purists:
I want you to consider the caliber of military commentary you see every day
which is remarkable for its ignorance of history; its lack of perspective; its
child-like sense of causation, contingency, and the play of chance; its talent for
reduction. We can watch self-styled experts deliver judgments based on nothing more than their own personal experience, often translated to the level of a
general principle. . . . History begins anew, every twenty-four hours.29
Spiller’s call is a reminder to purists that any serious attempt to answer the
question, What is good history? leads quickly to another—namely, What is it
good for? Historians know the answer to the first question but are often hostile
to the second and continue to “show an almost pathological disinclination
to commit themselves to any general statements about their work, its aims,
subject-matter and methods.”30 For better or worse, history is the use that the
present makes of the past for the sake of the future. Military historians ignore
this reality at their peril. If scholars spurn their social obligation to teach the
public how history can be intelligently understood, “the alternative is not
other people with better information but other people with no information.”31
Lessons and Analogies: A Contemporary Approach to History
Because history is ultimately a quest for deeper understanding of the human condition, detachment from the present is not only impossible, it is
counterproductive. Knowledge of the past as a guide to dealing with present and future problems is essential to our civilization; it must be carefully
embedded in what has been described as “a contemporary approach to history” by British scholars Gordon Connell-Smith and Howell A. Lloyd.32 It
is important to understand that the notion of a contemporary approach to
history advanced here is not the same as the idea of contemporary history.
The latter is characterized by a focus on the evolution of world history
while the former is about the relevance of history for those who inhabit
the present.33 A contemporary approach to understanding the past takes
its inspiration from French scholar Marc Bloch’s insistence that “[the] fac-
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ulty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of the
historian.”34
A contemporary approach to history has been defined as representing a holistic outlook about the use of historical knowledge that emphasizes problemsolving techniques and “stresses the concern of history with change in human
society and the totality of human experience.”35 The aims of a contemporary
approach are about elevating history’s social function as a medium of education. As such it is an approach that seeks to ponder such issues as how to
employ historical knowledge to refine human judgment; how to situate the
subject as a connective tissue within an interdisciplinary body of scholarly
expertise; and how best to use the past to deepen understanding of the present. In a contemporary approach to history, one must avoid “presentism”
but one must, at the same time, be “present-orientated.” The purpose is to
be interpretative and to explore how in a human affairs context, contingency
and complexity interact to shape our existence.36
An American interpretation of the contemporary approach to history is
provided by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May in their fine 1986 book
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. This is a unique
study about “the uses of history, not history per se” that is mainly concerned
with examining the diagnostic capacities of historical knowledge for use in
foreign policy. The authors explain the use of analogical reasoning and compare and contrast the interaction of agency and structure in historical events
in a quest to develop a set of “mini-methods” to aid statecraft.37 Yet a quarter
of a century before Neustadt and May wrote Thinking in Time, the outlines
of a distinctive contemporary approach to military history, situated in an
interdisciplinary framework of analysis, had already been sketched by the
leading American historian, Walter M. Millis. In the wake of the coming of
the Cold War and its intersection with nuclear weapons revolution and the rise
of the modern policy science community, Millis counseled American military
historians to modernize their activities. He recommended that scholars “turn
away from the study of past wars to the study of war in its broadest possible
terms [in order] to make greater use of the resources of political philosophy,
economics and sociology . . . [and] somehow . . . come to better terms with
applied science.”38
Despite Millis’s call, the most innovative exponent of a contemporary
approach to the history of war has not been an American but a British
scholar, Michael Howard. A snapshot of his thinking about the use of history
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illuminates some of the challenges involved in linking analysis drawn from the
past to current concerns. Howard owed much of his early intellectual inspiration to the influence of Liddell Hart’s lifelong quest to understand war through
its history. Over the course of a long academic career, Howard progressed
from a discomfort with the idea that the past could yield “lessons learned”
to the status of a skillful exponent of analogical reasoning in the analysis of
strategy.39 He applied historical analysis to contemporary security concerns
ranging from nuclear deterrence through the social dimension of strategy to
the relevance of traditional strategy in international relations.40 As a former
British military officer, Howard displayed sensitivity to the requirements of
the profession of arms regarding the use of history. Indeed, early in his academic career he was forced to confront the chasm between the applied and
pure schools over learning lessons from history. He came away chastened by
the experience, writing,
I had to deliver, to a class of young army officers a lecture on the Italian campaign of 1943–5. . . . At the end there was a silence which I correctly gauged
to be disapproving. It was broken by a young man in the front row now asking impatiently, “But what were its Lessons?” And well might he ask. What
was the point in all this if it did not have a direct professional relevance? They
were busy men. But it was a question that nothing in my historical training
. . . had equipped me to deal with and which I deeply and absurdly, resented
having to answer.41
Rather than retreating from the issue of history’s relevance, Howard resolved
to confront the challenge. His contribution to the long-running debate over the
“utility of military history” was to develop a new model of thought in the form
of interdisciplinary war studies. Influenced by intellectual figures as diverse as
Hans Delbrück, Liddell Hart, Hedley Bull, Martin Wight, and Raymond Aron,
Howard developed a British school of war studies based on integrating history
with the social sciences to provide relevance for the world of strategic affairs.
“Howard’s concept of war studies,” notes Brian Holden Reid, “rests on the
blending of his historical works and the discussion of contemporary [strategic]
problems.”42 The British pioneer of war studies addressed the issue of using
military history by introducing the now classic formula of “width, depth and
context” in order to broaden the field’s analytical parameters. In evolving a
contemporary approach to history for use in an environment dominated by
science and technology, strategic theory became Howard’s “heuristic kit with
which [he sought] to analyze [the history of war] and [to link] past, present
and future into one body of knowledge.”43
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It is important to note that Howard’s contemporary approach to history through the medium of interdisciplinary war studies was not without
significant tensions. He disdained the idea of learning lessons from the past,
remarking, “whatever its value in educating the judgment, [history] teaches no
‘lessons’.” He cautioned that historians peddling lessons were the equivalent
of medical quacks who marketed patent medicines for curing disease.44 Yet
because of his consistent application of history to strategic affairs, Howard
could not avoid the reality that, if history did not repeat itself, it did often
appear to rhyme and to move in uniformities and patterns. “Events,” he
conceded at one point, “sometimes significantly recur.”45 His way of navigating this intellectual conundrum was to suggest that, while historical lessons
remain implausible, historical analogies—the notion of finding similarity in
the midst of apparent difference—could be inferred. However, Howard never
defined the empirical requirements for discerning between gleaning a lesson
and drawing an analogy—nor did he come to terms with the indeterminacy
of analogies when employed to anticipate future events. Finally, the British
scholar did not probe the way in which pre-modern, positivist, and pragmatic
styles of thought have been applied to the task of deducing the lessons of
historical experience.46
Ultimately Howard’s overriding concern to provide proper historical context for the analysis of contemporary security dilemmas blurred any necessity
for methodological distinctions. His corpus eventually came to embody “a
certain confidence about the link between the past and the present, and the
answers the former might impart to the latter.”47 The experience of the founder
of the British war studies school is a useful reminder that all we really know is
the past; we have no choice but to try to learn from it irrespective of whether
it is couched as a lesson or an analogy. Our conclusions about the past, defective as they often are, are our only means of strengthening our intellectual
capacity to meet the challenges of the future.
The Interdisciplinary Imperative: Using History
in the Analysis of Future War
If professional historians are wary of deriving lessons from the past for the
present, they are even more reluctant to transpose historical lessons into the
future. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that many historians prefer to
avoid discussion of the future of war in much the same manner as spinsters avoid discussing the content of sex manuals. Yet as the British historian
Lewis Namier pointed out in 1942, whether they like it or not, historians
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are forced to engage with the future. The very nature of historical inquiry
requires scholars to “imagine the past and remember the future”—by which
Namier meant that historians employ forms of scholarship that explain what
occurs only through the lens of subsequent events—events that actually lie in
the past’s future.48 In short, writing history can never be pure; it is an act of
reconstructing the past from a long-distance perspective. It is an activity that
involves not simply reliance on archival records but also a form of speculation by the scholar that can only be affected by contemporary perspectives
and personal experiences.
Any consideration of “lessons” for the conduct of war by today’s military
establishments needs to be situated in a contemporary and interdisciplinary
approach, and it must be fully engaged with considerations of the profession
of arms. In a military organizational context, historical inquiry prospers when
it is part of what retired British general Sir John Kiszely calls a “balanced
diet” of professional military knowledge. Professional historians need to understand that the purpose of history inside a military establishment is not to
produce uniformed scholars but to enhance the theory and practice of the art
of war in all of its aspects.49 Accordingly, the philosophy to be adopted must
be that of Lord Acton, who wrote, “history is not only a particular branch
of knowledge, but a particular mode and method in other branches.”50 Only
in this way can the logic of historical inquiry infiltrate other fields that are
equally directed to the future of war—including military theory, concept and
doctrine development, and operational analysis. David Hackett Fischer makes
a compelling case for historians to overcome their long-held reservations about
speculating about the future when he writes,
Historical inquiry can . . . be useful . . . for what it suggests about the future.
A quasi-historical method is increasingly used, in many disciplines, for the
purposes of forecasting—for establishing trends and directions and prospects.
Historians have had nothing to do with such efforts, which many of them
would probably put in a class with phrenology. Maybe they should bear a
hand, for they have acquired by long experience a kind of tacit temporal sophistication which other disciplines lack—a sophistication which is specially
theirs to contribute.51
In a similar vein, another historian, David Staley, argues strongly in favor of the
use of historical method in thinking about future challenges—in the classical
sense of historia as cognitive inquiry into a spectrum of the alternative paths
that may loom ahead.52 Drawing partly on the work of Fernand Braudel and
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the French Annales school, Staley suggests that history’s value in speculations
about lessons for the future lies not in prediction of events but in preparation for
the possibilities and probabilities inherent in different situations.53 Transposed
to military affairs, a familiarity with historical thinking can help the profession
of arms construct a useful range of future strategic and operational scenarios
for ordering perceptions and developing readiness. In this sense, many of the
foundation skills required for today’s military futures analysis lie in historical
techniques such as counterfactual thought experiments and the study of analogical reasoning. Here Hackett’s “tacit temporal sophistication” of history can
offer diagnostic skill and act as a powerful lubricant in developing an intellectual
foundation for war gaming, simulation, and scenario development.54
In preparing for “possible, probable and preferable” futures, today’s military planners must be taught to think according to a contemporary approach
to history and to evaluate and infer across two mental planes: the functional
(in the form of the application of historically informed military expertise) and
the dialectical (in the form of knowledge of the interactions of past, present,
and future). In this way, they can enhance their understanding of how human
agency and historical circumstance interact to determine the shape of future
military challenges. The mental relationship between past, present, and future
is well described by Jonathan Clark:
We walk backwards into an unknowable future, and what distinguishes us
is only whether we are myopic or long-sighted as we do so. What makes the
future recognizable as we enter it [are] the continuities in ourselves and our
contemporaries, continuities established by our historical sense. To look forward, to display foresight, to show prudence is not to penetrate the future, for
the future is and must always remain to us a featureless silence; it is to reflect
intelligently on the past, and to understand what lessons can and cannot be
learned from it.55
Such functional-dialectical historical awareness improves the military’s diagnostic capacities by providing an intellectual journey in which insight derived
from hindsight can be transformed into a form of educated foresight. While
we cannot know much about the future beyond projecting what we see in the
present, any talent for foresight “depends on a serious, sometimes inspired
knowledge and understanding of some things in the past.”56 Although past
experience can never be applied with confident accuracy to future war, the
creative mind will seek to use history to understand and, where possible,
anticipate, the shape of emerging military trends. The demanding process of
L earning L essons 19
preparing human minds for an unknown future is perhaps the single most
important “lesson” that history can teach today’s military professional. As
the military reformer General Donn A. Starry once remarked, “[T]he purpose
of history is to inform our judgments of the future; to constitute an informed
vision; guide our idea of where want to go; how best to get from where we
are (and have been) to where we believe we must be.”57
Conclusion
In an echo of C. P. Snow, the scholar E. H. Carr once wrote that “good
historians, I suspect, whether they think about it or not, have the future in
their bones. Besides the question ‘Why?’ the historian also asks the question
‘Whither?’.”58 It is certainly the whither, rather than the why, that is of most
interest to policy practitioners and military professionals. Ever since the time
of Thucydides, at the heart of history has been the question, What is it for?
History must offer social relevance and broad educational understanding,
not simply academic purism and narrow specialization. The cultivation of
historical understanding by the military profession is particularly important,
for its senior members must be able to discriminate between phenomena,
enlarge their contextual knowledge, and develop a thought structure for intelligent decision-making. Yet our expectations of what history can reveal as
applied wisdom must still remain modest. While a contemporary approach
to history can confer a certain temporal sophistication—with a diagnostic instinct for trends and a feeling for the future play of events—it offers no predictive qualities and no grand conceptual scheme for universal application.
A contemporary historical approach works best in an interdisciplinary setting in which a chastened logic born out of long and deep historical thought—
particularly in military affairs—can be used to bring perspective and depth to
judgments about current and future problems. Even though most historical
lessons and analogies remain slippery, ambiguous, and uncertain, they are all
we have as a means of preparation for a future that defies human mastery. In
the end, history’s greatest lessons are its unpredictability and inscrutability
and the way these temper ambition and hubris. As Arthur J. Schlesinger Jr.
reminds us, “[F]ar from unveiling the secret of things to come, history bestows
a different gift: it makes us—or should make us—understand the extreme difficulty, the intellectual peril, the moral arrogance of supposing the future will
yield itself so easily to us.”59
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Notes
1. Henry A. Kissinger, “The Lessons of the Past: A Conversation with Walter
Laqueur,” in For the Record: Selected Statements, 1977–1980 (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1981), 124.
2. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
3. Ibid., 10–11; 22–29.
4. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the
Peloponnesian War, ed. Robert B. Strassler (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 16.
5. Raymond Aron, “Thucydides and the Historical Narrative,” in Politics
and History, trans. and ed. Miriam Berheim Conant, 20–46 (New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction, 1984).
6. Graham T. Allison, “Avoiding Thucydides’s Trap,” Financial Times (London), 22 August 2012; see also Allison, “The Thucydides Trap,” inThe Next
Great War: The Roots of World War 1 and the Risk of US-China Conflict, ed.
Richard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller, 73–79 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2015),.
7. William Inboden, “Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience: A Taxonomy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 47, no. 2
(April 2014): 291–318.
8. David Chandler, Napoleon (London: Leo Cooper, 2001), 169–70.
9. Vorin E. Whan Jr., ed, A Soldier Speaks: The Public Papers and Speeches of
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (New York: Praeger, 1965), 54.
10. Othello, Act 1, Scene 1, in Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds., The Complete Oxford Shakespeare, Vol. III: The Tragedies, 1167.
11. Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: Harper Perennial,
1996), 612.
12. B. H. Liddell Hart, Why Don’t We Learn from History? (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1944); see also Hart, The Remaking of Modern Armies (London:
John Murray, 1927), 173.
13. J. F. C. Fuller, British Light Infantry in the Eighteenth Century (London:
Hutchinson, 1925), 242–43.
14. See Michael Evans, Western Armies and the Use of Military History Since
1945 (Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre Working Paper No. 46,
March 1997), 1–15.
15. Harald Høiback, Understanding Military Doctrine: A Multidisciplinary
Approach (Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2013), 80. See also Dale H. Porter,
The Emergence of the Past: A Theory of Historical Explanation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), 86–87; and W. H. Walsh, Philosophy of History,
rev. ed. (New York: Harper Torchbacks, 1967), 24–25.
16. Jay Luvaas, “Military History: Is It Still Practicable?” Parameters: Journal
of the United States Army War College XII (March 1982): 83. For more on the
challenge of gleaning historical lessons, see David Hackett Fischer, Historians’
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Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1971), 157–58.
17. John Gooch, “Clio and Mars: The Use and Abuse of History,” The Journal of Strategic Studies III, no. iii (1980): 21–36.
18. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in
the Study of Modern History, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1991), 10–11.
19. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the
21st Century (New York: Little, Brown, 1993). For historical critiques of Fourth
Generation Warfare, see essays by Antulio J. Echevarria II and Michael Evans
in Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth Generation Warfare, ed. Terry Terriff, Aaron Karp, and Regina Karp, chapters 7–8
(London; Routledge, 2010).
20. Quoted in Jay Luvaas, ed., Frederick the Great on the Art of War (New
York: The Free Press, 1966), 23.
21. R. G. Collingwood, “Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1926,” in
The Idea of History: With Lectures 1926–1928, ed. J. van der Dussen (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 1993), 54.
22. Joseph S. Nye, “Old Wars and Future Wars: Causation and Prevention,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 581.
23. Martin Wight, “The Balance of Power and International Order,” in The
Bases of International Order, ed. Alan James (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1973), 88–89.
24. See James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschmeyer, eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
25. John Lewis Gaddis, “History, Theory and Common Ground,” International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 84.
26. Colin S. Gray, “Clausewitz, History and the Future Strategic World,” in
The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession, ed.
Williamson Murray and Richard Hart (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 115.
27. John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France,
Britain and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1984); Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the
Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Eliot A. Cohen,
Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York:
The Free Press, 2002).
28. Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich, “Introduction,”’ in The
Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession, 1.
29. Roger J. Spiller, “Military History and Its Fictions,” The Journal of Military History 70, no. 4 (October 2006): 1092.
30. W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and Historical Understanding (London: Chatto
and Windus, 1964), 53. See also Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 307–18.
22
M ichael E vans
31. N. A. M. Rodger, “The Perils of History,” The Hattendorf Prize Lecture,
Naval War College Review 66, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 7. For a discussion of social obligation, see Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 307–18; John Lewis Gaddis,
“Expanding the Data Base: Historians, Political Scientists and the Enrichment of
Security Studies,” International Security XII (Summer 1987): 1, 3–21; Gaddis,
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
32. Gordon Connell-Smith and Howell A. Lloyd, The Relevance of History
(London: Heinemann, 1972).
33. Ibid. For contemporary history and its world framework, see Geoffrey
Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (Harmondsworth, UK;
Penguin, 1964).
34. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1954), 43.
35. Connell-Smith and Lloyd, The Relevance of History, 85–86, emphasis added.
36. Ibid., 61–87.
37. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of
History for Decision-Makers (New York: The Free Press, 1986), xii; chapters 3,
5, 13–14.
38. Walter M. Millis, Military History (Washington, DC: American Historical
Association, 1961), publication no. 1, 18, emphasis added.
39. Michael Howard, “The Lessons of History,” in The Lessons of History
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1–20.
40. Howard wrote widely on this in his book The Causes of Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) and specifically in “Lessons of the
Cold War,” Survival 36, no. 4 (Winter 1994–95): 161–166.
41. Howard, The Lessons of History, 10.
42. Brian Holden Reid, “Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern War
Studies,” The Journal of Modern History 3, no. 73 (July 2009): 901.
43. Michael Howard, “The Use and Abuse of Military History,” RUSI Journal CVII (February 1962): 4–10; quote from Reid, “Michael Howard and the
Evolution of Modern War Studies,” 891.
44. Howard, “The Lessons of History,” 11.
45. Reid, “Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern War Studies,” 903.
46. William C. Fuller Jr, ‘What Is a Military Lesson?’, in Strategic Logic and
Political Rationality: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel, ed. Bradford A. Lee
and Karl F. Walling, 41–52 (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003).
47. Reid, “Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern War Studies,” 903.
48. Lewis Namier, Conflict: Studies in Contemporary History (London: Macmillan, 1942), 70.
49. John P. Kiszely, “The Relevance of History to the Military Profession: A
British View,” in Murray and Sinnreich, The Past as Prologue: The Importance
of History to the Military Profession, 32.
L earning L essons 2 3
50. Acton quoted in Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 307, emphasis added.
51. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 315.
52. David J. Staley, History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine
the Future (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007), 2; 48.
53. Ibid., 71–73. For the Annales school, see Fernand Braudel, On History
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980).
54. See Steven Weber, “Counterfactuals, Past and Present,” in Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics, ed. Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron
Belkin, 268–90 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Michael
Evans, “Forking Paths: War After Afghanistan,” Parameters: Strategy and Landpower 44, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 77–94. For analogical reasoning, see Yuen Foong
Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decision of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
55. Jonathan Clark, Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism and
History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 13, emphasis added.
56. John Lukacs, The Future of History (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2011), 139–40.
57. General Donn A. Starry, “A Perspective on American Military Thought,”
Military Review LXIX (July 1989): vii, 3.
58. E. H. Carr, What Is History? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1961), 108.
59. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “On the Inscrutability of History,” Encounter
(November 1966): 17.
Chapter 2
THOUGHTS ON LESSONS
LEARNED IN THE PAST
Williamson Murray
The processes of lessons learned are a product of the complexity of war in
the twentieth century. This is not to say that strategist soldiers and sailors
were incapable of learning lessons in the past. At the strategic level Britain’s
political leaders in the eighteenth century, with the exception of during the
global war against France and Spain that saw the American colonists gain
their independence, based their strategic approach on rejecting the pleas for
a “blue water” strategy in favor of a continental commitment that rested on
both troops and financial support for Britain’s allies.1 That approach was
critical in eventually defeating Napoleon and his armies. But the strain of
the war against the resurgent French of the Revolution and Empire required
the economic support of Britain’s nascent Industrial Revolution.
From a continental perspective, the political and strategic problems raised
by the massive armies the French Revolution was able to put in the field resulted in a stream of setbacks by the ancien regime for a period that lasted
nearly two decades. As the great Prussian thinker Carl von Clausewitz noted
shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars,
Not until [Europe’s] statesmen had at last perceived the nature of the forces
that had emerged in France, and had grasped that new political conditions
now obtained in Europe, could they foresee the broad effect that all this
would have on war; and only in that way could they appreciate the scale of
the means that would have to be employed, and how best to employ them. In
short, we can say that twenty years of revolutionary triumph were mainly due
to the mistaken policies of France’s enemies.2
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 2 5
It was not that the French had discovered revolutionary new tactics that were
greatly superior to those of their opponents. Indeed, as the Duke of Wellington
proved in his campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula, there was nothing wrong
with the tactics of ancien regime when properly used. In the 1790s, those
armies consistently beat those of the French. The issue had to do with the
strategic ability of Republican France to mobilize its manpower and resources
so that its armies could take immense casualties and then come back for another round. Then the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte allowed the soldiers of
his empire to win a series of seemingly decisive battles at Ulm, Austerlitz, and
Jena-Auerstedt.3 Only when it appeared that Napoleon was going to overthrow the entire European order did his opponents change their political and
strategic approaches, as Clausewitz suggests. If military organizations find it
difficult to learn lessons on the battlefield, they find it even more difficult to
learn at the strategic and political levels, a difficulty that has not noticeably
improved over the past two centuries.
The period between the War of Spanish Succession and the Wars of Napoleon saw some considerable changes in operational concepts and tactics,
but invariably those changes came about from the dismal experiences of the
battlefield and were passed along in muted form by traditions. This period,
which lasted for over a century, saw virtually no technological changes on the
battlefield. In fact, the Duke of Wellington’s armies were still using an updated
version of the Brown Bess musket that Marlborough’s soldiers had used during the War of Spanish Succession. The advent of the Industrial Revolution
in the last decades of the eighteenth century only influenced the twenty-year
war against France in the fact that it allowed the British to support the Royal
Navy, Wellington’s army in Spain, and their allies on the Continent, overall
an immense economic burden.
The American Civil War changed matters dramatically in terms of the
impact of technology on the battlefield. But in the nascent American armies of
1861 no processes existed to collect lessons learned. Yet the war saw immense
changes. The best way to characterize the extent of those changes is to note
that the Union armies of 1861 were closer to the armies of the French Revolution in 1792 than they were to the armies of 1865. And the Union armies of
1865 were closer to those of 1915 than they were to those of 1861. But the
lessons-learned processes that made those changes possible were entirely the
result of the grim results of battlefield experience.4 The terrible costs of that
conflict would lead William Tecumseh Sherman and Emory Upton, two of the
war’s more thoughtful generals, to be in the forefront of efforts to establish
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an educational framework within which American officers could address the
tactical and operational problems raised by a profession that was changing
with increasing speed.
The First Modern War
It was to be the First World War when lessons-learned processes made their
first significant appearance and were able toward the end of the war to have
some considerable impact on the conduct of tactics and military operations.
In fact, it took two years before any of the commanders and their staffs realized the importance of doing a careful analysis of what was happening on
the battlefield and what needed to be done in a tactical sense to solve the
conundrum of infantry firepower, massed artillery, barbed wire, and an industrial base that could produce endless supplies of material and nations that
could mobilize all of their manpower. In effect, this great social and military
revolution saw the combination of the French Revolution and the Industrial
Revolution.5
The result was a massive revolution in the character of war, but at the
same time there were no systematic means to discern the implications of
what this revolution meant for those on the battlefield other than by the
actual experience. The First World War changed the character of war to
an even greater extent than was the case with the American Civil War,
because the Industrial Revolution and its attendant technological changes
had an even greater impact. Thus one might take a brigade commander
off the battlefields of late 1918 and place him in the Gulf War of 1991,
and once acclimated to the faster tempo and farther ranges of weapons,
he would have been able to grasp the tactical framework. A brigade commander of 1914, however, would have been unable to understand how his
counterparts in 1918 were fighting.
In effect the modern state had acquired the ability to mobilize its population and industrial power, the latter to an extent and size unimaginable only
decades earlier. For armies (and their nascent air forces) the problem lay in
the complexities that a massive wave of technological change brought to the
battlefield that made the tactical problems almost unsolvable and stalemated
operational and strategic designs. As Paul Kennedy has noted,
For it seems worth claiming that it was at the tactical level in this war (much
more than in the 1939–1941 conflict) that the critical problems occurred. The
argument, very crudely, would run as follows: because soldiers simply could
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 2 7
not break through a trench system, their generals’ plans for campaign success
were stalemated on each side; these operational failures in turn impacted on
the strategic debate at the highest level, and thus upon the strategic options
being considered by national policy makers; and these pari passu, affected the
considerations of ends versus means at the political level, the changing nature
of civil-military relations, and the allocation of national resources.6
For the first two years of the conflict, two sources, the generals at the highest
level and those at the sharp end, drove the lessons-learned processes, neither
one of which possessed much of an analytic framework to examine the implications of the masses of firepower deployed by the opposing sides. In the
latter case those at the sharp end figured out relatively quickly that bullets and
shrapnel killed. Thus by late fall 1914 the armies had gone to ground, while
trenches and primitive field fortifications stretched from Switzerland to the
English Channel.7 On the other hand the generals, thwarted by firepower and
ever expanding fields of barbed wire, sought a technological, material solution
with greater and greater artillery bombardments, which slaughtered the infantry massed in the trenches.8 As the stalemate continued, tactical publications
proliferated, but none addressed the larger issues of how to use firepower not
only to suppress the enemy’s defenses, but to enable maneuver.
The tactical breakthrough came toward the end of summer 1916 at the
Battle of the Somme, when Erich von Ludendorff, to all intents and purposes
the chief of the General Staff, journeyed to examine what was going wrong
with the German Army in France. The Somme, normally seen only in terms
of the disastrous losses the British Army suffered on the first day, ultimately
imposed losses on the German Army that the Reich could not afford in the
long run. What the Germans called the Materialschlacht came as a shock to
them. Massed artillery fire by the British slaughtered the German troops packed
in front-line trenches. In the end after the first day of the battle, the Germans
suffered almost as many casualties as the British and French attackers, which
meant that in terms of attrition, the Germans were the clear losers. Such losses
represented a level of attrition which spelled Germany’s inevitable defeat.
In his first visit to the Western Front since August 1914, Ludendorff found
himself astonished by the punishment that the German army was suffering.9
“[O]n the Somme the enemy’s powerful artillery, assisted by excellent aeroplane observation and fed with enormous supplies of ammunition, had kept
down our own fire and destroyed our artillery. The defense of our infantry had
become so flabby that the massed attacks of the enemy always succeeded.” His
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attitude, however, was quite different from what most generals of that period
displayed. Throughout his visit, Ludendorff demanded clear, honest reports on
what was actually happening and not “favorable report[s] made to order.”10
Having examined what was going wrong, he then set about having the
General Staff develop a response. The result was the promulgation of “The
Principles of Command in the Defensive Battle in Position Warfare,” a doctrinal approach that emphasized defense in depth, a thin line of machine gunners
in front-line positions, the placing of most of the infantry out of the range of
enemy artillery, and swift decentralized counterattacks launched on the spot
without waiting for orders from those above. The new doctrine was ready
within three months of Ludendorff’s visit to the Western Front. But what was
even more impressive was the fact that the lessons that Ludendorff and his
General Staff officers drew from the Somme battle were then inculcated into
an entirely new system of war within three months, which played a major
role in the defeat of the great Nivelle Offensive in spring 1917. That German
success came close to breaking the French Army.11 Here the crucial point is
that the German General Staff system with its double reporting system was
not only able to develop a sensible tactical response to the problems posed
by the Western Front, but was then able to ensure that the commanders on
the battlefield from corps and divisions down to battalions incorporated the
doctrine into their defensive system.
A similar process occurred over the fall and winter of 1917–1918 with the
development of the German Army’s combined-arms, maneuver war doctrine.
This doctrine rested on a careful analysis of the lessons drawn from the counterattacks launched in response to Anglo-French offensive actions on the Western
Front. Thus on 1 January 1918 the General Staff issued its doctrinal analysis of the counterattacks and other offensive actions launched by the German
Army throughout the year: “Angriff im Stellungskrieg (the attack in Position
Warfare).” The key lay in a systematic artillery bombardment that aimed at
destroying specific targets within the enemy’s defensive system. As one commentator has noted, armies “had to stop expecting the artillery bombardment to
destroy the defensive system—which was impossible—and settle for an artillery
bombardment which neutralized the defensive system—which was possible.”12
It was then the job of infantry commanders on the spot to identify and
then drive through the weaknesses in the enemy defensive system. Moreover,
the attacking infantry would carry with them their own firepower—mortars,
light machine guns, and flame throwers—to neutralize the enemy in the drive
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 2 9
into the depths of the enemy’s defensive system. Crucial to the success of
the upcoming German attacks was the fact that the General Staff was able
to ensure that the commanders responsible for conducting the attacks fully
understood the doctrine—a doctrine based on a thorough examination of the
lessons culled from the counterattacks launched throughout the 1917 defensive
battles. By mid-March 1918 the army had trained up to thirty-plus attack
divisions, fully prepared to conduct their operations within the context of the
new exploitation tactics.13 The German offensives appeared to be immensely
successful, at least in terms of the territory they were able to seize. Nevertheless, the Germans displayed a general lack of imagination at the operational
level, and their spring offensives proved inordinately expensive in terms of the
casualties suffered, well over nine hundred thousand—losses that contributed
immensely to the army’s collapse at the end of 1918.14
Whatever their difficulties in spring 1918, the Allies proved to be quick
learners, as much due to the soldiers on the sharp end as to the improvement
in generalship. By summer 1918 British and French armies were using the
German system of defense in depth to considerable effect. The French defense
in front of Rheims against Ludendorff’s so-called “Peace Offensive” brought
the German offensive to a halt before it had barely begun. Similarly, by fall
1918 Allied offensive operations were as sophisticated and in some ways more
deadly because of their immense superiority in material and extensive use of
tanks than the Germans had been in the spring.
Learning the Lessons of the Last War:
The Armies After the First World War
Let me turn now to the interwar period and deal with the British, French,
and German militaries in their efforts to learn the lessons of the last war.
The British, unfortunately, proved to be the least effective, for reasons that
reflect their military culture as well as the political and strategic framework
within which the army operated. What suggests the cultural framework
within which it worked is the fact that it was not until 1932 that the army
established a lessons-learned committee to examine its experiences in the
First World War. In other words, it simply never bothered to establish a solid
understanding of what it had done well in the past and where it needed to
improve. The result was that in many ways the British army proved less proficient in the next conflict than it had in the last.
30
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There was, of course, the mitigating fact that the British government kept
the army on a paupers’ budget until the great awakening came with the German occupation of Prague in March 1939.15 Nevertheless, the British did
carry out major experiments with armored tactics in the late 1920s and early
1930s, which unfortunately proved more beneficial to the Germans than to
the British.16 The problem lay in the fact that with no frame of reference in
terms of how the British Army was prepared to fight in the next war, or without a doctrine that emphasized combined-arms, the experiments, which were
debated fiercely both within and outside of the army, simply had no place to
fit into British thinking about the next conflict.
On the other side of the hill, the French Army did think seriously about
how it was going to fight the next war. Unfortunately, its experiences led it in
a direction that proved to be counterproductive. In the First World War, the
French had led the way in their aggressive approach to the problem raised by
the stalemate. Part of the French aggressiveness was the result of the political
pressures raised by the fact that the German Army occupied a significant portion of northern France. But whatever the cause, the French took terrible casualties in these offensives. The result was that the army developed a top-down
approach, which aimed at preventing officers from taking initiative that might
result in unnecessary casualties.17 Moreover, the German solution in terms of
storm-troop, maneuver warfare tactics held little attraction, given the appalling
casualties the Germans suffered in their spring 1918 offensives. In fact, given
the experiences of the First World War, the French lessons-learned processes
made sense, even if in the end they proved wrong. Part of the problem lay in
a “victory disease” that resulted in the French Army not spending sufficient
time in tough, coherent training of its officers and NCOs.18 Thus the disaster
of 1940 represented a combination of a doctrine that was flawed in many
ways, a lack of serious training, and appallingly bad leadership at the top.19
Not surprisingly, in many ways, the German Army stands in sharp contrast to the other armies in Western Europe. General Hans von Seeckt, the
army’s commander-in-chief from 1920 to 1926, faced a number of intractable
problems. The first was the fact that he was responsible for downsizing the
officer corps from approximately twenty-five thousand to the limit of four
thousand set by the Treaty of Versailles. Here he placed the weight of who
would be retained on the General Staff, while paying little attention to the
Frontkämpfer or those whose claim rested on their pedigree and connections
with Germany’s noble families. In effect, Seeckt put the General Staff’s culture
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 31
of ruthless analysis and learning at the heart of the Reichswehr’s culture,
especially in the officer corps, as well as that of its successor the Wehrmacht.
Nothing better exemplifies his approach than the fact that he then established no less than fifty-seven different committees to examine the lessons
of the war.20 As he noted at the time, “[I]t is absolutely necessary to put the
experiences of the war in a broad light and collect this experience, while the
impressions won on the battlefield are still fresh and a major proportion of the
experienced officers are still in leading positions.21 He demanded that those
committees examine the war’s lessons within the following set of simple, but
direct questions:
1. What new situations arose in the war that had not been considered before
the war?
2. How effective were our prewar views in dealing with those situations?
3. What new guidelines have been developed from the use of new weaponry
in war?
4. Which new problems put forward by the war have not yet found a
solution?22
The result of the major study effort was a careful, intelligent, and insightful
doctrine that emphasized decentralized leadership, combined arms, exploitation, and maneuver warfare. That was the real enabler that allowed the
Wehrmacht to gain such a significant advantage over its opponents in the
early years of the Second World War. Moreover, both the doctrine and the
culture allowed the Germans to examine the exercises that they conducted
throughout the 1920s and 1930s in a clear, intelligent fashion. The lessonslearned processes that the Germans evolved rested on the formula that had
worked so well for them during the last two years of the First World War and
would carry over into the next conflict in much the same fashion throughout
the Second World War.
A particularly useful set of records exists for how the Germans learned
the lessons of the Polish campaign.23 In this case, the Oberkommando des
Heeres (OKH) ordered all its subordinate units to submit a full report of their
experiences at the tactical and operational levels within the first week of the
termination of the campaign.24 These were immediately collated, and by midOctober the OKH was able to issue a highly critical preliminary report on the
army’s tactical performance in spite of the fact that the Germans had destroyed
a Polish Army of forty-plus divisions in less than a month. By mid-November
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the OKH had established a number of training schools through which over
the following four months cadres from every single division passed with the
clear intent that they would inform the training programs in their home units.25
Thus over the eight-month period the OKH ensured that the whole army
was retrained with the framework that the experiences in Poland had established. Much of the success that the Wehrmacht was to enjoy in the campaign
against France and the Low Countries, which destroyed the European balance
of power, rested on the effectiveness of the lessons of the Polish campaign
combined with a ruthless system of learning. It was the ability of the Germans
to translate lessons into training that made them such formidable opponents.
Yet there is a significant caution that the historian must make in regard to
the German lessons-learned processes. The Germans were exceptionally good
at learning tactical and operational lessons. Their ability to learn from their
strategic mistakes was, however, appalling. Throughout the First World War
the Germans had made a series of serious strategic mistakes that had contributed to the ultimate collapse of the Kaiser’s Germany. From the Schlieffen Plan
with its invasion of Belgium, which ensured the immediate participation of
Britain in the war at the side of the Allies, through to the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the United States into the war, the
Germans had prized “military necessity” at the expense of strategic wisdom.26
Yet there is no indication that Seeckt and his committees paid the
slightest attention to the consequences of the Reich’s strategic mistakes
that had played the crucial role in Germany’s defeat. Simply put, the result
was that the Germans managed to repeat every major mistake they had
made in the First World War in the second great world war. One might
have thought that the strategic mistakes made by Germany’s leaders that
brought the United States into the war with disastrous consequences might
have warned the Germans not to make that mistake again. But then, as
Gerhard Weinberg has pointed out, since for most Germans the explanation
of their defeat in 1918 had been that Jews and communists had stabbed
an undefeated army in the back, the entrance of the United States into the
war had not mattered.
Lessons Learned, the Right Way:
The U.S. Navy in the 1920s and 1930s
The American naval services (the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps) in the interwar period are a quite different example from the European armies.27 In both
fleet exercises and fleet games at the Naval War College and at Quantico,
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 33
naval and marine leaders tested and refined the possibilities that technological change offered. Integral to these processes was the ability to test out the
lessons and then fold them into changing concepts of war. While we do not
have time to examine all the details in these processes, we can point out the
results of how the navy developed a set of realistic lessons about the next
conflict and then incorporated them in preparation for the next conflict. In
the largest sense, the navy was able not only to change its operational approach to a war in the Pacific, but to draw important strategic conclusions
as well.
At the beginning of the 1920s, one of the most innovative officers in the
history of the U.S. Navy, Admiral William Sims, assumed the presidency of the
Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.28 Almost immediately, Sims and
his faculty began testing future capabilities, including that of air power, even
though the navy had yet to procure its first aircraft carrier. One of the first and
most important insights that the games on the top floor of Luce Hall gained
was that the effective employment of air power would depend on pulses of
power. In other words, what mattered was how many attacking aircraft and
how fast a carrier could launch its aircraft and then recover them.29 Similar
insights continued to occur throughout the interwar years on the basis of
simple war games and the lessons that they suggested. The war gaming at
Newport in the late 1920s led its participants to suggest that a light carrier/
cruiser combination that the General Board was proposing could more than
handle an enemy battle cruiser.30
What is particularly interesting is the fact that Newport was a crucial center
for innovation, while serving on its faculty was career enhancing in a way
that is no longer true today. Captain Joseph Reeves attended Newport as a
student and then served for two years on the faculty before he received command of the navy’s first carrier, the USS Langley, a former coal collier. In that
position Reeves was then able to increase the number of aircraft this primitive
aircraft carrier could maintain from fourteen to forty-eight. Among his many
accomplishments were the creation of a deck park, crash barriers, and arresting
wires, but it was his use of the Langley’s aircraft that made an indelible mark
on the navy. In October 1926 his aircraft executed an attack on the battle fleet
that entirely won over Admiral C. F. Hughes, commander of the battle fleet,
to the concept of carrier aviation. Hughes commented that “the feasibility of
carrier operations is believed to have been very well demonstrated.”31 By the
mid-1920s the navy was incorporating the Langley into its fleet exercises, and
34
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it was in the combination of fleet exercises and war gaming at Newport that
the navy was able to draw a set of extraordinary lessons-learned that would
frame its entire approach to the conduct of operations against the Japanese.
What makes the navy’s culture during the interwar period is the manner in
which its leaders carried out the fleet exercises, the vigorous lessons-learned
analyses that followed them, and the honesty with which they were reported
throughout the navy. How the navy exercised the fleet exercises suggests a
great deal about its approach to innovation. The fleet exercises (Flexs) consisted of two fleets, each with different mixes of capabilities, confronted with
an operational problem. The mixes changed each year, but reflected a desire
to examine the possibilities and capabilities not only within the current force
structure, but in future fleets as well. Following each fleet exercise, there was
a thorough and often contentious hot wash to examine what the contestants
thought had happened and what the implications might be.
In January 1929, the Saratoga, initially designed as a battle cruiser and
converted to an aircraft carrier when she was half completed, participated
for the first time in a fleet exercise.32 Carrying 110 aircraft, due to Reeves’s
experiments with the Langley that had developed the concepts of deck parks
and crash barriers, the Saratoga made such an impression that Admiral William Moffett, head of the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, persuaded both the
navy’s leadership and Congress that a substantial increase in the training and
combat establishment of the naval air forces was necessary. There was thus
a direct connection between the experiences of the Flexs and the navy’s view
of its emerging technological requirements.
But perhaps the most impressive aspect of the lessons-learned processes
within the naval officer corps had to do with the honesty and rigor with which
the lessons were learned and then passed along for further thought and development. At the end of fleet exercise VIII (1928), the commander-in-chief U.S.
Fleet (CINCUS) “devoted ten of the 21 paragraphs of his general comments
to often severe criticism of [the] Orange [fleet commander].” At the same
time he praised Blue’s “thorough preparation and forceful execution.”33 The
evidence is clear that the analysis of fleet lessons was honest, thorough, and
at times ruthless in the hot washes. As Admiral James Richardson, CINCUS
1940–1941, commented after the war, “The battles of the Fleet Problems
were vigorously refought from the speakers’ platform.”34 In his critique of
the 1924 fleet exercise, Vice Admiral Newton McCully openly criticized his
own performance in not preparing for mine warfare.35
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 35
Even more impressive was the fact that these hot washes were often held
before sizeable numbers of the mid-level officers who had participated in these
exercises. Fleet problem IX in 1929 took place before seven hundred officers,
while the audience for fleet exercise XIV totaled more than a thousand officers.36 Moreover, the naval staff ensured not only that the accounts of the hot
washes fully informed the teaching at Newport and were then incorporated
into the War College’s curriculum, but that reports on the exercises were widely
distributed throughout the officer corps. Significantly, a weak performance
could ruin a senior officer’s career. In fleet exercise XIV in February 1933,
Vice Admiral Frank Clark, widely seen as the next Chief of Naval Operations
(CNO), did not perform well in command of the Black fleet. As a result, the
post went to Reeves, the most senior aviator in the fleet and quite rightly seen
as one of the most innovative officers in the fleet.
We obviously do not have time to delve extensively into how and when the
navy learned the crucial lessons that would play such an important role in the
winning of the Second World War. Out of these lessons-learned efforts came a
number of key insights. As early as 1929, Reeves was arguing that fleet commanders should receive “complete freedom in employing carrier aircraft.”37
The first exercises with the fast carriers Lexington and Saratoga underlined
that these carriers should not find themselves tied to the much slower battle
fleet, but that fleet commanders should loose them to carry out independent
missions. In the fleet exercise of 1938, Admiral Ernest King, future CNO during the Second World War, took the carrier Saratoga to the north of Oahu,
attacked the army aircraft based on Wheeler and Hickam Fields, and putatively
destroyed them with a single strike.
By the late 1930s it was obvious that the navy was going to have to acquire
fast oilers and supply ships to keep the carriers and their aircraft refueled and
resupplied in order to execute sustained operations. As the navy developed
its strategic and operational concepts for a war in the Pacific, the need for
amphibious capabilities emerged as being of increasing importance. In fact
one needs to look at the Marine Corps and navy as sharing a common culture and that the development of amphibious warfare was not just a Marine
Corps effort, but rather one to which the navy was thoroughly supportive.
In some of these areas, the navy was not able to follow up on its insights,
because its funding through to the end of 1938 remained at such a low level.
But the concepts were there, and when the funding became available actual
fleet innovation surged ahead.
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The extent of the navy’s innovations in thinking by the end of the 1930s is
suggested by the fact that in 1920 its strategic and operational concept for a
Pacific war had rested on the precepts of Alfred Thayer Mahan, a movement
of the fleet across the Pacific with a great fleet action occurring somewhere to
the west of Guam between the Japanese and American fleets. By 1939 such a
conception was dead in the navy’s thinking. Instead, the operational approach
that would emerge in late 1943 with the assault on the Gilberts with the landing on Tarawa and the start of the great island-hopping campaign had replaced
the Mahanian conception. Moreover, because navy strategists understood that
such a campaign would prove to be a long, drawn-out affair, they had serious
worries as to whether the American people would prove able to sustain the
psychological pressures raised by such a campaign. The Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor removed that doubt.
Lessons Learned in the Technological Sphere
Overall, Anglo-America’s military forces proved imaginative and adaptable
in their ability to learn the tactical battlefield lessons that confronted them
in the Second World War. In some respects their ability to learn lessons in a
technological sense varied. The most impressive case of learning from combat and then creating the technologies and the tactical framework to utilize it
came in the Battle of the Atlantic. In fall and winter 1940–1941, the British
confronted a perilous situation in the North Atlantic as the Kriegsmarine’s
U-boats savaged British shipping in the North Atlantic, which the Royal
Navy’s escorts were not technologically or tactically prepared to handle. To
make a serious situation worse, the U-boats had access to the ports on the
west coast of France, while in fall 1940 a substantial portion of British escorts were not available due to the threat posed by a potential German invasion of the British Isles.
As the losses rose steadily, the British desperately scrambled to develop technological capabilities and tactics that would address the threat that Churchill
noted was the only one that kept him awake at night. By the end of the spring
of 1941 the British had developed the weapons systems, technological aids,
and tactical framework that would enable them to defeat the U-boats over the
long run in the Battle of the Atlantic. The process of learning the lessons and
then creating the necessary systems required careful, analytic work between
scientists, technologists, and senior Royal Navy officers and convoy commanders. The most obvious of these lessons learned was the rapid realization
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 37
that hunter-killer groups, consisting of large numbers of escorts, represented
a waste of resources that could be far better utilized in protecting convoys. In
effect, those groups were searching for a needle in a haystack, while the best
place to look for U-boats was in the neighborhood of convoys. The second
lesson learned was that unescorted merchant vessels were sitting ducks, and
therefore the convoy authorities allowed fewer ships to proceed unescorted.
The third was the realization that in most cases only sustained attacks could
destroy U-boats. Finally, by spring 1941 it was clear that long-range air represented a crucial enabler for the protection of convoys. Unfortunately, the
obdurate opposition of the bomber barons would prevent the provision of
such long-range air support until spring 1943.
The technological adaptations began with the equipping of escort vessels
with surface radar to pick up U-boats attacking convoys; using on-board
direction-finding equipment that would allow escorts to pinpoint the location
of U-boats trailing convoys; improving the capabilities of British Asdic (Sonar);
providing short-range radio capabilities to enable escorts to communicate
among themselves without danger of German long-range direction finding
being able to locate the convoy; developing more powerful depth charges
and new weapons such as the “hedge-hog” that would considerably increase
the lethality of the weapons the escorts carried; and, finally, reintroducing
high-powered searchlights on radar-equipped aircraft. All of these tactical
and technological improvements had either been developed or were well on
the way to development by spring 1941. The Allies would not win the Battle
of the Atlantic until May 1943 because it took a considerable period of time
before the escort ships, the necessary technological supporting infrastructure,
and the training had reached the point where the full power of these changes
could defeat the U-boats. Nevertheless, the pieces were largely in place by the
end of the spring of 1941.38
Unfortunately, the ability or willingness to learn from experience and utilize that experience in the development of improved tactical and technological capabilities was not always the case. From the first British raids against
German harbors in September and October 1940, the Royal Air Force (RAF)
was forced to recognize that bomber formations that were not protected by
escort fighters invariably suffered prohibitive losses. As early as March 1940,
the head of Fighter Command, Air Marshal Hugh Dowding, one of the most
innovative and imaginative commanders of the Second World War, pressed
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the Air Staff for the development of a long-range-escort fighter. Unfortunately
there were few other senior officers in the RAF as imaginative as Dowding.
The response from the Air Staff is startling in terms of its willful ignorance,
but one that was to mark the Air Staff’s attitude throughout the war:
It must generally speaking, be regarded as axiomatic that the long-range
fighter must be inferior in performance to the short-range fighter. . . . The
question has been considered many times and the discussion has always
tended to go in circles. . . . The conclusion had been reached that the escort
fighter was really a myth. A fighter performing escort functions would, in reality, have to be a high performance and heavily armed bomber.39
One year and two months later, Churchill himself expressed interest in
the possibility of developing such a fighter. The chief of the Air Staff, Air
Marshall Sir Charles Portal, quickly replied to disabuse the prime minister
of such a notion. He commented that a long-range escort fighter could
never stand up against a short-range escort fighter. Churchill’s response
was that such a view closed many doors.40 In fact, the senior RAF leadership had in the face of no technological or engineering evidence closed off
the possibility of having the immensely competent British aircraft industry
develop such a fighter.
Ironically, the RAF and Fighter Command already possessed a fighter with
the capability to be easily developed into a long-range fighter, namely, the
Spitfire. In the swirling dogfights over western and central France, the RAF
had found itself at a considerable disadvantage because of the lack of range
of its Spitfires. The Spitfire IIa variant began to address that problem with the
addition of a single additional fuel tank in the right wing. The pilots flying the
aircraft did not like the configuration, although it did “not seriously affect the
flying qualities of the aero plane.”41 Ironically, the fact that RAF long-range,
unarmed Spitfire reconnaissance fighters were flying all the way to Berlin and
back by this time had no impact on the RAF’s developmental interests. Thus
despite the need there was no further development for a year and a half in efforts to increase the Spitfire’s range—this in spite of the fact that by this point
in the war it was clear that night-time bombing was capable only of hitting
cities, and even then not all that accurately.42
There the matter rested until the Royal Navy raised the possibility of
longer-range Spitfires being able to protect Coastal Command’s Beaufighters
in their attacks on the German freighters carrying Swedish iron ore through
the Skagerrak. Again the RAF drew a line stating that such an effort was not
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 39
possible. It was not until the Americans entered the effort in spring 1943 with
their emphasis on daylight precision strategic bombing aimed at destroying
Germany’s war economy that the issue of long-range escort fighters again
appeared. Nevertheless, not all the Americans were interested in providing
long-range escort fighters to protect the bombers in the conduct of bomber
operations deep into Germany. Lieutenant General Ira Eaker, commander of
Eighth Air Force, was detailing less than a third of the P-51s he had available
to escorting his bombers in October 1943.43
By that October, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Force was putting
considerable pressure on the British. In a meeting with Fighter Command’s
head, Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Henry “Hap” Arnold “suggested
that a young man of brains was needed to accomplish the task” of developing
a long-range escort fighter.44 At the end of 1943, Arnold’s deputy, General
Barney M. Giles, bet Portal a case of whiskey that the American technical
center at Wright Field could turn the Spitfire into a long-range escort fighter.45
In mid-March 1944 the crated Spitfires arrived at Wright Field. Within less
than a month the modified Spitfires were ready to fly, and the initial test pilot’s
report indicated that the additional fuel tanks and fuel weight only marginally
affected the aircrafts’ performance. By the end of May with additional modifications the Spitfires were able to fly a distance of 1,250 miles, equivalent to
a range of over 500 miles, almost reaching the range of the P-51 Mustangs,
which had already broken the back of the Luftwaffe’s fighter force. In terms
of its capabilities, one of the last Wright Field reports indicated that “apart
from heavier rudder forces in turns and the slow response to lateral controls,
the higher all-up weight had little effect on the handling characteristics.”46
When the two modified Spitfires arrived at Boscombe Downs on 11 July 1944,
having flown across the Atlantic, Portal’s comment was, “Unbelievable.”47
And so what did the RAF do with the American-modified Spitfires? They
cancelled the trials of the aircraft in mid-August. Moreover, the RAF’s senior
leaders now proceeded to bury the evidence of how badly they had mishandled the question of the potential of creating a long-range escort fighter.
Thus when Bomber Command returned to the bombing of Germany proper
in September 1944 after supporting Allied ground forces from April 1944
on, its commander, Arthur Harris, wrote a biting letter to Portal about the
lack of interest in the other elements of the RAF in turning the Spitfire into
a long-range escort:
I am informed that it has all along been contended that it is impossible to give
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the Spitfire a much greater range, but I am also informed that the Yanks took
one to the U.S.A. and got 1,300 miles out of it by installing interior tanks. . . .
[I]t appears that at least they have given evidence that the range of the Spitfire
can be considerably extended beyond anything we have at present admitted as
possible or taken steps to obtain.48
The final chapter in this sorry story came with the reply by the Air Staff’s chief
of technical requirements, Air Vice-Marshal John Breaky, who misstated the
fuel the American variant could carry and then argued that the Americans
had “removed one of the main form ribs from the wing roots, and this had
reduced the strength of the wing to a degree which lowers the factors below
acceptable limits for combat.”49 That claim was a complete misrepresentation,
and Breaky either was being economical with the truth or was completely
ignorant. Unfortunately, the RAF’s obdurate denial of what was technologically possible and what the most obvious lessons of strategic bomber operations had indicated as being absolutely necessary was not the only case where
bureaucrats and supposedly informed weapons experts had denied the most
obvious lessons that the war had underlined.50
Lessons Learned at the Strategic Level
Bismarck is said to have commented that “fools learn from their mistakes;
I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.”51 Bismarck was, of course,
suggesting that the past provides a wealth of examples that can and should
be of use in thinking through the problems of the present. And of all the possibilities open to the processes of lessons learned, that of learning from the
past to address the strategic issues of the present is not only the cheapest, but
the most important, because performance at the strategic level is where wars
are won or lost.52 A more recent commentator on the current scene noted
sharply that either one can learn from the examples of the past five thousand
years of history, or one can learn from filling body bags.53
The dismal landscape of American strategy after 1960 underlines how few
American politicians and military leaders paid attention to the Iron Chancellor’s realistic comment on the business of statecraft. The trail from the French
experience with their colony of Indo-China through to the rise of the insurgency in Iraq is a sorry tale of American political and military leaders proving
to be unwilling to learn from even the recent past. The story began in 1945,
when the French military, largely on their own initiative, reoccupied IndoChina with the intent of reimposing French colonial rule after the Japanese
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occupation. From the beginning the French underestimated the tenacity and
ruthlessness of their opponents, particularly the leaders of the insurgency,
who were not only communists but the products of French lycées, which
provided them with a solid grounding in the traditions of the French Revolution. With considerable help from the arrival of the Chinese Communists on
the border with Indo-China, the Viet Minh moved from being an insurgent or
guerrilla force to a conventional military capable of taking on the French.54
The denouement came in the spring of 1954, when the Viet Minh crushed the
French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, helped enormously by the overconfidence
and arrogance of the French high command in Hanoi.55
Almost immediately after the French defeat and pullout from Indo-China
the French confronted another challenge as the Arabs and Berbers in Algeria
rebelled. As the French regarded Algeria as an integral part of France proper,
rather than a colony, the government in Paris engaged in a far greater effort
than had been the case with the war against the Viet Minh.56 In that conflict,
the French Army drew the lesson from the Vietnam war that the only way to
defeat an insurgency was through the use of the most ruthless means, including the extensive use of torture.57 The French military defeated the Front de
Libération Nationale in a murderous and protracted war, but the political costs
of the conflict came close to causing a civil war in France itself. And military
victory only resulted in political defeat. Only Charles de Gaulle’s extraordinary
political skills prevented a political collapse in France.
While these conflicts were ongoing, the United States and its observers were
largely disinterested observers. But in the early 1960s the American government found itself steadily drawn into the swirling conflicts in Southeast Asia,
largely as a matter of political prestige but also partially due to the arrogance
of its political leaders and their ignorance of the area and its history. For the
most part, to those Americans involved in the area the French experience in
the area appears to have counted for little. Admittedly, in 1964 the SIGMA
war games carried a sharp warning about the prospects of a prolonged war
against the insurgency in South Vietnam.
Ultimately SIGMA II predicted that the escalation of American military involvement would erode public support for the war in the United States.
Continued public instability in Saigon drew into question the worthiness
and dependability of America’s ally, and the subtlety of the Communist strategy made it difficult for the U.S. government to sustain the case for military
intervention.58
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At the same time that the SIGMA war games were suggesting that many of
the assumptions on which America’s proposed direct entrance into the conflict
were flawed, the French government sent over to the Pentagon its top secret
analysis of the reasons for its defeat in the Indo-China War. The Department
of Defense bureaucrats not only failed to translate the document, but immediately shipped it across to the classified library at the National War College.
But then, of course, what did the American military have to learn from a
military which had in the end lost not to just one, but two insurgencies? The
long dark tale of America’s experience in Vietnam followed. Thus it followed
that the U.S. military repeated virtually every mistake that the French had
made. Moreover, most crucially, it had not forced its political masters to address the hard question as to whether the strategic gains to be made from the
conflict justified the cost.
The American withdrawal from Vietnam, followed by the regime we had
spent so much blood and treasure in supporting, fully lived up to the warnings the French experiences in Indo-China and Algeria, not to mention the
SIGMA war games, should have provided. At least the threat presented by
the massive Soviet buildup that had occurred in response to the Cuban Missile crisis allowed the U.S. military to focus on the clear and present danger,
rather than on past defeats. Ironically, the result of the lessons-learned processes in the post-Vietnam period focused on a belief that the United States
would never again allow its military forces to engage in another Vietnam
type of insurgency.
As a result, the emphasis in the war colleges and staff colleges was almost
entirely on conventional war, while the lessons of the Vietnam War remained
buried in the psyches of the officers who had served in that conflict. By the
time that the insurgency broke out in Iraq in 2003, time had washed out
the memories of what the insurgency in Vietnam had looked like. And so
the American military, its officers uneducated in their war colleges and staff
colleges about the nature of insurgencies in the past, repeated virtually every
mistake that had been made in the Vietnam War. And because those institutions gave so little study to what history might suggest, the British experiences
in what was then called Mesopotamia in 1920 in the revolt of the tribes were
ignored as well. The lessons learned from the past simply did not exist in the
thought processes of all too many senior officers.
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Conclusion
The connection between lessons and learned in the lessons-learned continuum
has been tenuous at best throughout history. The easiest lessons-learned process would seem to be that of war’s strategic level. But Clausewitz’s ironic
warning is all too apropos. “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his
senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends
to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”59 Of course that
suggests that one might want to have some calculation about the connection
between means and ends, or even whether the cost is worth it all. In fact, history’s sorry catalogue of bizarre assumptions, contemptuous dismissals of the
“other” and his potential, and overestimations of one’s own capabilities would
suggest how difficult it is to learn the lessons of five thousand years of history.
Moreover, it is difficult to learn from history because to do so is invariably
to challenge one’s assumptions and in some cases basic beliefs. Moreover,
really studying history requires real work and real knowledge as well as an
instinct for what is relevant in the past, depending on its context. The Munich
analogy, which so beset policymakers in the early 1960s, was faulty because
the context within which the Czech crisis of 1938 took place was entirely
different from the context in which the crisis in South Vietnam was bubbling
to the surface. Above all, history would suggest that to do lessons-learned
processes properly at the strategic level requires that we understand not just
the historical framework of our opponents, but our own as well.
In one sense, we have made considerable strides in terms of our capabilities to provide lessons-learned processes at the tactical and operational levels. Instrumented ranges and computer-assisted play, among other supposed
improvements, have advanced our ability to model potential engagements in
the training of not only individual soldiers, but their commanders as well.
Nevertheless, as the U.S. Navy’s performance in the 1920s and 1930s underlines, the basic requirement for lessons-learned processes to be successful at
any level lies in the openness of a service culture to serious debate and honest
thorough analysis.
Notes
1. For a discussion of the debate between the “blue water” school and those
advocating a continental commitment, see Williamson Murray and Peter R.
Mansoor, eds., Grand Strategy and Military Alliances (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), ch. 2. A shorter version has appeared in Orbis.
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2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Peter Paret and Michael
Howard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 609.
3. By far and away the best military history remains David Chandler, The
Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
4. For the extent of these changes and their impact on the American Civil
War, see Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-Siang Hseih, A Savage War: A MilitaryHistory of the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
5. For a discussion of this military and social revolution, see MacGregor
Knox and Williamson Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–
2050 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 1.
6. Paul Kennedy, “Military Effectiveness in the First World War,” in Military
Effectiveness, vol. 1, The First World War, ed. Allan R. Millett and Williamson
Murray (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988; reprint ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 330.
7. By the time this was the case approximately half-a-million German, French,
and British soldiers were dead. For the extent of the casualties, see Max Hastings,
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (London: Knopf, 2013).
8. For the nature of the stalemate and the response of the armies, particularly
that of the British, see among others Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Firepower: British Army Weapons and Theories of War, 1904–1945 (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1982); Timothy Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front, & Emergence of Modern War 1900–1918 (London: Allen and Unwin,
1987); and Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The
Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914–1918 (London: Blackwell, 1991).
9. In early August 1914 Ludendorff had been with the lead units advancing
on the Liege fortresses and had managed single-handedly to accomplish the surrender of Liege’s citadel before he was seconded to the Eastern Front to serve as
Paul von Hindenburg’s chief of staff.
10. Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story: August 1914–November
1918, vol. 1 (New York: Nabu Press, 2010), 313–316.
11. For the interplay of military adaptation on the Western Front, see Williamson Murray, “Complex Adaptation: The Western Front: 1914–1918,” in
Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011); G. C. Wyne, If Germany Attacks
(London: Naval and Military Press, 1940); and Timothy Lupfer, The Dynamics
of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World
War (Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1981).
12. Brad Meyer, “Operational Art and the German Command System in
World War I” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1988), 279.
13. Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg: 1914–1918, vol. 14, Die Kriegführung an
der Westfront im Jahre 1918 (Berlin: Reichsarchiv, 1944), 41–42.
14. For an outstanding analysis of the failures of generalship in the German offensives, see particularly David Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives:
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 4 5
A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (London: Routledge, 2006),
311–328.
15. For Britain’s defense policies in the 1930s, see Williamson Murray, The
Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), ch. 2.
16. See Williamson Murray, “Armored Warfare,” in Military Innovation in
the Interwar Period, ed. Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also J. P. Harris, Men, Ideas and
Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939 (Manchester,
UK: Manchester University Press, 1995).
17. The foremost study of the development of French tactics in the interwar
period remains Robert Allan Doughty, Seeds of Disaster: The Development of
French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939 (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1985).
18. For the weaknesses in French training, see particularly Eugenia C. Kiesling, Arming Against Hitler, France and the Limits of Military Planning (Leavenworth, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), ch. 3.
19. For the 1940 campaign, see particularly Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013).
20. The extent of that effort is suggested by the fact that the number of officers involved numbered approximately 10 percent of the officer corps as a whole.
21. James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German
Military Reform (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 17.
22. Ibid., 37.
23. For a more detailed examination of the lessons-learned processes after the
Polish campaign, see Williamson Murray, “Flawed Adaptation: German Adaptation,” in Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War.
24. OKH, Berlin, Okt 7, 1939, Betr: “Erfahrungsbericht bei der Operationen
im Osten,” National Archives and Records Service, T-315/435/000491.
25. This is discussed in Murray, Military Adaptation in War, ch. 4.
26. For the results of the German officer corps’ emphasis on “military necessity,” see Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices
of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
27. The following discussion on the U.S. Navy is largely drawn from Williamson Murray, “US Naval Strategy and Japan,” in Successful Strategies: Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present, ed. Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
28. Sims had commanded U.S. naval forces assigned to Europe, and therefore
he commanded the most important position in the navy. He clearly could have
had any position in the navy when he returned home, but chose to command the
Naval War College.
29. Thomas Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark Mandeles, American and
British Aircraft Carrier Development, 1919–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 34.
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30. John T. Kuehn, Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design
of the Fleet That Defeated the Japanese Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 2008), 117.
31. Ibid., 41–43.
32. Because of the 1921 Washington Naval Treaty’s limitation on the number
of battleships the U.S. Navy could possess, the half-finished hulls of the Saratoga
and Lexington were scheduled for the scrapheap. However, because the United
States had unused carrier tonnage, the navy made the decision to convert the
ships to giant carriers of nearly forty thousand tons.
33. Quoted in Alfred F. Nofi, To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet
Problems, 1923–1940 (Newport, RI: Military Bookshop, 2010), 102.
34. Ibid., 40.
35. Ibid., 64.
36. Ibid., 40.
37. Ibid., 95.
38. The development of British antisubmarine capabilities is discussed in
Murray, Military Adaptation in War, 186–193. See also Captain S. W. Roskill,
The War at Sea, 1939–1945, vol. 1, The Defensive (London: HMSO, 1954).
39. Public Record Office AIR 16/1024, Minutes of the 20th Meeting of the
Air Fighting Committee, held at Air Ministry, Whitehall, 12.3.40.
40. Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive
Against Germany, vol. 1, Preparation (London: Her Magesty’s Press, 1962), 177.
41. The following discussion is based on the extraordinary article by David
Stubbs, “A Blind Spot? The Royal Air Force (RAF) and Long-Range Fighters,
1936–1944,” Journal of Modern History (April 2014). What is so amazing about
this article is that it has taken seventy years for this story to appear.
42. For the accuracy of Bomber Command in summer 1941, see the Butt
Report in Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany,
vol. 4, appendix 13, “Report by Mr. Butt to Bomber Command on His Examination of Night Photographs,” 18.8.41.
43. Stubbs, “A Blind Spot?” 687.
44. Ibid., 691. Leigh-Mallory was not only a nasty insubordinate officer who
had conspired to have Dowding removed from his position, but in retrospect was
a not particularly bright officer who held onto his preconceived opinions despite
contrary evidence. None of his colleagues in high command respected him, and
some were downright contemptuous of his abilities.
45. Now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
46. Stubbs, “A Blind Spot?” 693.
47. Ibid., 692.
48. Ibid., 697–698.
49. Ibid., 698.
50. Two other cases spring to mind: the incredible refusal of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance to recognize that neither the magnetic nor the contact
T houghts on L essons L earned in the Past 4 7
exploder on the torpedoes that it had designed worked. It took Admiral Ernest
King, CNO, over a year and a half to force the bureau to recognize its culpable
failure. The second had to do with the inadequate weapon with which the U.S.
Army equipped its Sherman tank. The evidence coming out of North Africa and
Tunisia clearly warned that the Germans were up-armoring and up-gunning their
armored fighting vehicles. The British response was to re-equip a number of their
Shermans with 17 pounder, high velocity (3”) cannons. That made the “Firefly”
variant of the Sherman superior to everything in the German armored fighting
vehicle inventory except for the Tigers and Panthers, which were less than 20
percent of the German inventory. Four hundred “Fireflies” would land with the
British and Canadian armies—none with the American army.
51. Quoted in Anatole Kaletsky, Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 280.
52. As this author and his colleague Allan Millett noted at the conclusion of
the Military Effectiveness project, “[I]t is more important to make correct decisions at the political and strategic level than it is at the operational and tactical
level. Mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected, but political and strategic mistakes live forever. . . .” Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, “Lessons of War,” The National Interest (Winter 1988/1989).
53. General James Mattis.
54. For the course of French difficulties in fighting the Viet Minh, see Bernard
B. Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina (Harrisburg, PA:
Stackpole, 1961).
55. For the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Bernard Fall’s final great work
remains the best study: Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of
Dien Bien Phu (New York: Lippincott, 1966).
56. For the Algerian War, see particularly Alistair Horne, A Savage War of
Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962 (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 1977).
57. For an unrepentant view of the use of torture in the war, see General Paul
Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–1957 (New York: Enigma, 2002). The film Battle of Algiers presents
the ferocity of that conflict with an honesty that is rare.
58. H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York:
HarperCollins, 1997), 157.
59. Clausewitz, On War, 579.
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Part 1I
IRAQ AND
AFGHANISTAN
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Chapter 3
LESSONS OF THE IRAQ WAR
Peter R. Mansoor
The Iraq War is replete with lessons that have particular relevance to the
future of the U.S. military. Indeed, given the dramatic rise and subsequent
fall of the Islamic State, the effects of the Iraq War continue to resonate
to this day. The U.S. Army has had the opportunity in recent years to put
into practice what it learned from the war in Iraq. Circumstances may have
changed at the margins, but the root causes of the conflict, as well as the
solutions to it, have remained constant. The fight against the Islamic State
was and is the Iraq War redux: same tune, second verse.
Politico-Military Lessons
The most important lesson from the Iraq War is for policymakers to consider carefully the decision to go to war before committing the nation’s blood
and treasure to it. War should be a last resort, not the go-to option in the
policymaker’s toolkit. A reasoned assessment of the decision to invade Iraq
would have shown the risks incurred by doing so if the best-case analysis
upon which the Bush administration based its war plan did not pan out. The
administration assumed that democracy and liberal market capitalism are
universal goods and that the Iraqi people would freely embrace both once
Saddam’s yoke was lifted.1 It did not occur to the administration that the
minority of Iraqis who benefitted from Saddam’s largesse—most but not all
of them Sunni Arabs—would oppose a future in which they were removed
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from power and left marginalized in Iraqi society. This outcome would have
occurred even if the intelligence regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
was correct. Given the poor decision-making in the run-up to the war and
in its first few months, the United States would be in the same place strategically today regardless of the status of Iraq’s WMD program.
The United States invaded Iraq ostensibly as a member of an international
effort to depose Saddam Hussein, but in reality the coalition was little more
than window dressing to legitimize American actions rather than a true warfighting entity. Although some militaries, such as the British and the Polish,
brought real combat capability to the fight (for a time, anyway), others made
token commitments that were hamstrung by restrictive rules of engagement.
For its part, the U.S. military was less than forthcoming with intelligence
sharing. Nevertheless, those coalition members in Iraq that used NATO procedures to control and orchestrate their forces were much more successful than
those from other parts of the world.2 In the future the United States may not
have the luxury of fighting without allies, and this means developing alliance
structures and command-and-control procedures that meld their capabilities
with those of U.S. forces.3
The importance of command relationships also extends to interagency
affairs. Phase IV, or reconstruction, operations are reliant on a whole-of-government approach for their accomplishment; this dependency is even greater
in counterinsurgency conflicts. Despite their desire to have all interagency
elements under a single chain of command, military leaders should not expect
unity of command in these operations since political considerations will usually
dictate the division of authorities under a variety of actors and organizations.
Rather, leaders should seek unity of effort to orchestrate the efforts of civil
and military organizations. The Iraq War shows the good, the bad, and the
ugly in the realm of civil-military interaction. The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer III, and the commander
of Joint Task Force 7, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, had a difficult
working relationship at best during the first year of the occupation.4 On the
other hand, the relationship between U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker
and Multi-National Force—Iraq commander General David Petraeus during
the U.S. troop surge in 2007–2008 set the gold standard for civil-military
cooperation due to their ability to forge a strong working partnership based
on professional respect and trust.5 Desiring to show a united front, they rarely
met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki separately, melded embassy and
L essons of the I raq War 5 3
military staffers into a joint team, and co-chaired campaign assessments and
reviews. Together they achieved unity of effort despite the absence of formal
unity of command.
The Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz has written of war
as the continuation of policy by other means.6 War and policy interact, with
effects on the battlefield affecting policy as much as policy affects military
operations. This truism played out time and again during the Iraq War. Three
examples will suffice to illustrate how military actions impacted political discourse. The criminal actions of U.S. soldiers in mistreating Iraqi detainees at
Abu Ghraib prison, abuses brought to public light in the spring of 2004, dealt
a serious blow to American moral justifications for the ongoing occupation of
Iraq.7 American soldiers serving early on in Iraq did not have extensive experience in dealing with detainees, and their training was woefully inadequate
to prevent abuses from occurring. The U.S. Army must ensure that soldiers
receive training on how to deal with prisoners of war and civilian detainees
to prevent such incidents from occurring in future conflicts.8
Fallujah provides a second example of the interaction of military operations and policy. After four U.S. contractors were ambushed by insurgents
and two of their charred bodies hung from a bridge in the center of the city
in March 2003, senior Bush administration officials demanded military action to apprehend the responsible insurgents and restore order. Against his
better judgment but in response to these orders, Major General James Mattis
launched his forces into Fallujah. After a week of fighting, the marines neared
the city center, but by then the Bush administration, facing negative publicity in the Arab media and a revolt by the Iraqi Governing Council, relented
and called off the attack. The coalition suffered the worst of all worlds; its
military operations had generated huge amounts of adverse publicity in the
Arab-Islamic world, but without a military success to show for its efforts. The
insurgents claimed victory and went on to control Fallujah, only to be routed
in an even more vicious assault on the city in November 2004.9
The third, but by no means final, example of the interaction between
military operations and policy is the September 2007 congressional hearings
on the Iraq War. Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus, recalled to Washington to confront skeptical legislators, faced an uphill task. Accused of being
a mouthpiece for the Bush administration, Petraeus provided a frank assessment of ongoing surge operations, thereby forestalling Democratic attempts
to force a withdrawal timeline on the Bush administration. Had coalition
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operations, led by Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno and Multi-National
Corps—Iraq (MNC-I) along with Iraqi allies, not made substantial gains in
providing security to the Iraqi people in the previous months, this outcome
would have been very much in doubt. Instead, the surge ran its course until
July 2008, by which time violence had been reduced by more than 90 percent
from its 2006 high.10
By the mid-point of the surge, civil and military leaders finally comprehended the complex nature of the root causes of the war in Iraq. The conflict
over how various sects, ethnicities, and groups would divide power and resources was a civil war, insurgency, foreign proxy battle, and criminal conspiracy rolled into one. This nuanced assessment was a far cry from the political
analysis heading into the war in 2003, when the military squarely focused its
gaze on major combat operations, leaving the messy aftermath of conflict seemingly to chance. After the fall of Saddam’s government, there was little if any
understanding of the root causes of conflict in Iraq and how politico-military
operations could address them. The clarion call for a transition to democracy
assumed the Iraqi people would eagerly embrace this form of government,
despite the lack of the fundamental basis for democracy in the country: a
vibrant middle class, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, respect for
minority rights, and a functioning civil society. Simply put, the U.S. military
was in danger of following the disastrous path of the German Imperial Army
and Wehrmacht in the first half of the twentieth century: operational and
tactically brilliant forces that nevertheless lost two world wars through their
inability to provide sound strategic input to Germany’s political leadership.11
Professional military education must ensure that Army leaders in the future
are prepared to provide strategic advice to the highest levels of government,
rather than simply focusing on military operations to the exclusion of broader
strategic considerations.
During the Iraq War, U.S. military leaders pointed out that counterinsurgency conflicts last on average a decade or longer, and therefore soldiers
needed to be prepared for multiple tours of combat to sustain the effort for the
long haul. But the real challenge with the long-term commitment required of
these conflicts is sustaining the will of the American people, especially during
changes of presidential administrations. Wild swings in policy between the
Bush and Obama administrations resulted in poor strategic decision-making
that undermined stability and severely reduced U.S. leverage with the Iraqi
government.12 In our system of government there is no simple way to ensure
L essons of the I raq War 5 5
continuity of policy, but military leaders must provide forthright advice to
administration officials regarding the risks of changing course.
Strategic Lessons
Planning for the Iraq War followed a best-case analysis approach.13 Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, desiring to use the war as a test case for the
new concept of rapid, decisive operations based on the information-precision revolution in military affairs, whittled down the strength of the invasion
force far below that recommended by many military leaders. Nevertheless, in
the end the commander of U.S. Central Command, General Tommy Franks,
concurred with the revised force structure. The forces assigned to invade
Iraq were sufficient to defeat the Iraqi armed forces and seize Baghdad, but
they proved woefully inadequate to secure the country once Saddam’s regime
collapsed, a contingency foreseen by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric
Shinseki.14
The force structure dedicated to the invasion of Iraq would have been
adequate to achieve the goals of the war plan only if the assumptions made in
the planning process had held, but they did not. Although a significant number
of Iraqis were delighted to see Saddam deposed, they were not overjoyed by
the presence of foreign forces on Iraqi soil. Furthermore, an important minority—those who had benefitted from Saddam’s largesse—were not prepared
to accept defeat gracefully. Policy decisions to de-Ba’athify tens of thousands
of Iraqis, to disband the Iraqi Army, and to empower a highly sectarian Iraqi
Governing Council quickly alienated much of the Sunni Arab population of
Iraq, paving the way for the outbreak of a virulent insurgency. The problem
with the war plan was not the assumptions per se, for every war plan rests
on assumptions. The problem was the failure of policymakers and military
commanders to revisit those assumptions periodically to see if they were still
valid. As matters turned out, as late as November 2003 President George W.
Bush resisted calling the opposition in Iraq an insurgency—this in the middle
of the first insurgent Ramadan offensive.15
There are a number of takeaways from the flawed planning process for
Operation Iraqi Freedom. One of the most important is that in uncertain environments, campaigns should be designed, not planned. There were enough
“unknown unknowns” in Iraq to cause concern in even the most optimistic
of military planners.16 Had they spent more time framing the problem rather
than developing solutions to the one problem they were good at solving, that
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is, the destruction of the Iraqi armed forces, then they might have foreseen the
challenges that erupted in the aftermath of major combat operations. Such a
process might have suggested that it would be better to overbuild the invasion
force structure rather than win by a slim margin merely to save resources or to
test an uncertain concept of warfare. Additional forces would have been a risk
mitigation mechanism in the event of unforeseen or unanticipated challenges,
such as occurred when the Fedayeen Saddam attacked coalition supply lines
and when massive looting erupted in the war’s aftermath.
The war plan also did not delve deeply enough into Phase IV operations,
those activities that would occur once regime change occurred. Before the
invasion, the Strategic Studies Institute published a study by scholars Conrad
Crane and Andrew Terrill that delineated just how difficult would be the
task of reconstructing Iraq.17 Yet the planning that occurred for reconstruction was too little and far too late. Under the leadership of retired Lieutenant
General Jay Garner, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs
(ORHA) had only a couple of months to pull together the myriad of activities required to stabilize a post-conflict Iraq. The agency suffered from tepid
senior leader support, insufficient personnel, and a woeful lack of resources
to accomplish its mission.18 ORHA might have been sufficient had the invasion of Iraq progressed in accordance with the best-case scenario, but events
did not move along this path. Army leaders must insist in the future on more
thorough post-conflict planning, including branches and sequels based on
enemy reaction to defeat.
The strategy underpinning the surge of forces to Iraq in 2007–2008 illustrates the value of a more holistic approach to war. Nicknamed the “Anaconda Strategy” by General Petraeus, the concept involved the use of kinetic
operations (counterterrorist raids, conventional force operations), intelligence
(increased use of ISR platforms and all-source fusion cells), political outreach
(tribal awakenings, “Sons of Iraq” local indigenous security forces, and reconciliation initiatives), interagency resources (diplomatic engagement with
countries from which jihadists originated, public diplomacy, and information
operations), nation-building (improvement of services, jobs programs, education, and religious engagement), and restructuring of detention operations (to
separate the irreconcilables from the reconcilables and to reform the latter).19
This strategy proved highly successful in defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq, albeit
only temporarily due to insufficient follow-through by the Iraqi and U.S.
governments. The success of this strategy also highlights the insufficiency of a
L essons of the I raq War 5 7
counterterrorism approach to a well-resourced, deeply entrenched group such
as al-Qaeda in Iraq (and the Islamic State more recently). As the surge showed,
if the goal is to destroy such groups, counterterrorism is not a substitute for
fully resourced counterinsurgency operations; at best, counterterror raids and
drone strikes can subject insurgent groups to attrition, but they cannot defeat
or destroy them.
The Iraq War was fought on the cusp of the social network revolution in
human communications. Although information operations have been part
of warfare from the dawn of civilization, the ubiquity and speed of twentyfirst-century communications have made the information battle even more
relevant and critical today. Indeed, it is not going too far to state that control
of the narrative is in many ways the center of gravity in modern warfare. For
too long in the Iraq War the coalition ceded the narrative to the enemy. Press
conferences held once a day by the Coalition Provisional Authority and then
Multi-National Force—Iraq could not compete with the ubiquitous internet
and satellite TV presence of a myriad of insurgent groups. The land of Hollywood and Madison Avenue was trumped by local actors using cheap platforms
and effective messaging.20 This situation reversed during the surge, when the
coalition finally used all the assets at its disposal to engage effectively in the
information struggle.21 The lesson of Iraq is to engage in the information war
with as much intensity as kinetic combat, for the battle of the narrative is a key
part of the fight—especially in the information-intensive world we now inhabit.
A final strategic lesson from the Iraq War is that to fight an insurgency, it
is best to employ a hybrid force combining conventional military forces and
irregular combatants. The tribal revolt that began in Ramadi in the summer
of 2006 was critical to the success of surge operations the following year. In
many ways, however, the Iraqi tribal Awakening was an accident of history,
the happy meeting of a third-tier tribal sheik who had seen too many of his
kinsmen murdered by al-Qaeda and a U.S. Army commander with the discernment and sense to ally with him against their common enemy.22 The Awakening, however, would have remained localized to Ramadi had it not been given
a boost by General Petraeus, who ordered his subordinate commanders to
support it and help it expand across Iraq.23 The lesson for commanders in
future conflicts is to seek out local allies with whom U.S. forces can cooperate.
The combination of U.S. firepower, training, and discipline with the societal
knowledge and cultural awareness of local actors is a powerful one.
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Operational Lessons
The U.S. military entered the Iraq conflict with a unidimensional operational
concept known as Rapid, Decisive Operations (RDO), which stressed precision attacks and swift maneuver to destroy an enemy force at its center
of gravity with a minimal ground footprint. The invasion of Iraq in 2003
seemed at the time to validate RDO; however, as a warfighting concept it
failed to take into account war’s enduring nature: fog, friction, chance, and
uncertainty.24 The attacks on U.S. supply lines by Fedayeen Saddam and the
insurgency that began shortly after the fall of Baghdad took U.S. military
leaders by surprise. Unprepared for a type of war that they had failed to envision, U.S. military leaders floundered for nearly four years before devising
an operational approach suitable to the conflict.25
The failure of U.S. Army leaders to adopt an appropriate operational
concept to the counterinsurgency war in Iraq was an indictment as well of the
professional military education system. Learning the fundamentals of counterinsurgency warfare was simply not a priority for U.S. Army leaders prior to
the Iraq War.26 Indeed, there are still those who believe that the U.S. military
should not engage in such conflicts at all, as if military leaders somehow have
a choice in what wars they will fight.27 Appropriate doctrine finally emerged
with the December 2006 publication of Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Prior to the advent of this doctrine, Army leaders in the field learned
counterinsurgency through on-the-job training, with varied results.28 The lesson here is not that the army should continually train for counterinsurgency
operations, for training days are limited and proficiency in combined arms
warfare difficult to achieve. Rather, counterinsurgency doctrine must be kept
up to date and taught in the professional military educational system. When
the day arrives when the nation must engage in counterinsurgency warfare, and
that day will surely come again, army leaders will be intellectually prepared
to shift their focus on the basis of a historical understanding of insurgencies
and how they have been countered in the past.
The U.S. Army floundered for three-and-a-half years before adopting a historically grounded counterinsurgency doctrine based on population control.29
Before the start of Operation Fardh al-Qanoon in February 2007, Combined
Joint Task Force-7 and MNC-I emphasized offensive operations to kill and
capture insurgent and terrorist operatives.30 But nightly raids, presence patrols,
and less frequent cordon and search maneuvers do not constitute a concept
of operations. Counterinsurgency campaigns must be guided by overarching
L essons of the I raq War 5 9
operational concepts, just like decisive conventional operations. This finally
happened when the surge began, as General Petraeus and Lieutenant General
Odierno mandated that all of their forces subscribe to the counterinsurgency
doctrine as laid out in FM 3-24. Under Odierno’s leadership, MNC-I prioritized the security of Baghdad and control of the Baghdad belts, with supporting efforts in western, northern, and south-central Iraq.31 Coalition forces
were finally maneuvering for a purpose: to control the Iraqi people and to
eliminate insurgent safe havens that had built up since the spring of 2003.
The result was a 90 percent reduction in ethno-sectarian violence by the end
of the surge in July 2008.32
The reduction in ethno-sectarian violence was critical, since it was the
primary driver of civil war in Iraq. General Petraeus focused primarily, albeit
not exclusively, on ethno-sectarian violence as the metric that best exhibited
the direction of the war effort. Metrics are useful tools, but only if they are
significant and clarify, rather than obscure, what is happening on the ground
and illuminate the path forward to victory. The collection of too many metrics
risks confusing mere data collection with cogent and useful analysis.33 Fewer,
but more meaningful, metrics are superior to a plethora of statistics that are,
in the words of Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Future warfighting commanders must take this lesson to heart.
Tactical Lessons
The army has learned a great deal of tactical lessons from the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, so this chapter will address only a few of the more salient
ones that deserve increased emphasis.
One of the more important developments arising from the Iraq War has
been the closer synergy between conventional forces and special operations
forces. In the first year of the war there was almost no cooperation between
these components; special operations forces would routinely raid targets within
the zones of conventional force commanders without notice, subjecting both
elements to the risk of fratricide and excluding the conventional force “land
owner” from discussions concerning the second- and third-order effects of the
raids (such as the considerable danger of backlash from collateral damage to
civilian lives and infrastructure). Only over the course of several years did this
relationship improve, but the integration is not yet complete.34
The integration of special operations and conventional forces is essential
in a counterinsurgency environment. Conventional forces can take and hold
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ground and protect and control the population. By doing so they force insurgent and terrorist operatives to move and communicate, thereby making them
vulnerable to targeting by special operators. During the surge a combined arms
task force known as Task Force Falcon assisted the Joint Special Operations
Task Force by conducting combat operations in areas of high insurgent density,
thereby “stirring the pot” and providing targeting opportunities. In the future,
special and conventional forces will routinely work together, especially in the
likely messy hybrid wars to come. They must train together in peacetime to
ensure cooperation in wartime. More important, the forces must be structured to ensure unity of effort through common doctrine, joint professional
military education, and delineated command relationships. As Major General
Bennet S. Sacolick and Brigadier General Wayne W. Grigsby Jr. state, “In Iraq
and Afghanistan, operational necessity drove battlefield synchronization and
integration of the joint force founded on personal relationships. Integration
that relies on personal relationships forged on the battlefield, however, is
transient unless made operational and institutional and instilled in our forces
from the very beginning of professional military education and throughout
all planning and training.”35
The Iraq War also demonstrated that ground forces must balance force
protection with the need to operate among the people. One of the more critical
errors made by U.S. commanders early in the Iraq War was to consolidate coalition forces onto large forward operating bases. This forced units to conduct
numerous mounted patrols in an attempt to control their assigned zones of
operation. But experience has shown that populated areas cannot be secured
with mounted patrols; rather, they can only be secured by forces that live
among the people and walk, rather than drive, among them. Junior leaders
must be empowered to conduct these decentralized operations, an ethos the
army will have trouble maintaining as it returns to peacetime routines that
encourage centralization and micromanagement.
The most successful operations in counterinsurgency warfare are intelligence driven. In the early part of the Iraq War, human intelligence was the
most critical element as other forms of intelligence were noticeably lacking.
This situation changed over time with the additions of robust signals intercept
and other forms of intelligence. By 2006 the pendulum had swung too far in
the direction of technical means of collection. When U.S. forces moved off the
large forward operating bases and into Iraqi communities during the surge,
they opened up a window into a plethora of human intelligence. The lesson
L essons of the I raq War 6 1
they learned is that signals intelligence is wonderful, but it is even better when
augmented by human intelligence.
Organizational Lessons
As John Nagl has noted in his study of counterinsurgency operations in Malaya and Vietnam, the ability of an organization to learn and adapt is crucial
to success in these types of endeavors.36 The U.S. Army had a mixed record
in this regard in Iraq, adapting at the tactical level much more quickly than
in strategic or operational matters. A robust system for lessons learning is
essential to learning and adaptation. Such a system cannot simply be an archive of historical material, but must instead be a dynamic means for getting lessons disseminated across the force and to units in the training cycle
on a continual basis. Training centers in the theater of operations can help
teach local lessons to transitioning unit leadership, as was eventually the case
with the Taji Counterinsurgency Center of Excellence. But the most critical
resource is the support of senior leaders, who alone have the influence to
ensure the Army remains a learning organization.
The advisory effort was one of the most important aspects of the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, but quite frankly this effort was continually
shortchanged in favor of staffing regular army formations with the most capable officers and noncommissioned officers. This is not to say that there were
no advisors who were extremely capable, for there were. But the army never
treated advisory duty as equal to career enhancement as service in key and
essential billets in line units. Until this dynamic changes, leaders will avoid
service with host nation forces in favor of assignments with line formations.
Senior leader support for the train, equip, and advisory effort is essential, for
these efforts ensure that host nation forces can fight and succeed over the long
haul and eventually in the absence of U.S. support. Putting advisory duty on
the same plane as service as an operations or executive officer in a line unit
would be an enormous step forward.
The institutional army improved predeployment training tremendously
as the war progressed. Over time training became relevant to the situation in
specific theaters, for it is not true that “any good soldier can handle guerrillas.”37 The author recalls hosting Major General Peter Chiarelli, at the time the
commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, on a predeployment reconnaissance
in October 2003. One of his assistant division commanders proudly remarked
to me that he was able to hire several hundred contractors to act as “civilians
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on the battlefield” to help the division train for its deployment to Iraq. The
author observed that he could hire the entire population of Killeen, Texas, the
city adjacent to the division’s base, and the number would still not equal 5
percent of the population of Baghdad.38 It was a sobering thought. The world
is becoming more urbanized, and as it does, the chances of the U.S. Army
operating in large urban areas increases. Training for urban combat in densely
packed cities is a challenge that army leaders must overcome to prepare the
organization for future warfare.
Culture and language training also ramped up during the course of the
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This evolution helped in avoiding some of
the more egregious missteps that occurred early on in these endeavors.39 But
army leaders should not expect soldiers to become cultural experts in a short
period of time. Language training, for instance, is a life-long endeavor. The
army should not expect one year of crash training to make a leader anywhere
close to proficient in a foreign tongue. It would be better to have leaders learn
enough language to be polite and train them how to use interpreters properly.
Precious predeployment time is better used on reading about the history, culture, society, and religion of the region to which a unit will deploy. As Colonel
Hershel L. Holiday remarks, “Perhaps the most we can accomplish is to develop a basic knowledge of foreign cultures so that planners and executors will
understand religious, tribal, or family connections within foreign societies.”40
Since success in counterinsurgency wars depends on a whole-of-government
approach, the army must prepare units to operate in an interagency environment. This means that civil-affairs officers and contracting officers are critical components of unit staffs, rather than their weakest links. When the 1st
Brigade, 1st Armored Division returned to Germany in 2004 after its initial
deployment to Iraq, the author selected an incoming armor officer, Captain
Travis Patriquin, to serve as the brigade S-5. Patriquin wanted to be an assistant S-3, as do most combat arms captains forced to serve on brigade staff.
But the author recognized his unique qualities: Patriquin had grown up in the
Special Forces world and spoke Arabic. He was the perfect choice to serve as
the brigade civil-military affairs officer as it returned to combat in Iraq. Before
his death to a roadside bomb in Ramadi in 2006, Captain Patriquin was a key
catalyst for the tribal revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq.41
L essons of the I raq War 6 3
Conclusion
More than twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greek historian Thucydides
wrote, “It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged
useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened
in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or
other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.”42 The same
thought could be written of the lessons of the Iraq War. We can learn them
now, or relearn them again at great cost the next time the nation embarks on
an uncertain venture in a foreign land.
Notes
1. Michael MacDonald, Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
2. For an example of this dynamic in action during the fight for Karbala in
the spring of 2004, see Peter R. Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 312.
3. For a historical examination of military alliances in action, see Peter R.
Mansoor and Williamson Murray, Grand Strategy and Military Alliances (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
4. Lieutenant General Sanchez admits as much in his memoir. See Ricardo
S. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story (New York: HarperCollins, 2008),
321.
5. Peter R. Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and
the Remaking of the Iraq War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013),
102–104.
6. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter
Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 87.
7. Steven Strasser, The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Independent
Panel and Pentagon Reports on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq (New York:
PublicAffairs, 2004).
8. For an examination of how U.S. Army soldiers conducted detention operations in Iraq in line with the law of war, see Douglas A. Pryer, The Fight for the
High Ground: The U.S. Army and Interrogation During Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003—April 2004 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CGSC Foundation Press,
2009).
9. Bing West, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
(New York: Bantam, 2005).
10. Mansoor, Surge, ch. 7.
11. For an examination of this mind-set in U.S. Army officers, see Jason W.
Warren, “The Centurion Mindset and the Army’s Strategic Leader Paradigm,”
Parameters 45, no. 3 (Autumn 2015): 27–38.
12. For a superb analysis of the failure of U.S. policy after 2008, see Emma
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P eter R . M ansoor
Sky, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (New York:
PublicAffairs, 2015), part III.
13. For an examination of the planning for the invasion of Iraq, see Michael
R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion
and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006).
14. Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation
Force’s Size,” New York Times, February 28, 2003, http://www.nytimes.
com/2003/02/28/us/threats-responses-military-spending-pentagon-contradictsgeneral-iraq-occupation.html.
15. Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2006), 266.
16. The term “unknown unknowns” was coined, of course, by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir
(New York: Sentinel, 2011).
17. Conrad Crane and Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2003).
18. Gordon Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq: Regime Change, Jay Garner, and the
ORHA Story (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011).
19. Mansoor, Surge, Appendix 3.
20. Todd C. Helmus, Christopher Paul, and Russell W. Glenn, Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters
of Operation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007).
21. Mansoor, Surge, 265.
22. Jim Michaels, A Chance in Hell: The Men Who Triumphed Over Iraq’s
Deadliest City and Turned the Tide of War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010).
23. Mansoor, Surge, 133–135.
24. H. R. McMaster, “Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for
Future War,” Orbis 52, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 564–584.
25. In this regard U.S. military leaders could have learned from the German
experience during World War II. German operational doctrine led to the rapid
collapse of France in 1940. “Blitzkrieg,” however, did not prove to be a warwinning concept, and the allies in time adapted to it.
26. Conrad C. Crane, Avoiding Vietnam: The U.S. Army’s Response to Defeat in Southeast Asia (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002).
27. For the harshest critique, see Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn: America’s
Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency (New York: The New Press, 2013).
28. For examples of this adaptation, see Dr. Donald P. Wright and Colonel
Timothy R. Reese, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign: The United
States Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, May 2003–January 2005 (Fort
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008).
29. The narrative commanders promulgated to the troops was that the surge
would “protect the population.” This was, in fact, true, but the surge succeeded
L essons of the I raq War 6 5
because the coalition was able to control the population and thereby choke off
the sources of ethno-sectarian conflict in Iraq. What the surge was not, as some
of its detractors have asserted, was “armed nation building” or an attempt to win
the “hearts and minds” of the people.
30. For a scathing indictment of these operations, see Tom Ricks, Fiasco: The
American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006).
31. General Raymond Odierno, unpublished and undated article on the
surge. Copy provided by General Odierno to the author.
32. General David Petraeus, “The Surge of Ideas: COINdinistas and Change
in the U.S. Army in 2006,” American Enterprise Institute, May 6, 2010, http://
www.aei.org/publication/the-surge-of-ideas-2.
33. For an incisive examination of how metrics clouded the strategic judgment of U.S. military leaders in the Vietnam War, see Gregory Daddis, No Sure
Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). An examination of the use of metrics in the Iraq War would be similarly useful. For an initial effort, see Jason
Campbell, Michael O’Hanlon, and Jeremy Shapiro, “How to Measure the War,”
Policy Review 157 (Oct.-Nov. 2009).
34. Joel P. Ellison and Daniel G. Hodermarsky, “Conventional and Special
Operations Forces Integration at the Operational Level” (master’s thesis, Naval
Postgraduate School, 2012); Michael D. Hastings, “The Integration of Conventional Forces and Special Operations Forces” (master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2005).
35. Bennet S. Sacolick and Wayne W. Grigsby Jr., “Special Operations/Conventional Forces Interdependence: A Critical Role in ‘Prevent, Shape, Win’,”
Army (June 2012): 40.
36. John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
37. Comment by U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Decker to President John F.
Kennedy in response to the latter’s attempt to reconfigure the US advisory effort
in South Vietnam along counterinsurgency lines.
38. Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise, 149.
39. Allison Abbe and Melissa Gouge, “Cultural Training for Military Personnel: Revisiting the Vietnam Era,” Military Review (July-Aug. 2012): 9–17.
40. Hershel L. Holiday, “Improving Cultural Awareness in the U.S. Military,” Strategy Research Project, U.S. Army War College, March 15, 2008.
41. William Doyle, A Soldier’s Dream: Captain Travis Patriquin and the
Awakening of Iraq (New York: New American Library, 2011).
42. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Penguin, 1954), 1:22.
Chapter 4
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
KEY LESSONS FROM THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE
Ben Barry
The British Army that entered Iraq in 2003 had a quarter century of successes, including Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, the Falkland Islands, Operation Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the 2002
formation and leadership of the International Security Assistance Force in
Kabul. All these operations were supported by Parliament, the public, and
the media. There were remarkably few casualties. Many aspects of these
operations were demanding, but in all these conflicts the opposition was of
lower average quality than British forces, were mostly unwilling to stand and
fight, and were overmatched by the arms and joint war fighting capabilities
of the United Kingdom and its allies.
So war in a broken country against enemies who rejected Western values
and were prepared to stand, fight, and die was always going to be challenging.
The war in Iraq was always controversial and became increasingly unpopular.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the failure to prevent instability, and the rising toll of casualties rapidly eroded public support in the U.K.
These factors combined to produce a serious strategic shock to the British
Government, its Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the army. All were too slow to
adapt. From 2006, the concurrent operation in Helmand Province, Afghanistan,
competed with Iraq for resources, media coverage, and intellectual horsepower.
O peration I raqi F reedom 6 7
When the United States decided to surge in January 2007, U.K. and U.S. strategies, operational approach, and tactics diverged. The British approach in Basra
came close to failure. Although this was redeemed by Operation Charge of the
Knights, Britain’s military reputation and confidence were damaged.
The army was faced with far greater challenges than it had expected. There
were periods of intense fighting. Most soldiers, officers, and units performed
well, often outstandingly so. But overall, the British in Iraq were not as effective as they could have been.
This chapter analyzes key dynamics of the British war in Iraq and identifies
lessons that may be relevant to the future U.S. Army. It is based on the evidence
gathered during the writing of the British Army’s final analysis of stabilization
operations in Iraq,1 on the U.K.’s Iraq Inquiry (both the extensive testimony
and the inquiry’s assessment), and on much material published in the United
Kingdom and United States since the war.2
The Iraq Inquiry’s Harsh Assessments
In 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to commission an independent inquiry into the British role in the war and its lessons.3 Chaired by
former senior civil servant Sir John Chilcot, it reported almost seven years
after it was commissioned. For reasons that have not been adequately explained, the inquiry lasted a year longer than did the British war in Iraq.
The inquiry displays single-minded concentration on analyzing high-level
decision-making in No. 10 Downing Street and Whitehall. This is its strength.
The most important assessment is that the British government failed to achieve
the strategic objectives it had set for itself. This is the core conclusion, from
which all the other assessments flow.
It identifies that prior to the invasion, the British intelligence and policy
communities had an “ingrained belief” that Iraq possessed a weapon of mass
destruction (WMD) capability. This gave rise to flawed assessments that were
never adequately tested, challenged, or probed. It particularly criticizes the
chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the head of the British Secret
Intelligence Service for presenting weak intelligence concerning Iraq’s weapons
of mass destruction with excessive certainty. It assesses that “the circumstances
in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action
were far from satisfactory.”
Chilcot concludes that “by 2007 militia dominance in Basra, which UK
military commanders were unable to challenge, led to the UK exchanging
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detainee releases for an end to the targeting of its forces. It was humiliating
that the UK reached a position in which an agreement with a militia group
which had been actively targeting UK forces was considered the best option
available. The UK military role in Iraq ended a very long way from success.”4
Regime Change
In southern Iraq, the USMC Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) included 1
(UK) Armoured Division, comprising a strong armored brigade, an air assault brigade, and a small amphibious brigade of Royal Marines. It incorporated a USMC marine expeditionary unit and ANGLICO teams. After
securing oil installations, it masked Basra to allow the rest of the MEF to
advance north.
Seeking to avoid turning Basra into Stalingrad or Grozny, it initially cordoned the city, but allowed civilians to leave. It used a mixture of patrols,
raids by armored forces, and precision air strikes to degrade Iraqi forces,
particularly their leadership and command and control. Detecting that Iraqi
defenses were crumbling, an armored attack was mounted on the city, which
defeated remaining Iraqi troops.
Subsequently the British presence reduced to a single brigade and a division HQ. Joined by other European, Japanese, Australian contingents and an
Italian brigade they formed Multinational Division (South East) (MNDSE),
responsible for the predominantly Shia provinces of Maysan, Dhi Qar, Al
Muthana, and Basra.
The British Approach in Southern Iraq
In 2004–2005, many British commanders considered the situation in southern Iraq to have more in common with peace support operations than anything else. Until 2008 there were insufficient U.K. troops or Iraqi forces to
adequately execute a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach, including securing the population. The Iraqi authorities became increasingly assertive and
less malleable as time went on.
U.K. force levels reduced greatly after 3 May and then declined further, with
the late 2004 decision to commit a major British force to NATO expansion
in Afghanistan in 2006. British expectations over progress after the successful elections of January 2005 were thwarted by local politics and growing
influence of Shia militias. These and their Iranian sponsored “special groups”
increasingly sought to gain political capital by attacking the British. New explosively formed projectile (EFP) roadside bomb technology fielded by Shia
O peration I raqi F reedom 6 9
militants sharply increased British casualties. This constrained the British
ability to build the Iraqi forces, as did the decision not to provide embedded
mentoring teams. The U.K. maintained the transition policy in MNDSE, which
worked in Dhi Qar and Al Muthana provinces (probably because of a relatively
stable political balance there) but was problematic in Maysan.
By mid-2006 it was clear that the transition strategy was failing in southern
Iraq because local politicians and Iraqi forces were unwilling to confront the
Shia militias. Operation Salamanca, a proposed British COIN operation against
Shia militias in Basra, was vetoed by the Iraqi authorities. It was replaced by the
less ambitious Operation Sinbad, which sought to reestablish security, promote
regeneration, and develop the Iraqi forces’ capability. Although insufficiently
resourced, it had some local tactical success. But the Iraqi security forces were
susceptible to militia pressure and had insufficient numbers and confidence to
hold areas that the British cleared. The operation only achieved transient effect.
It did not change the Basra political dynamic, particularly the unwillingness of
the Iraqi authorities and forces to take on the militias.
By then Britain troops were fighting a war with the Shia militias, and heavy
fighting took place around bases and convoys. The British responded with
intelligence-led strike operations. This war against the Jaish al Mahdi (JAM)
saw intense fighting and a high number of U.K. casualties.
When the United States decided to surge in January 2007, U.K. and U.S.
strategic, operational, and tactical approaches diverged. With U.K. public
support decreasing with every casualty, the British declined to match the U.S.
surge and chose to continue with the transition strategy. They argued that
Basra’s Shia majority and lack of Sunnis meant that it was different from the
rest of the country, that previous efforts to stabilize Basra had failed to change
the city’s political dynamic, so it was now up to the Iraqi government and
security forces to take the lead. And the U.K. had agreed to build up forces in
Afghanistan, so no British reinforcement was possible.
The British assessed that the conflict in Basra was Shia internal competition
for power and influence, rather than an insurgency against the Iraqi state. And
the British were losing legitimacy with the Baswaris. So they withdrew from
Basra to force the Iraqi authorities to recognize the militia problem and deal
with it. The new Basra security commander, General Mohan, assessed that
the U.K. presence in the city was distorting politics and prompting nationalist
Baswaris to fight the British as occupiers and to gain political credibility. He
wanted British forces to leave Basra to undercut support for the JAM.
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At the time, Prime Minister Maliki was unwilling to challenge Shia extremists
politically or militarily. Apart from special operations forces (SOF) raids, U.S.
forces were not contesting JAM-held areas in Baghdad, intending to address
Shia extremism only after the Sunni and al-Qaeda-Iraq (AQI) insurgencies were
neutralized. But the U.S. surge worked militarily and along with the Sunni Awakening shifted the security dynamic, the second decisive point in the campaign.
Meanwhile in Basra, an “accommodation” was negotiated with elements
of the Basra JAM that the British assessed as potentially reconcilable. The U.K.
ceased attacking the JAM, withdrew from the remaining U.K. base in the city,
and embarked on a phased release of JAM detainees. Attacks on British forces
greatly reduced. It was intended that this would encourage more responsible
JAM elements to move from violence toward legitimate politics and against
Iranian influence. Provincial Iraqi control was declared in December 2007.
But the Basra authorities and security forces were not ready to confront the
militias, their extensive racketeering, and their malign rule. The reducing British ISTAR capabilities and complete lack of U.K. mentors embedded in the
Iraqi Army meant that the British lost the situational awareness required for
over-watch, although this was not apparent at the time.
At Easter 2008 a joint U.K.-Iraqi plan for a deliberate operation to clear
Basra over the next six months was overtaken by the surprise decision of
Prime Minister Maliki to clear the JAM from Basra. After an inevitably shaky
start, Operation Charge of the Knights became an effective Iraqi surge into
Basra with U.S. and U.K. support. By concentrating sufficient ground troops,
attack helicopters, and armed umanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); visibly putting
the Iraqi Army in the lead; and subsequently exploiting an Iranian-brokered
JAM ceasefire, it restored security months earlier than MNDSE and General
Mohan had planned.
The U.S. leaders were shocked to find that the British had negotiated with
the JAM from a position of weakness, had lost leverage once all the JAM
detainees were released, and had insufficient situational awareness of Basra.
And many Iraqi actors wanted to shift blame onto the British. This meant that
strategic, operational, and tactical shocks resulted, with damage to Britain’s
military reputation.5
The Sunni Awakening and the U.S. surge had created the security and
political conditions to allow Maliki to take on the Shia extremists and their
militias. Without these, the whole campaign would almost certainly have
failed, as would have the U.K. approach in Basra. Maliki redefined the militia
O peration I raqi F reedom 71
and Iranian-supported “special groups” as enemies. The success of Operation Charge of the Knights resulted in Maliki authorizing the U.S. and Iraqi
troops to mount similar offensives against Shia strongholds in Sadr City and
elsewhere. The offensive was a decisive point. If it had failed, it is difficult to
see how either Maliki or the British position would have survived. And the
U.S. campaign would have been badly damaged.
Subsequently the improved security situation allowed the British to support Iraqi COIN operations by fielding teams to mentor the Iraqi forces,
further develop Iraqi security capability, and mount strike operations against
irreconcilable Shia fighters. The effort gradually shifted to energizing interagency delivery of the comprehensive approach and setting the conditions for
handover to the United States in May 2009.
Lessons for the U.S. Army: Building Indigenous Security Forces
Between 2004 and 2008 the British chose not to embed mentors with the
Iraqi forces. Their approach to developing the Iraqi Army (form, train, and
equip) was not as effective as the U.S. approach (form, train, equip, mentor, partner, and recognize that “your fight is our fight”). This reduced their
ability to form empathetic relationships with Iraqi forces. This suggests that
indigenous security capacity can be built more effectively through active support than through passively promoting self-reliance.
Corruption could often degrade logistics, when supplies were sold on the
black market, or money for fuel, food, water, and other supplies were stolen.
Left unchecked it could significantly reduce the morale and cohesion of forces.
In Iraq, where corruption was observed by coalition mentor teams, it was
brought to the attention of the senior commanders of that unit or formation.
This was sometimes effective, sometimes not. There was evidence that the
more effective an Iraqi unit, the more tolerant coalition mentors were of corruption. On several occasions Iraqi units were withdrawn from operations for
periods of retraining, providing an opportunity for less effective and corrupt
commanders to be dismissed.
The pointer to the future is that corruption in indigenous forces will often
reflect both corruption and patronage networks in host nations. This will need
recognition from the start. There will be opportunities for those training and
advising to identify corruption, but their ability to reduce it may be limited.
Corruption is probably best tackled in a comprehensive approach, including
political, development, and intelligence agencies.
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“War Amongst the People”; Combat in a
Predominantly Urban Environment
The majority of British tactical combat occurred in or around towns and cities. The United States employed a variety of approaches to attacking urban
areas. These included the U.S. Army’s 2003 “Thunder Runs” into Baghdad,
the cordoning and deliberate clearance of Fallujah in 2008, and the 2008
clearance of Sadr City. The tactics employed by 1 (UK) Armoured Division in
March-April 2003—isolating Basra, gathering information and intelligence,
conducting patrols, employing ground and air shaping attacks, and finally
exploiting the weakening of enemy command and morale with a ground
attack—provide a potential fourth model for the seizure of a large urban
area—essentially a “smart siege.”
Between 2005 and 2008 there were sufficient successful U.K. and U.S. formation offensive operations for common success factors to be identified. These
included concentrating sufficient security forces to clear and then hold key
urban terrain. This required combined arms forces, with infantry protected by
armored vehicles. Protected direct fire weapons were essential, both mounted
on armored vehicles and in the form of tanks.
Whenever enough forces were concentrated in an area, stayed there, and
applied the principles of COIN, stability resulted. But this only achieved results
after the initial problematic phase of Operation Charge of the Knights from
Easter 2008. This was actually executed by a combination of Iraqi, U.S., and
British troops using an eclectic blend of their various approaches. One British
commander described the Iraqi Army’s urban patrolling as “hundreds of heavily armed men throwing their weight around over a few city blocks, controlled
entirely by mobile phones—but no less effective for that.”6
Like U.S. forces, the British made extensive use of air power. Although 1
(U.K.) Armoured Division deployed with Phoenix UAVs, these were quickly used
up. The RAF contribution to USAF Predator operations carried with it no guaranteed allocation of missions to British ground forces. It was not until late 2007
that unarmed Hermes 450 UAVs were deployed. The British were handicapped
by having neither organic attack helicopters nor precision artillery, although
both capabilities were fielded in Afghanistan. A man in the loop precision attack capability was eventually fielded using an Israeli Spike NLOS missile. This
was subsequently used in Afghanistan and now is a British program of record.
Both firepower and ground maneuver were complemented with key leader
engagement, information operations, and tactical reconstruction—much of
O peration I raqi F reedom 73
which was funded by the U.S. Commander’s Emergency Response Program.
The more the operation involved Iraqi forces, giving an “Iraqi face” to build
empathy with the civil population, the better. These are pointers to future
formation operations amongst the people, both in COIN and other types of
conflict, including “conventional” war in urban areas.
Lessons from an Enemy Perspective
There are also lessons to be learned from the enemy. For example, the JAM
attempts to defeat British convoys and raiding parties featured an ability to
rapidly lay urban ambushes and to “swarm” fighters against slow-moving or
static British troops. This showed the potential value of a maneuver in defense of urban areas and covering obstacles by fire. Part of this was the ability to quickly emplace directional anti-armor mines, the EFP devices. This
would be a useful tactical capability for conventional land forces.
The casualties imposed by insurgent improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
to the British and coalition forces in Iraq and subsequently in Afghanistan,
and the resulting friction and delay and cost of countermeasures, will have
been noted by actors who would confront U.S. and NATO forces. They will
probably see that they could achieve similar low-cost but high-impact effects
by using large numbers of land mines.
For insurgents and states that might confront Western forces, relevant
lessons include the value of decentralized organizations and of asymmetric
approaches and the advantage conferred by support from neighboring states.
The political-military “bang for the buck” that Iran has been achieving in Iraq
from the Qods Force support to Shia proxies suggests that this is a capability
of enduring value.
SOF
From the outset of the war, U.K. SOF made a significant contribution to the
U.S.-led SOF operations, both against Iraqi forces in western Iraq and subsequently in the intelligence-led operations against Sunni insurgents, AQI,
and Shia extremists. These operations have been well described by General
McChrystal.7 There is much additional tactical detail of the role of the Special Air Service (SAS) in a book by Mark Urban, a British journalist, although it draws heavily on testimony of former SAS personnel who were
disillusioned with Britain’s role in Iraq.8 Apart from different legal rules for
handling detainees, the SAS was fully integrated into McChrystal’s increasingly effective and networked operations to attack enemy networks.
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Initially dependent on close support from U.S. Rangers, the U.K. formed a
dedicated battalion-sized SOF support group of paratroops and marines. During Operation Charge of the Knights, a British armored infantry battalion provided protection and firepower support to Iraqi SOF, whose Humvees lacked
sufficient firepower and protected mobility. So the lessons already discerned by
the U.S. about the value of integration between SOF and conventional forces
are supported by the British experience.
The British chose to deploy only a few SOF into MNDSE. The British
division still needed to attack enemy networks. In previous campaigns the
British had used conventional troops to field some capabilities that in other
nations would have been assigned to SOF. They did this again, first, by training
specially selected infantry to provide close support to SOF, second, by training infantry and armored and cavalry companies and squadrons to conduct
precision raids to detain suspects and seize enemies.9 Linked to increasingly
effective analysis of militia networks and surveillance by UAVs, these capabilities allowed the British to attack networks for themselves.
Coalition Dynamics
For the majority of the campaign, the U.K. effort in southern Iraq was not
treated either by the United Kingdom or the United States as an integrated
part of a unified campaign. Up to May 2008, it was never the corps’ main
effort. British commanders and staff in Basra often saw their primary command relationship as being with London rather than Baghdad. This seems
to have developed by mutual consent. So MNDSE did not always effectively
engage MNC-I and tended to seek assistance not from MNC-I, but from
the U.K. The campaign does not appear to have been as well understood in
Whitehall as it should have been.
The divergence of U.S. and U.K. strategy and the U.K.’s subsequent difficulties in Basra show that having a nation’s forces operate to different strategy,
operational design, or tactical approach from the rest of the coalition creates
risk of tactical incoherence. While this might be manageable, the enemy, coalition, and other actors or unforeseen events may expose these contradictions, resulting in effects that could produce strategic, operational, tactical,
or presentational shocks.
This is what happened in Operation Charge of the Knights. The resulting
crisis showed that that there had been too little mutual understanding between
the MNC-I and MNDSE staffs. For example, the term transition seems to have
O peration I raqi F reedom 75
been differently understood in Basra and Baghdad. Subsequently, MNDSE
went out of its way to fully engage MNC-I.
A contributory factor was that the U.K. National Contingent Commander
was not one of the British generals in Baghdad, but was the British commanding general in Basra, a tactical commander. The lesson is that to maximize
unity of effort and coherence of a multinational campaign, there should be
a single campaign plan, owned by the in-theater headquarters in which all
tactical plans are nested.
The war shows that the National Contingent Commander is better placed
at the theater headquarters, to influence the campaign plan and establish unambiguous situational awareness. This would be the best place to de-conflict
any British tactical issues with the coalition plan, rather than leaving it to a
land tactical commander to do. This approach was subsequently adopted in
Afghanistan.
Connecting the Tactical, Operational, and Strategic Levels:
Multiple Failures of British Strategic Leadership
The Iraq Inquiry summary contains a wealth of evidence and analysis that
clearly shows that throughout the war British strategic leadership failed to
display the required level of competence. It clearly shows how following the
fall of Saddam Hussein, both the British and U.S. governments struggled to
achieve the necessary match between ends, ways, and means necessary for
tactical success to have the desired operational effects that would achieve
progress toward both coalition and national strategic objectives. These were
complex failures, with many contributing factors and multiple examples of
suboptimal decision-making in Washington, London, CENTCOM, Baghdad,
and Basra.
After regime change, British commanders in Basra sensed a profound lack
of civil-military coordination in London, a palpable lack of top-down leadership, and a government approach to southern Iraq under-resourced and
inadequately led and coordinated. These factors made achieving an adequate
British interagency effort problematic until after Operation Charge of the
Knights. Some modest improvements were seen in the last year of the war, but
these were too late to reverse many of the effects of earlier failures.
The inquiry assesses that the scale of U.K. effort in post-conflict Iraq “failed
to take account of the magnitude of the task of stabilizing, administering and
reconstructing Iraq, and of the responsibilities which were likely to fall to the
UK.” This was because Prime Minister Blair “did not establish clear Ministerial
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oversight of UK planning and preparation. He did not ensure that there was
a flexible, realistic and fully resourced plan that integrated UK military and
civilian contributions.”10
The inquiry’s evidence paints a picture of suboptimal leadership and management of the war. A stark conclusion reached by former Chief of the General
Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt after the war was that “[w]e struggled in
Iraq because we did not have enough troops, because the budget was tight and
because we had committed ourselves to a second operation in Afghanistan”
and that there was “a profound lack of leadership on the part of the organs
responsible for delivering UK Government and coalition policy. We failed to
organize ourselves properly in a single, transparent chain of authority, with
the result that internecine squabbling over roles, resources and responsibilities dangerously damaged the combined effect we were trying to achieve.”11
Although the British Chiefs of Staff were frustrated by the inadequate coordination of the interagency effort in London, the inquiry clearly shows they
were themselves guilty of some suboptimal decision-making and delivery.
For example, it was they who decided not to implement the U.S. initiative of
assigning full-time mentors to Iraqi Army units.
This is but one of a large number of examples identified by the inquiry
of suboptimal performance by politicians, government, departments and intelligence staff, senior military officers, and civilian officials. For example,
preinvasion planning in Whitehall had identified that post-conflict operations
would be decisive, that a major reconstruction effort would be necessary, that
the U.S. plans for post-conflict activity were weak, and that the rapidly improvised U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA)
would be over-faced by the task. But no one person or government department
was placed in charge of prewar planning of reconstruction. Claire Short, the
minister in charge of the Department for International Development (DfID),
displayed “reluctance to engage in post‑conflict activity other than for the immediate humanitarian response to conflict, until it was confirmed that the UN
would lead the reconstruction effort.”12 Leadership of the U.K. reconstruction
effort was eventually given to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)
in late March 2003. Although an ad hoc committee considered reconstruction
plans, it assumed no effective role in implementation.
Despite agreement by Short and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the
United Kingdom should do more to support the ORHA, the DfID effectively opted out of doing so. After Short’s resignation in May 2003, the DfID
O peration I raqi F reedom 77
assumed leadership of reconstruction, but by then the U.K. reconstruction
effort had fallen well behind the requirements and well behind Blair’s public
and private rhetoric. Relations between the DfID and the British military were
badly damaged and took years to recover.
There were also strategic failures by the FCO. For example, at a July Cabinet meeting in 2003, Blair concluded that the United Kingdom should make
the CPA regional office in Basra, CPA(South), “a model.” In a subsequent
video conference, Blair told President Bush and other U.S. strategic leaders
that the U.K. would do its “level best to meet any demand for additional
resources.”13 A senior diplomat, Sir Hilary Synnott, was called out of retirement to head the team.
The inquiry forensically analyzes the extent to which this direction to
support CPA(South) was met. It provides abundant evidence to show that
the U.K. never provided the staff or resources that Synnott requested. It
identifies that the FCO, the department responsible, “did not provide adequate practical support to Sir Hilary Synnott as Head of CPA(South),”
going on to identify that the FCO’s Permanent Secretary failed to ensure
that the FCO provided the support. What it does not explain is why inadequate implementation of a Cabinet decision, which had been declared to
the U.S. government, was tolerated by the central coordinating machinery
of government, the foreign secretary, or the prime minister. In his memoir,
Synnott offered his assessment that the consistent failure of the FCO to
provide sufficient personnel
stemmed from a lack of political direction. Seen from Iraq and notwithstanding Blair’s rhetoric, there was little evidence that the British Government as
a whole saw itself as being at war. Management and oversight at ministerial
and senior official level was essentially ad hoc and bore little resemblance
to the highly organised arrangements for post-conflict reconstruction which
had been put in place, for instance, some four years before the end of the
Second World War. Blair put a constant public emphasis on the importance
and urgency of making progress in Iraq. But seemingly little interested in
the processes within Government by which this might be brought about, he
proved unable to mobilise Government departments to produce the necessary
results.14
The inquiry shows that although many organizations, officials, military officers, and ministers in the FCO, the MoD, and the DfID contributed to this
display of inadequate strategic competence, the single most important factor
was probably the inability of Prime Minister Blair to make the decisions he had
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taken stick. Many British people, politicians, and media outlets consider that
the Iraq War destroyed Blair’s reputation. These judgments are well deserved.
So just as U.S. troops on the ground often found themselves dealing with
the consequences of inadequate political and strategic leadership and management of the war, so did the British. But the popularity of the war declined much
faster in the United Kingdom than it did in the United States, thus decreasing
London’s appetite for risk, which further reduced from 2006 as the British
contingent in Afghanistan became involved in increasingly heavy fighting. This
and the resulting casualties in Helmand served to increase the unpopularity of
both wars. This illustrates the difficulty of connecting the tactical and strategic
levels when different coalition partners have different appetite for risk.
The Three-Block War and Strategic Corporals
The war certainly confirmed the proposition that future conflict would be a
“three block war,” as described by USMC General Charles Krulak in 1999.
He saw future conflict as
contingencies in which Marines may be confronted by the entire spectrum of
tactical challenges in the span of a few hours and within the space of three
contiguous city blocks. . . .
The inescapable lesson of Somalia and of other recent operations, whether
humanitarian assistance, peace-keeping, or traditional warfighting, is that
their outcome may hinge on decisions made by small unit leaders, and by actions taken at the lowest level. . . .
These missions will require them to confidently make well-reasoned and
independent decisions under extreme stress—decisions that will likely be subject to the harsh scrutiny of both the media and the court of public opinion.
In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of
American foreign policy and will potentially influence not only the immediate
tactical situation, but the operational and strategic levels as well. His actions,
therefore, will directly impact the outcome of the larger operation; and he will
become, as the title of this article suggests—the Strategic Corporal.15
Many of the U.S. and British operations in Iraq were at least as complex as
those envisaged by Krulak, often more so. And the requirement for a high
standard of small-unit leadership was present throughout, validating the strategic corporal concept. But the corporals with the greatest strategic effect were
those U.S. and British corporals who abused Iraqi prisoners in 2003–2004.
These tactical actions with extremely damaging strategic effect showed that
the strategic corporal concept cut both ways.
O peration I raqi F reedom 79
Legitimacy and the Law
The disgraceful examples of prisoner abuse mentioned above demonstrate
the importance of achieving legitimacy and operating in accordance with
the law, at all levels of war. Recognizing that collateral damage and civilian
casualties both eroded legitimacy and acted as powerful recruiting sergeants
for militias and insurgents, the United States and its allies sought to use force
with precision and discrimination. This included highly restrictive rules of
engagement and increasing use of precision weapons. Despite international
legal authority conferred by UN Security Council resolutions, the coalition
struggled to achieve legitimacy, both in Iraq and globally, exacerbated by
the international forces’ difficulty in understanding the complex makeup of
Iraq’s human terrain, including tribal dynamics.
The Character of the War
Operation Iraqi Freedom demonstrated the inherent unpredictability of war,
in which the enemy has a vote and may fight to the death to cast it. It reminds us that war is a clash of wills between actors seeking to shape events
to suit their political aims. The combatants are seeking to gain and exploit all
the advantages they can. Attrition, maneuver, and symmetric or asymmetric
military approaches all had their roles in both wars. It demonstrates the enduring application of what J. F. C. Fuller called the “constant tactical factor,”
where every improvement in warfare is checked by a counter-improvement.
These events reflect the changing nature of our opponents; the coalition
campaign and Iraqi politics; and a highly complex, challenging, and dynamic
multinational and interagency setting. The initial land campaign had been thoroughly planned. Land operations unrolled in linear fashion. But the subsequent
stabilization of Iraq became increasingly complex. It was “non-linear,” that
is with many variable factors, which interacted with each other in a complex
and constantly changing fashion. General Petraeus has been quoted as saying
that “war is not a linear phenomenon; it’s a calculus, not arithmetic.”16
Often success in Iraq depended upon the political climate and context, and
the attitude, capability, and will of the Iraqi authorities and security forces—a
factor too often overlooked by many commentators. For example, there were
a number of operations for which the Iraqi authorities gave prior consent, only
for the outcome to be retrospectively repudiated by them. One instance is the
U.S. operation in 2007 to interdict Shia death squads operating from Sadr City
that was vetoed by Maliki. A probable reason is that such operations were
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so close to the envelope of Iraqi governmental sensitivities that by succeeding
they threatened that government’s political support.
Another factor may be lack of understanding. It is not clear that all British plans began with the Iraqi viewpoint and considered outcomes from their
perspective. The British were more likely to succeed when they worked with
the forces in Iraqi society, not against them, and were more likely to fail when
they imposed solutions on them.
Often characterized by British officers as “nation building under fire” or
“armed politics,” counterinsurgency operations were essentially contests for
the minds of people: the populations, the insurgents and militias, and their
military and political leadership. There was nothing new about this; indeed, it
had been the central feature of insurgency and COIN for the previous century.
The war confirmed that the classic principles of insurgency and counterinsurgency still applied. This includes the primacy of politics, addressing the
root causes of the insurgency, making progress across all areas of governance
and development, retaining legitimacy and operating within the law, and the
value of propaganda to the insurgents and “information operations” to the
counterinsurgents.
The environment was extremely complex, with all coalition efforts subject
to great friction and uncertainty. Events in Iraq often defied the simple characterizations found in textbooks or military doctrine. A wide range of insurgent,
militia, U.S., coalition, and Iraqi politics, activities, and military operations at
the strategic, operational, and tactical levels were constantly overlapping and
impacting on each other in the short, medium, and long terms. For example,
there was considerable overlap between militias, organized criminals, and
political and religious extremists and death squads. Crime and extortion often
funded insurgent and militia activity.
The U.S. campaign is rich with examples of these interactions. These include Fallujah in 2004 and the failure to stabilize Baghdad in 2006. These
dynamics are a central feature of the surge—for example the decisive role that
General Petraeus’s and Ambassador Crocker’s testimony to Congress in fall
2007 played in sustaining the remaining domestic political support for the war.
This also applied to the British. Examples include London’s sensitivity to
casualties leading to the British initially opting out of embedding mentors
in the Iraqi forces and its 2006 decision to cease flying manned helicopters
above Basra, with resulting reduction in airborne surveillance. So was Operation Sinbad, for which inadequate resourcing and support by both British
O peration I raqi F reedom 8 1
and Iraqi governments contributed to its resultant failure to convert local
tactical success into either operational or political advantage. The 2007 “accommodation” with the JAM was driven by the U.K. government seeking to
minimize casualties, a direct result of the increasing unpopularity of the war
in the United Kingdom.
The conflict saw plenty of examples of the factors that Clausewitz identified as distinguishing war from other activities; the effects of danger, the
difficulty of gaining sufficient accurate information, the summer heat (which
Clausewitz would have described as “exertion”), and the pervasive presence
of friction. These all applied in Iraq, as did war’s contest of wills and its political nature. But on the basis of these simple principles was overlaid complex
multiple political and military conflicts. And pervasive media reporting, not
least by CNN, Al Jazeera, and other news channels and the internet, greatly
accelerated passage of information of various degrees of truth, falsehood,
and exaggeration. It was as if Clausewitz had been laid on top of Hobbes,
Machiavelli, and George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, all shredded and
then spun in a powerful centrifuge.
This interpenetration and interdependence of war and politics increased
complexity and created opportunities, risks, and threats for all actors and at
every level. Or as British Lieutenant General Lamb, then deputy commander
of MNF-I, put it in 2007, “This is as complex as anything I’ve ever done. . .
.This is three-dimensional chess in a dark room.”17
This complexity is probably an enduring feature of twenty-first-century
armed conflict. The multiple connected conflicts in Syria and Iraq and the
multiple regional and global threats posed by ISIS appear to confirm this. This
will put a premium on the education, training, and selection of commanders.
“Learning Under Fire”
Secretary Rumsfeld once famously told a soldier that you go to war
with the Army you have, which is absolutely true. But I would add
that you damn well should move as fast as possible to get the army
you need.
—Robert Gates18
As no war will have exactly the character predicted by the combatants, and
as competent adversaries will seek to adjust their activity to better respond to
their opponents’ actions, it is necessary to adapt at the strategic, operational,
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and tactical levels. And successful adaptations at one level will often have
positive impact at the other levels of war.19
There is good evidence that in important areas U.S. forces in Iraq changed
and adapted faster than the British. Although there was much tactical adaptation and learning by British forces, the evidence suggests that for every positive
example of British military adaptation, there were equal and opposite examples
of failures to adapt. Many officers who fought in Iraq expressed sentiments
that “we could and should have done better.”20
The British had useful experience of COIN from postwar colonial campaigns and the early years of the Northern Ireland campaign. But they had
abandoned the teaching of it at their staff college in the late 1990s, in favor
of peace support operations. Some of the lessons of operations in Bosnia and
Kosovo may have misled as much as they informed.
The British were slower than the U.S. to produce up-to-date COIN doctrine, their equivalent of FM 3-24 only being published in 2009. As former
U.K. Chief of Defense Lord David Richards assessed,
Critics say that our long experience in Ulster made us complacent about tackling insurgency elsewhere, a case of “we’ve done this in Northern Ireland, so
we know what to expect and how to deal with it.” As a result of our experience in Ulster, we certainly had a feel for the requirement to keep people with
us and work within a political environment. But I think in Iraq, for example,
too many British officers would, without realizing what they were doing, slip
into a Northern Ireland mind set. Very early on that was an appropriate response when the efficient administration of law and order along the Northern
Ireland pattern was required. But once things escalated, we needed to think
in new and innovative ways, in order to deal with a complex and unique insurgency and the collapse of Iraqi society. That did happen, but maybe it took
longer than it should have done.21
Although they succeeded in applying many counter-IED capabilities they had
learned in Northern Ireland, they had failed to institutionalize some other
key relevant lessons of Northern Ireland. For example, they failed to grow
tactical intelligence capabilities quickly enough. In Northern Ireland, both
conventional and special forces had exploited British command of the air for
intelligence gathering and surveillance. But it was not until 2007 that an adequate British UAV capability was fielded in Iraq, much later than many other
national contingents in Iraq. There was never an adequate tactical intelligence
database fielded in Iraq. These and many other failures to generate adequate
tactical intelligence also applied in Afghanistan, where they were eventually
O peration I raqi F reedom 8 3
overcome by a concerted effort to “invert the pyramid,” including affording
the intelligence needs of tactical forces a much higher probability.22
Technological adaptation usually took longer than altering tactics, techniques, or procedures. These could be changed relatively quickly, particularly
when driven by military commanders. Identifying technological solutions to
new problems was always going to take longer, even when equipment could
be acquired “off the shelf.” If new research and development was required,
more time would be needed. An example of this is the U.S. and U.K. reactions
to the fielding of EFP weapons in 2005. Additional armor and new countermeasures were developed, but in the meantime, troops adjusted their tactics
to reduce their vulnerability.
From 2005 onward the British struggled to field sufficient numbers of
armored vehicles with adequate protection against IEDS. Sufficient urgency
and momentum appear only to have been put into this effort in 2007 by a
defense procurement minister, Lord Drayson.23 It seems to have taken the MoD
in London longer than the United States to develop the sense of urgency that
Robert Gates imparted to the Pentagon. With the exception of Lord Drayson,
it is difficult to discern any U.K. defense minister who had impact similar to
Gates in energizing the U.K. defense ministry’s bureaucracy. And while the
U.S. had two defense secretaries between 2001 and 2009, in the same period
the British government had five. This cannot have promoted political commitment to adaptation and urgency.
Adaptation depends on political and military leadership. Bottom-up adaptations could not succeed without the engagement, encouragement, and
enthusiasm of small-unit leaders. And as shown by the British and U.S.
examples, top-down adaptation worked best when it was driven by toplevel leaders.
Some of the reluctance of the British Army to change seems to have been
caused by an unwillingness of the organization to make culturally uncomfortable decisions, bending themselves out of shape. This shows that it is essential
that organizations be prepared to adapt quickly and prepared to move outside
their comfort zones as they do.
These and many other examples from both wars illustrate the importance
of leaders and forces being able to innovate and adapt on operations. The
adjustments made in Iraq and subsequently applied in Afghanistan show that
although technology can assist with adaptation, the key enablers and barriers
to adaptation are leadership, culture, and mental and organizational agility.
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Candor and dialogue help adaptation happen. Much of the contemporary
dialogue within the U.S. Army and the USMC was striking in its candor, the
more so as much of it was in relatively open fora. It was often self-critical
and highly reflective—about what was working in Iraq and what was not. It
showed a healthy exchange of ideas, not just between tactical practitioners, but
also flowing from senior officers, through company commanders and including enlisted ranks. Some key senior leaders in the U.S. Army and the USMC
seemed confident enough to take critical feedback from their subordinates,
supporting good ideas with resources and influence. A British officer who
served in Baghdad described the U.S. approach as one of “brutal frankness.”24
This suggests that an honest dialogue between the front line, middle management, and senior leadership can make organizations significantly more agile
and effective, by better integrating top-down direction with bottom-up lessons
from the front line. The overall impression is that this happened more slowly
in the British Army than in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
Overall, the key pointer to the future is that adaptation is essential to
military success. It will be essential to encourage bottom-up adaption by units
on operations and to support this by top-down adaptation and direction,
particularly in joining top-down with bottom-up initiatives. The energizing of
inherently conservative military command chains and defense ministry bureaucracies, including the Pentagon, will be an enduring challenge for political and
military leaders. Leading adaptation is a core function of politicians, senior
military leaders, and commanders at all levels.
Notes
1. “Operations in Iraq, January 2005–May 2009: An Analysis from a
Land Perspective,” Army Code 71937. 29, November 2010, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/
file/557326/20160831-FOI07003_77396_Redacted.pdf. The report was written
between June 2009 and June 2010. Evidence included a thousand British postoperation reports from Iraq and a hundred interviews. Findings were tested at an
Army conference and by a reference group of a dozen serving and retired British
generals with Iraq experience who peer reviewed the work.
2. This includes especially the comprehensive analysis published by the U.S.
Army in early 2019. Colonel Joel D. Rayburn and Colonel Frank K. Sobchak,
eds., The U.S. Army in the Iraq War, vol. 1, Invasion—Insurgency—Civil War,
2003–2006 (Carlisle, PA: Army War College Press, 2019); Rayburn and Sobchak,
eds., The U.S. Army in the Iraq War, vol. 2, Surge and Withdrawal 2007–2011
(Carlisle, PA: Army War College Press, 2019).
O peration I raqi F reedom 8 5
3. “Sir John Chilcot’s Public Statement, 6 July 2016,” The Iraq Inquiry, The
National Archives, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20170831105417/
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-inquiry/sir-john-chilcots-public-statement.
4. This quote and the one in the preceding paragraph from ibid.
5. There is no better description of the operation and its lesson than that
in Peter R. Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the
Remaking of the Iraq War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), ch. 9.
6. Author’s interview with British Army commander, October 2009. Anonymity requested by interviewee.
7. Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (London: Portfolio
Penguin, 2013).
8. Mark Urban, Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and
the Secret War in Iraq (New York: Little, Brown, 2010).
9. The British Army uses the term squadron to describe a company-sized subunit in cavalry, armor, engineer, and signals units.
10. “Sir John Chilcott’s Public Statement.”
11. General Sir Richard Dannatt, Leading from the Front: The Autobiography (London: Bantam Press, 2010), 392.
12. The Iraq Inquiry, 533, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.
uk/20170831105417/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk.
13. Ibid., 95. Specific reference is to the Irq Inquiry Report Volume IX Reconstruction Conclusions section page 533, paragraph 32, https://assets.publishing.
service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/535417/
The_Report_of_the_Iraq_Inquiry_-_Volume_IX.pdf.
14. Hilary Synnott, Bad Days in Basra: My Turbulent Time as Britain’s Man
in Southern Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 252.
15. General Charles C. Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the
Three Block War,” Marines Magazine, January 1999. See https://apps.dtic.mil/
dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a399413.pdf.
16. Quoted in “The Situation in Iraq and Progress Made by the Government of Iraq in Meeting Benchmarks and Achieving Reconciliation.” Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, April 8, 9, and 10,
2008, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-110shrg45666/html/CHRG110shrg45666.htm.
17. Mansoor, Surge, 83.
18. Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 148. The chapter “Waging War on the Pentagon” is a useful study of the leadership of adaptation.
19. This section is informed by the historical analysis of military adaptation in Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation and War: With Fear of Change
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
20. Author’s interview with British Army commander October 2009. Anonymity requested by interviewee.
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21. General David Richards, Taking Command: The Autobiography (London: Headline, 2014), 78.
22. Author’s observations, 2009.
23. See Lord Drayson’s evidence to the U.K. Iraq Inquiry, http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/50260/LordDraysonofKensington-statement.pdf.
24. Author’s interview with senior British officer, October 2009. Anonymity
requested by interviewee.
Chapter 5
AN IRAQI MILITARY PERSPECTIVE
ON THE INVASION OF 2003
Kevin M. Woods
Collecting so-called “lessons” from past events has always been easier than
learning them. Learning from something that did not take place is far more
difficult. And yet, such learning need not be based on mythology and speculation alone. The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes exemplified this notion
in his systematic approach of looking logically at what did not occur: the
famous “curious incident of the dog in the night-time” was curious precisely
because the dog did not bark.1 The iconic sleuth knew that unraveling a
mystery sometimes required exploring potential narratives beyond “selfevident” facts.
This is the challenge faced by anyone looking at the invasion phase of
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) for lessons applicable to future wars. Military
success is generally a more difficult classroom than military failure. Such lessons require the careful use of counterfactuals, or, as Marc Bloch described,
the “bold exercise of the mind.”2 Such an exercise requires a complete study
of what did occur and, to the extent possible, why things occurred as they
did. This is the necessary foundation of what might be called “grounded
speculation.”
This chapter focuses on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In all but the most exceptional, fleeting, or tactical circumstances, the outcome of the initial military
objective (to unseat the regime) was never in doubt.3 Despite the fact that
Iraq’s armed forces were large, reasonably equipped, and sited on moderately
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defensible terrain, they were with few exceptions poorly led, unmotivated,
undertrained, and completely exposed to the asymmetric effects of U.S. air
power. In order to develop a more complete case study, the chapter describes
the strategic environment from the Iraqi perspective. It outlines the 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq from the perspective of senior Iraqi military leaders and
commanders. These perspectives widen and offer “curious incidents” worth
exploring as either alternative cause-and-effect explanations for what did occur
or as points of departure to consider the implications of what did not occur.
Thinking About the Perspective of “the Other”
To many observers, the choices the Iraqi regime made during the 2003 war
appear dysfunctional, bordering on the absurd. Photographs of advanced
fighter aircraft buried in the desert and bridges left intact in the face of an
enemy’s advancing armored forces invite more ridicule than analysis. Upon
closer inspection, however, the regime’s responses to the coalition threat, and
then the invasion, were consistently logical within the Iraqi context.4 The
1991 Gulf War and Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch, and
the “No-Fly Zone” operations that followed, shaped both Iraqi and American perceptions of each other’s intent and military capabilities. It was these
perceptions, some valid and some not, that played out in 2003.
Divining a single perspective from any government bureaucracy requires a
significant amount of simplification and abstraction. However, in this case, the
risk is reduced by the fact that assessing the adversaries, developing military
plans, and exercising command and control were limited to a small group of
senior Ba’ath party and military officials.5 Unfortunately, the regime’s precipitous and complete collapse precluded generating an Iraqi equivalent to
American OIF historical narratives to compare and contrast.6 What does exist
is a large but disparate collection of captured state records, and also the individual recollections of surviving Iraqi leadership. This chapter draws mainly
from these two sources.7
Iraqi Military Effectiveness
Before delving into the operational aspects of the 2003 invasion, it is important to recall the environment in which Iraqi military, paramilitary, and
intelligence organizations operated. Military effectiveness can only be understood as the complex interrelationship between vertical (for example, political, strategic, operational, and tactical) and horizontal (manpower, planning,
training, logistics) factors that animate any military force.8 In Iraq, the politi-
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 20038 9
cal and strategic factors that existed at the time of OIF are the most relevant
to understanding Iraq’s military performance. This is not to imply that other
factors were irrelevant; in fact, the Iraqis demonstrated a surprising degree of
adaptation during a number of tactical engagements.
The overarching political and strategic factor that shaped Iraqi perceptions
of the threat in 2003 was that, despite the drubbing the Iraqi military endured
in 1991, the regime did not consider itself a defeated power, nor did it act like
one. Saddam did not accept the U.S. judgment of Iraq’s forces, and therefore
saw little need to significantly adapt or upgrade his conventional arms. Such
a judgment, while self-serving to the dictator’s narrative, precluded any serious post–Desert Storm review of Iraqi operational decision-making, general
doctrine, or military organizations. Despite such constraints, the Iraqi military
did spend a significant amount of energy studying American capabilities.
One such example of adaptation was a specific concept to defeat attack
helicopters. Developed after encounters with the U.S. AH-64 Apache during
the 1991 Gulf War, the new Iraqi concept was put to effective use against the
U.S. Army’s 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment on the night of 23 March 2003.9
During a post–Operation Desert Storm lessons-learned conference, one Iraqi
officer recalled that because the Apache “could stand outside the effective range
of Iraqi defensive weapons” Iraqi maneuver forces were unable to effectively
close with American ground forces.10 The Iraqi’s solution was a “swarm-style”
approach to counter Apache units operating from hovering battle positions.
While this adaptation did have some tactical success, one should not overstate
the exceptions in search of a rule. The Iraqi political-strategic context was
arguably the most significant influence on the way events unfolded.
Postwar interviews with former Iraqi field commanders make clear that,
for the professionals among them, their understanding of U.S. capabilities far
exceeded their ability to meet or counter them. For example, the commander
of Iraq’s Air Force noted “nobody knows more about absorbing precision
munitions than Iraq. . . .”11 Iraqi forces conducted detailed and deliberate
studies of every incident of force during Operation Northern Watch and Operation Southern Watch. These detailed studies, combined with information
exchanged with Serbian experts after the end of the 1999 Kosovo War, did
not facilitate developing an effective counter to U.S. airpower. However, it did
ensure a degree of asset preservation (disassembling, dispersing, and, in the
extreme, burying aircraft) and the continuation of air defense communication
throughout the campaign.12 The fact that the Iraqi military tried to counter
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American capabilities and generally failed does not mean that a future adversary might not succeed along the same or similar lines of effort.
During OIF, the Iraqi military was a shadow of its previous self (see Table
5.1). In 1990, the Iraqi military, especially its ground forces, was the largest
and, arguably, the most capable Arab force in modern times.13 By March
1991, the force had been ravaged at the hands of a U.S.-led, thirty-one-nation coalition and the internal security crisis that followed. Compared to the
force that ended the Iran-Iraq War or faced the coalition forces in Kuwait in
1991, by early 2003, the readiness, training, and general morale of the Iraqi
armed forces were all at historic lows. As one senior American analyst noted,
“the Iraqis had made some defensive preparations, but as the actual fight
approached, they made only sporadic and half-hearted attempts to execute
them.”14
The Iraqi Perspective
The regime’s assumptions about the nature of the threat it faced on the eve of
the invasion resulted from its own idiosyncratic interpretation of the international environment. A Saddam-centric worldview was further conditioned by
a dozen years of U.S. military coercion in the form of Operations Northern
Watch and Southern Watch, as well as of several strikes such as Operation
Desert Fox. Perhaps most significant was Saddam’s apparent belief that the
threat of invasion was no more than a ramping up of the long-running U.S.led coercion campaign. In 1998, Saddam emphasized this point to his inner circle by arguing that American leaders “know very well that they can’t
change the regime. . . . So, all they can do is destroy what can be destroyed
of [Iraq’s] resources.”15 This assumption, as well as the experience of the
1991 post–Gulf War uprisings, convinced the regime that the primary risk to
survival was an internal one.
The regime prioritized the threats it faced in early 2003 as (1) internal uprising (supported by external forces), (2) regional threats (primarily Iran, but
also the ubiquitous “Zionist entity”—Israel), and (3) invasion by a U.S.-led
military coalition.16 This explicitly placed internal security ahead of thwarting
any coalition action. Just as important was restoring internal control after
every coalition operation, lest the regime face a repeat of the post–Operation
Desert Storm uprisings.
In postwar interviews, Ali Hasan Majid (AKA Chemical Ali) was asked
how the risk of a possible regime-ending invasion could be so easily discounted.
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 200391
Table 5.1. Iraqi Ground Forces, 1990 and 2002.
Desert Storm
Iraqi Freedom
950,000 troops in sixty divisions
280,000–350,000 troops in seventeen
divisions
Republican Guard—150,000
Republican Guard—50,000–80,000
>5,000 tanks
>2,200 Tanks
5,000 APCs
2,400 APCs
3,000 Artillery Pieces
4,000 Artillery Pieces
Source: Kevin M. Woods, The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein’s Strategic Plan for
the Persian Gulf War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008); Kevin M. Woods,
Michael R. Pease, Mark E. Stout, Williamson Murray, and James G. Lacey, The Iraqi
Perspectives Report: Saddam’s Senior Leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom (Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006).
His answer was simple: Saddam believed that Iraqi economic, diplomatic, and
strategic investments designed to end sanctions and separate the United States
from members of the 1991 coalition (and the members of the UN Security
Council) had all but succeeded.17 Majid noted that Saddam was not naïve
about the potential cost of an incursion. However, Saddam did not believe,
on the basis of his experience, than any nation or combination of nations had
the capability and, most important, the will to impose regime change. This
belief is evident as far back as late 1998, when Saddam told his senior staff,
The Americans are incapable of doing anything worse than what they have already done. . . . they have used all their tactics, they have used all their means
at the intelligence and military level . . . to the economic to the psychological,
to the media, they have deployed all their tactics . . . are they going to harm
us, the answer is yes.18
Saddam had other reasons for optimism. He believed that (1) the United States,
increasingly casualty-averse, and its leaders would buckle under domestic
pressure against an invasion given the prospect of warfare in Iraq’s cities or
against its tribes; (2) Iraq could absorb air attacks, even intense precision bombardments, as it had done in the past; and (3) the worst-case scenario would
perhaps result in losing Basra and its local environs, but not Baghdad. In the
end, the regime deemed even this “worst-case” scenario survivable because,
as Chemical Ali noted, the United States would quit the region after they had
to deal with the Shia on a regular basis.19
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Preparing for the Invasion
Wishful thinking, combined with a rational fear of contradicting Saddam’s
judgments, seems to have effectively muted defensive preparations at the
strategic level. However, Iraqi military staffs at the operational land tactical
level did what they could to prepare—or simply survive. Despite their best
intentions, and for the reasons described above, all but the smallest elements
of the most “elite” formations in Iraq (such as some units in the Republican
Guard and intelligence services) were prepared to operate against another
military force. But even the best prepared formations were hamstrung by
a decade of internal security challenges—real and imagined. Readiness efforts increasingly focused on counterproductive investments in paramilitary
militias and intelligence organizations that focused on preserving the regime
to the detriment of conventional forces in terms of materiel, manpower, and
the ability to coordinate across and between commands.20 The paramilitary
militias (Fedayeen Saddam and local Ba’ath Party gangs) and intelligence organizations added little to Iraq’s conventional defense, but would grow into
elements of the insurgency that followed the regime’s collapse.21
There was no escaping the fact that as Saddam became more out of touch,
the more specific and unhelpful his military directives became. Saddam’s instructions ranged from details related to the lapel size on officers’ uniforms,
to support for proposed (but rarely developed) secret weapons, to directing
specific training events for tactical units on the eve of battle. The dictator’s
longevity seems to have done little to improve his understanding of the military
instrument of power. In early 2003, Saddam directed the best of his armored
units, the al-Nida Division, to make sniper operations a training priority,
which made little practical sense to the unit’s commander.22 Perhaps the most
glaring example occurred at the height of the March 2003 invasion. As American ground forces were closing in on the outer defenses of Baghdad, Saddam
drafted a long, detailed tactics, techniques, and procedures memorandum for
how to conduct squad-level ambushes and ordered it delivered to all field
commanders.23
Despite the corrosive effects of authoritarian rule on effectiveness, the
Iraqi military had a rational long-standing concept for defense against a conventional military assault. The unimaginative, but realistic, defensive concept
made use of the operational depth of Iraq’s terrain, including water obstacles,
and the experiences of the Iran-Iraq War and 1991 Gulf War. The basic defensive concept was to grind down an invader in an in-depth series of successive
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 200393
defensive lines. Any breakthroughs would be met by Iraq’s two Republican
Guard corps poised to strike as a strategic and operational reserve.
The defensive concept leading up to the 2003 invasion saw Baghdad as
protected by both of the Republican Guard corps in their traditional role.
In addition a division-size Pretorian Guard known as the Special Republic
Guard was deployed in strategic locations within the city. Beyond the capital
there were layers of Regular Army units as well as lightly armed Popular
Army units, specialized security forces from the various intelligence agencies
deployed to manage internal security and hedge against the low potential of
an external invasion.
One of the new organizations in Iraq’s complex internal security structure
was the Fedayeen Saddam. Founded in late 1994 as a paramilitary force under
the direct command of Saddam’s unstable son Uday, the force (numbering
between twenty-five thousand and forty thousand men) ranged across Iraq
as a kind of supra-tribal force. The Fedayeen Saddam had an eclectic set of
responsibilities covering everything from enforcing civil laws to policing local
militias and defending the regime against emergent internal threats.
Routine Fedayeen operations included collecting intelligence, suppressing local tribal rebellions, arranging suicide attacks on Kurdish leaders, and
conducting platoon-size assaults on criminal gangs and banned Shia political groups and associated armed militants.24 The Fedayeen’s limited military
capabilities were somewhat offset by their loyalty and fanaticism. What had
been an unwelcome surprise to coalition forces during the invasion became
worse in the years of occupation that followed. The legacy of the Fedayeen
Saddam was that in many areas it provided a ready-made local force for the
insurgencies to come.
All units, with the exception of the Fedayeen, were controlled through
a system of four regional headquarters, each led by a trusted senior Ba’ath
official (most with little or no practical military experience). These officials
executed their duties through small regional staffs, manned by a mix of military
officers and Ba’ath loyalists, and reported directly to Saddam and his personal
staff—bypassing both the military and intelligence chains of command. Beginning in the late 1990s, this basic regional contingency plan was the focus
of an annual, General-Staff-led sand table rehearsal each autumn. The final
rehearsal was held in October 2002.
On 18 December 2002, Iraq’s senior military leaders, including corps and
division commanders, were summoned to Baghdad, where they were briefed
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on a significant modification to the standard defensive concept. The new plan
dispensed with the defense in depth outside of Baghdad and opted instead
for an urban-centric defense. The Regular Army and local militias would defend the cities and towns along likely invasion routes, while the Republican
Guard would focus on an elaborate multi-ring defense of Bagdad. One senior
commander described the concept as “simple and stupid” but was told by
Saddam’s second son, Qusay, who was the civilian head of the Republican
Guard, that Saddam had already approved the plan and it was “time to make
it work.”25 Subsequent actions in response to the new plan ranged from dutifully executing the plan as briefed to executing it with local modifications to
suit the command-specific terrain and circumstances, or, as in the case of the
2nd Regular Army Corps, minimal compliance with a major emphasis on
enhancing or developing survivability positions.26
It is unclear why the regime shifted so suddenly and dramatically after
more than a decade of planning. The ring defense may have been the regime’s
acknowledgment that the United States was not merely posturing but was
prepared to risk commitment of a large ground operation (even if it fell short
of regime change).27 Moreover, the limited size of the coalition (at least in
terms of forces and participating nations when compared to the 1991 war)
hinted at a potential focused “inside-out” approach to regime change. Given
the Iraqi discussions of the recent “Afghanistan model” (where small forces
leveraged locals to topple a regime), a new, more population-focused defensive
scheme would be logical.28
With a revised defensive scheme in place (at least on paper), the Iraqi
regime sought to refine their understanding of the American plan. In early
February 2003, the Iraqi minister of defense directed a study of “scenarios
of the American enemy.” This study, conducted by senior members of the
General Staff with representatives of the Al Bakr University for Advanced
Military Studies, utilized the best available intelligence reporting at the time
and identified eight likely enemy courses of action (ECOAs).
Six of the ECOAs revolved around seizing key terrain or population centers
outside of Baghdad in a set of limited coalition ground and airborne incursions
from neighboring countries. The expectation was that the coalition would use
airpower and information operations to try and break the morale of Iraqi
troops and the Iraqi population. The theory of victory, the Iraqis believed, for
each of these ECOAs was a U.S.-supported internal uprising or expatriate-led
overthrow of the Ba’ath regime.
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 200395
Only two ECOAs focused on U.S. and coalition ground forces taking
Baghdad and removing the regime. One focused on a northern invasion route
from Turkey. The other—and the one considered most dangerous and most
likely by the study panel—comprised simultaneous, multi-axis, multidomain
attacks from Kuwait, Jordan, and Turkey. The key to this concept would be to
confuse Iraqi command and control (as to the main effort) and the maintenance
of momentum.29 Notably the study identified this ECOA as reminiscent of
the coalition’s deceptive left-hook maneuver during Operation Desert Storm.
This final concept could also be described as the worst-case scenario, because, as it had in 1991, U.S. air dominance meant Iraqi forces would be
slaughtered if they tried to maneuver once the campaign began. According
to U.S. Central Command commander General Tommy Franks, many of the
perceptions associated with this most dangerous and most likely ECOA were
encouraged through a complex U.S. deception effort aimed at distracting Iraq
from the coalition’s seemingly obvious, main effort—an attack north out of
Kuwait.30 Whatever the cause, and as events would later demonstrate, Iraqi
leaders remained unclear about the coalition’s main effort until just hours
before the American forces entered Baghdad.
The Execution of the Defense
The initiation of simultaneous coalition air and ground attacks came as a
surprise to the regime.31 On the basis of interviews with surviving members
of the inner circle, Saddam anticipated a long air campaign, similar to the
one in Desert Storm. He apparently hoped to forestall any major ground action by leveraging the imagery and anticipated humanitarian outcries of yet
another punitive air campaign to his political and psychological advantage.
One indication of the degree to which Saddam was unprepared for the
ferocity and timing of the campaign came just after he learned that the presidential compound at Dora Farms had been destroyed by a U.S. strike.32 The
normally well-prepared Saddam had to hastily prepare a national address to
assure the nation that he survived the attempt at decapitation and to rally the
Iraqi people. The televised address led to rumors of body doubles because
Saddam was forced to wear his awkward reading glasses to see his own handwritten notes, something his vanity would have otherwise precluded.33
Outside of Baghdad operations also moved more rapidly than the Iraqis
expected. Soldiers from Iraq’s Regular Army did not last long in the face of the
combined arms assault moving north and west along the Tigris and Euphrates
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Rivers. With minor exceptions, Iraqi troops either were quickly destroyed or
else they abandoned their positions to surrender or flee. The fact that U.S.
Army and Marine Corps formations bypassed local militia forces in the cities
and towns along the assault routes only added to the pace of events.
Iraqi troops (especially in the first days of the campaign) put up a halfhearted and ineffective defense, but, not surprisingly, did not report it as such.
Minor engagements (often the mere expenditure of ordnance) were reported to
headquarters as tactical victories. Number of rounds fired were often reported
as number of American targets struck. Being bypassed by coalition troops was
reported as a successful defense. Regional staffs, composed of political loyalists, dutifully consolidated and forwarded this kind of reporting to Baghdad
without comment or assessment. Denied the use of its aircraft or even access
to the electromagnetic spectrum by coalition actions, the Iraqi regime received
predominately handwritten updates from the field. These factors led to confusion within the regime as to the location and speed of the coalition assault.
It also facilitated the relative ease with which U.S. forces entered Baghdad.
For the Iraqi general staff in Baghdad, the operational picture on the second
of April was, at best, dire. Coalition operations were reported to the south,
west, and north. Making sense of events was becoming increasingly difficult.
Continuing precision attacks on suspected Iraqi leadership and commandand-control locations reduced the leadership of the Iraqi armed forces to “[a]
blind force as well as one without a brain.”34
The Iraqi leadership assessed that the situation to the north of Baghdad
was stable and a matter of decreasing concern for two reasons: (1) no large
coalition force was reported moving south from Turkey (as feared), and (2)
while U.S. special operations forces and Kurdish Pershmerga were engaging
Iraqi forces across a wide front along the Green Line, Iraqi forces south of
the line remained intact.
The situation in the south was confused. Reports indicated the coalition
was attempting but generally failing to secure the cities and towns along the
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Given that Basra was holding on and cities such
as Samawah and Nasiriyah were still in the fight indicated to the Iraqi generals that the Americans either were bogged down or were purposely trying to
draw Iraqi forces to the south—and away from Baghdad.
Perhaps the most concerning issue for Saddam’s senior military advisors
was the uncertain situation to the west of the capital. An aggressive effort by
coalition special operations forces operating with a significant air armada left
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 200397
the regime blind in the direction of the Jordanian frontier. The contrast to the
steady stream of reporting from the south, the deafening silence from the west,
convinced Saddam and his senior advisors that the coalition was in fact using
deception to attack through the western desert (reminiscent of 1991 events).
Saddam oriented his remaining forces to the west (and away from the actual
main effort in the south) to face this “main effort.”
The poor quality of Iraqi reporting placed the regime in what they imagined
to be the most likely but worst-case scenario described by the ECOA study
team—unable to discern the coalition’s main effort. There were other voices.
For example, Lieutenant General Ra’ad Hamdani, commander of the II RG
Corps (fighting in the south), insisted that, on the basis of the weight of the
attacks and his observations of coalition forces, the main effort was the one
moving north from Kuwait. His arguments fell on deaf ears. His request for
reserve forces to hold the Americans south of the Euphrates was denied in
favor of bolstering the defenses facing a phantom force to the west of Fallujah. Hamdani later described the gulf between the reality of the battlefield
and Saddam’s and his general staff’s view as reminiscent of Hitler’s last days
in the bunker in Berlin.35
The military outcome in all but the most exceptional and fleeting circumstances was never in doubt. This judgment does not, however, make the
potential for lessons less relevant—just harder to unearth. Questions worth
mining might include coalition readiness for a significant unconventional preemptive strike at coalition facilities in the Gulf by Iraqi forces, a significant
inundation and counter-mobility effort, WMDs used against coalition forces
or directed at civilian targets in the region, a more coordinated and effective
Fedayeen Saddam effort to cut coalition lines of communication between Kuwait and Baghdad, or a more robust defense of Baghdad (a true “Stalingrad
on the Euphrates”).
Conclusion
So why bother learning from a defeated adversary? On the surface, one would
be hard pressed to find much in the conventional military contest between the
U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi ground forces to warrant analysis. In fact, one
could argue, given the lopsided outcomes of both Operation Desert Storm and
Operation Iraqi Freedom, that Iraqi military judgment is a poor source for insight. Nonetheless, following Sherlock’s example, it is worth considering OIF’s
“curious incidents” as a potentially valuable source for lessons.
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That the United States swiftly defeated the Iraqi military obscures the fact
that, for all of its limitations, it remains the most proximate historical surrogate
for a future state adversary. Moreover, future concepts, doctrine, and capabilities
are often developed around or justified through historical case studies. Inaccurate or incomplete historical studies are not a sound footing to build upon.
Most contemporary histories of OIF, not surprisingly, focus on the coalition’s perspective. Such an imbalance, common as it is in military history,
burdens those charged with deriving lessons applicable to future operations
with only half the story. After all, which is worse: failing to learn lessons or
learning the wrong ones? Imagine trying to write a review of a play in which
half the cast is invisible and audible only to their fellow actors. One could
probably describe the general setting of the play, but the actions and dialogue
of the visible and audible cast members would force the audience to assume
all but the most basic plot elements. The value representing the adversary even
in a limited way in a conversation about lessons can treat the symptoms of
some common lesson-seeking pathology; specifically, the tendency to value
conventional wisdom over critical analysis, to study only that which can be
easily documented, or, as is often the case with large institutions, to focus on
the question of “did we do things right” and not “did we do the right things.”
Notes
1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze,” in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
(New York: n.p., 1893), 22.
2. Cited in John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians
Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 100.
3. Perhaps the greatest operational risk was the potential for Iraq’s use of
chemical or even biological weapons in a desperate attempt to preserve the regime. The fact that we now know no such weapons were available to Iraq should
not diminish one’s interest in the “what might have been.”
4. Kevin M. Woods, Michael A. Pease, Mark E. Stout, Williamson Murray,
and James G. Lacey, Iraqi Perspectives Report: Saddam’s Senior Leadership on
Operation Iraqi Freedom (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), xvii.
5. This is not to imply that bureaucratic politics, personal versus state loyalty,
or structural frictions did not exist in Iraq—they most certainly did. But on issues
of national security, the range of views was exceedingly narrow.
6. The best general narratives of the invasion include Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons (Washington, DC:
CSIS Press, 2003); Gregory Fontenot, E. J. Degen, and David Tohn, On Point:
The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2005); Nicholas E. Reynolds, Basrah, Baghdad, and Beyond: The
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 200399
US Marine Corps in the Second Iraqi War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,
2005); Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story
of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Vintage Books, 2007); and
Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Unseen War: Allied Airpower and the Takedown of
Saddam Hussein (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013).
7. For more on the nature of working with the Iraqi sources used in this and
related papers, see Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 175–91; Kevin M.
Woods, David D. Palkki, and Mark E. Stout, eds., The Saddam Tapes: The Inner
Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978–2001 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 1–15; and Kevin M. Woods, The Mother of All Battles: Saddam
Hussein’s Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), xv–xxiv.
8. For more on military effectiveness, see Allan R. Millett and Williamson
Murray, eds. Military Effectiveness, Volume 1: The First World War, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1–30.
9. For more on the effects of Iraq’s counterattack helicopter doctrine, see
Fontenot, Degen, and Tohn, On Point, 179–92.
10. Woods, The Mother of All Battles, 287.
11. Commander Hamid Raja Shalah al-Hadithi al-Tikriti (Iraqi Air Force),
interview to Institute for Defense Analyses, Baghdad, 12 November 2003.
12. While simply being able to communicate is not the same as exercising effective command and control, the fact that the Iraqi Air Defense Command could
still pass messages to Baghdad as late as 8 April is noteworthy, considering it was
shut down during the later stages of the 1991 war. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 127.
13. This judgment does not ignore the serious and systemic weaknesses in
Iraq’s military. For an assessment of Iraq’s military, see Kenneth M. Pollack,
Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948–1991 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 148–266. Capable in this case recognizes the uniqueness
among Arab states of Iraq’s ability to execute large-scale, sustained, and often
complex operations during the eight-year war with Iran.
14. Gregory Hooker, Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom: The
Role of Military Assessments (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, 2005), 55.
15. See captured Iraqi record Saddam and Senior Advisors Discussing a Potential Military Conflict with the United States, 9 February 1998, CRRC # SHSHTP-A-000–756. The debate over whether the sanctions policy “kept Saddam
in a box” was, in the end, unanswered until the invasion and failure to find
WMD in Iraq.
16. Interviews with Sultan Hashim Ahmed Al Hamed Al Tai, Iraq minister of
defense; Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, Regional Commander Basra; Tariq
Aziz, Ba’ath Regional Command; and Abid Al-Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam’s personal secretary, cited in Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 25.
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17. Turkey’s decision, on 1 March 2003, to deny U.S. ground forces access
to Iraq’s northern border would seem to lend credence to Saddam’s view that the
coalition was more bark than bite.
18. See captured Iraqi record, Meeting Between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi
Ministers Regarding Iraq Under Sanctions, Undated, CRRC # SH-SHTPA-001–298. This was on the eve of Operation Desert Fox—the largest military
operation against Iraq since 1991. The operation’s intended effect was to coerce
cooperation with the UN inspectors. It produced the opposite effect—after the
attack, Saddam stopped all cooperation with the United Nations.
19. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 28–31.
20. One Iraq Corps commander described how he would not coordinate with
the unit to his front (despite the probability the he would have to manage a
passage-of-lines operation) because neither the plan nor his higher headquarters
directed the communication and to do otherwise would raise suspicion. Author
interview with former commander, Republican Guard I Corps, Lieutenant General Majid Husayn Al Hibrahim Al Dulaymi, Baghdad, 8 November 2003.
21. Captured Iraqi record, Decree Signed by ‘Uday Saddam Hussein Concerning Fedayeen Saddam, 15 July 1999, CRRC # SH-FSDM-D-002–005.
22. Interview with former chief of staff of the Republican Guard’s Adnan
Division, BG Muhammid Sattam Abdullah Al Hamdani, Baghdad, 2 December
2003.
23. Captured Iraqi Record—Correspondence About Saddam Hussein’s Orders
During the War on Iraq, dated Mar-Apr 2003, CRRC# SH-IZAR-D-000–819.
24. Kevin M. Woods and James G. Lacey, Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam
and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Documents (Redacted) (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2007).
25. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 81.
26. Ibid., 80–83.
27. A significant buildup of theater logistics to support a large U.S. force
(above and beyond what was already in Kuwait and surrounding areas supporting operations in Afghanistan) would have been difficult for the Iraqis to miss
and was largely in place by September 2002. Command post-exercises unfolded
during the fall, and large troop formations began arriving in December 2002. See
Fontenot, Degen, and Tohn, On Point, 29–80.
28. The discussion of leveraging Iraqi dissidents to overthrow the regime
dates back to the close of the 1991 war. Support for covert regime change was
given prominence with Congressional passage, in 1998, of the Iraq Liberation
Act. For more on U.S. efforts before the 2003 invasion, see Kenneth Katzman,
Iraq: US Efforts to Change the Regime (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 8 January 2003). For more on the interaction of the debate and
U.S. Central Command plans in the years leading up to the 2003 invasion, see
Hooker, Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom, 19–34.
29. A Report from the Republican Guard Chief of Staff to an Iraq State
A n I raqi M ilitary P erspective on the I nvasion of 200310 1
Command Member Concerning the Scenarios for the US-UK Attack on Iraq,
10 February 2003, CRRC # SH-RPGD-D-000–110; Formation of a Commission to Discuss a War with the United States, March 2003, CRRC #
SH-PDWN-D-000–130.
30. Tommy Franks, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books, 2004), 434–
436, 558–560.
31. Hooker, Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
32. Dora Farms was a regime property on the edge of Baghdad thought by
U.S. intelligence to be the site of a high-level regime meeting on 19 March 2003.
The intelligence proved to be wrong. Lambeth, The Unseen War, 74–79.
33. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 126.
34. Cordesman, The Iraq War, 483.
35. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report, 143–145.
Chapter 6
AFGHANISTAN AND THE CRISIS OF
COUNTERINSURGENCY, 2001–2014
Carter Malkasian
From 2001 to 2014, the United States and its military struggled to defeat the
Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The war started as a mission to destroy
al-Qaeda and the Taliban in reaction to the attacks of 11 September 2001.
The initial invasion was a resounding success. Few U.S. troops were needed.
A new Afghan state was established. But the Taliban returned in 2006 and
threatened to overturn the fledgling government. To save it, the United States
sent more and more troops to Afghanistan. Quick victory eluded them.
The war dragged on. The United States drew down in 2014 and its leaders questioned whether they should have stayed in Afghanistan at all after
2001. Today, the common refrain is that defeat was a foregone conclusion.
The latter stages of the Afghan war reinforced American skepticism of
irregular war. Long before Afghanistan, the United States had wrestled with
irregular war. For decades, the cloud of Vietnam had hung over any talk of
it. Irregular wars were seen as costly and messy. The U.S. military was seen
as culturally and organizationally unable to prevail in them. Despite the short
bloodless wars of the 1990s, the United States did not truly return to irregular
war until Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, large, often idealistic, efforts
were made to succeed. The failure of these efforts challenged the very credibility of U.S. military intervention in the world. After years of reforms and
attempts to adapt, the U.S. military and the American people returned to the
post-Vietnam skepticism of foreign intervention and irregular war. The U.S.
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 201410 3
military once again looked like a blunt, dull instrument, not to be set against
the complexities of insurgencies, people’s wars, and guerrillas.
The rise and demise of counterinsurgency—the great reformist moment in
the American way of irregular war—is at the center of the American irregular
way of war in Afghanistan. Developed and pressed by reformist military officers and liberal civilian thinkers, counterinsurgency eventually was executed
successfully in Iraq, and media, policymakers, and reformist military officers
heralded it as the path to success in irregular war. From 2009 to 2011, the
United States implemented counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of troops protected the population while governance programs and
development projects aimed to create a good government that the people
would favor over terrorists or insurgents. Yet in Afghanistan, counterinsurgency could not defeat the Taliban quickly. As the great recession at home and
years of stalemate pressed America toward isolationism, counterinsurgency
fell from favor. With it went the hope that the U.S. military could succeed in
irregular war.
Counterinsurgency was not the only new strategy implemented in Afghanistan. Counterterrorism was too, the war’s second important, and perhaps
longer-lasting, contribution to the American way of irregular war. Since the
1991 Gulf War, the idea of using precision technology and air strikes to get
around bloody ground wars had fascinated U.S. strategists. Under counterterrorism, special operations forces, aircraft, and drones struck terrorist targets
from afar, in an attempt to destroy them without bogging the United States
down in a messy ground war. Counterterrorism offered no way to actually
defeat an insurgency but could kill enough terrorist leaders to reduce threats
to the United States. At the end of the Afghan war, counterterrorism was the
strategy of choice, although as much a way of staying out of irregular wars
as winning them, a recognition that the United States should minimize its
involvement in them.
This chapter examines America’s war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014.
It describes the two main strategies that were employed, explains why the
U.S. effort came up short, and examines what Afghanistan means for the U.S.
military, particularly whether it shows that the military is incapable of winning
irregular wars. The chapter explores four general phases of the war: the initial
intervention and the fateful mistakes of the war’s early years (2001–2005);
the return of the Taliban in 2006 and U.S. and allied attempts to hold them
back; the surge of 2009 and the operations that followed in 2010 and 2011;
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and the slow U.S. withdrawal from 2012 to 2014. The conclusion analyzes
why U.S. efforts never succeeded and explains Afghanistan’s significance for
the U.S. military.
Early Years
In the wake of the invasion, in 2002, eight thousand U.S. and five thousand
allied troops were in Afghanistan. The U.S. numbers rose to almost twenty
thousand by 2005.1 Their primary focus was counterterrorism: capturing or
killing terrorist and insurgent leaders, especially from al-Qaeda. Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld wrote, “Our . . . modest goal was to rid Afghanistan of
Al-Qaida and replace their Taliban hosts with a government that would not
harbor terrorists.”2 Special operations forces and air power were seen as a
potent yet cheap means of securing Afghanistan and defeating terrorism. Air
strikes or special operations forces took out suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban
leaders, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s tribal areas, often in raids
upon homes at night.
With the focus on counterterrorism, development of a new army and police
force was slow. In December 2002, an entire year after the end of the invasion, the United States took responsibility to build a seventy-thousand-man
army, a small number but one the Bush administration thought Afghanistan
could eventually fund on its own.3 Because of the emphasis on quality over
quantity, by 2006, only thirty-six thousand Afghan army soldiers had been
trained.4 President Bush later admitted that “in an attempt to keep the Afghan
government from taking on an unsustainable expense, we had kept the army
too small.”5
In terms of improving the government and the economy, the United States
tried to stay away from expensive and large-scale nation-building. Problems in
development and government, however, could not be ignored altogether. One
step to address them was provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs). PRTs were
meant to jumpstart reconstruction in areas where there was little or no presence on the part of the government or the development community. U.S.-led
PRTs fielded sixty to a hundred personnel, with a State Department political
officer and USAID development officer. The first PRT stood up in January
2003 in Paktiya Province. Seven more were up by the end of the year, followed
by eleven in 2004, many in contested provinces such as Kunar, Paktika, and
Ghazni. They worked daily with Afghan provincial governors and officials
and started a variety of projects from wells and culverts to schools and roads.
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 201410 5
Although the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership had retreated to Pakistan,
low-level violence persisted along the Pakistan border and Afghanistan’s eastern mountains. While the Afghan government formed, the Taliban rebuilt
themselves in Pakistan and prepared for renewed war. In 2003, Mullah Omar
formed a council of senior leaders to guide the movement, known as the
“Quetta shura.” Small teams of fighters infiltrated into the Afghan countryside,
organized new cadres, and launched terrorist attacks.
The few police could not stop the Taliban. Power-brokers and government
leaders were often too busy fighting among themselves to unite against them.
And U.S. forces were mostly on the border, focused on counterterrorism. Air
strikes and special operations raids could not keep the Taliban back.
Adrift
In late winter 2006, after spending four years rebuilding an underground
movement, the Taliban moved out of the shadows and into the open, launching a major offensive in Kandahar and Helmand. The Taliban offensive coincided with the deployment of seventy-five hundred British, Canadian, Dutch,
and Australian troops to southern Afghanistan. In autumn 2006, President
Bush, recognizing that strategy in Afghanistan was foundering, ordered
five thousand U.S. reinforcements go to Afghanistan in 2007, for a total of
twenty-five thousand U.S. troops.6 The war in Iraq prevented the United
States from sending more.
This was the same time that counterinsurgency reforms were being implemented in the U.S. military in Iraq. In 2005 and 2006, under the guidance of
General David Petraeus, reformist military officers bonded with liberal intellectuals to write a new counterinsurgency doctrine. It called for protecting the
population over killing insurgents. Tactically, this meant patrolling and outposting villages rather than striking insurgent leadership or sweeping through
insurgent sanctuaries. Counterinsurgency also called for major training and
advisory efforts for the local army and police. Yet the best-known aspect of
the new doctrine was its emphasis on limiting civilian casualties, winning over
the population, and building a good and fair government.7
As the idea of counterinsurgency spread, innovative regimental and battalion commanders attempted new tactics. Yet, unlike in Iraq, the top generals
in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2009 did not enforce counterinsurgency.
Operations took on a conventional flavor. In many areas, the United States
and its allies had too few troops on the ground to protect the population.
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Where there were sufficient numbers, the troops were misused. U.S. Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates would later write of this period, “It became clear to
me that our efforts in Afghanistan . . . were being significantly hampered not
only by muddled and overly ambitious objectives but also by confusion in the
military command structure, confusion in economic and civilian efforts, and
confusion over how the war was actually going.”8
In the south, the Taliban kept gaining ground. In Helmand, the Taliban
offensive forced the British to disperse their scarce forces—little more than a
thousand fighting men—into small fortified posts—later known as “platoon
houses”—in outlying areas. Alone and unafraid, the platoon houses became
beleaguered, their supply lines cut off.9 In Kandahar, the Canadians and U.S.
Special Forces teams tried to destroy insurgent safe havens, such as in Zharey
and Panjwai, in “Operation Medusa.” Unfortunately, they lacked the forces
to hold much of what they cleared.10 Two years later, the Taliban controlled
most of Kandahar Province.
While the undermanned British and Canadians were struggling in the populous and fertile south, the Americans focused on a few sparsely populated
valleys in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. forces had been in the mountainous east
since 2002 because of its proximity to terrorist safe havens in Pakistan. In
2005, Lieutenant General Eikenberry sent more U.S. forces east to combat
resurgent Taliban activity.11 Slowly, U.S. forces were drawn into fights with
insurgents hiding in the high mountains, especially in Kunar and neighboring
Nuristan. These two provinces lie north of Jalalabad along the border with
Pakistan. In early 2006, the U.S. command in the east launched “Operation
Mountain Lion.” Colonel John “Mick” Nicholson, the brigade commander
headquartered in Jalalabad, sent two U.S. battalions, roughly thirteen hundred
men, to Kunar and Nuristan. Both dispersed into companies and platoons
along the rivers and into the remote Korengal, Waygul, and Kamdesh valleys.
Under the influence of reforms in Iraq and the new field manual, Nicholson
and many other officers in eastern Afghanistan endorsed counterinsurgency.
Nevertheless, operations and dispositions were based on destroying insurgent sanctuaries. There were a lot of search-and-destroy operations, favored
by Nicholson’s superior, Major General Ben Freakley. Freakley’s operations
officer wrote that U.S. forces were “aggressively attacking enemy forces in
sanctuary . . . areas, where they enjoyed freedom of movement.”12 The overall
U.S. commander in 2007, General Daniel McNeill, held similar views. He told
Secretary of Defense Gates, “[T]he Taliban does not have the upper hand.
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 201410 7
We’re killing a lot of them, getting to sufficient numbers of their leaders and
having great effect.”13
The United States was troubled in these mountain valleys. American presence upset the local people, who just wanted to be left alone, while attracting
Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from Pakistan. The Korengal, in particular,
became the hot spot of eastern Afghanistan. Reporter after reporter traveled
there. Casualties and grim battles helped sap U.S. domestic support for the
war. In the words of Bing West, the well-known combat author, “[T]he writing in the New York Times and other national papers was so vivid that the
Korengal became a symbol of the war. . . . The generals were oblivious that the
Korengal illustrated the war’s strategic drift.”14 In the nearby Waygul valley,
in July 2008, roughly two hundred well-trained insurgents nearly overran an
outpost of forty-nine American and twenty-four Afghan soldiers, wounding
or killing forty-one.15 Two days later, the United States withdrew from the
valley. In early 2009, General David McKiernan, the new U.S. commander
in Afghanistan, tried to salvage the failing effort and reinforced Kunar with
an additional battalion. Nothing changed. Finally, between the end of 2009
and April 2010, the United States pulled out of the Korengal and the other
mountain valleys.
These setbacks were not the whole story in the east. Many innovative battalion and PRT commanders enjoyed small victories. Provincial reconstruction
team projects, particularly in Khost and Jalalabad, improved the legitimacy
of the government and corresponded with reduced violence. Even in Kunar,
while fighting raged in the mountains, U.S. army commanders worked with
the PRT to pave key roads, which helped security in the low-lying valleys.
But overall the United States had fought a war of attrition in far-off mountain valleys. The battalions sent out to Kunar and Nuristan had been sorely
needed elsewhere, such as in Ghazni, one of the most populous provinces,
strategically located along the main highway from Kabul to Kandahar. The
Taliban surrounded the provincial capital and established a thriving shadow
government in the countryside. From there, they expanded into Wardak, just
south of Kabul itself.
Amid the heavy fighting, Major General Robert Durbin, head of U.S.
training for the army and police from 2005 to 2007, put greater effort into
the army and police. As U.S. funding for the Afghan security forces increased
from $1.9 billion in 2006 to $7.4 billion in 2007, he was able to accelerate
training.16 The army grew from 36,000 in 2006 to 68,000 in 2008 and became
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more and more combat-experienced.17 Ten to fifteen advisors were assigned
to every Afghan battalion and brigade and higher headquarters. Quality was
mixed.18 The United States also funded an increase in police from 62,000 to
82,000. A smattering of units advised the police: U.S. civilian contractors,
PRTs, military police detachments, and platoons on the ground picking it
up as an ad hoc responsibility.19 In spite of these efforts, the army and police
remained too small to replace coalition forces. At the end of 2008, after
seven years of war, there were just 148,000 soldiers and police in a country
of thirty-three million fighting off a raging insurgency. At the turn of the
twentieth century, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, Afghanistan’s king, had only
slightly fewer—40,000–70,000 tribal levies plus a 60,000-man army—for a
population of just five million.
The Afghan Surge
In this context the United States reinforced Afghanistan. Momentum to
reinforce Afghanistan grew during the 2008 presidential elections. In late
2008, thirty-two thousand U.S. forces were in Afghanistan (plus thirty-one
thousand NATO and other foreign troops).20 After taking office, President
Obama in March 2009 approved twenty-one thousand reinforcements (including four thousand advisors). Those reinforcements arrived over the
spring and summer.21 In May, Secretary of Defense Gates appointed the
highly regarded General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of special
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as commander of all U.S. and allied
forces in Afghanistan.
McChrystal refocused U.S. strategy on counterinsurgency. In August 2009,
McChrystal delivered a formal assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the
White House and the Pentagon. He bluntly stated, “The key take away from
this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy. . . .
ISAF [the International Security Assistance Force] is not adequately executing
the basics of COIN [counterinsurgency] doctrine.” 22 He gave ISAF a new goal:
to protect the population. “Our strategy,” he wrote, “cannot be focused on
seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces; our objective must be the population.”23 He stressed fair and good governance: “ISAF can no longer ignore
or tacitly accept abuse of power, corruption, or marginalization.”24 In this,
he was in accord with the conventional wisdom of the time. Afghan experts,
especially military officers, human rights advocates, development experts, and
intellectuals, placed foremost priority upon fixing Afghanistan’s government.
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 201410 9
McChrystal and most of the military strategists accepted this argument. To
support the new counterinsurgency strategy, McChrystal asked for forty-four
thousand additional reinforcements.
McChrystal’s request met skepticism in Washington. Political support for a
long-term, heavy commitment to Afghanistan was fragile. The banking crash
of 2008 and the great recession dampened America’s enthusiasm for foreign
wars. Counterinsurgency doctrine had been written in 2005 and 2006, before
these events. After his confirmation, congressmen and senators had warned
McChrystal that he had a year to turn things around or public support would
dry up.25 A September 2009 CBS poll found that 41 percent of Americans
thought U.S. forces in Afghanistan should be reduced rather than increased.26
Vice President Joseph Biden argued that a long-term surge would be politically and economically unsustainable. He championed counterterrorism as an
alternative. In his plan, special operations forces would hunt down al-Qaeda
and terrorist leaders while advisors would train the Afghan army and police.
Counterterrorism captured the imagination of many as a cheaper and cleaner
option. Journalists noted the supposed precision of special operations forces
and their stories of countless insurgent leaders captured or killed. Proponents
argued that surveillance technology was so good that special operations forces
could see terrorists and insurgents crossing Afghanistan’s borders and then
launch raids or air strikes to capture or kill them or their leaders.
After careful debate, in December 2009, President Obama decided to send
thirty thousand additional reinforcements to Afghanistan, for a total of nearly
a hundred thousand U.S. troops in the country. His goals were to deny alQaeda a safe haven, reverse Taliban momentum and deny them the ability
to overthrow the government, and strengthen the Afghan armed forces and
government so they could secure Afghanistan on their own.27 He limited counterinsurgency to these goals. Because he did not want a long-term commitment
of a hundred thousand U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the president decided the
drawdown would begin in July 2011—a tight timeline for success but one
McChrystal thought possible.28
Counterinsurgency on the Ground
The spare counterinsurgency strategy that President Obama dictated was
neither the one that had been planned nor the one that would be implemented. Major improvements in governance and development—tantamount
to nation-building—remained part of the U.S. plan on the ground. Indeed,
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experts and analysts deemed such improvements vital to attaining even
Obama’s minimalist goals. The argument went that the government could
never stand on its own if corruption, weak delivery of goods and services,
and unfair policies drove people to the Taliban. Counterinsurgency remained
a thoroughly idealistic strategy with idealistic hopes of creating a good government in a few years. Most important, in terms of both security and governance and development, counterinsurgency was executed in a manner that
demanded years to attain meaningful success.
Upon arriving in Afghanistan in May 2009, before completing his assessment of the situation, one of McChrystal’s first moves had been to reduce the
number of Afghans killed by the coalition. For years, air strikes and night
raids had been accidentally killing innocent Afghans. Since at least 2006,
these deaths had outraged Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Worse, innocent
deaths pushed many Afghan men to join the Taliban in order to avenge lost
family members.29 McChrystal firmly believed civilian casualties could cause
the United States to lose the war.30 In order to reduce civilian casualties, on 1
July 2009, he issued a tactical directive that restrained the use of air strikes
against homes, forbade U.S. and allied forces from entering mosques, and
recommended that Afghan forces search all homes.31 Many soldiers and officers cringed, believing the directive endangered them. Yet the tactical directive
would make a difference. In 2008, coalition and Afghan troops had killed
roughly eight hundred civilians. In 2010, the number would fall to fewer than
five hundred. It would continue to fall the following years.32
In addition to reducing civilian casualties, McChrystal tried to clean up
and improve the Afghan government. The White House and State Department also wanted to see corruption and governance problems remedied. The
fraudulent 2009 presidential elections, in which government officials stuffed
ballot boxes in favor of President Karzai, tainted him in the eyes of many
Americans.33 McChrystal’s command wrote up an ambitious Civil-Military
Campaign plan. It sought to offer access to justice, expand accountable and
transparent governance, create sustainable jobs, provide agricultural opportunity and market access, and counter corruption and narcotics. Meanwhile,
the U.S. State Department launched a “civilian surge.” Five hundred civilians
were sent to Afghanistan to work in provincial reconstruction teams and new
district support teams (two to five civilians assigned to a district). Besides this
provincial work, McChrystal blessed plans to systematically address corruption, including removing corrupt tribal leaders and government officials.34
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 2014111
Efforts to improve the government enjoyed mixed success. Some hit the
mark. PRTs worked with the Afghan government and started schools, courts,
clinics, and small-scale agricultural development, if not on the scale that had
been hoped for. Other efforts fell short. Community councils were set up and
then mostly vanished after 2011.
The Afghan army and police were a happier story. Under the Obama
administration, they at last got the help they deserved. In 2008, the planned
total strength of the army had been increased from 70,000 to 134,000, of
which 92,000 were on duty by 2009. McChrystal wanted the whole 134,000
recruited and trained by October 2010. He also wanted to raise the total number of army and police. McChrystal and Washington eventually settled upon
a combined army and police of 352,000 (195,000 for the army and 157,000
for the police). McChrystal accepted the risk that training might suffer by
trying to get Afghan boots on the ground as soon as possible.35 His decisions
took the United States away from a slowly built force to a larger, faster-built
force that could quickly fight the insurgency.
Advising was emphasized by McChrystal. Of the twenty-one thousand initial reinforcements, four thousand were dedicated to training and advising the
Afghan army and police. Every U.S. battalion had an advisory team that worked
with the Afghan army and police as closely as possible. Advisors were expected
to try to live in the same headquarters as the Afghans or right next to it. Americans used the Dari phrase “shona ba shona” (shoulder by shoulder) to characterize the spirit of cooperation, saying it over and over again. Battalion and
regimental commanders themselves were expected to partner with the Afghans
in all operations and to trust their Afghan police chiefs and army commanders.
Army and police combat performance improved over the next three years.
More and more soldiers and police took the field. Afghan army battalions
fought alongside American and allied battalions in all the hottest combat
zones. Slowly, the vast majority of police went to the academies. As the surge
progressed, police and army detachments were able to take over posts and
hold ground that had been cleared alongside the Americans. The police and
army generally needed help in planning, logistics, and fire support. Leadership was the biggest problem. Absent American generals, not all police and
army senior commanders could manage security responsibilities and keep their
police and soldiers going after the Taliban. The U.S. military rarely forced
the selection or retention of strong leaders, for fear of offending the Afghan
sense of sovereignty.
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In the course of the surge, the United States, its allies, and the Afghan army
and police slowly retook ground. McChrystal’s overall scheme of maneuver
was to first clear and hold the south, where the insurgency most threatened
the Afghan state, and then turn to the east. The first elements of the surge
were two army brigades and a marine brigade. McChrystal wanted to use
them to secure Kandahar. Old priorities and earlier decisions stymied him.
Before McChrystal’s appointment, McKiernan had decided to parse out the
reinforcements between different provinces. One army brigade (roughly two
thousand men) was split up between Wardak, Logar, and Kunar. The marine
expeditionary brigade (nearly eleven thousand men) went to Helmand. Marine generals had insisted on going there. That left roughly four thousand
U.S. reinforcements for Kandahar. Although he would have preferred to clear
Kandahar first, McChrystal acceded to the earlier decisions.36 He thought
that success in Helmand could be the first step in breaking the perception of
Taliban strength.37
In 2009, the marines and British recaptured several parts of Helmand—
Garmser, Nawa, and Babaji (north of Lashkar Gah)—but no crushing success
took place. Marjah, the main insurgent stronghold, was not scheduled to be
cleared until February 2010, after Obama’s second tranche of reinforcements
arrived. McChrystal promised rapid reconstruction and reestablishment of
the government, saying that an Afghan “government in a box” would follow
the assault. But a bright shining new government could not appear out of
thin air. Tough fighting persisted into the summer, prompting McChrystal to
call Marjah “a bleeding ulcer.” The comment lit up the press and reinforced
domestic unease with the war effort. Ironically, tactical success was close. The
marines had adopted very aggressive counterinsurgency tactics. They spread
themselves thin by setting up as many posts as possible, usually held by only a
handful of men. Foot patrols were constant. The marines were not shy about
using firepower but also worked to build strong relationships with the Afghans.
Marine willingness to fight impressed many Afghans. The marines recruited
local tribal militias, known as arbekai. The recruitment of seven hundred in
Marjah helped turn the tide. By November, the marines had quelled Marjah.
It and the other districts cleared by the marines in 2009 would be among the
most stable in Afghanistan. McChrystal simply had not realized that success
would take months, not weeks.
Meanwhile, operations progressed slowly in Kandahar. A U.S. army Stryker
brigade reinforced the province in August 2009. The brigade commander
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 2014113
disregarded counterinsurgency. He focused on search-and-destroy operations
in outlying districts and did not clear or hold the critical districts around Kandahar city. He treated Afghans harshly. McChrystal did not want to overrule
him. Doing so would have violated the U.S. military’s doctrine of pushing responsibility downward.38 Five of the brigade’s soldiers would later be tried for
murdering unarmed Afghans for sport and keeping body parts as war trophies.
In November 2009, British Major General Nick Carter took over Kandahar. Carter enforced counterinsurgency. He removed the Stryker brigade
and drafted a new plan to secure Kandahar, known as Operation Hamkary
(Pashto for cooperation). The plan sought to improve the government, fortify
the city with lines of posts, and biometrically enroll citizens in databases.
The U.S. military and USAID allocated over $400 million for Kandahar,
much of which would go to large-scale infrastructure projects and agricultural cash-for-work programs. Improving the government was a big part of
Carter’s plan. Poor government policies, corruption, and poppy smuggling—
associated with Ahmed Wali Karzai and, to a lesser extent, border police
commander Abdul Razziq—were considered a major reason the Taliban
returned to Kandahar from 2005 onward. After delays to address concerns
from President Karzai and to get more American and Afghan troops on the
ground, Operation Hamkary finally kicked off in August 2010, over a year
after the surge had begun.39
McChrystal never got to see the execution of his plans in Kandahar or the
completion of the surge. General David Petraeus, founder of America’s counterinsurgency doctrine, replaced him in June 2010, after a Rolling Stone article
revealed McChrystal’s staff had been openly criticizing President Obama.
Petraeus pushed McChrystal’s plans forward with alacrity. He knew that he
had to achieve success quickly. “Put time back on the clock” was a phrase
he often used. He believed meaningful successes could convince Washington
to allow more surge troops to stay in Afghanistan past 2011. Something like
that had occurred in Iraq. The economic conditions of 2011, however, would
prove far different from those of 2008.
With three U.S. brigades operating in Kandahar, by sheer numbers the
American and Afghan forces locked down Kandahar city and cleared the
surrounding districts. In the city, Americans set up rings of checkpoints and
placed military police detachments at police substations as advisors. Almost
nightly, special operations forces raided insurgent locations.40 The districts surrounding the city—Zharey, Panjwai, and Arghandab districts—were saturated
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with U.S. soldiers. Each had roughly twice the number that had been required
to clear the bigger district of Garmser in Helmand.
Along with American clearing operations came the new Afghan local police
program. Since 2007, U.S. commanders had been considering how to create
local militias in Afghanistan. Poor supervision, piecemeal implementation, and
opposition by U.S. leaders who saw militias as undemocratic had stunted prior
attempts. Karl Eikenberry (now U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan) and many
other American leaders feared that militias would harm innocent people. In
early 2010, U.S. Special Forces came up with a new well-thought-out program, known as “Afghan local police.” Afghan local police would be village
militias, but paid and armed by the government and under the supervision
of the district police chief. Volunteers would be approved by a tribal council,
the district governor, and the Ministry of Interior. They would be trained by
Special Forces, SEALs, or, in Helmand, U.S. Marines. Petraeus championed
the program, placed under the district police chief, and paid and armed by
the Ministry of Interior. Petraeus hoped to repeat Iraq’s Sunni Awakening, in
which Sunni tribes and their militias, bankrolled by the United States, had rapidly turned against al-Qaeda and helped defeat them. After some debate with
President Karzai, who also worried that the militias might abuse the people,
a program for thirty thousand local police was approved in August 2010.41
Taking advantage of the local police program, the Afghans and U.S. military slowly cleared and held Arghandab, Zharey, and Panjwai. Arghandab
was strategic because of its agricultural wealth and location next to Kandahar
city. From June 2010, two U.S. and two Afghan battalions garrisoned the
district, tripling the number of combat outposts from three to seventeen,
where they worked side by side with the Afghan army.42 The Afghan local
police program was first run here. By 2011, 350 local police had taken the
field, trained and advised by U.S. Special Forces teams. With the help of the
Afghan army and the U.S. Army, they were able to quickly identify Taliban
and either capture them or force them out of the district. By June 2011, after
heavy fighting (including the leveling of one village with air strikes) and the
successes of the local police, Arghandab was at last secure.43 A similar process
took place in Zharey and Panjwai, also neighboring Kandahar city. A total
of five U.S. and Canadian battalions and seven Afghan battalions went into
these two districts, an unprecedented concentration of forces. Local police
were recruited. Clearing still took time. It was not until 2012 that fighting in
the two districts finally calmed down.
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 2014115
While battles raged on in Arghandab, Zharey, and Panjwai, attempts to
build a progressive government in Kandahar failed. The U.S. State Department
and General Carter tried to improve the government and weaken powerbrokers
such as Ahmed Wali Karzai and Abdul Razziq by establishing community
councils, funneling projects through the government, and getting the provincial
government to send goods and services to the districts. Yet Ahmed Wali and
Razziq were too strong to be circumvented, let alone removed. Little could
happen without their permission. Unable to change the system, after mid-2010,
the United States and its allies went with the grain. Instead of trying to create
an egalitarian government from scratch, the United States worked through
Razziq and Ahmed Wali.44
Counterterrorism Successes
Since 2006, counterterrorism had continued apace with some notable successes, such as the killing of infamous Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah Lang in 2007. Years of reforms, technological advances, and increasing
funding had improved counterterrorism’s accuracy and effectiveness. Drones
were more lethal. Intelligence analysis was more refined. From 2003 to 2008,
McChrystal had instituted many reforms himself as commander of special
operations. Intelligence fusion centers, on-site exploitation of evidence, intelligence sharing, and rapid prosecution of actionable intelligence fueled hundreds of raids per month.
After 2009, counterterrorism ran in parallel to the surge and counterinsurgency. McChrystal and especially Petraeus intensified strikes against Taliban
and insurgent leadership. Petraeus wanted to hurt the Taliban as much as
possible before the withdrawal of surge forces in 2011. During summer 2010,
nearly four thousand raids were conducted, triple the number of 2009. Petraeus even revoked some of the limitations of McChrystal’s tactical directive.
In the last three months of 2010, special operations forces claimed to have
killed a thousand insurgents and captured three thousand more.45
The United States also struck insurgent and terrorist leadership in Pakistan. Drones had been hitting targets in Pakistan since 2004. Strikes into
Pakistan went from 36 in 2008, to 54 in 2009, and then to 122 in 2010.46
Drones hit a variety of insurgent groups, especially al-Qaeda, Haqqani, and
the Pakistani Taliban.47 They accounted for the deaths of several al-Qaeda
leaders. By 2012, the United States estimated that drones had killed about
75 percent of al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, an impressive statistic.48 On 1
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May 2011, Osama bin Laden himself was killed in a SEAL and CIA raid,
removing America’s number-one enemy. Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban were
less a target. The United States left Afghan Taliban targets in Quetta alone
rather than risk upsetting the Pakistani government. The United States thus
surrendered an important tool in damaging the Taliban and coercing them
toward negotiations.
The End of the Surge
By the middle of 2011, Kandahar Province was coming back under government control and the main parts of Helmand were secure. The situation
in the east was more troublesome. The turn to the east never happened.
Clearing the south had taken too long. Near Kabul, the Taliban still controlled much of Wardak and Logar, and nearly all of Ghazni, not to mention
Nuristan, Kunar, and other dangerous stretches of the border. The Taliban
were far from defeated. The number of attacks in Afghanistan in 2011 were
slightly less than 2010 or 2009 but still higher than 2006.
In June 2011, President Obama fulfilled his promise to end the surge. Domestically, there was very little public pressure to succeed in Afghanistan. For
most Americans and their congressmen, the ongoing economic recession made
Afghanistan an unneeded expense. Tens of thousands of boots on the ground
no longer seemed affordable. At the height of the surge, the United States was
spending approximately $110 billion per year in Afghanistan, roughly double
what the U.S. federal government could spend on education. At the same time,
the death of Osama bin Laden seemed to remove the primary threat to the
United States. According to a May 2011 Gallup poll, taken days after Osama
bin Laden’s death, 59 percent of Americans believed that the U.S. mission in
Afghanistan had been accomplished.49 Many in the White House argued that
special operations forces and drones would be enough to stop al-Qaeda from
ever reestablishing itself in Afghanistan. Drone strikes and special operations
appeared a far cheaper way to defeat terrorists than counterinsurgency and
tens of thousands of troops. After some discussion with Gates, Clinton, and
Petraeus, Obama decided all thirty-three thousand surge troops would leave
by September 2012, with large cuts to follow in 2013 and 2014.
Drawdown
Obama announced the drawdown on 22 June 2011. In the months that followed, counterinsurgency quickly fell into disgrace. Generals, colonels, and
battalion commanders in Afghanistan ceased referring to their operations
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 2014117
as counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency tactics were rapidly discarded.
Throughout Afghanistan, U.S. spending on projects fell dramatically. Only
a few major projects remained, such as the ring road and the Kajaki Dam
power turbines. District support teams and provincial reconstruction teams
rapidly shut down. By the end of 2013 all were gone.
Officially, the United States and its allies now focused on training, advising, and assisting the Afghan army and police, known as “security force assistance.” General John Allen, Petraeus’s successor, tried to commit twenty
thousand of the sixty-eight thousand U.S. forces that would remain at the end
of 2012 to security force assistance. To the initiated, security force assistance
was merely a form of counterinsurgency, the same as what the United States
had done in El Salvador or Colombia. But the idea of counterinsurgency was
now too unpopular to be used to describe any U.S. strategy.
During this time, America’s relationship with the Afghan government and
police and army frayed. In February 2012, U.S. guards at the prison in Bagram
burned several Korans in a trash dump. The grievous mistake got into the
press and was widely publicized. Riots broke out. The government itself was
outraged that Americans could be so insensitive. Discontent spread to the army
and police. A few days after the riots started, a policeman killed two American
advisors working in the Ministry of Interior. A spate of killings broke out,
known as “insider” or “green-on-blue” attacks. Such attacks had always been
a problem in Afghanistan. Afghan soldiers and police accidentally insulted
by Americans or angry at their presence in the country had from time to time
turned their guns on them. In 2012, the number of insider attacks doubled.50
Mullah Omar endorsed the tactic. Mullahs encouraged Afghan soldiers and
police to shoot Americans.51 American casualties from these attacks were
heavily publicized and further undermined the war effort. The U.S. command
had to pull back its advisors. The old “shoulder by shoulder” advising went
away. All bases now had checkpoints or even walls dividing the Americans
from the Afghans. An armed escort accompanied any advisor talking with
Afghans. Afghans more and more saw Americans as distant and disinterested
in helping them.
Between summer 2011 and the end of 2014, U.S. forces drew down in
Afghanistan. From nearly 100,000 in summer 2011, there were 45,000 left
by the end of 2013. As U.S. forces left, the Afghan army and police took their
place in most of the country. At the end of 2012, the police and army reached
352,000, their total strength. Another 23,000 local police had been recruited.
118
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The Afghans could not hold everywhere. Distant mountain valleys were tough
to supply. But they fought.
The fact that the Afghans could now fight for their country on their own
and often win battles on their own was the greatest success of counterinsurgency. By 2013, most of Helmand, Kandahar, and Ghazni—strategic provinces—were in Afghan hands. The Afghans were holding ground and fighting
battles instead of the Americans. In 2009, this had been impossible. At that
time, the United States and its allies had been forced to fight most of the battles.
Counterinsurgency had given the Afghans the time they needed to stand up.
For the United States, this new Afghan-led war was much cheaper than the
surge: roughly $40 billion in 2014 compared to roughly $115 billion in 2011.
Nevertheless, the end result was stalemate rather than victory. Year after year,
the Afghan police and army would still have to fight the Taliban. Year after
year the United States would have to fund them. How long the American
people would pay was unknown.
Conclusion
The lessons of Afghanistan for the United States can only be ones of frustration. After striving for years to succeed in an irregular war and avoid the
pain of Vietnam, history repeated itself. Afghanistan raised deep questions
about the ability of the U.S. military to adapt to irregular war and whether
such wars are worth fighting. Afghanistan reinforced arguments that the
U.S. military has trouble adapting to strategies not focused on killing. Afghanistan also showed that Americans have problems understanding other
cultures, best seen in the difficulty the military had in accepting the counterproductiveness of using too much force. At worst, intervention looked
utterly ineffective; at best, too expensive to sustain.
Time will tell, but it is right to ask why the United States did not achieve
more in thirteen years of fighting. First and foremost, from 2002 to 2007,
the United States should have built the Afghan army and police much more
quickly. U.S. generals and policymakers too long ignored the signs of the Taliban resurgence—a first-order failure to understand their environment—and
consequently let years go by before seriously building the army and police.
Once the Taliban attacked in 2006, the chance to secure Afghanistan without
masses of U.S. reinforcements disappeared.
Second, from 2006 to 2009, the U.S. military should have adapted more
quickly to fighting an insurgency. Generals wasted resources in fruitless battles
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 2014119
in the mountains. Reforms were often not spread unless dictated by high-level
generals. The generals themselves were too often reluctant to do so, lest they
steal authority from their subordinates, violating the ingrained decentralized
command-and-control system of the U.S. military. For years, innovative reforms were not spread throughout the military. A good example is how the
dangers of killing civilians fell on deaf ears until General McChrystal forced
units to restrain their use of firepower.
Third, during the surge, U.S. generals should have paid more attention to
the political imperative of gaining major successes as quickly as possible. At
least a year was lost pursuing secondary objectives. Overall, U.S. leaders ran
counterinsurgency shy of the reckless urgency needed to meet the political
withdrawal timeline. U.S. generals and policymakers never aligned strategy
against the economic and political realities facing the United States at home.
The strategy was disconnected from America’s domestic situation.
In sum, nearly a decade passed as U.S. policymakers and generals groped
for the right strategy and then tried to implement it. By the time the Americans
and Afghans were at last starting to win, the political and economic conditions
that had allowed counterinsurgency to succeed in Iraq in 2007 had shifted. By
2014, the Afghan army and police could secure much of the country on their
own, at a vastly lower cost to the United States than the surge years. If U.S.
generals and policymakers had acted sooner and with greater determination,
the Afghan state could have reached that point much earlier. The end result
might have been a more-affordable long-term stalemate instead of a costly
one filled with uncertainty about American resolve.
Notes
1. James Dobbins et al., America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany
to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), 133; Ian Livingston and Michael
O’Hanlon, “Afghanistan Index,” Brookings Institution, 26 April, 2013, www.
brookings.edu/afghanistanindex.
2. Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown (New York: Sentinel, 2011), 683.
3. Douglas J. Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of
the War on Terrorism (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 150.
4. Dobbins et al., America’s Role in Nation-Building, 137; Terrence R. Kelly,
Nora Bensahel, and Olga Oliker, Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan: Identifying Lessons for Future Efforts (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2011), 20, 26, 33,
37–38; Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 167–168, 176.
5. George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), 211.
12 0
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6. Livingston and O’Hanlon, “Afghanistan Index.”
7. The U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007), 37.
8. Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2014), 205.
9. Discussion with British officers, Joint Service Command Staff College,
Shrivenham, 20 October 2008.
10. Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban
Insurgency in Afghanistan (London: Hurst, 2007), 197.
11. David Rohde and David Sanger, “How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan
Went Bad,” New York Times, 12 August 2007.
12. Michael Coss, “Operation Mountain Lion: CJTF-76 in Afghanistan,
Spring 2006,” Military Review (January–February 2008): 23–24.
13. Gates, Duty, 211.
14. Bing West, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan (New York: Random House, 2011), 46.
15. Douglas Cubbison, Wanat OP Draft evaluation paper, U.S. Army Combat
Studies Institute, 47.
16. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan, 40.
17. Paul Miller, Armed State Building: Confronting State Failure, 1898–2012
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 165.
18. Discussion with CJTF-82 assessments cell, Bagram Air Base, 23 September 2007.
19. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan, 48.
20. Livingston and O’Hanlon, “Afghanistan Index.”
21. Kenneth Katzman, “Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and
U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service, 2012, 19.
22. General Stanley McChrystal to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
“COMISAF’s Initial Assessment,” 30 August 2009, http://www2.gwu.
edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB292/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2013), 291.
26. “Terrorism: The War in Afghanistan and C.I.A. Interrogations,” CBS
News Poll, 1 September 2009.
27. McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 359.
28. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 128.
29. Discussion with CJTF-82 assessments cell, Bagram Air Base, 23 September 2007.
30. McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 310.
31. ISAF Tactical Directive unclassified guidance, 6 July 2009.
A fghanistan and the C risis of C ounterinsurgency, 2001– 201412 1
32. Livingston and O’Hanlon, “Afghanistan Index.”
33. Jim Hoagland, “Obama’s Afghan Hopes Meet Reality,” Washington
Post, 10 September 2009.
34. Chandrasekaran, Little America, 261–62.
35. McChrystal to Gates, COMISAF’s Initial Assessment.
36. Chandrasekaran, Little America, 59.
37. McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 323.
38. Chandrasekaran, Little America, 154–61.
39. Carl Forsberg, “Counterinsurgency in Kandahar,” Institute for Understanding War, December 2010, 13, 43.
40. Ibid., 16.
41. Linda Robinson, One Hundred Victories (New York: PublicAffairs,
2013), 14–22.
42. David Flynn, “Extreme Partnership in Afghanistan: Arghendab District,
Kandahar Province, 2010–2011,” Military Review (March–April 2012): 29–30.
43. Chandrasekaran, Little America, 274–76, 284.
44. Ibid., 310–14.
45. Livingston and O’Hanlon, “Afghanistan Index”; Chandrasekaran, Little
America, 277.
46. New America Foundation, “Drone Wars Pakistan: Analysis,” http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/Pakistan/analysis.
47. Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland, “CIA Drone Strikes and the Taliban,” in Talibanistan, ed. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 229.
48. Audrey Kurth Cronin, “Why Drones Fail,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 4
(July-August 2013): 45.
49. Gallup polls on Afghanistan, http://www.gallup.com/poll/116233/afghanistan.aspx.
50. “Report on Progress Toward Stability and Security in Afghanistan,” Department of Defense, December 2012, 34.
51. Discussion with U.S.-Afghan interpreter who worked in Nangarhar from
2011 to 2012, Washington, DC, 11 January 2013.
Chapter 7
BRITAIN’S WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, 2001–2014
Theo Farrell
Britain’s war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 covered four overarching
operations—Veritas, Fingal, Jacana, and Herrick. Operation Veritas saw
Britain deploy cruise-missile-firing nuclear submarines and refueling and
reconnaissance aircraft from October to December 2001, to support the
U.S.-led war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The British land
component to this phase of the war came from special forces with up to
three hundred troops deployed; of these, a third operated behind enemy lines
in southern Afghanistan conducting strike missions against Taliban targets.
Under Operation Fingal, from December 2001 to April 2002, Britain led
the establishment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Kabul, contributing the headquarters, an infantry battalion, and other enabling
land forces. The environment in Kabul was permissive in 2002, and there were
no attacks by the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Accordingly, this first ISAF mission was
able to create security through joint patrolling with Northern Alliance militia
and orderly disposal of mines and munitions, and to provide logistical support
to the new interim government led by Hamid Karzai. In April 2002, Britain
launched Operation Jacana, deploying a seventeen-hundred-strong all-arms
Royal Marine battlegroup to support ongoing U.S. counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. The Royal Marines arrived a few weeks after Operation
Anaconda, the largest battle of the war involving U.S. forces and after which
all Taliban had gone to ground or fled to Pakistan along with any remaining
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 01412 3
al-Qaeda fighters. The Royal Marines conducted a number of sweeps but
failed to find anybody to fight. They returned to the United Kingdom in July
2002 without having killed a single Taliban or militant.1
Under Operation Herrick, the mission of British forces shifted from supporting the U.S. counterterrorism campaign to supporting the international
effort to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan. Initially, this involved establishing
two civil-military provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in northern Afghanistan. In 2003, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took over responsibility
for ISAF, and the year after, NATO agreed for ISAF to expand progressively
beyond Kabul, in a counterclockwise fashion starting with the more permissive north and west, before deploying ISAF forces into the more hostile south
and east of the country. In mid-2006, Britain joined the ISAF expansion to
the south by deploying a task force to Helmand Province. Within weeks of
arriving, British forces were locked in fierce battle with a resurgent Taliban.
Section one provides an overview of the Helmand campaign, and the sections
that follow then explore the lessons for, respectively, force generation, intelligence, military operations, and campaign command.
Operation Herrick
Under Operation Herrick, Britain deployed a series of brigade-sized task
forces rotating through the province, each on a six-month tour of operations,
from 2006 to 2014. British forces arrived in Helmand just as the Taliban
launched a major offensive to retake the province. For eighteen months, the
first three task forces—16 Air Assault Brigade, followed by 3 Commando
Brigade, and then 12 Mechanised Brigade—each tried in different ways to
defeat the Taliban. Large numbers of Taliban were killed through heavy use
of firepower; however, more kept coming. The British presence in Helmand
proved to be a magnet for jihadist militants, and so the Taliban were able
to surge fighters from Pakistan into Helmand. Moreover, British operations,
especially in support of counter-narcotic efforts, alienated the local population and made it easier for the Taliban to recruit fighters from the local
population.2 Far from creating security for development efforts, the British
military got bogged down in heavy fighting in the northern districts of Now
Zad, Gereshk, Sangin, and Musa Qala, and the southern district of Garmser.
Indicative of a worsening security situation, the number of combat events
steadily climbed from 537 under 16 Brigade, to 821 under 3 Brigade, to
1,096 under 12 Brigade.3
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T heo F arrell
From late 2007 to late 2008, British forces under 52 Brigade and 16 Air
Assault Brigade (back for a second tour), focused more on trying to secure the
population than on defeating the Taliban. On taking command of Task Force
Helmand, as it was thereafter designated, 52 Brigade deemphasized combat
operations and developed new capabilities to conduct “influence operations.”
16 Brigade’s tour was dominated by the logistically demanding task of transporting two massive turbines up to Kajaki Dam in northern Helmand, in order
to provide power for Kandahar city. 16 Brigade undertook a tactically brilliant
operation, sneaking the turbines up through a secret back route in neighboring
Kandahar Province. However, it all came to nothing. The turbines were never
connected up to the regional electricity system and remain unused to this today.
Just days after arriving on their second tour in Helmand in October 2008,
3 Command Brigade were alerted to an impending Taliban assault on the
provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, where the PRT and brigade headquarters
were based. Drones urgently sent from Camp Bastion found hundreds of
insurgents closing in on Lashkar Gah from three different directions. British
intelligence later assessed that the Taliban objective was to decapitate provincial government and thereby “discredit British stewardship of Helmand.”4
Beyond the brigade command staff, only twelve Royal Marines were available
to defend the provincial capital; most of the brigade was committed to bases
in northern and southern Helmand. ISAF air power was rushed to Laskhar
Gah to repulse the insurgent forces, and this enabled the Afghan police to
keep the Taliban from overrunning Lashkar Gah.5 A number of Taliban were
allowed to escape, and ISAF drones tracked them back to their bases in Nad-e
Ali district in central Helmand. The British now knew where the enemy lay.
Brigadier Gordon Messenger, commander of 3 Commando Brigade, took his
carefully worked-up campaign plan to “deepen the hold” in northern and
southern Helmand, and shredded it. The new plan was to gain a foothold in
Nad-e Ali. Central Helmand would become the focus of the British campaign
for the rest of the war.6
Next up was 19 Brigade in April 2009. It was to suffer the highest casualties
of any British brigade in Helmand, with sixty-five soldiers killed in action during its tour. In Summer 2009, 19 Brigade launched Operation Panchai Palang,
with the intent of clearing insurgents out of Babaji, an area in the northeast of
Nad-e Ali district. The main objectives were to create the security conditions
for locals to vote in the 2009 national elections and to improve the security of
nearby Lashkar Gah. British infantry had to break through carefully prepared
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 01412 5
insurgent defenses in Babaji. The operation involved such heavy fighting that
it caused most local people to flee, leaving very few residents to cast votes on
polling day.7
Eleven days before his inauguration in January 2010, Barak Obama sent
Vice President–elect Joe Biden on a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan. Biden
came back with bad tidings; the war completely lacked strategic direction and
was being waged on “autopilot.” What President Obama did to turn things
around was to have a profound impact on the British campaign in Helmand.
Crucially, in the summer of 2009, he brought in a new commander to run the
war, somebody who was a proven innovator and counterinsurgency expert,
General Stanley McChrystal.8 McChrystal gripped the ISAF campaign, imposing a new strategy that emphasized protecting the population over fighting
Taliban and much closer partnership with the Afghan security forces. Within
months of arriving in Kabul, McChrystal was under intense pressure to show
results. He decided that ISAF had to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Taliban
to satisfy Washington and reassure Afghans, and Helmand was chosen as the
place to do it.9
Operation Moshtarak was the largest offensive undertaken by ISAF and
intended to sweep the Taliban from central Helmand. The U.S. Marines were
given the task of clearing the insurgents out of Marjah, while the British were
to clear the Taliban out of northern Nad-e Ali. In all, twelve hundred British
soldiers, along with seventy-four hundred American and Afghan troops, were
involved in a massive air and ground assault on Taliban strongholds. The insurgent defense rapidly collapsed in northern Nad-e Ali, and the British were
able to seize the area without killing a single civilian. The U.S. Marine Corps
had a far tougher task in Marjah, where the insurgents put up more of a fight
and up to twenty-eight civilians were killed.10
From 2011 on, ISAF had given up the hope of defeating the Taliban, and
the command was focused on increasingly transitioning responsibility to Afghan security forces, and managing the drawdown and retrograde of forces
from contributing countries. The British military footprint shrank during this
period to the districts of Nad-e Ali, Gereshk, and Lashkar Gah, as the U.S. Marine Corps took responsibility for the north and south of Helmand. Security,
local governance, and development were impressive within the British area of
operations—partly as a result of Operation Moshtarak, and partly because the
U.S. Marines were keeping the Taliban busy in Sangin and Marjah. In August
2013, Task Force Helmand moved its headquarters from Lashkar Gah to
12 6
T heo F arrell
Camp Bastion. In April 2014, the British task force was closed down altogether
and its command functions were assumed by Regional Command—Southwest
(RC-Southwest), led by the U.S. Marine Corps. In October 2014, British and
U.S. Marine forces formally ended all combat operations in Helmand.
Force Generation
Britain struggled to generate sufficient ground forces for Operation Herrick. In response to the ferocity of the Taliban insurgency, the size of the
British task force climbed from 3,150 in 2006 to 8,500 in 2008, where it
plateaued for over a year. The main problem was the delay in withdrawing British forces from Iraq. When committing to the Helmand mission, the
British Army had expected to be out of Iraq by 2006. However, the situation in Iraq was even worse than in Helmand, and over 7,000 British troops
were battling a Shia insurgency in southern Iraq. British combat operations
in Iraq did not end until April 2009, and although British numbers in Iraq
dropped to just over 4,000, across the two theaters over 12,000 troops were
deployed on operations (Table 7.1). While these numbers were all services,
the vast bulk were from the British Army, which at this time numbered only
120,000. Under defense-planning assumptions, the British Army was supposed to conduct only one brigade-sized enduring campaign. From 2006 to
2009, it conducted two. In response, the army took a reserve brigade headquarters that was not meant for operations, 52 Brigade, and deployed it to
Afghanistan in 2007; as it transpired, this was one of the more successful
brigades in Helmand.
The chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, warned in
2006 and 2007 that the army was “stretched to capacity” by the two campaigns, and that this level of operations was “unstainable” for an “undermanned army.”11 Dannatt increasingly viewed Afghanistan as a threat to the
army, and especially its modernization program. This view was not shared
by the Commander in Chief of Land Forces (the number two in the British
Army), General Sir David Richards. Richards had commanded ISAF in 2006
when it had expanded into southern and eastern Afghanistan. He viewed
Afghanistan as a “war of necessity” that required an all-out effort by the
Ministry of Defence (MoD). He advocated sending another five thousand
soldiers to Afghanistan. In January 2009, Richards launched an army-wide
campaign to “put the Army on a war footing.”12 In August 2009, Richards
succeeded Dannatt as the chief of the General Staff, and in October 2010 he
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 01412 7
Table 7.1. U.K. Military Personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Year (mid)
Iraq
Afghanistan
Total
7,000
3,150
10,150
2007
7,200
6,500
13,700
2008
5,500
8,500
14,000
2009
4,100
8,300
12,400
2010
150
9,500
9,650
2006
Source: Theo Farrell, Sten Rynning, and Terry Terriff, Transforming Military Power Since
the End of the Cold War: Britain, France and the United States, 1991–2012 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 157.
was appointed chief of the Defence Staff. This was the period when the British
Army commitment to Afghanistan was at its height.
However, by the time the army had fully withdrawn from Iraq, there was
not the political will to send more troops to Afghanistan. Prime Minister
Gordon Brown had become skeptical about the prospects for the Helmand
campaign, and was reluctant to invest more resources.13 In an extraordinary
move, Dannatt, as the outgoing army chief, felt compelled to publicly criticize
the prime minister in the summer of 2009 for failing to give commanders what
they needed in Helmand.14 This, combined with pressure from the Obama
administration, led to an increase in British forces to ninety-five hundred, just
in time to support Operation Panchai Palang.
The British Army entered Helmand without the equipment it required.
In particular, the army’s Snatch Land Rover was completely vulnerable to
small arms fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs); soldiers had taken to
calling them “mobile coffins.”15 For the most part, these equipment capability gaps were successfully addressed through the MoD’s Urgent Operational
Requirement scheme. This resulted in over twenty enhancements to personal
equipment for the soldier (including better body armor, new rifle sights, nightgoggles, and so on). Crucially, over 2007–2008, the British armed forces
rapidly acquired almost a thousand blast-proof armored vehicles.16
The one capability gap that the MoD struggled to address was the shortage
of helicopters.17 Despite being an air assault brigade, 16 Brigade originally
deployed to Helmand in 2006 with only six Chinook transport helicopters.
This was nowhere near enough. Between 2006 and 2009, the MoD managed
to deliver a 30 percent increase in transport helicopter “flying hours” through
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T heo F arrell
a combination of measures, which included retrofitting helicopters ill-suited for
operating in hot climates (such as the Puma and the Sea King) for operations
in Helmand. It was 2010 before the Royal Air Force’s Chinook replacement,
the Merlin transport helicopter, was deployed to Helmand.18
Intelligence
The early phases of Operation Herrick were characterized by significant intelligence failures. British and U.S. intelligence failed to detect the scale of
Taliban infiltration of Helmand Province over 2004–2005. This is because
the Taliban sent in small “vanguard teams” to undermine any local opposition and lay the foundation for a general push into the province in 2005–
2006. Even more unforgivable, British intelligence failed to anticipate that
when the highly corrupt provincial governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada,
was replaced at their insistence just prior to the arrival of British forces, his
large militia would switch sides and back the Taliban.19 British intelligence
was again caught off guard when the Taliban amassed a large force to attack Lashkar Gah in October 2008. Task Force Helmand was tipped off by
the local Afghan police to the Taliban assault with only twenty-four-hours
notice.
Britain’s Afghan allies were not always reliable sources of intelligence.
District government and police officials in Helmand commonly misdirected
the British Army toward local rivals, claiming they were Taliban. In the early
years, the British Army would send in forces to drive Taliban from villages
that had been resisting district police; after a while, the British began to realize
that they were being manipulated, and that often the district governor and
police represented particular tribal interests and were misusing their positions
to settle scores or steal land from rivals.20
Overtime, intelligence got a lot better, especially ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance). In 2009, the MoD undertook
a major review of ISTAR support to Operation Herrick, focusing especially
on the counter-IED effort. By this stage IEDs were the largest threat to British
forces, accounting for 55 percent of coalition fatalities. Moreover, the threat
was increasing, with more coalition troops killed by IEDs in the first half of
2009 (sixty-five) than in all of 2008 (fifty-five).21 The review led to a major
reorientation of the MoD’s ISTAR development effort in order to focus more
on the campaign in Afghanistan and, in particular, to make the program more
responsive to the needs of users in-theater.22
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 01412 9
Much attention in the press has been focused on drones, but just as important to the British in Helmand were the ASTOR (airborne stand-off radar)
and Base ISTAR systems. Introduced into service in Afghanistan in November
2008, ASTOR comprised five Sentinel aircraft operated by the RAF and eight
base stations operated by the British Army, to provide long-range target-imaging and tracking capabilities. Base ISTAR started off as a series of tracking
and validating systems operated at the main gates of British bases in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It developed into a network of cameras, radar, and ground sensor
systems that by 2010 was protecting twenty British bases in Afghanistan.23
By 2009, Britain had considerable SIGINT assets in-theater. The British
signals intelligence agency, GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters),
established ten “listening posts” in the main British bases across Helmand
and in Regional Command—South (RC-South); mobile phone communications intercepted in the field were analyzed by a ninety-strong team back in
Britain at GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham.24 The value of ISTAR and
signals intelligence can be seen in Operation Moshtarak. Through psychological operations (for example, informing the Taliban via Afghan contacts of an
impending ISAF offensive) and aggressive patrols near Taliban frontlines in
northern Nad-e Ali, the British were able to get jittery Taliban commanders
to reveal their locations through radio and phone communications. Air strikes
and commando raids were then conducted against these targets, with the effect
of removing around thirty Taliban commanders from the battlefield. In this
way, the British had eviscerated Taliban tactical command in northern Nad-e
Ali district well before the main air assault against Taliban strongholds was
launched in February 2010.25
Military Operations
After the first eighteen months in Helmand, the British military switched
from an enemy-centric to a population-centric approach to operations when
52 Brigade took command of Task Force Helmand. Much of this was down
to the peculiar character of 52 Brigade. As noted, it was not a frontline
fighting brigade, but rather had been activated for service. The brigadier in
charge, Andrew Mackay, was not your typical army brigade commander.
Mackay had been a police officer in Hong Kong before joining the army,
and had worked on police reform in Iraq under General David Petraeus. He
understood the imperative to build trusted relationships with local communities, and to develop the capabilities and confidence of the Afghan security
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T heo F arrell
forces. Where 12 Brigade had rotated units through forward operating bases
(FOBs) in order to free up forces for large clearance operations, 52 Brigade
committed units to FOBs for the entire tour in order “to provide reassurance
and provide clear proof that our presence is not transient or temporary.”26
On his battlefield tour before taking command, Mackay had seen the damage that was being done by the heavy fighting between British forces and the
Taliban. When 3 Brigade retook Now Zad from the Taliban, the fighting was
so intense that the entire population fled and never returned; Mackay found
a ghost town when he visited it a year later. British forces had to find a less
violent way to “create security.” He established teams at the company and
brigade levels to develop, deliver, and assess non-kinetic effects and influence
operations.27
Mackay was determined to avoid unnecessary pitched battles. When he
was tasked with retaking Musa Qala in late 2007, he decided to do this in a
way that minimized the displacement of the local population. For Mackay,
“the people were the prize,” not ground or destruction of enemy forces.28 Thus
52 Brigade planned a cautious offensive, involving mechanized forces slowly
approaching the district center on two flanks over a number of weeks. The
intention was to intimidate the Taliban into leaving the town, and thereby
avoid a major battle. In contrast with 12 Brigade, who gave no prior warning to the local population before major operations for fear of compromising
operational security, 52 Brigade gave plenty of warning; if locals passed on
this information to the Taliban, so much the better since 52 Brigade wanted
the insurgents to know they were coming in force.29 The plan largely worked:
the Taliban fled Musa Qala after a brief fight.30 Mackay also made sure that it
was the Afghan National Army who formally reclaimed Musa Qala, as they
were more trusted by locals than the British. One journalist on the ground
noted, “The residents of Musa Qala voted with their feet soon after the arrival of the Afghan army. Tractors, pick-up trucks and carts started bringing
people home.”31
The three brigades that followed, 16 Brigade, 3 Commando Brigade, and
19 Brigade, failed to capitalize on the population-centric approach introduced
by Mackay. At least 16 Brigade avoided unnecessary battles with the Taliban,
but the turbine move operation drained command attention and brigade resources, and reduced the British military presence in Helmand. 3 Brigade
ended up focusing on breaking into Nad-e Ali district, which was held by the
Taliban. In Operation Panchai Palang, 19 Brigade conducted a classic block
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 014131
and sweep using mechanized infantry to clear the Taliban from Babaji. Forces
were pulled from FOBs across Helmand to support this major operation.
The British returned to a more population-centric approach under 11
Brigade in late 2009. This was not a recovery of Mackay’s approach; rather,
11 Brigade were responding to tactical direction issued by McChrystal, as
the commander of ISAF. The population-centric approach to COIN was articulated in McChrystal’s strategic guidance to subordinate commands and
elaborated in his tactical directive to the troops. The tactical directive was
unambiguous in stating that “[g]aining and maintaining [the support of the
population] must be our overriding operational imperative.” To this end, it
provided clear direction to ensure that ISAF use of force was restrained and
disciplined.32 This objective of protecting local people and winning their trust
was declared the “Main Effort” in the operational order for Moshtarak issued
by the commander of RC-South.33
Much like the clear of Musa Qala by 52 Brigade, 11 Brigade’s concept of
operations for Operation Moshtarak was to “erode insurgent will and capacity
to fight” through a combination of physical and psychological pressure in the
shape phase of operations. The intent was to “write down insurgent capability
to the point that the actual clearance is anti-climatic.” This included extensive
“messaging” in advance of the offensive in order to impress upon the insurgents that the ISAF and the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) would
arrive in overwhelming force. In the event, the clear was indeed anti-climactic,
with an “exceptionally muted response” from insurgents to the British offensive in North Nad-e Ali. Taliban commanders fled the area of operations
ahead of D-Day, leaving behind “dislocated and confused low level fighters”
who only presented “small sporadic contacts” before going to ground.34 This
undoubtedly contributed to the remarkable lack of civilian casualties in the
British sector during Operation Moshtarak.
Campaign Command
The short tour length of brigades introduced a fundamental limitation to
the British campaign in Helmand. Every six months a new brigade arrived,
bringing a new approach and often a different emphasis to the campaign.
Over 2006–2007, 16 Brigade garrisoned district centers up north, 3 Brigade
chased Taliban in the desert, and 12 Brigade conducted large-scale mechanized sweeps of the Green Zone between Gereshk and Sangin. The British
focused on stabilizing central Helmand from late 2008 on, but even here we
13 2
T heo F arrell
see great variation in approach between the largely conventional combined
arms operations of 19 Brigade and the “consent-based” clear of 11 Brigade.
Thus, in effect, Task Force Helmand rebooted itself every six months, with
the incoming brigade headquarters having to learn afresh about Helmand.
This was most unhelpful from the perspective of building constructive relationships with Afghan government and security partners. It also gave more
scope for unscrupulous Afghan partners to manipulate ignorant British officers, and frustrated efforts by reliable Afghan partners to work with British
forces. By 2009, the British had created three nine-month “continuity posts”
within Task Force Helmand—the deputy commander, and lead planners for
influence operations and for stabilization operations—to provide some institutional memory between brigades.35 However, this was more useful in
giving the incoming brigade situation awareness than in ensuring continuity
of effort across brigades.
Civil-military integration was another challenging area for the British.
The Helmand PRT and Task Force Helmand HQ were co-located in adjacent
buildings in the British compound in Lashkar Gah. However, with few exceptions through the campaign, the PRT and British task force conducted parallel
rather than integrated planning and operations. The first civil-military plan,
the Joint Helmand Plan 2006–2008, was largely ignored by successive British brigades, as was the successor plan, the Helmand Road Map 2008–2010.
Efforts were made to improve the integration of military and civilian efforts.
From 2008, British military planners moved into the PRT main office to work
alongside their civilian partners, and a colonel was dual-hatted as deputy of
the PRT and of Task Force Helmand. However, incoming brigades continued
to produce their own campaign plans, and the PRT pursued its seven thematic
programs of activity (governance, health, education, infrastructure, and so on)
in parallel to one another. In contrast, at the battlegroup level there was some
improvement with the creation of civil-military district stabilization teams.36
Competing chains of command also produced competing pressures on British commanders, while at the same time giving them opportunities to create
freedom to do as they pleased by playing one chain of command off against
the other. Thus the commander of Task Force Helmand was answerable to
ISAF Command and to U.K. Permanent Joint Headquarters back in Britain,
and from 2008, he formally came under the two-star diplomat leading the
Helmand PRT. In 2009, it was decided to create a U.K. National Contingent
Command in ISAF HQ, led by the senior British officer who was deputy
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 014133
commander of ISAF. This improved things somewhat in that the British task
force commander was no longer directly answerable to superior command
back in Britain.37
However, the key development that gave great continuity to the British
campaign was the strengthening of ISAF command under McChrystal and
creation of the three-star ISAF Joint Command led by Lieutenant General
David Rodriquez. Under McChrystal, there came much clearer direction on
the strategic direction and tactical conduct of the war. ISAF Joint Command
also developed an ISAF-wide operational plan, with tactical priorities to inform planning by regional commands. An internal assessment of ISAF Joint
Command in late 2010 concluded that it “is generally effective in providing
direction to the Regional Commands. It ensures that security operations are
consistent with ISAF strategy and provides continuity of command as subordinate headquarters rotate.”38 This led to more continuity of effort and
approach by subsequent British brigades in Helmand.
Equally important was the strengthening of RC-South in 2009–2010 under
U.K. 6th Division. Command of RC-South rotated between the British, Canadians, and Dutch from 2006 to 2010. The Canadians and Dutch simply
lacked the experience and capabilities for division-level command, and the
first British command of RC-South in 2007 was under-strength and a bit of a
shambles. The British Army was determined to make a better job of it in 2010.
As the commander of 6th Division, Major General Nick Carter constructed
large headquarters custom-built for Afghanistan; the headquarters was “living
Afghanistan on a daily basis” a year before it even deployed.39 Much more even
than McChrystal, Carter emphasized the importance of government and the
importance of public perception: “The Campaign in Afghanistan is principally
a battle for people’s minds. . . . Progress can be made if the people believe that
GIRoA is more effective at providing for their needs than the insurgent.”40 This
emphasis was to inform the planning and execution of Operation Moshtarak,
especially by British forces.
Poor civil-military integration remained a problem right to the end of the
British campaign. Even while unity of effort improved on the military side
under McChrystal, Rodriquez, and Carter, it got worse on the civilian side
and this complicated efforts to improve civil-military integration. By mid
2010, RC-South had been split up, with Helmand going into a newly established RC-Southwest under the U.S. Marine Corps. Around this time, the U.S.
Department of State established a number of regional hubs. This created a
13 4
T heo F arrell
competition in Helmand between the PRT, the large civil affairs team in RCSouthwest, and the State Department Regional Hub. This reflected a wider
problem in the ISAF campaign. The ISAF Joint Command internal assessment
in October 2010 found that “governance and development lines of operations
manifest disunity of effort in all Regional Commands except RC-West. The
Regional Commands do not have command over non-US PRTs. There is little
integration between PRT and national regional platforms.”41
Conclusion
There are clear lessons from Afghanistan for future military operations by
British and coalition forces. In terms of force generation, Britain was comfortably able to deploy, at short notice, highly capable special forces and
all-arms battlegroup-sized task forces. Indeed, in this, the British military
excels. The Helmand campaign proved more challenging. This was especially
the case for the first four years, 2006–2009, when the British Army was
stretched to its limit conducting brigade-sized campaigns in both Iraq and
Afghanistan. Under the Future Army 2020 Program led by Lieutenant General Nick Carter (promoted following his return from Afghanistan), the British Army shrank from just over a hundred thousand down to around eighty
thousand. This was supposed to be compensated by a larger, better resourced
and more closely integrated army reserve. However, the MoD struggled to
grow the reserves to the new target strength of thirty thousand; the army
reserve stood at less than twenty thousand by mid 2015.42 With a smaller
army, Britain will find it even more difficult to generate brigade-sized task
forces for enduring operations in the future.
The British military came out of Afghanistan with significantly improved
ISTAR capabilities, both technological and organizational. At the same time,
the Helmand campaign suggests that British and coalition forces should be
alert to shortfalls in strategic intelligence, and to the challenges of generating
reliable human intelligence, in future campaigns in unfamiliar places.
While most of Afghanistan is sparsely populated, the most intense military
operations were conducted in and around rural population centers. In this
way, Afghanistan conforms to the idea of “wars amongst the people” as the
new norm of warfare.43 Thus war is waged among and to win over people,
and not on battlefields to gain territory. In such wars, an enemy-centric approach, with the attendant risks of civilian casualties and collateral damage, is
unlikely to succeed and indeed may often be counterproductive. As Helmand
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 014135
showed, by engaging in pitched battles with the Taliban, the British alienated
the population and made it easier for the Taliban to attract militants and
recruit locals to fight the infidels.
The lessons for campaign command are the starkest of all. The six-month
tour length of British brigades was a major hindrance to campaign unity of
effort across time. It also hindered the development of situation awareness by
British command staff in-theater, and the development of trusted relationships
with Afghan stakeholders. The argument for six-month tours is that groundholding battalions and companies get worn out and need to be replaced to
ensure optimal operational efficiency. The case for rotating brigade headquarters with battalions every six months is far less persuasive.
Finally, Afghanistan reveals the difficulty of achieving effective coordination of civil-military operations. The British campaign was hindered by
chronic tensions and inconsistencies of effort between the military campaign
and development effort.44 There is nothing new here. Throughout the various
UN-mandated peace operations of the 1990s, military commands struggled to
coordinate efforts with various humanitarian and development agencies. Most
civilian agencies are ambivalent about operating alongside military forces, as
this threatens their neutrality; many nongovernmental organizations are outright hostile toward any military. Ironically, the switch to population-centric
counterinsurgency in Afghanistan exacerbated these tensions, as many aid
agencies interpreted this as ISAF moving into their lane and “militarizing
development.” ISAF command even struggled to coordinate with national
development efforts advanced by European PRTs. The lesson from Afghanistan is clear. In future wars amongst the people, Western militaries will need
to support humanitarian and development efforts, and work with civilian
agencies to achieve this, but they should not expect this to be easy or neat.
Notes
1. Theo Farrell, Unwinnable: Britain’s War in Afghanistan, 2001–2014 (London: Vintage, 2018), 92–100, 106–13.
2. Theo Farrell and Antonio Giustozzi, “The Taliban at War: Inside the Helmand Insurgency,” International Affairs 89, no. 4 (2013): 852.
3. Theo Farrell, “Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in
Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006–2009,” Journal of Strategic Studies 29,
no. 5 (2006): 577–78.
4. Post Operation Report, HERRICK 9 (2009), 18.
5. Ewen Southby-Tailyour, 3 Commando Brigade: Helmand Assault (London: Ebury Press, 2010), 55–66.
13 6
T heo F arrell
6. Interview with military planner, 3 Commando Brigade, London, 1 July
2010.
7. Toby Harnden, Dead Men Risen (London: Quercus, 2011).
8. Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
9. Discussions with ISAF staff, ISAF HQ, Kabul, 9–13 January 2010.
10. Theo Farrell, Appraising Moshtarak: The Campaign in Nad-e-Ali District, Helmand (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2010).
11. Richard Norton-Taylor, “Straight Talking and More to Come,” The
Guardian, 14 October 2006; General Sir Richard Dannatt, Leading from the
Front (London: Bantham Press, 2010), 237–55.
12. Email correspondence with Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David
Richards, 3 July 2011.
13. Interview with senior British government advisor, 4 April 2014.
14. Jonathan Oliver and Michael Smith, “Labour Clashes with Army as Afghan Death Toll Mounts,” The Times, 12 July 2009; Michael Evans and Nico
Hines, “General Dannatt Forces Afghanistan Shopping List on Gordon Brown,”
The Times, 17 July 2009.
15. James Sturke, “Snatch Land Rovers: The ‘Mobile Coffins’ of the British
Army,” The Guardian, 1 November 2008.
16. Hansard, 24 July 2006, col. 758W; Hansard, 12 December 2007, col.
332; and Hansard, 29 October 2008, cols. 28WS-30WS.
17. House of Commons Defence Committee, Helicopter Capability, Eleventh
Report of Session 2008–2009, HC 434 (London: TSO, 16 July 2009).
18. Theo Farrell and Stuart Gordon, “COIN Machine: The British Military
in Afghanistan,” The RUSI Journal 154, no. 3 (2009): 23.
19. Farrell and Giustozzi, “The Taliban at War,” 849–51.
20. Mike Martin, An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict (London: Hurst, 2014), 1–3.
21. Sheila Bird and Clive Fairweather, “IEDs and Military Fatalities in Iraq
and Afghanistan,” The RUSI Journal 154, no. 4 (2009): 33.
22. Interview with very senior officer, MOD, London, 27 July 2010.
23. Interview with senior officer, Directorate of Capability Development,
MoD, London, 1 July 2010.
24. Larisa Brown, “Spies Foil Taliban Raid on UK Base,” Daily Mail, 31
December 2014.
25. Farrell, Appraising Moshtarak, 5.
26. Farrell, “Improving in War,” 579.
27. Ibid., 580.
28. Interview with Brigadier Andrew Mackay, DCDC, Shrivenham, 29 January 2009.
29. Interview with SO3 J2 Plans, 52 Brigade HQ, Redford Cavalry Barracks,
Edinburgh, 29 June 2009.
B ritain ’ s War in A fghanistan , 2001–2 014137
30. Tom Coghlan, “Taliban Flee as Troops Retake Musa Qala,” Daily Telegraph, 10 December 2007.
31. Stephen Grey, Operation Snakebite (London: Viking, 2009), 280.
32. COMISAF/COMUSF-A Gen. Stanley McChrystal, HQ ISAF, Tactical Directive, 1 July 2009.
33. COMRC(S), Operation MOSHTARAK Direction TF Commanders, 27
January 2010.
34. Operation MOSHTARAK Post Operation Report.
35. Interview with deputy commander, Task Force Helmand, Lashkar Gah,
3 November 2009.
36. Participant observation and interviews with PRT and Task Force Helmand personnel, Lashkar Gah, October-Novevmber 2009 and May-June 2010.
37. Interview with General Nick Parker, former Deputy Commander ISAF,
London, 10 March 2014.
38. ISAF Joint Command Internal Assessment, October 2010, para 2.1.
39. Interview with former senior ISAF officer, 6 April 2014.
40. Combined Joint Task Force-6, Post Operation Report, November 2010.
41. ISAF Joint Command Internal Assessment, October 2010, para. 3.1.
42. Ben Riley-Smith, “Michael Fallon Admits Government Is Struggling to
Recruit Army Reservists,” Telegraph, 1 July 2015.
43. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
(London: Penguin, 2006).
44. Barbara J. Stapleton and Michael Keating, Military and Civilian Assistance to Afghanistan, 2001–14: An Incoherent Approach (London: Chatham
House, July 2015).
Chapter 8
RAISING AND MENTORING SECURITY
FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN
T. X. Hammes
Security force assistance was a major pillar of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan,
so much so that local security forces were often spoken of as “our ticket
home” or “our exit strategy.” The effort to raise, train, equip, field, and
advise army and police forces eventually became the center of gravity. Yet
initially, the effort was ad hoc, under-resourced, and complicated by internal
bureaucratic struggles in Washington and by corruption and mismanagement
within the Afghan government.
This chapter will deal in turn with the army, national police, and village
police programs, including some discussion of the Ministries of Defense and
Interior. It will focus on the problems encountered. However, one remarkable
success cannot be denied. Starting from scratch, the coalition raised, trained,
and equipped an Afghan security force of over 350,000 personnel. This speaks
very highly of the dedication and talent of the military and civilian personnel
who made it happen.
Afghan National Security Forces
The very rapid U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks meant that military planners had almost no time to consider post-conflict security. Thus, after ousting
al-Qaeda, the United States turned to the United Nations. On 20 December
2001, the UN adopted Security Council Resolution 1368, which established
the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)1 with a goal of a fifty-thou-
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 139
sand-person Afghan National Army and a sixty-two-thousand-person Afghan
National Police.2 But the UN provided no resources to meet those goals.
Afghan National Army
In January 2002, the United States took on the lead-nation role in raising
the army.3 However, it wasn’t until May that U.S. Special Forces arrived to
begin training the Afghan National Army. The SF training was not centrally
directed nor did it attempt to build the army as a national institution. It
focused on small units. In was not until October 2002 that Major General
Karl Eikenberry arrived as chief of the Office of Military Cooperation—
Afghanistan (OMC-A) with the mission of building the Afghan Army.
Eikenberry noted the Afghan army lacked a recruiting force, trainers,
living facilities, equipment, and any form of logistics or personnel support.
OMC-A had to build the Afghan army’s supporting base as it was training
and deploying the Afghan combat units. The mission was initially assigned
to the 2d Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, which did not arrive until
May 2003.4 After six months, the mission passed to the National Guard,
which assigned a new brigade HQs to the mission every six months. Because
brigades are not manned to do so, the training for Corps HQs and Ministry
of Defense was conducted by MPRI (Military Professional Resources
Incorporated), a private company.5
By fall 2003, the U.S. overall strategy was clearly failing. Taliban elements
were moving freely through most of the south and east unchallenged by any
Afghan government presence. The United Nations and aid organizations pulled
their people out of those regions.6
OMC-A focused on building the Afghan National Army (ANA), but by
July 2005 it had reached a strength of only 24,300 trained and equipped with
6,000 more in training—less than half the force authorized in the December
2002 Bonn Conference. Over this period, training for the newly raised infantry
battalions was standardized at fourteen weeks—six weeks individual training,
six weeks advanced training, and two weeks of collective training. In a June
2005 report, the Government Accountability Office noted that OMC-A had
never been staffed at more than 71 percent of its approved personnel level.7
On 12 July 2005, OMC-A was renamed Office of Security Cooperation—
Afghanistan (OSC-A) and assumed the additional responsibility for training
the Afghan National Police (ANP).8 In April 2006, OSC-A was again re-designated as Combined Security Transition Command—Afghanistan (CSTC-A).
14 0
T. X . H ammes
It retained responsibility for training the army and police as well as mentoring
the Ministries of Defense and Interior.
One of the key challenges was the steadily worsening level of violence in
Afghanistan. IED incidents increased from 844 in 2005 to 2,215 by 2007.9
As attacks intensified, leaders made the logical choice to increase the size of
the ANA and the ANP. With each increase, more trainers were needed and
each time before the new requirement was filled, the increased threat led
to plans for further increasing the strength of the Afghan National Security
Forces (ANSF).
In its 2008 report to Congress, CSTC-A stated it was working closely
with the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on three lines
of operation to develop the ANSF: “(1) build and develop ministerial institutional capability; (2) generate the fielded forces (sic); and (3) develop the
fielded forces.”10 CSTC-A noted the target end-strength for the ANA had been
increased to eighty thousand and the ANP to eighty-two thousand.11 It would
also field different kinds of units—“13 light brigades, a mechanized brigade, a
commando brigade, a headquarters and support brigade, enabling units and
the initial operation of an air corps.”12
While the NATO reports indicated major progress in training the Afghan
National Army during 2007–2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office
was much less optimistic. In its June 2008 report, it noted,
The United States has provided over $10 billion to develop the ANA since
2002; however, less than 2 percent (2 of 105 units) of ANA units are assessed
as fully capable of conducting their primary mission.13
Not surprisingly, in its April 2009 report to Congress, the GAO noted the
primary limitation on progress as the shortage of training personnel. NATO
Training Mission—Afghanistan (NTM-A) had only half of the 2,225 personnel needed to train the ANA at the approved level of 79,000 ANA soldiers.
This shortage was likely to get more severe with the newly approved strength
increase for the ANA.14
To assist in filling the shortage of trainers, the North Atlantic Council
announced the formation of NATO Training Mission—Afghanistan as an
integral part of the ISAF on 12 June 2009.15 While providing a significant
reinforcement in personnel, NTM-A also had an expanded mission to provide
higher-level training for the ANA, including defense colleges and academies,
and would be responsible for doctrine development, as well as training and
mentoring for the ANP.16
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 14 1
However, NTM-A would not provide advice or training for the Afghan
ministries. That mission remained the responsibility of CSTC-A. Keeping track
of the collective NATO and individual national caveats concerning training
and funding added to the complexity of the mission.
In August 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the new ISAF commander,
concluded his own initial commander’s assessment. McChrystal stated the
army needed to triple in size to 240,000 and police strength must almost
double to 160,000.17 Yet by 2010, the international community had agreed
to only 171,600 for the ANA and 134,000 for the ANP. Further, NTM-A was
still manned at only 52 percent of its authorized strength.18
In early 2010, the International Crisis Group’s analysis noted “army combat readiness has been undermined by weak recruitment and retention policies, inadequate logistics, insufficient training and equipment and inconsistent
leadership.”19
Despite these challenges, the ANA had reached the October 2010 endstrength goal of 134,000, and the ANP had exceeded the goal of 109,000 and
was actually at 115,000.20 NTM-A had added a literacy program designed
to bring 50 percent of the ANSF to third-grade reading levels. The ANA and
ANP personnel needed to be able to read and write to operate in the way they
were being trained.
Another major issue impacting the ANA and ANP’s ability to operate was
the ethnic balance of the forces. In a nation that is roughly 40 percent Pashtun,21 NTM-A had only succeeded in raising the number of southern Pashtuns
to 4 percent of the force.22 Given the historic animosity between the southern
Pashtun and the Northern Alliance (Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, and so on) this
was not a surprising result. Most southern Pashtun perceived the ANA as an
occupying force and thus were very resistant to joining.
By September 2012, ANA strength was 195,000 and ANP 157,000.23
Further, there was some increase in reported capabilities, with 7 percent of the
units reported as “independent with advisors” as were 9 percent of the ANP
units, and the number of units had increased dramatically—to 219 ANA and
435 ANP units.24 Also during 2012, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps began
deploying Security Force Assistance Advisory Teams to facilitate the transition
of all operations to ANSF. The relative priority the services placed on transition
teams versus U.S. operational units remained an issue. As was the pattern in
Afghanistan and Iraq, advisory teams were formed late—sometimes actually
in-country—and often without the appropriate mix of rank and skills.25
14 2
T. X . H ammes
The GAO noted that there was little or no progress in developing the critical Ministries of Defense and Interior, citing corruption and lack of human
capital as major issues.26 By early 2013, the GAO was also reporting shortfalls
in promised funding for future Afghan security forces and that the services
were failing to adequately staff the security force assistance and advisory
teams.27 Each of these failings had been identified for years but NATO had
been unable to address them. At the end of 2014, NTM-A completed its
mission and was replaced by a NATO-led mission called Resolute Support.
Afghan National Police
Afghanistan has never had a very strong or effective civilian police force. The
daunting challenge confronting police reformers in the spring of 2002 was
to create an effective civilian police force from a largely illiterate, untrained
force manned primarily by factional commanders and their militias, who had
little or no equipment or infrastructure, who were unpaid or underpaid, and
who operated within the corrupt and factionalized institutional structure of
the Ministry of Interior (MoI).28
The Bonn Agreement (December 2001) included authority to raise “a
multiethnic, sustainable, and countrywide 62,000-member professional police service.”29 As the lead nation, Germany focused on training senior police
officers in a three-year course and police NCOs in a one-year course. It did
not plan to provide any training or mentoring for the vast majority of police
officers who were ordinary patrolmen.
U.S. leaders believed police would be critical to maintaining order in Afghanistan and that the German program was moving too slowly. So, despite
Germany’s role as lead nation, the United States established a police training
program. For bureaucratic and legal reasons, the Department of State’s Bureau
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement was designated as the U.S.
program manager for the Afghan police. Since the Bureau lacked the personnel to actually conduct the training, it contracted with DynCorp Aerospace
Technology to train and equip the police; advise the MoI; and provide infrastructure assistance, including constructing several police training centers.30
The initial U.S. program was a “train the trainers” program. Experienced
Afghan police officers completed a three-week instructor development course
taught by DynCorp advisors. They then conducted the eight-week basic training course for new police officers as well as the two-week refresher program for
veteran police officers. For comparison, in 2008 police in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 14 3
a much more literate and less violent society than 2002 Afghanistan, received
twenty-five weeks of initial training.31
By January of 2005, Germany and the United States reported having
trained more than thirty-five thousand national, highway, and border police
using the dual programs. They expected to meet the goal of training sixty-two
thousand by December 2005.32 Despite these optimistic projections, by July
2005, senior leaders felt the police training was not progressing well. Responsibility for police training was transferred from the Department of State to the
Department of Defense. Thus the Office of Security Cooperation—Afghanistan
became responsible for training all Afghan National Security Forces. At the
time of the turnover, the Afghan National Police were organized in multiple
branches. The largest, the Afghan Uniformed Police, was responsible for dayto-day law enforcement countrywide and was scheduled to increase from
thirty-one thousand to forty-five thousand personnel. The Afghan Border
Police, with eighteen thousand personnel, was tasked with manning thirteen
border posts and patrolling the border. Theoretically, the Afghan National
Civil Order Police (ANCOP) was to be responsible for maintaining civil order
in Afghan’s largest cities and acting as a reserve for crisis. In fact, because the
ANCOP officers received more training, better equipment, and better vetting
than other police agencies, ANCOP units were often used as an auxiliary to
the Afghan military in combat operations. The last two branches were the Afghanistan Highway Police and the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan.33
Due to exceptional corruption, the Afghan Highway Police was subsequently
disestablished.
In a further reorganization of the advisory effort, Germany’s role of training and advising senior police officers was assumed by the European Union
Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL) in the summer of 2007.34 EUPOL
Afghanistan focused on training senior officials of the MoI and senior police
officers, with an emphasis on coordinating and cooperation among the various
elements of the Afghan judicial system. Unfortunately, EUPOL was unable
to fill half of the allotted training slots and actually assigned many of those
personnel to national provincial reconstruction teams rather than the National
police training program.
Because it provided the bulk of both financial and personnel resources for
the ANP, CSTC-A remained the primary driver of the police training program.
In late 2007, it initiated the Focused District Development plan. Under this
plan, all police officers were withdrawn from a district, replaced with officers
14 4
T. X . H ammes
from the Afghan National Civil Order Police, and then put through a twomonth training program before being returned to their districts.35 CSTC-A was
enthusiastic about the progress of those police units that had participated in
the program. In a news release, it stated, “Initial reviews suggest that FDD is
working, albeit slowly. Districts that have completed FDD have experienced
a 60 percent decrease in civilian casualties.”36 The optimism may have been
premature. The January 2008 Afghanistan Study Group Report, led by General
James L. Jones and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, noted,
The ANP are severely underfunded, poorly trained, and poorly equipped. . . .
In parts of the country the police are seen as a greater cause of insecurity than
the Taliban.37
In June 2008, a Department of Defense assessment showed that not one Afghan police unit out of 433 was fully capable of performing its mission; over
three-fourths of them were assessed at the lowest capability rating.38 In 2010,
the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) even
called into question the validity of the mission-capable rating system in its
entirety. It noted that the Baghlan-e Jadid police district had been rated CM1
(capable of independent operations) upon completion of the Focused District
Development program in June of 2009. However, when the SIGAR team asked
to visit the district, still rated CM1, in March of 2010, they were told it was
“not secure” and “overrun with insurgents” to the point that the Baghlan-e
Jadid police force “had withered away.”39
The problems were not limited to the police. Without effective court and
prison systems, even effective police operations have little or no impact on
security. In 2008, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index
rated Afghanistan as 172 of 179 countries. By 2013, despite intensive anticorruption efforts, Afghanistan was tied for last place with Somalia and North
Korea.40
McChrystal’s 2009 assessment noted that eight years into the conflict the
ANP lacked “training, leaders, resources, equipment, and mentoring.”41 He
pushed for the police training contract to be moved from State to Defense to
improve the quality of the training. This meant DynCorp, which had been selected by State and held the contract for the previous seven years, was ineligible
to bid. In response, DynCorp sued in U.S. Federal Court. Despite numerous
audits over the years that indicated major problems with DynCorp trainers,
DynCorp won the suit and then won the subsequent rebid of the contract.42
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 14 5
In effect, a federal court overturned the decision of the ISAF commander in
Afghanistan and forced him to continue using a contractor that had consistently failed to execute the police training mission.
McCrystal was not the only senior official who felt the ANP was not progressing. In March 2009, Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke “characterized
the ANP as ‘inadequate,’ ‘riddled with corruption,’ and the ‘weak link in the
security chain.’”43 In a joint report, the Royal United Services Institute and
the Foreign Policy Research Institute agreed.44
While the NTM-A improved the coordination of the various training elements, the shift of police training responsibility to NTM-A highlighted an
ongoing dispute concerning the proper role of the ANP. Critics of ISAF’s use of
the police felt the ANP were being misused as “little soldiers” and improperly
assigned “to isolated posts without backup” and as a result “suffered three
times the casualties of the ANA.”45 They focused on the need for a police force
capable of enforcing the rule of law in a post-conflict Afghanistan rather than
as a counterinsurgency force. In contrast, proponents of assigning the police
nationwide as a paramilitary security force understood the need for professional police but felt that until the security situation improved significantly, the
Afghan National Police must focus on the counterinsurgency security mission.
This tension was never formally resolved.
And despite the assignment of CSTC-A/NTM-A as the de facto lead for
police training, “smaller bilateral missions and the European Police Mission
(EUPOL) [continued] pursuing its own mandate.”46 This divergence of national
mandates for police training reflected only one small aspect of the coordination
issues involved in the coalition.
Local Police Initiatives
While not technically an element of the Afghan National Security Forces, any
discussion of Afghan security must include the various local police initiatives
that have been tried across the country. A series of programs attempted to
replicate the success of the “Sons of Iraq”—Afghan National Auxiliary Police (2005), Afghan Public Protection Program (2007), Community Defense
Forces (2009), Community Defense Initiative/ Local Defense Initiative (2009),
Interim Security for Critical Infrastructure (2010), Village Stability Operations
(2010), and finally the Afghan Local Police Program (2010).47 Some field reports extolled the virtues of locally recruited police/militias.48 Other reports
consistently detailed Afghan local police (ALP) abuses—corruption, assault,
14 6
T. X . H ammes
rape, murder.49 In addition, in those areas with mixed populations with long
hostility to one another the police/militias are seen as another source of power
in local conflicts. Despite these challenges, the policy of having U.S. Special
Forces teams live with ALP units resulted in major improvements in their
performance and professionalism.
Unfortunately, each of the problems with the ALP was magnified by the
withdrawal of the SF advisors. In some areas, U.S. Special Forces were replaced
by Afghan SF teams. But these teams simply lacked the resources available to
U.S. teams. Because the ALP lacked supporting institutions to provide pay,
equipment, fuel, spare parts, and ammunition, some were forced to turn to
extortion to survive.50
Continuing Problems
From the very beginning, the police training program suffered from a number of significant problems. Insufficient manning, disagreement over the police mission, corruption, and the weakness of the justice system degraded
the program from its inception. The Government Accountability Office’s
Afghanistan Security Report dated March 2009 noted CSTC-A was short
over fifteen hundred police trainers.51 Three years later, a subsequent GAO
report noted ANP instructor manning still reflected a 46.5 percent shortage.52 Despite the increased focus on ANSF development by successive ISAF
commanders—McChrystal, Petraeus, Allen, and Dunford—manning levels
for police trainers never approached even the modest levels requested by
NTM-A.
In addition, ISAF was unable to reconcile the basic dispute concerning the
mission of the police.
The most fundamental issue that must be resolved for police reform efforts
to succeed in Afghanistan is the need for a shared vision of the role of the
ANP, and a shared strategy on how to achieve that vision. In particular, there
is a need to reconcile the “German vision” of the police as a civilian law and
order force, and the “US vision” of the police as a security force with a major
counter-insurgency role.53
A different and equally significant disagreement existed over whether the
police should be centrally controlled from the MoI in Kabul or should be
controlled locally.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in working with the MoI and the ANP
was corruption. Despite focused anticorruption efforts, organizations as
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 14 7
disparate as Transparency International, World Bank, and Asia Foundation
Surveys consistently reported increasing levels of corruption in Afghanistan
from 2005 to 2013.54 In December 2013, Thomas Ruttig of Afghan Analysts Network noted, “The Ministry of Interior—known for its systematic
sale of positions—has, according to the oversight body SIGAR, completely
stopped its anti-corruption reforms.”55 In its 2017 report, Transparency
International found corruption perceptions “have not changed significantly
over recent years.”56
Key Issues for the Future of Afghan National Security Forces
In April of 2014, the Department of Defense expressed optimism concerning
the ability of the Afghan National Security Forces to deal with the Taliban.
Unfortunately, the optimism had to be tempered with significant caveats.
ANSF capability is no longer the biggest uncertainty facing Afghanistan. Since
taking the lead for security operations nationwide in June 2013, the ANSF
demonstrated an ability to overmatch the Taliban consistently, with limited
ISAF support. The sustainability of gains to date will be dependent on a number of factors, to include: Afghan ownership of the security and economic
problems facing their country to date; the outcome of the presidential elections
and Afghanistan’s ability to reach internal political equilibrium, international
financial support after 2014; the ability of the new Afghan government to put
in place the legal structures needed to attract investment and promote growth;
and the size and structure of the post-2014 U.S. and NATO presence.57
A bit later in the report, DoD noted that “the logistics and facilities departments for the MoD and MoI still required coalition assistance and were expected to continue to require support in the near future.”58
For its part, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) noted that funding
would remain a major challenge for the ANSF. In its usual “just the facts,
ma’am” style, the CRS noted the discrepancy between currently pledged funds
and those funds actually needed to maintain the ANSF at the 352,000 men
deemed necessary for security.59
Perhaps an even greater challenge will be maintaining the professionalism
and end-strength of ANSF. As of late 2013, 31.4 percent of the ANSF did not
reenlist each year.60 With an end-strength goal of 352,000, ANSF will have
to recruit, train, and equip 110,528 new personnel every year—or more than
the 2013 recruiting goal for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps combined.61 To
this must be added the replacements for combat casualties—almost 12,000
just in the first half of 2015.62
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In late 2014, SIGAR released a list of seven high-risk programs that were
particularly vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse. Number one on the list
was “Corruption and Rule of Law.” Number three on the list was the Afghan
National Security Forces.63
Training Teams
In Afghanistan, the initial advisory effort consisted of the CIA and special
operations forces teams inserted to support the Northern Alliance militias
in the campaign to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan. At this point, the
advisory effort was the main effort for U.S. forces in Operation Enduring
Freedom. Once the initial campaign was over, the emphasis shifted to operations conducted by U.S. forces. As noted above, initial efforts to raise
Afghan forces were improvised. The commanders understood the need for
advisors and formed embedded training teams (ETTs) to work with each
kandak (battalion). Initially assigned to a kandak after it completed its training cycle, in March 2005 ETTs began to be assigned to kandaks on the first
day of training.64 When NATO became more involved in training Afghan
forces, they formed NATO Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams. In time,
twenty-seven nations provided trainers to these thirteen-to-thirty-person
teams which were assigned to kandaks as well as brigade and corps headquarters.65 Despite this international effort, the ANA never received sufficient numbers of advisors.
In 2008, the GAO reported, “While trainers or mentors are present in
every ANA combat unit, less than half the required number are deployed in
the field.”66 Police advisory efforts were further complicated by the fact police
were often assigned to small stations spread over the entire country. While it
was feasible to provide advisors to headquarters and large city police stations,
it was simply impossible to provide advisors to most police stations. Police
advisory efforts were markedly more challenging and therefore less effective
than armed forces advisory efforts. Efforts were made to provide advisors
whenever possible, but police advising, by its very nature, is a much more
challenging proposition than advising military forces.
There was a lively debate as to whether or not the ANSF could hold its
own against a resurgent Taliban. Few questioned the ability of the ANA to
fight. Despite increased attacks and high casualties, the ANA remained an aggressive, effective fighting force. Unfortunately, many observers questioned the
ability of its institutions to sustain the combat forces. Thus both the U.S. and
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 14 9
NATO missions needed to focus on assisting the ministries with these critical
sustaining functions. While Afghan forces clearly continued to fight hard (as
indicated by their casualties), the military outcome remained in question. As
NATO forces withdrew from the country, the security situation worsened. On
July 9, 2014, the United Nations announced that Afghan civilian casualties
in the first half of 2014 had surged to the highest level since 2009.67 In July
2015, the New York Times reported that casualties for the first half of 2015
were 50 percent higher than in 2014.68
Lesson 1: Have a Plan
This painfully obvious lesson should not have to be stated. While circumstance precluded detailed preinvasion planning, it took years before realistic
plans were developed to provide appropriately sized forces. Prior to that a
series of plans that seemed to be based on hasty estimates and poor understandings of the societies involved were developed. Each successive plan increased the number of security forces to be recruited, trained, and equipped
but resourcing never caught up. Worse, command-and-control arrangements
kept changing as we tried to adapt to the novel situation of an over-fortycountry alliance.
Lesson 2: Understand the Problem You Are Trying to Solve
A frequent error seen in dealing with interactively complex problems is a
failure to clearly understand the real problem that has to be solved. Coalition
efforts seemed to be based on the idea of a two-sided conflict—the government versus the insurgents. The reality was much more complex, with ethnic,
political, religious, institutional, and cultural differences driving much of the
conflict. In fact, the historical record of outsiders overcoming deep ethnic,
religious, and culture schisms within any society is very poor. This is not a
new factor nor should it have been a surprise.
The U.S. efforts to transfer the population-centric approach used in Iraq
to Afghanistan did not result in the dramatic improvements in security seen
in Iraq. Bluntly, a flawed understanding of the political and social dynamics in
Afghanistan led us to the approach of “population-centric counterinsurgency,”
which did not significantly reduce the levels of violence.69 This highlights the
fact that despite major efforts to understand a complex problem, planners may
still define it incorrectly and must be prepared to adjust accordingly.
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Lesson 3: Align Personnel Policies to Operational Needs
As noted, frequent reorganizations of the U.S. and coalition command arrangements led to confusion. This was exacerbated by the short tours of
most trainers, which made it very difficult for the host nation personnel to
establish relationships with their coalition counterparts. Further, the mix of
government and contract training personnel contributed to fragmentation
of coalition efforts. Finally, the training and mentoring establishments never
received the number of personnel required by their tables of organization.
If that were not enough, personnel without the required knowledge or skill
were often assigned in an effort to fill those billets. To attract the right personnel, advising must be given the same promotion weight as commanding
a U.S. unit.
The requirement to match approach to culture severely complicates any
advisory effort. Because U.S. advisors can only train what they know, advisors must be educated in culturally appropriate and hence different ways to
organize ministries and forces before they deploy. Personnel planners should
assume that developing and executing such a program—including the essentially basic language training—will take at least a year. If advisory tours
remain one year long, this will effectively double the personnel requirement
for advisory efforts.
Lesson 4: Understand the Culture That Drives the Societies in Conflict
Any proposed solution must be functional within the host nation cultural
context. The Joint and Coalition Operation Analysis of a Decade of War
noted that the planned end state was based largely on U.S. expectations instead of those consistent with the host nation and mission.
Perhaps the single most challenging cultural problem in both nations was
corruption—as the West understands it. Virtually every after-action report
noted corruption as siphoning off a major portion of resources as well as
placing unqualified personnel in key billets from district to national levels. The
problem of course is figuring out what is considered corruption in the specific
culture and what is considered greasing the wheels or a moral obligation to
take care of family. The reality remains that without the exchange of funds
or favors, projects do not get completed. Clearly we will have to deal with
corruption in future efforts. However, we must understand what represents
wasteful corruption and what represents necessary transactions or even moral
obligations for that society. We should remember that while we may abhor
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 15 1
contractors offering money to government officials to procure contracts, an
outsider might think the U.S. lobbying system looks remarkably similar. Money
is paid to a lobbyist or directly to an election campaign and certain laws or
programs are approved.
Lesson 5: Structure Ministries and Forces Appropriate
to the Problem and the Societies in Conflict
The United States developed ministries and forces modeled on our own. The
political, economic, social (cultural) conditions of these countries made this
approach problematic and unsustainable without a significant U.S. presence.
Compounding the problem was a failure to understand that the actual organization and functioning of the ministries of defense and interior are inevitably tied to the political and social structures of the host nations. This
was particularly damaging since ministerial development is both more critical and much more difficult than fielding forces. The coalition attempted to
establish apolitical, merit-based, technocratic ministries. The domestic political situation and vicious conflicts within the governments meant this was an
unattainable goal.
The United States government has a tendency to default to police as the
“front line” in any counterinsurgency operation. Unfortunately, doctrinal attitudes about the police role in counterinsurgency are based heavily on British
experiences. In the primary cases—Malaya and Northern Ireland—Britain
was the governing power and had spent centuries establishing the British
system of policing and justice. Thus police were culturally less threatening
than army personnel to the native populations. However, in many parts of
the world, the police are the most oppressive and corrupt element of the host
nation government.
Lesson 6: Develop Effective, Accurate, and Appropriate
Metrics to Inform Senior Decision Makers
Metrics were considered central to the U.S. command’s understanding of
the fight in both theaters. The United States dedicated a great deal of effort
to developing an effective set of metrics to allow commanders to understand the situation on the ground. However, the lack of language skills,
short tours, and sheer complexity of the political, social, and economic
environment made accurate measurement nearly impossible. The durability
of this problem is reflected by the wide discrepancy between the generally
optimistic reports from the military chain and the often pessimistic reports
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from GAO, CRS, Afghan Analysts Network, and most other independent
organizations.
The fact remains that metrics will continue to be a major factor driving
political and military decisions in wars such as these. It is critical that an effective method for determining, reporting, and interpreting metrics be developed.
Notes
1. UN Security Council Resolution 1368 (2001), http://www.refworld.org/
cgi-in/texis/vtx/rwmain?docid=3c4e94557.
2. CSTC-A, “United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National Security Forces, June 2008,” 5, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/united_states_plan_
for_sustaining_the_afghanistan_national_security_forces_1231.pdf, accessed 28
October 2014.
3. Tim Bird and Alex Marshall, Afghanistan: How the West Lost Its Way
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 119.
4. Interview with Major General Karl Eikenberry, in Eyewitness to War Volume III: US Army Advisors in Afghanistan, ed. Michael G. Brooks (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, n.d.)..
5. Interview with Colonel Mike Milley, in Eyewitness to War Volume III: US
Army Advisors in Afghanistan, ed. Michael G. Brooks (Fort Leavenworth, KS:
Combat Studies Institute Press, n.d.), 95–111.
6. Robert B. Oakley and T. X. Hammes, “Securing Afghanistan: Entering a
Make-or-Break Phase?” Strategic Forum 205 (March 2004): 4.
7. Ibid, 15.
8. Frederick Rice, “Afghanistan Unit Takes on New Mission, Name,” American Forces Press Service, 13 July 2005, http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.
aspx?id=16650, accessed 28 October 2014.
9. NATO “Progress in Afghanistan, Bucharest Summit, 2–4 April 2008,” 4,
http://www.isaf.nato.int/pdf/progress_afghanistan_2008.pdf, accessed 27 October 2014.
10. CSTC-A, “United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National
Security Forces, June 2008,” 6, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/united_states_plan_
for_sustaining_the_afghanistan_national_security_forces_1231.pdf, accessed 28
October 2014.
11. CSTC-A, “United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National
Security Forces, June 2008,” 4.
12. NATO “Progress in Afghanistan, Bucharest Summit 2–4 April 2008,” 8.
13. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan Security: Further Congressional Action May Be Needed to Ensure Completion of a Detailed Plan to
Develop and Sustain Capable Afghan National Security Forces,” June 2008, 3,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08661.pdf, accessed 28 October 2014.
14. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan: Key Issues for Congressional
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 15 3
Oversight,” April 2009, 20, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09473sp.pdf, accessed 25
October 2014.
15. “NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan,” National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/operations-supporting-docs/
ntm-a.page, accessed 28 October 2014.
16. “NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_52802.htm, accessed 29 October 2014.
17. General Stanley A. McChrystal to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
“COMISAF’s Initial Assessment,” 30 August 2009, 2–15, http://www2.gwu.
edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB292/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf, accessed 29 October 2014.
18. John Brummet, “Actions Needed to Improve the Reliability of Afghan
Security Force Assessments,” Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, June 29, 2010, 2, http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/audits/2010–
06–29audit-10–11.pdf, accessed 25 October 2014.
19. International Crisis Group, “A Force in Fragments: Reconstituting the
Afghan National Army,” Asia Report No 190, 12 May 2010, ii.
20. “Long Road Ahead for Afghan Security Forces: Interview with Dr. Jack
Kem,” Council on Foreign Relations, August 17, 2010, http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/long-road-ahead-afghan-security-forces/p22805, accessed 11 November 2014.
21. Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 24.
22. Cheryl Pellerin, “Afghan Security Forces Grow in Numbers, Quality,”
American Forces Press Service, 23 May 2011, http://www.defense.gov//news/
newsarticle.aspx?id=64044, accessed 29 October 2014.
23. Kenneth Katzman, “Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and
U.S. Policy,” 9 October 2014, 27–28, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf,
accessed 22 October 2014.
24. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan Security: Long-Standing Challenges May Affect Progress and Sustainment of Afghan National Security Forces,” 24 July 2012, 2.
25. Ibid., 8–9.
26. Ibid., 6.
27. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan Key Oversight Issues,”
February 2013, 20.
28. Andrew Wilder, “Cops or Robbers? The Struggle to Reform the Afghan
National Police,” Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, July 2007, vi,
http://www.areu.org.af/Uploads/EditionPdfs/717E-Cops%20or%20Robbers-IPprint.pdf, accessed 22 October 2014.
29. “Summary of the Afghan National Police,” Program for Culture & Conflict Studies, Naval Postgraduate School, http://www.nps.edu/programs/ccs/National/ANP.html, accessed 22 October 2014.
15 4
T. X . H ammes
30. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan Security: Efforts to Establish Army and Police Have Made Progress, but Future Plans Need to Be Better
Defined,” June 2005, 8.
31. David H. Bayley and Robert M. Perito, The Police in War: Fighting Insurgency, Terrorism, and Violent Crime (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2010), 112.
32. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan Security: Efforts to Establish Army and Police,” 19.
33. Wilder, “Cops or Robbers?” 11–13.
34. “Summary of the Afghan National Police.”
35. CSTC-A, “United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National
Security Forces, June 2008,” 4.
36. “Afghan National Police,” Institute for the Study of War, https://www.
understandingwar.org/afghan-national-police-anp, accessed 3 November 2014.
37. James L. Jones and Thomas R. Pickering, “Revitalizing Our Efforts. Rethinking Our Strategies,” Afghan Study Group Report, Center for the Study of
the Presidency, 30 January 30 2008, 34.
38. Michael Johnson Jr., “Afghanistan Security: U.S. Efforts to Develop Capable Afghan Police Forces Face Challenges and Need a Coordinated, Detailed
Plan to Help Ensure Accountability,” Government Accountability Office, http://
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08–883T, accessed 3 November 2014.
39. Brummet, “Actions Needed,” 13.
40. Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2013, http://
www.transparency.org/cpi2013/results, accessed 30 October 2014.
41. McChrystal to Gates, “COMISAF’s Initial Assessment,” 2–15.
42. Spencer Ackerman, “Mercs Win Billion Dollar Afghan Cop Deal. Again.”
Danger Room, 21 December 2010, http://www.wired.com/2010/12/controversial-firm-snags-another-billion-dollar-afghan-police-deal/, accessed 3 November
2014.
43. Robert M. Perito, “Afghanistan’s Police: The Weak Link in Security Sector Reform,” U.S. Institute of Peace Special Report, (August 2009): 2, http://
www.usip.org/sites/default/files/afghanistan_police.pdf., accessed 22 October
2014.
44. RUSI and FPRI, “Reforming the Afghan National Police,” i, http://www.
fpri.org/docs/ReformingAfghanNationalPolice.pdf, accessed 3 November 2014.
45. Perito,”Afghanistan’s Police,” 1.
46. Michelle Hughes, “The Afghan National Police in 2015 and Beyond,”
U.S. Institute of Peace, May 2014, 2, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/
SR346_The_Afghan_National_Police_in_2015_and_Beyond.pdf, accessed 25
October 2014.
47. Human Rights Watch, “Just Don’t Call It a Militia,” September 2011, 15,
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/afghanistan0911webwcover_0.pdf,
accessed 3 November 2014.
48. David Axe, “NATO Cancel Afghan Cop Program,” Danger Room, 10
R aising and M entoring S ecurity F orces in A fghanistan 15 5
April 2008, http://www.wired.com/2008/04/nato-cancels-af, accessed 3 November 2014.
49. Human Rights Watch, “Just Don’t Call It a Militia.”
50. Margherita Stancati, “Left Unmoored, Afghan Local Police Pose New
Risk,” Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2014, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10
001424052702304679404579459270523670760, accessed 3 November 2014.
51. Government Accountability Office Afghanistan Security Report, “U.S.
Programs to Further Reform the Ministry of Interior and National Police Challenged by Lack of Military Personnel and Afghan Cooperation,” March 2009,
11.
52. ISAF Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan,
December 2012, 53, http://www.defense.gov/news/1230_Report_final.pdf, accessed 25 October 2014.
53. Wilder, “Cops or Robbers?” x.
54. Civil Military Fusion Center, “Corruption & Anti-Corruption Issues in
Afghanistan,” February 2012, 6, and Transparency International Corruption
Perceptions Index 2013, http://www.transparency.org/cpi2013/results, accessed
30 October 2014.
55. Thomas Ruttig, “Some Things Got Better—How Much Got Good?” Afghanistan Analysts Network, 30 December 2013, http://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/some-things-got-better-how-much-got-good-a-short-review-of-12-yearsof-international-intervention-in-afghanistan, accessed 3 November 2014.
56. Edris Arib, “Policy, SDGS and Fighting Corruption for the People,”
Transparency International 39, https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/policy_sdgs_and_fighting_corruption_afghanistan_a_civil_society_report,
accessed 18 December 2019.
57. Department of Defense, “Report on the Progress Toward Security
and Stability in Afghanistan,” April 2014, 5, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/
April_1230_Report_Final.pdf, accessed 4 November 2014.
58. Ibid, 27.
59. Kenneth Katzman and Clayton Thomas, “Afghanistan: Post-Taliban
Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service, 13 December 2017, 27–28, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf, accessed 4 November 2019.
60. Katzman and Thomas, “Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security,
and U.S. Policy.”
61. Department of Defense, “Report on Progress Towards Security and Stability in Afghanistan, October 2013, 48.
62. Joseph Goldstein, “Afghan Security Forces Struggle Just to Maintain Stalemate,” New York Times, July 22, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/
world/asia/afghan-security-forces-struggle-just-to-maintain-stalemate.html?hp
&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=topnews&WT.nav=top-news, accessed 22 July 2015.
15 6
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63. SIGAR, “High Risk List,” 1, December 2014, http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/
spotlight/High-Risk_List.pdf, accessed 11 December 2014.
64. Mirtha Villarreal, “Embedded Training Teams Making History in Afghanistan,” DoD News, March 21, 2005, http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=31140, accessed March 31, 2015.
65. “Fact Sheet: NATO’s Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams (OMLTs)
October 2009,” NATO HQ Brussels, http://www.nato.int/isaf/topics/factsheets/
omlt-factsheet.pdf, accessed March 31, 2015.
66. Government Accountability Office, “Afghanistan Security: Further Congressional Action May Be Needed to Ensure Completion of a Detailed Plan to
Develop and Sustain Capable Afghan National Security Forces,” June 2008, 3,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08661.pdf, accessed 28 October 2014.
67. UNAMA, “Afghanistan: Midyear Report 2014 Protection of Civilians
in Armed Conflict,” Kabul, July 2014, http://unama.unmissions.org/LinkClick.
aspx?fileticket=m_XyrUQDKZg%3d&tabid=12254&mid=15756&language
=en-US, accessed 28 October 2014.
68. Goldstein, “Afghan Security Forces Struggle Just to Maintain Stalemate.”
69. Tyler Jost, “Defend, Defect or Desert?: The Future of the Afghan Security
Forces,” Center for New American Security, January 2015, 4, http://www.cnas.
org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS_Afghan_ANF_policybrief_Jost.pdf,
accessed 9 January 2015.
Chapter 9
THE ACCIDENTAL COUNTERINSURGENTS
U . S . P E R F O R M A N C E I N A F G H A N I S TA N
Todd Greentree
In his memorable characterization of what motivates Afghan insurgents,
David Kilcullen wrote, “The local fighter is . . . an accidental guerrilla—fighting us because we are in his space, not because he wishes to invade ours.”1
By the same inference, Americans became accidental counterinsurgents in
Afghanistan—fighting the Taliban because they helped al–Qaeda, who invaded our space and attacked us on September 11, 2001.
The long counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan was literally an accident.
It is also a warning. This was not a war the United States had planned or
prepared to fight, and once committed, the demands of war drove strategy
rather than the other way around. Military misfortune has contradicted
success; the counterterrorist aim has been achieved, but only provisionally,
the Afghan state is no more than marginally stable; and the unilateral U.S.
drawdown combined with negotiations with the Taliban places the future of
the international commitment deeply in doubt. However, in another sense
the war must be judged a failure. Despite overwhelming advantages that
included predominance of force, resources, operational proficiency, and
presumed nation-building capability, these were not sufficient strategically
to achieve a decisive outcome. Most important, the war did not come to an
end. Only the most willful explanation could justify how it was possible to
have expended so much cost and effort for so long to have achieved such
inconclusive results.
15 8
T odd G reentree
Among the many reasons that help explain this unfortunate outcome in
Afghanistan are institutional shortcomings that compromised performance.
The basic argument is that the U.S. interagency process, civil-military relations, and bureaucratic politics all worked against success, despite highly
professional, even preeminent military, intelligence, diplomatic, development,
and other organizations.
Vietnam and Afghanistan: Lessons of History
Afghanistan (with Iraq as the companion to this narrative) is not the first
time the United States found itself fatigued after combating a virulent insurgency while supporting a deeply troubled government in a protracted
military intervention. The Vietnam War is the obvious benchmark, and
comparison of U.S. performance in Vietnam and Afghanistan is the starting point for this analysis.2 Despite the great differences in those two wars,
most important being that Afghanistan did not result in defeat and national
tragedy, the parallels are significant and revealing. In 1972, Robert Komer,
the well-known civilian deputy commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS), wrote an assessment of the U.S. failure in Vietnam, which he
titled Bureaucracy Does Its Thing.3
To judge by results in Afghanistan, Komer’s observations did not take. The
lessons of Vietnam did not endure as lessons learned, as the lists of supposedly
new wisdom now emerging from recent wars bear out.4 It should be far more
distressing than apparently it is that recent U.S. performance in Afghanistan
parallels in so many ways that in Southeast Asia half a century ago. One
basic reason is because U.S. foreign policy and national security institutions,
as they evolved out of World War II and the Cold War, were not designed for
intervention in internal conflicts but for other purposes. A repeated problem
set has been the result:
1. The amount of time it took to understand and adapt to circumstances
on the ground, along with the discontinuities between initial approaches
taken to the conflicts and the strategies that eventually emerged
2. The overwhelming militarization of the response, despite thorough understanding of the importance of non-military dimensions, along with
the persistent use of existing capabilities, even when their effects were less
than optimal
3. The ways that traditional approaches to civil-military relations and re-
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source management, along with institutional inertia, friction, and divided
authorities across multiple autonomous organizations, hindered unity of
effort and command
4. The attempt to mold a foreign government and its security forces in the
image of modern nation-states without taking into sufficient account vast
differences in culture and levels of development
5. The overly optimistic assumption that existing U.S. instruments of power
were capable of achieving ambitious aims at reasonable cost, within a
limited timeframe, and without regard to the limits to power
Throughout the long arc of the Afghan war, U.S. performance fell by accident
into every one of these patterns.
The first order of error arose from misjudging the character of the war in
Afghanistan as an extension of the misconceived “Global War on Terrorism.”
Having invaded to avenge 9/11 and defeat al-Qaeda, the United States proceeded into a direct fight against Pashtun Islamists, whose concern was internal
rather than international. A second complication stemmed from aspiring to
transform Afghanistan into a modernized nation-state far removed from its
recent condition, level of development, and sociopolitical nature. Third, the
massively complex American-led COIN by coalition that adopted heavily
militarized nation-building as an extension of warfighting reversed the order
of using military means to achieve political aims. Unexamined assumptions
that this effort could be accomplished as an economy of force contingency
operation on a compressed timeline were further complications.
Innovation and Adaptation: Groundhog Day All Over Again
“As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the
Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”5 This reference to
then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s reply to a soldier in Iraq who
complained about a lack of properly armored vehicles in 2004 has become
an infamous cliché. Yet the larger truth about U.S. performance it captures
is that a nation goes to war not only with the military equipment and technology it has at the time, but with the organizations of government—both
armed forces and civilian—it has at the time as well.
When stressed, organizations, like species, must adapt or fail. U.S. government institutions experienced major stress in reaction to 9/11, and their
resulting adaptations varied enormously. In Afghanistan, one of the central
theaters where that reaction took place, adaptation was in some respects
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successful, but in others troubled. Operation Enduring Freedom began with
effective innovation under exceedingly challenging circumstances during the
final months of 2001. Organized specifically for the mission and operating
flexibly—hallmarks of CIA paramilitary action—a small number of intelligence
officers, special operations forces (SOF), and coalition partners rallied Afghan
irregulars while U.S. aircraft dropped precision guided munitions to achieve
quick decisive overthrow of the Taliban and rout al-Qaeda.6 In complementary
political-diplomatic action, the U.S. convened concerned nations and Afghan
leaders in Bonn to establish a new state, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
At that moment, the United States was the arbiter of power, and organizational
innovation had made it possible. From that military and political culminating
point, however, success became elusive, and established institutional arrangements were part of the problem.
Some adaptations were evolutionary. This was particularly true of intelligence-driven direct action operations that when supplemented with drones
became the primary tactics of hunting terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) set up across the country represented
an authentic attempt to balance military and non-military dimensions of stabilization and counterinsurgency. Some adaptations were more problematic.
The advantages of mission command and unit learning cycles allowed the
U.S. military to sustain its commitment to Afghanistan, but also resulted in
a Groundhog Day syndrome that hindered operational proficiency from accumulating strategic success as units came and went. Shifting to populationcentric counterinsurgency and the 2009 troop surge were extremely important.
The problem was that it took nearly a decade to get these critical changes in
employment and force levels into place.
The sheer complexity of the Afghanistan mission became an issue in itself.
At its height, the U.S.-led coalition had grown into multiple overlapping and
parallel structures that included regional commands, task forces, forward operating bases and combat outposts, and thirty-seven PRTs under International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command, with a parallel International Joint
Command operational headquarters and a multiplicity of special operations
and other semiautonomous commands. In addition, the world’s largest CIA
presence operated separately, and other U.S. civilian agencies headquartered
in the U.S. Embassy were almost equally independent. In some respects, this
organizational complexity reflected the diverse and often disconnected nature
of Afghanistan itself. The massive effort did eliminate the international terrorist
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threat and result in relative stability. That it did not result in anything more
than a marginally functioning state or prevent the Taliban from regrouping
into a virulent insurgency is evidence of its strategic insufficiency.
Although justified at each stage by a rational calculus, the U.S. effort was
largely reactive, and perhaps the best explanation that it developed the way
it did was because the resources, capabilities, and instruments were available,
and both civilian and military leaders decided it could. In other words, it was
in the nature of U.S. institutions, and especially the operating style of the
military, to take over the war.
The principal lesson here may be that if Big COIN appears to be a solution,
it is already too late. A more modest alternative available early on would have
taken advantage of the defeat and dispersal of the Taliban, while adapting
U.S. priorities to Afghan needs and the Afghan way of war. This would have
required less ambitious nation-building and more effort to develop the Afghan
National Security Forces. With a little modification, T. E. Lawrence said it
extremely well in 1917:
Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the [Afghans] do
it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help
them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of
[Afghanistan], your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think
it is.7
Civil-Military Relations Begin at the Top
From the ground perspective in Afghanistan, it was evident at the outset that
the troop surge announced by President Obama at West Point on December
1, 2009, was flawed. The new direction was no surprise, and neither were
its flaws. The surge was after all a variant of the strategy used in similar circumstances to reverse the rise of the insurgency in Iraq two years earlier. In
a sense, the system worked. The president appropriately assumed command,
and the months-long interagency reassessment was an earnest effort. Clashes
among the civilian and military participants, along with leaks that engaged
the press, Congress, and the public, could be considered inevitable to the deliberative process by which alternatives were deliberated and decisions taken.
The surge did achieve its immediate intent with a jolt of force that blunted
the Taliban offensive and stabilized the situation in Afghanistan.
But the process was seriously belated, and it revealed major shortcomings in strategy-making and managing civil-military relations. 8 The taxing
additional commitment of forces became necessary because prior errors and
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insufficient effort had accidentally created the conditions that allowed the
Taliban insurgency, putatively the weaker side, to capture the initiative in the
first place. Although their resurgence became evident in 2006, there was a
three-year lag, which included a presidential election cycle, before measures
to address it were in place.
The reassessment itself became a strategic devolution. The narrow debate
over troop numbers reinforced the influence of politically astute military commanders over the less prevalent strategically aware civilian leaders. Once set
at thirty thousand troops, only the commander in chief could have prevented
the marines from misdirecting their major contribution in the form of a selfcontained expeditionary force to Helmand, a province that, although a Taliban
stronghold, contained less than 3 percent of the population and was not the
insurgent center of gravity. The entire surge package manifested a pattern
in the U.S. response to the challenges of limited war that goes back as far
as Korea.9 It was a time-bound, second-best solution under tight domestic
constraints to reverse a losing war that had protracted to the point of fatigue,
while forestalling an open-ended commitment. It constituted an unsustainable
increase in counterinsurgency effort. It did not amount to a complete strategy
in the sense that its purpose was not to win or otherwise bring the Afghan war
to conclusion. The unilateral declaration accompanying the subsequent troop
drawdown that “the tide of war was receding,” however pragmatic it may
have been politically, did not take account of the fact that adversaries who
retained the will to contend did not share this perspective. Such judgments
about aims, resource allocation, and timing are ultimately and appropriately
the purview of civilian leadership, but on balance, were such sacrifices of
strategic sense prudent?
A Band of Brothers or a Team of Rivals?
The terms “whole of government” and “the interagency” are awkward in
more than just grammar; applied to U.S. government performance in Afghanistan they are symbols for institutional incompetence. Intervening in a
distant and war-torn country such as Afghanistan was enormously complex,
but to the extent that adaptation did take place, it never did overcome the
competition among agencies with divided authorities as they pursued unbounded and often contradictory goals, or the inertial tendency of bureaucracy to do what it has always done while resisting realignment of power and
resources. The resulting organizational friction made the simplest things dif-
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ficult at all levels of organization, both horizontally and vertically, in Washington and the field, and in all executive bodies, beginning with the National
Security Council, and extending to the Armed Forces, the State Department,
and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the
many other federal agencies with established equities in Afghanistan, from
the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Department of Agriculture. It is no
mystery that grappling with Afghanistan through the existing system hampered, and in some cases crippled U.S. performance, and it bears repeating
that these were the same problems the United States encountered in Vietnam.
If the saying is true that counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was 80 percent
non-military and 20 percent military, perhaps the most serious institutional
problem was the degree of separation between military and civilian realms.
While civilian authority over the military is a foundation of the American system, this was hardly a concern in Afghanistan. The more important problems
stemmed from a model of civil-military relations oriented to conventional war,
military predominance, and the inability of civilian organizations to perform.
On the one hand, the military by orientation to command and control assumed
non-military competencies, whether or not civilians were at hand. On the
other, the promised “civilian surge” never did materialize, and in any case, as
former Ambassador and Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman put it, in
Afghanistan, “Other parts of the government were not at war.”10
As in other internal conflicts, political and military dimensions in Afghanistan were inseparable at all levels, from Kabul to the village. However logical
it may have seemed to integrate the civilian and military sides of the house,
especially at the height of the effort during 2009–2012, attempts to overcome
their long-standing normative separation never truly succeeded. Komer believed he had built an effective organization in Vietnam by establishing unity
of command over both civilian and military personnel assigned to the CORDS
program, only to be handicapped by lack of a corresponding structure in
Washington. Richard Holbrooke, who had worked for Komer, wasted no
time trying to remedy that flaw when he became Special Representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) in January 2009. Using the State Department’s putative mandate to coordinate the conduct of U.S. foreign relations, the
SRAP office achieved unprecedented influence over operations and programs
as an interagency body tailored specifically for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Ironically however, there never was a corresponding structure in Kabul, and
other civilian agencies, particularly USAID, jealously guarded their authorities
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from the SRAP office, as did the military services, the Pentagon, the CIA, and
most important, the National Security Council staff.
Not at War in the Kabubble
The same issues of civil-military relations and divided authority pervaded the
U.S. mission headquartered in Kabul. In general, the ambassador has formal
authority “over every executive branch employee in the host country, except
those under the command of a U.S. area military commander.” At war in
Afghanistan, this authority remained unresolved. The Chief of Mission presided with powerful influence but did not entirely rule over civilian agency
representatives, while the tenor of civil-military relations in Afghanistan derived in large measure from the informal abilities of the U.S. ambassador
and the ISAF commander to get along with each other. To a degree this sufficed. But there was a range from partnership to animosity over the years in
Afghanistan, and any discomfort at the top made it universally evident how
crucial personal relations were at all levels, while revealing how inadequate
they were for resolving underlying issues.
The embassy in Kabul, as in other U.S. missions, is organized around the
Country Team, in which agency representatives serve under the authority of
the Chief of Mission while reporting simultaneously to their own headquarters.
This is a venerable system, and under good leadership the Country Team can
function reasonably well as both an interagency matrix and organization-specific
hierarchy. When the U.S. mission in Afghanistan expanded under the heavy operational demands of the surge, it assumed many of the disadvantages and few
of the advantages of a large bureaucracy. Staffed with over a thousand officers
from more than a dozen agencies, there were at one point fifteen interagency
working groups to coordinate the multifaceted civilian presence and work with
the separate ISAF and multiple other military commands, along with four, and
sometimes five, ambassadors to oversee them. From the field, regional platforms
and PRTs reported separately to Kabul, as did other civilian agencies with a
large field presence, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency. Internal procedures
multiplied and became more formalized, but not necessarily more efficient.
Major bottlenecks accumulated and traditional authority structures and procedures persisted, leaving mid-level and field personnel disempowered. Clearly,
this growth went well beyond the carrying capacity of the Country Team model.
Efforts to innovate produced a mixed record. Within the U.S. mission, the
Office of Interagency Provincial Affairs (IPA) strove among intense interagency
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competition to control what were termed “subnational” issues and operations.
Originally set up with a flat structure to support a few dozen field officers in
the PRTs, the IPA necessarily ballooned with the surge, becoming more layered
but less operational as a result. Most staff embassy-wide had limited connection, not only with Afghans but with field officers, whom they outnumbered
by a significant margin. Even though few within the U.S. Embassy would
disagree that what happened outside of the capital was crucial, an inward
focus on the “Kabubble” was pervasive and self-absorbing. This customary
propensity reflected the core business of conducting relations between national
governments, along with the demands of bureaucracy to spend much of its
time and energy interacting with itself. Oppressive security restrictions were
a further constraint.
In the field, U.S. civilian “platforms” consisting of a dozen or more officers
were set up in the four much larger regional commands during 2009. Each
was headed by a Senior Civilian Representative (SCR) who was nominally
equivalent to the two-star military commander and ostensibly in charge of
U.S. civilian agencies and resources in their region. In practice, even the most
influential SCRs, along with platform staffs, served principally as advisors and
program coordinators with very limited authority.
U.S. PRTs, which dated to 2002, were present in seventeen Afghan provinces to carry out governance and development activities. As part of the surge,
a small number of district support teams (DSTs) also began working out of
forward operating bases in 2009. The PRTs were primarily a military innovation, which included assigning navy and air force officers as commanders,
and the military dominated them despite their principally non-military mission. Individual civilian officers from the State Department, USAID, and the
Department of Agriculture did make valuable contributions as advisors and
project managers. Although it may not be fair to propose a blanket judgment
about the performance of the PRTs and DSTs—and some did extremely good
work in their areas—for many reasons, the sum tended to be less than the
whole of its parts.
The absence of a sustained, coherent, and actionable process for civilmilitary planning was a glaring weakness in Afghanistan that ensured the
impossibility of making the 80:20 rule work. During its brief existence from
2008 to 2010, the Integrated Civil Military Action Group (ICMAG) did
achieve reasonable success as a small team that managed complex executive
decision-making within the mission and linked the mission to the field through
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a hands-on planning process. However, when new embassy leadership in 2010
dissolved ICMAG and replaced it with the Civilian-Military Planning and
Assessment Section (CMPASS), the result was an organizational demotion.
The primary responsibility of CMPASS was to centralize drafting of the U.S.
Government Integrated Civil-Military Campaign Plan for Afghanistan.11 As
is so often the case with such exercises, the plan took months to prepare and
proved suitable as a compendium of activities and programs that, if anything,
served as a reference document more than a usable road map.
With or without an executive secretariat like ICMAG, the Country Team
remained dedicated to control and hierarchical management, but it lacked the
organizational integrity to handle dozens of activities and programs involving
hundreds of people across Afghanistan. Civilians and military personnel often
worked extremely well together in the field. However, no overarching process
to synchronize civilian and military activities ever gelled, while an underlying
drive to maintain separate civilian and military spheres was as strong as it was
incoherent. One illustration from Regional Platform-South during the height
of the surge in 2011 is telling. While a small civil-military cell was building a
Regional South Stabilization Approach to integrate civilian and military “lines of
effort,” the leadership, nominally a two-star rank, was at the same time resisting
participation in RC-South operational planning, aspiring instead, in the words
of one senior civilian officer, “[t]o just come up with something different.”12
Surging Civilians?
It was also clear that the State Department and USAID, as well as agencies
with specific roles to play such as the Departments of Justice and Agriculture, lacked the capacity even if they had the capability to carry out missions
that fell into their areas of expertise and authority. In the first instance, much
of the problem with civilian organization and performance was attributed to
lack of resources, to the extent that former Secretary of Defense Gates placed
himself in the forefront of a campaign alongside then Secretary of State Clinton to convince Congress to support greater funding for civilian agencies.
Part of the attempted solution was to accompany the military surge in 2009
with a $2 billion “civilian surge” (AKA civilian uplift). The much-vaunted
increase did manage to bring the number of civilians in Afghanistan up to
just over twelve hundred, but this was well short of what was promised. As
one general officer observed in 2011 when told the civilian surge was at its
high-water mark, he could feel it “lapping at my ankles.”
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There were other serious downsides, both to effectiveness and institutional integrity, that money could not solve. Though the civilian surge was
built around calls for volunteers among the Foreign Service and Civil Service
throughout the federal government, in the end many if not most of the recruits
came from outside the U.S. government. There were accomplished professionals among the range of civilian recruits, but their ability to function in a
conflict environment like Afghanistan varied greatly. Many had never worked
for the federal government and faced the additional handicap of being rookies
in a new organization. The often-repeated priority was “to get bodies into the
field,” but the recruiting process inevitably remained saddled with laborious
administrative requirements, and it took many months for individuals, most
of them hired on one-year contracts, actually to deploy.
Urgency also took hold for training. Standardized familiarization consisted
of a thirty-day course at the Training Center for Complex Operations at
National Guard Camp Atterbury—Muscatatuck, Indiana, with area studies
and related subjects offered on a supplementary basis at the Foreign Service
Institute (FSI), as well as a mandatory but minimal four-day “crash and bang”
security course. Rarely did individuals have the opportunity for sustained
preparation with the military unit they would be working with. As a comparison of seriousness, the basic FSI course for civilian and military officers
assigned to CORDS in Vietnam lasted six months, and twenty-four months
for those getting language qualified. With up to sixty days of leave added to
at least thirty days of training, plus time for in-processing, many individuals
experienced substantial subtractions from time in-country. The Ground Hog
Day syndrome was fierce. While garnering some credit for adaptation, the
civilian surge was another manifestation of accidental counterinsurgency and
another second-best solution.
One of the most critical restrictions to U.S. performance in Afghanistan
was the highly protective, effectively zero-risk approach to managing civilian
security. Just as force protection is an imperative of military command, the
same was true of protecting civilians, but with two consequential distinctions.
The first was a matter of priorities. Whereas measures to avoid casualties and
protect troops were intended to enable them to carry out their missions, the
opposite was the case on the civilian side. Instead, carrying out the mission was
routinely subordinate to keeping out of harm’s way (certain law enforcement
and intelligence personnel excepted). The second distinction was operational.
Whereas all soldiers are prepared to participate in their own protection and
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that of their units, civilians are generally expected to be passive recipients
of protection provided by soldiers and a large security bureaucracy. While
prudence makes minimization of risk imperative under regular conditions,
there was a high cost to insulating civilians to such an extreme degree from
the inherent dangers of war. Not only did they become isolated from Afghans
and Afghanistan, restrictions that prevented officers from going into the field
alongside the military and from taking responsibility for their own protection inhibited them from doing their jobs. This security posture in turn fed
unhealthy separation in which the military was at war while the civilians
were not.
It is not that the civilian effort in Afghanistan has been negligible. Many
dedicated officers representing more than a dozen agencies served diligently
in Afghanistan and worked pragmatically with the situation as it existed,
meaning often in spite of the system. In addition, one of the virtues of having
worked side-by-side for the past decade in Afghanistan is the mutual understanding that a new generation of military and civilian officers now have for
their respective roles and missions.
Destabilization Operations
A harsher judgment applies to the damaging effects of organizational friction
on U.S. performance in Afghanistan as a whole. This is more than a matter
of the intense competition among agencies and individuals that often compromised unity of effort and “whole of government” aspirations. Nor was
it simply a problem of over-militarization and the separation of civilian and
military realms. The larger issue is the extent to which separate organizations
pursued aims that were counterproductive or conflicted with each other. One
of the more serious examples was the contradiction between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency. Drug Enforcement Agency operations (often conducted with support from military units) contributed to destabilization by
eliminating livelihoods among rural Pashtuns. Further, opium poppy production shifted from government-controlled to Taliban-controlled areas, thus
increasing insurgent authority and revenue, without achieving the intended
goal of reducing overall production. Similarly contradictory effects can be
identified, for example, in the continued reliance on Afghan militia not integrated into the Afghan National Security Forces for counterterrorist operations, in the difficulty of synchronizing USAID programs with the “build
phase” of military operations, and in the corrupting effects of injecting bil-
T he A ccidental C ounterinsurgents 16 9
lions of dollars through projects and service contracts into one of the world’s
poorest countries. Perhaps such contradictions were inherent to intervention
in a country like Afghanistan, even if it was an extreme case. The point is
that the failure of the U.S. government to manage its own performance is
one of the principal explanations why so much cost and effort achieved such
inconclusive results.
Searching for the Solution Set
It was no accident in Afghanistan (and Iraq) that special operations forces
were among the first to grasp the futility of using conventional tactics to
fight unconventional enemies, a story that former ISAF and Joint Special
Operations Task Force commander retired General Stanley McChrystal tells in the 2015 book Team of Teams.13 As SOF began to adapt their
hierarchies into more flexible forms better configured to combat against
networks, they had the advantages of being small, cohesive, and selfcontained. In addition, their mission was common to other professional
militaries at war of marrying organization, method, and technology to increase lethality, precision, and effectiveness, in this case tightly focused on
counterterrorism. But this adaptation also came at an organizational cost
when it came to counterinsurgency. Hy Rothstein wrote presciently in 2006
that SOF proficiency in conducting direct action was sacrificing the traditional unconventional warfare method of working by, with, and through
indigenous forces.14 More broadly, Afghan security force development had
always been a key, but it was not until after 2009 that implementation
of partnering and mentoring became a general priority. Hunting the enemy was strategically insufficient from the beginning, and grappling with
the broader challenges of Afghanistan proved an order of magnitude more
demanding, especially when it required cooperation across organizations
with separate authorities.
Lack of capability and failure to perceive a problem went hand in hand.
A critical case in point was the near-total focus of intelligence collection on
enemy networks as a product of the military focus on combat. As ISAF chief
intelligence officer Major General Mike Flynn put it,
We outlined the color system: the red, the white, the green, and the blue. The
red was the enemy; white was the population; green was Afghan National
Security Forces; and blue was us. We had a really good picture of the red and
the blue, but we had no picture of the green or the white, and it was really
stunning.15
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His solution, proposed in the paper Fixing Intel, which created a sensation
when it appeared in 2010, was to establish Stability Operations Information
Centers (SOICs), in which teams of analysts would work interactively between headquarters and the field to generate information needed, not just to
target the enemy, but to understand and operate in the complex environment
of Afghanistan. Fixing Intel proposed to integrate the SOICs into the State
Department-led platforms at the regional commands. The idea was met on the
civilian side with lack of comprehension and interest. Instead, the SOICs stood
up in Regional Commands East and South as back-office elements of Military
Intelligence staff, where they were of little operational use, while White Intel
was delegated as a secondary task to the Human Intelligence sections.
However new and unfamiliar the Afghan situation may have seemed, the
challenges to performance were not much different from ones that have been
long and well understood. After initial success, the United States as a whole
in Afghanistan took too long to reassess and adapt, continued to rely on
military means despite the importance of non-military aspects, attempted to
transform the country into a modern nation-state assuming it was capable
of achieving such an ambitious aim using instruments of power designed for
other purposes, and experienced organizational friction that greatly hindered
unity of command and effort. The organizational narratives that McChrystal,
Rothstein, and Flynn told pointed the way out.
Proposals to solve the persistent problems of U.S. performance evident
in Afghanistan point ultimately in the same direction: reform of the U.S.
national security system. The real problem lies not in identifying what the
issues are, but in how to do something about them. The record is not promising. Weakened as an institution after Vietnam, the U.S. Army went through a
serious transformation. In contrast, no fundamental changes to organization
or doctrine took place in answer to the larger systemic issues that Komer (and
many others) identified. More recently, with few exceptions, every attempt at
reform has collapsed from lack of political support or inability to break the
“interagency phalanx” of entrenched resistance.16 The Goldwater-Nichols
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, the most significant reform since 1947,
occurred only because rare circumstances aligned to meet both of those criteria;
after a major multiyear initiative, the follow-up Project on National Security
Reform died for failure to meet them.17 The Department of Homeland Security and intelligence reform issued from the shock of 9/11; neither produced
optimal results, and both are still works in progress.
T he A ccidental C ounterinsurgents 171
Washington, D.C., is flooded with reports and proposals to reform national security and foreign policy institutions, including any number prompted
specifically by the experience of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many had the
participation of prominent serving and former officials. For example, Beyond
Goldwater-Nichols: U.S. Government and Defense Reform for a New Strategic
Era, a four-year project by the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
involved dozens of experts, among them former Undersecretary of Defense
Michelle Flournoy and current Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.18 To reinforce the point that Afghanistan is a warning, many of the recommendations
contained in their Beyond G-N, Phase 2 Report on interagency reorganization
were actually attempted, including setting up a dedicated office in the National
Security Council, giving enhanced authority to a Special Representative of
the President, creating a State Department–led organization to bring civilian
capacities together, and using strategic planning to align organizations in the
field. 19 None of these measures overcame the problems they were meant to
address, and some were counterproductive.
Whole of Government—Striving for Second Best
Heralded as a significant evolution in doctrine when it appeared in December
2006, Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, added up to a well-articulated
but nonetheless belated rediscovery of basic principles.20 A central tenet of
FM 3-24 was reorientation from combatting the enemy to protecting the
population. To achieve that mission, civilian and military organizations
would become united in purpose, working together through unity of effort.
The implication seeded throughout the text—and an article of faith in the
military—was that in a counterinsurgency war civilian agencies, presumably
led by the State Department, would be up to the task. That proved largely
not to be the case in Afghanistan. The current superseding version of FM
3-24, as well as FM 3-07 Stability Operations, dedicates significant sections
to whole of government and the fuzzy, all-inclusive “unified action.”21 However, the embassy Country Team, along with State Department, USAID, and
other U.S. government agencies, are now described strictly in terms of their
traditional roles and missions.
At one point, the State Department did attempt to build on FM 3-24 by
producing an interagency counterinsurgency guide, not surprisingly at the
initiative of military officers detailed to the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.22 Although the published guide was signed by then Secretary of State
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Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and bore the symbols of nine government organizations (State, Defense, Homeland Security,
Agriculture, Transportation, Justice, Treasury, USAID, and the Director of
National Intelligence), it quickly disappeared from the scene without prompting further action.
Prompted by early experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, and despite significant consensus, the disappointing efforts to establish an organization
within the State Department to integrate civilian capacities has been another
cautionary lesson.23 This largely incremental initiative to inject a specialized
organization into the bureaucracy has exposed the limitations of interagency
coordination in the face of persistent resistance and divided authority. The
approach ultimately adopted also raises questions about the efficacy of the
traditional model of civil-military relations that keep the two realms so distinctly separated.
When it was set up under Secretary of State Collin Powell in 2004, the
Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) received a congressional mandate to lead, coordinate, and institutionalize U.S.
government civilian capabilities in conflict and post-conflict situations. Although initially excluded from Afghanistan, facing internal resistance from the
regional bureaus, underfunded, and operating within the bureaucracy-heavy
state system, S/CRS did manage to serve later as a personnel clearing house
for Afghanistan, and officers, such as those who staffed ICMAG in Kabul,
contributed important niche expertise. Secretary Clinton’s first Quadrennial
Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) in 2010 formally raised the
status of S/CRS to become the Bureau of Conflict Stabilization and Operations (CSO). This nominal elevation was in fact a reduction in authority to
an advisory role. Although one of the 2015 QDDR’s principal goals was
listed as “Preventing and Mitigating Conflict and Violent Extremism,” CSO
received no mention. Plans for an expanded Civilian Response Corps with
a reserve component were shelved, while USAID, presumably a key partner,
independently expanded its own overlapping organization. Moving in a different direction from its original conception, the weak CSO has deemphasized
close civil-military synchronization with DoD, but basically remains the only
game in town.
T he A ccidental C ounterinsurgents 173
Lowering the Bar
Another common stream among proposals to fix performance issues downplays ambitious efforts to restructure organizations in favor of improving
how organizations and the people within them operate. Speaking from experience with the Clinton administration’s Reinventing Government initiative,
Vice President Gore’s former national security advisor, Leon Fuerth, adopted
as a guiding principle in the major government reform project he led that
obstacles to the government’s ability to act are deeply rooted in its structures,
and therefore the best chance for change is to make limited, practical improvements.24 In the absence of those rare conditions in which national and
bureaucratic politics align for major and well-considered reform, there is a
lot of merit in this approach.
With the experience of Afghanistan in mind, it is fairly easy to draw up a
short list of common recommendations under the general headings of leadership, training, and what might best be defined as institutional development.
Most of them are fairly obvious and in principle feasible without major investment in political capital:
Foster collaborative leadership oriented to integrating (not coordinating) multidimensional functions including civil-military
Align authorities and accountability according to the mission
Co-locate senior leaders
Revise training and incentive systems to reward cooperation, flexibility, and
adaptiveness
Set up tailored organizations and programs, including incentives for contributing to the mission of these temporary teams
Encourage networking across organizations, adopt common terminology and
concepts of operation, and use integrated strategic planning to align goals and
resources across organizations
Missing Pieces
Without belaboring discussion of the search for solutions further, there were
capabilities that contributed to the strategic insufficiency of U.S. performance in Afghanistan because they were substantially absent. Two of them,
police force development and political action, were critical. Both remained
unclaimed as strategic priorities, contributing to the misalignment of aims
and means in Afghanistan. General awareness that Afghan security forces
needed to become more effective and the military campaign required a com-
17 4
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plementary political strategy did exist. However, like the case of expanding
intelligence to focus on more than the enemy, translating realization into
reality fell far short. Creating those capabilities and the organizations to support them were primarily civilian responsibilities that would have demanded
commitment and reframing of civil-military relations.
The primary challenge was not to transform the nature of Afghanistan, but
more basic: to reestablish order. Police are the principal state instrument for
securing order, and this role is best carried out by national forces, certainly not
a foreign army.25 Defeating the insurgent enemy, along with “protecting the
population” and the broader aspirations of counterinsurgency, should have
been subordinate to this elemental aim, while hunting international terrorists
remained a separate and legitimate objective. Because Operation Enduring
Freedom was institutionally a military responsibility, it was conceived, resourced, and organized accordingly, with civilian elements secondary to this
militarization.
This is not to diminish the considerable assistance provided to the various
Afghan security forces, but to point out that not only did the U.S. military fail
for years to give due effort to developing the Afghan National Army, the police
were an even lower priority. NATO partners had lead responsibility and in
some measure had more relevant capacities, but the scope of their programs
was well below what was needed. U.S. law enforcement agencies, including
the FBI, made important contributions, especially once corruption belatedly
became a concern. U.S. military units in the field, including MPs, worked
with Afghan police on an ad hoc basis, while more systematic programs,
such as the creation of police zones and the Afghan Local Police, were late
innovations that came with the surge. There is also an important distinction
between the internal security purpose of the National Directorate of Security
and its principal patron, the CIA, focused on counterterrorism as a foreign
intelligence organization. Without going into further detail, the absence of
U.S. capabilities to assist a gendarme-type armed police force and special
branch policing in both rural and urban areas was a major gap in essential
counterinsurgency functions.
Similarly, the lack of a capability in Afghanistan to conduct expeditionary political action—as distinct from but complemented by covert political
action—meant that there was no way to carry out an integrated political
strategy—a critical prerequisite of reestablishing order—even if there had been
one. Of course, civilians deployed to the field did engage in political work,
T he A ccidental C ounterinsurgents 175
sometimes to great effect. Officers, for example, helped shape local Afghan
political arrangements, negotiated reincorporation of Taliban, applied political criteria to evaluation of Joint Prioritized Effects Lists (tried on a tentative
basis in 2009–2011), and worked side-by-side as advisors to commanders at
all levels. But political action occurred largely on an ad hoc basis, often in the
face of oppressive security restrictions and lack of comprehension at higher
levels. The missing element was systematic organization, support, and, most
important, understanding of its importance.
It is possible to envision with some precision how a truly integrated civilian-military organization would have unleashed powerful capabilities and
improved U.S. strategic effectiveness in Afghanistan. For example, civilians
serving as deputies for Stability Operations in the Regional Commands (on
the CORDS model) and working out of task forces and PRTs would have
greatly increased civil-military balance and ensured the integration of military
campaign plans with political engagement strategies. In addition to shaping
political conditions, responsibilities would have extended well beyond managing the various governance and development programs to include inherently non-military activities such as information operations, Human Terrain
Teams, and the Stability Operations Information Centers. To do so would
have required going beyond the embassy IPA, regional platforms, senior civilian representatives, PRTs, and in Washington, SRAP and CSO, to build a
new, less segregated model of civil-military relations. By extension, it would
require creating a small cadre of expeditionary foreign service officers trained,
equipped, networked, and oriented to the essential unity of political and military dimensions of being “at war.”26 (Although it is based on conflict resolution
norms, the United States Institute of Peace Academy is probably the closest
model for what such a program might look like.27)
Conclusion
It bears repeating that when Big COIN appears as a strategic beacon, is better seen as a warning not a guide. The hard lessons of what was needed to
improve U.S. performance were learned, but forgotten. Intentional reforms
to civil-military organization may amount to wishful thinking with extremely
low probability of implementation, but there is still a strong argument to make
that they would have made a difference in Afghanistan. It should have been
possible to bring the war to a conclusive end at much lower cost and effort,
and in much shorter duration. The outcome certainly would have looked
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more Afghan and less Westernized. But that is not a bad thing given that, to
paraphrase Lawrence, “Our practical work was not as good as, perhaps, we
thought it was.” At minimum, however unpredictable the future may remain,
there is no reason ever to become accidental counterinsurgents again.
Notes
1. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press, 2009), xiv.
2. Todd Greentree, “Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: US Performance and the
Institutional Dimension of Strategy in Afghanistan,” The Journal of Strategic
Studies 36, no. 3 (June 2013): 325–56.
3. Robert Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on
US-GVN Performance (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1972).
4. See, for example, Gideon Rose and Jonathon Tepperman et al., “What
Have We Learned? Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 93, no.
6 (November-December 2014): 2–54; Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis
(JCOA), Joint Staff J7, commissioned by CJCS GEN Dempsey, Decade of War,
Volume I: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations, 2012, http://
blogs.defensenews.com/saxotech-access/pdfs/decade-of-war-lessons-learned.pdf.
5. Secretary Rumsfeld Town Hall Meeting in Kuwait, December 8, 2004,
http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=1980.
6. Henry Crumpton, The Art of Intelligence (New York: Penguin Press,
2012); Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for
Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army
War College, 2002).
7. T. E. Lawrence, “Twenty-Seven Articles,” Arab Bulletin, August 20, 1917.
8. See Hew Strachan, The Direction of War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 64–97; Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command (New York:
The Free Press, 2002).
9. Robert E. Osgood, Limited War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1957), and Limited War Revisited (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1972); and
Antulio Echevarria, Reconsidering the American Way of War (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2014).
10. Eric Edelman, “Ground Hog Day: Reflections on the Fall and Rise of
COIN in American Defense and Foreign Policy,” remarks to the International
Stability Operations Association, 25 Oct. 2011.
11. U.S. Embassy Kabul and U.S. Forces—Afghanistan, United States Government Integrated Civil-Military Plan for Support to Afghanistan, February
2011, www.ccoportal.org/sites/ccoportal.org/files/icmcp_feb_2011final.pdf; U.S.
Government Accountability Office, Afghanistan: Changes to Updated U.S. Civil
Military Strategic Framework Reflect Evolving U.S. Role, GAO-14–438R, April
1 2014, http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/662213.pdf.
12. Center for Complex Operations, “The State of Integrated Civil-Military
T he A ccidental C ounterinsurgents 177
Operations Between the ISAF Regional Command South (RC-S) and the US Regional Platform South (RP-S),” Draft (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2011).
13. General Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and
Chris Fussell, Team of Teams (New York: Penguin, 2015); see also John Arquilla,
“To Build a Network,” Prism 5, no. 1 (2014): 22–33.
14. Hy Rothstein, Afghanistan & The Troubled Future of Unconventional
Warfare (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006); see also Linda Robinson, The Future of Special Operations (New York: Council on Foreign Relations,
2013).
15. Center for Complex Operations, “An Interview with Lieutenant General Michael Flynn,” Prism 4, no. 4 (n.d.): 181–189; Major General Michael T.
Flynn, Matt Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making
Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan, Center for a New American Security, 2010,
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/AfghanIntel_Flynn_Jan2010_
code507_voices.pdf.
16. Amy Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and
NSC (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 140–48; Austin Long,
On “Other War”: Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2006)
17. Project on National Security Reform, Forging a New Sword, Arlington,
Virginia, November 26, 2008.
18. Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Beyond Goldwater-Nichols,” http://csis.org/program/beyond-goldwater-nichols, accessed 14 November
2019.
19. Clark A. Murdock, Michele A. Flournoy et al., Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: Phase 2 Report (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International
Studies, July 2005).
20. Department of the Army and Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Army Field Manual No. 3-24/ Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No.
3-33.5, Counterinsurgency, December 15, 2006.
21. Department of the Army, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5: Insurgencies and
Countering Insurgencies, Change No. 1; and FM3-07: Stability Operations, both
issued June 2, 2014.
22. U.S. Department of State, U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide,
January 2009, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/119629.pdf.
23. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Inspector General, Inspection Report: The Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, Report
Number ISP-I-07–26, May 2007; Congressional Research Service, In Brief: The
State Department Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, by Nina M.
Serafino, October 2012; National Defense University, Center for Complex Operations, U.S. Department of State’s CSO Lessons Learned, http://cco.dodlive.
mil/u-s-department-of-states-cso-lessons-learned.
17 8
T odd G reentree
24. Leon S. Fuerth with Evan M. H. Faber, Anticipatory Governance: Practical Upgrades: Equipping the Executive Branch to Cope with Increasing Speed
and Complexity of Major Challenges, Report of the Project on Forward Engagement (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2012).
25. General Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the
Modern World (London: Penguin Books, 2005).
26. Rufus Phillips, Breathing Life into Expeditionary Diplomacy: A Missing
Dimension of US Security Capabilities, National Strategy Information Center,
Washington, DC, Fall 2014; Simon Center for the Study of Interagency Cooperation, Interagency Handbook for Transitions (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CGSC
Foundation Press, 2011).
27. Deedee Derksen, The Politics of Disarmament and Rearmament in Afghanistan, Peaceworks No. 110, (Washington, DC: The U.S. Institute of Peace,
2015).
Part III
LESSONS OF OTHER
WARS
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Chapter 10
LESSONS OF MODERN WAR
A C A S E S T U D Y O F T H E S R I L A N K A N WA R
Ahmed S. Hashim
In May 2009, the Sri Lankan armed forces decisively defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insurgent organization after three years
(2006–2009) of grueling warfare. This was the final phase—known as
Eelam War IV—of an almost three-decade long war that began in 1983.1
Throughout much of the course of this ethno-separatist insurgency the LTTE
displayed a high level of proficiency spanning the entire terrorism-guerrillaconventional continuum in the war against the government of Sri Lanka.
This “hybrid” approach to warfare combined ways of war including a wide
array of technologies and innovative operational art and tactics that helped
the Tamil Tigers defeat or fight the Sri Lankan military to a standstill in the
first three phases of the war, known as Eelam Wars I through III, which took
place between 1983 and 2002, when a comprehensive ceasefire was negotiated between the two sides. Given the wide gap between the visions of the
two sides of how the conflict should end—the LTTE wanted independence
for the Tamil minority in the north of the country and consequently onethird of the island and two-thirds of its coastline, while the government was
only prepared to concede autonomy—it was not surprising that armed hostilities would break out again. Violence erupted in May 2006 and everybody
braced for yet another wasteful round of destruction and death.
This time the war was different. Between 2006 and 2009, the Sri Lankan
armed forces got the better of the LTTE and inflicted a series of devastating
18 2
A hmed S . H ashim
defeats on the once feared insurgent organization. In the spring of 2009, the
reeling LTTE forces were convincingly annihilated in the final grueling and
bloody battles of the war. This was the first unequivocal defeat of an insurgency
by the state (the counterinsurgent) in the twenty-first century. Two scholars
stated in a joint piece that the Sri Lankan victory was “arguably the most
significant annihilation of an armed rebel movement in modern times.”2 Observers around the world were baffled. It was not supposed to end that way.
First, most people were convinced that the end of the war would come about
through a negotiated settlement, in which each side would be forced to give up
more than it was prepared to do in the past. Achieving a final settlement had
been the focus of attention by international mediators from Nordic countries
prior to the outbreak of Eelam War IV in 2006. Second, outsiders found it
difficult to believe that the Sri Lankan armed forces, hitherto lackluster in their
counterinsurgency efforts due to poor leadership, lack of personnel, poor training, and inadequate weaponry, could have turned the tide so decisively in their
favor and managed to defeat one of the most deadly insurgent movements of
the late twentieth century. Third, in the absence of a negotiated settlement, the
world had gotten used to one of two other possible outcomes in insurgencies:
one in which insurgents win by fighting the more powerful side to a standstill
(which, by definition is a victory for the insurgent) or a state of “perpetual
war” in which neither the insurgent nor counterinsurgent are able to prevail.
Surprise at the outcome gave way to questions: What happened to change
the tide between 2006 and 2009? And what lessons, if any, could other countries take away from the Sri Lankan victory? The purpose of this chapter
is to address what Sri Lanka did to change its military into a war-winning
instrument and to assess whether the Sri Lankan military’s victory contains
lessons of potential relevance to other armies. The noted military historian
Martin van Creveld wrote about lessons of the 1973 war between the Arabs
and Israel in this vein: “[H]ow such lessons [of that war] can be derived is,
methodologically, a difficult problem. Obviously, any attempt to learn from
historical events must start with an effort to separate the grain from the chaff,
the universal from the localized, the permanent from the accidental.”3 In this
chapter we will proceed on the basis of this insightful methodological advice.
Evolution of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces: From Ceremonial
Force to Seasoned Counterinsurgency Military
Outside observers could be forgiven for not believing that the Sri Lankan Armed
Forces (SKLAF), a force with inauspicious beginnings, could impart important
L essons of M odern War 18 3
lessons of war. Until its innovations in Eelam War IV, the SKLAF performed
suboptimally despite some impressive feats of arms on a number of occasions.
When Britain granted Ceylon—as Sri Lanka was known until 1971—independence in 1948, it did not leave behind a substantial military infrastructure
as it did in India and Pakistan. In the words of Thomas Marks, a former U.S.
Army officer and world-renowned expert on irregular war,
In the decades after achieving independence from Britain in 1948, Sri Lanka
was a state remarkably unprepared to deal with even substantial overt protest
action much less subversion and its challenges, whether terrorism or guerrilla action. Only 10,605 policemen were scattered in small stations amidst a
population of 12.5 million. The military was in a similar state; small (the army
numbered but 6,578 in five battalions) and poorly armed and equipped.4
The new country’s leaders did not see a need for significant defense expenditures because there was simply no immediate foreign threat. The only country
that could conceivably be a threat was neighboring giant India; and that was
a threat—real or perceived—that Ceylon simply could not deter or defend
itself from. Moreover, the government of the new island-state believed that
the former colonial power, Great Britain, would continue to assist Ceylon with
its defense requirements for the foreseeable future. The Defence and External
Affairs agreement with Britain substantiated this belief.
Initial efforts focused on the creation of a small ceremonial force to assist
the police in maintaining domestic law and order. No air or naval forces were
set up in the early postcolonial period. The ground forces had no doctrine for
or training in any large-scale operations. Surprisingly, this small military force
was blindly educated and trained in conventional warfare along British lines.5
This was a decidedly strange approach to take because, as noted, the country was unlikely to face any conventional attack it could successfully defend
against. There is no explanation for this except simple bureaucratic inertia on
the part of the departing British and the Ceylonese political circles. The military
did not develop a doctrine for counterinsurgency or even for counterterrorism when the country was faced with a serious terrorist and insurgent threat
from Sinhalese militants in the 1970s. The little COIN doctrine that the army
had imbibed was also blind imitation of British COIN methods plundered
unsystematically from the former colonial power’s experiences without any
apparent regard for the peculiarities of the environment or the situation on
the ground in Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese insurgency was quashed by the state’s
use of counterterror and brutal methods.
18 4
A hmed S . H ashim
For much of the 1970s the military’s primary mission was to prevent smuggling and illicit immigration from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which was
separated from Sri Lanka by barely thirty miles of water. In 1978, as the situation in the northern part of the country was heating up and Tamil militants
began expressing themselves in violent ways, the army consisted of only 496
officers and 8,489 other ranks. It had only two combat brigades when violence
broke out between the military and the nascent LTTE in 1983.
SLKAF in Eelam Wars I–III
The Sri Lankan government entered into armed conflict not only lacking a
significant military, but with absolutely no conception of what it was about to
endure. As former Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa put it in an article
he wrote, “In the early years of independence, national security did not need to
be a primary concern of the government of Ceylon. As an independent dominion of Great Britain, and as a non-aligned nation with excellent relationships
within and outside the region, Ceylon faced few pressing threats.”6
During the early stages of the war the government acted as if the nascent
insurgency was not really a serious matter. The government did not have clear
policy goals: was it defeat of the insurgency or was it to bring the insurgents
to the table to negotiate a settlement that was mutually acceptable to both
sides? This drift in government policy affected military operations. For the
government, the fighting was a form of armed negotiations; yet its foe was
engaged in a serious effort to tear off a part of the country and call it its own.
In the words of one senior officer, General Ranatunga,
There appeared to be a total lack of continuity in the conduct of operations
against the armed Tamil terrorists. This is a result of having no policy on how
to eradicate terrorism. This type of ethnic based armed conflict, once ignited
due to many reasons, is difficult to eradicate without a firm policy derived
from strength and practicability.7
The lack of clear-cut policy goals was to be a constant theme of all governments in Colombo until 2005. Inconsistent direction at the national level
emerged as a factor in the duration of conflict until 2005. Operations were
conducted without adequate preparation. Politicians wanted to show that
they were doing something against the terrorists. Procurement was a mess
and often lacked logic as the military often found itself saddled with weapons
that were obsolete or did not fit the operational requirements of the services.
Without an overall strategic plan that would build upon previous measures,
L essons of M odern War 18 5
the government found itself in a repetitive cycle of armed conflict punctuated
by ceasefires. Especially at the initial stages of the insurgency during Eelam
Wars I–III, the government did not establish a national-level organization to
control and coordinate all the government agencies and the security forces
concerned with the counterinsurgency campaign. There was no understanding of the concept of using all the instruments of national power—political,
economic, social, informational, and military—in a coordinated manner.
The military was no more innovative than its civilian masters. With the development of Tamil insurgency in the country, the study of counterinsurgency
was included in the syllabus. The lessons were taken straight from the British
army manuals. The instructions conducted were mainly on combat aspects,
such as patrolling, ambushes, and raids. Other key elements in a counterinsurgency strategy, such as civic action, psychological operations, population and
resource control, information operations, human rights, and legal aspects, were
not taught adequately. There was no attempt to do a thorough study of how
other countries with similar insurgency problems conducted their campaigns
and to use that knowledge to educate the Sri Lankan military.8
Though there has been some debate concerning the manpower levels required in fighting insurgency, counterinsurgency as the SKLAF discovered is
a manpower-intensive activity. The military did not have enough boots on the
ground at the beginning. This meant that it could either fight or hold ground,
but could not do both effectively. The government was forced to expand the
military enormously during the course of the war. The result was that problems
occurred almost immediately in command and control as officers were not
versed in leading large numbers of men. In its quest to fill the ranks, the army
allowed the enlistment of personnel that were physically infirm, medically unfit,
or socially undesirable with resultant discipline problems. While the government sought to improve the armed forces’ capabilities throughout the period,
the military still lacked the necessary numbers, weapons, and training in order
to pose a challenge to the LTTE. In 1983, the armed forces through voluntary
recruitment raised a total of sixteen thousand soldiers, eleven thousand of
whom were in the combat units. By late 1985, the SKLAF more than doubled
its ranks to forty-eight thousand, with twenty-two thousand regulars and the
rest reservists. However, as the military expanded, the logistics infrastructure
was unable to keep pace with the needs of a growing force.
It has been argued since the nineteenth century that information and
intelligence in counterinsurgency are critical but are never easy to get from
18 6
A hmed S . H ashim
a population that is either indifferent or hostile. Western forces have faced
this issue fighting in foreign lands—or within host nations—because they
are not familiar with the cultural and geographical environment. Even
host nations such as those in the Global South, which are facing insurgencies within their own sovereign territories, are not necessarily better
at obtaining information and developing the key intelligence capabilities.
In Sri Lanka, neither the armed forces nor the government in Colombo
knew much about the enemy they faced in the north and throughout the
rest of the country. For most of Eelam I–III, the Sri Lankans were fighting
blindly. In confronting Tamil terrorism in the north, the Sri Lankan army
was essentially a “foreign army on its own territory.” Because of terrorist
intimidation and government recruiting policy, less than 5 percent of the
Sri Lankan army was of Tamil origin. Sinhalese troops saw themselves
surrounded by a hostile population whose language they could not speak
and whose customs they did not share and who, they were convinced, were
either members of the LTTE or supported the group. Unable to come to
grips with the terrorists, the army lashed out blindly, killing many innocent
Tamil villagers.
The largely Sinhalese-dominated armed forces and police, due to their contempt for the Tamils, did not direct personnel to learn how to speak or write
Tamil. Subsequently, this hurt intelligence collection since Sinhalese officers
could not converse well, if at all, with Tamils. Tamils also refused to serve as
interpreters for the army or police. The LTTE also hurt military intelligence
collection by executing Tamils accused of spying and placing signs around their
necks proclaiming them to be “informers.” In the early days there was very
limited international intelligence cooperation against the LTTE. This allowed
the group to reach out to the Tamil diaspora and thus to get recruits and funds
unhindered.9 Since the army lacked an effective intelligence system, one officer,
General Ranatunga, along with two mid-ranking officers and a number of
junior officers, was instrumental in establishing an intelligence-gathering unit
at the army base in Gurunagar, outside Jaffna:
I started my own intelligence system. There was a small but enthusiastic band
of about half a dozen officers from various units and some other ranks posted
to me who were available to work independently in small groups, sometimes
consisting of only two or three who went out to collect intelligence. I made
use of my own soldiers who were very good in Tamil and set them to collect
information.10
L essons of M odern War 18 7
General Ranatunga made quite clear that his efforts and those of his men
were ad hoc measures instituted by their own unit and received little, if any
support, from higher authorities:
Had we access to finances—not a mere 150 rupees—high quality intelligence
would have been easily available, but the authorities were indifferent. There
were instances when officers’ ration money was utilized to “buy” intelligence
due to the lack of funds and red tape.
Over the course of the insurgency the government expanded what embryonic
intelligence organizations existed and created new ones. This, however, did
not solve the problems of getting information about the insurgents. Indeed,
more organization meant more chaos. The government’s intelligence effort
also suffered from lack of coordination. The government intelligence organizations failed to infiltrate the insurgent organization in an effective manner.
They were not successful in monitoring the LTTE activities in foreign countries by having a close working relationship with foreign intelligence services
and by setting up their own network in those countries. There was a lack
of coordination among the various intelligence organizations. The National
Intelligence Bureau, which is manned by the police, has a vast network that
covers the whole country. The Directorate of Military Intelligence is the premier intelligence organization of the army. Similarly, the navy and the air force
developed their own intelligence-gathering branches. These four intelligence
agencies worked without any sustained coordination or cooperation with
one another.11 The LTTE offensive against Killinochchi in September 1998
represented a catastrophic intelligence failure for security forces. The ability of
insurgent forces to mount an organized combined arms assault of some three
thousand guerrillas—in close proximity to Sri Lankan army units conducting
offensive operations—highlighted an alarming lack of situational awareness
among the government’s security forces.
In war harmonious relations between civilians and the military are critical
and contribute to ensuring efficient cooperation and coordination. Harmony
between the two groups was lacking in the first three phases of the civil war.
Civil-military relations were marred by suspicion and tensions stemming from
two abortive coup attempts, one in 1962 and one in 1966, and by senior officers’ resentments over lack of funding for the armed forces. Many of the senior
command of the armed forces were not promoted on the basis of merit, but of
loyalty. In the early 1960s a handful of senior officers attempted to seize the
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A hmed S . H ashim
reins of government on two separate occasions. This engendered considerable
suspicion of the officer corps on the part of the civilian elite thereafter. The
first coup attempt was led largely by Christian officers who were increasingly
dismayed by the display of Sinhalese ethnic chauvinism being displayed by the
prime minister at the time. The coup attempt was nipped in the bud and the
senior officers arrested and cashiered. Funding for the military was cut even
further in favor of expanding social welfare programs.12
The SKLAF’s early operations during Eelam Wars I–III were generally characterized by a lack of flair and imagination against a foe that exhibited both in
copious quantities. However, a small cadre of competent officers did emerge
even in the early days, and despite the lack of clear-cut political directions from
the civilian political authorities managed to conduct successful offensives—
such as Operation Liberation—that dented the growing power of the LTTE.
Despite these structural problems, the army was able to launch Operation
Liberation in the Jaffna Peninsula during Eelam War I. The senior command
was determined to formulate and implement an offensive that would deal the
LTTE a significant and telling blow. The operation was meticulously planned.
It took into consideration the impact of civilian and military casualties, and
the possible reactions of the international community, particularly of India to
an operation of this magnitude taking place on its doorstep. The operation
began on May 26, 1987, and involved eight thousand troops. Concerned by
the reaction of millions of Tamils in Tamil Nadu state to the battering that
the LTTE was taking, New Delhi rather peremptorily called for a halt to the
offensive. However, “islands of competency” in a “sea of incompetence” is
not a recipe for victory. In the early days the ideas of the innovative officers
did not receive widespread support and were not accepted and institutionalized throughout the military, and as a result their ideas and lessons learned
remained merely ad hoc efforts within their commands and achieved impact
only in localized operations.
The first three phases of the three-decade long war were disasters for the
SKLAF and the country. This was crowned by a catastrophic defeat at the
battle of Mullaitivu on the eastern coast of the island. During this battle the
LTTE overran an army garrison and slaughtered twelve hundred troops. The
disaster forced the hitherto indifferent government to pay closer attention to
the some of the more serious structural defects of the military. The perennial
problem was the lack of sufficient trained personnel. Even successful operations such as Operation Riviresa had taxed the army to its limits, because that
L essons of M odern War 18 9
operation had taken up so much of the available manpower that defensive
positions elsewhere were left unmanned. There was insufficient infantry to
hold territory when major offensives were being conducted. A senior officer,
Brigadier Sarath Munasinge, whose memoirs of many years of soldiering are
very informative on the strengths and weaknesses of the protagonists, was
clear about the deleterious impact of insufficient manpower in 1996: he indicated that the ground forces, in particular, needed a substantial increase in
authorized strength to offset deaths, injuries, retirements, and desertions.13
Desertion became a big problem due to the heavy casualties suffered during
the course of intense battles with the LTTE and due to demoralization stemming from the government’s perceived inability or unwillingness to provide
soldiers with what they needed. Munasinghe argued that the military needed
another fifty infantry battalions with the requisite support infrastructure and
weaponry. In his view the type of war required well-trained manpower more
than high-technology weaponry. To get the requisite number of volunteers, the
government needed to convince the population of the worth of the endeavor.
In order to convince them, it had to articulate a realistic set of policy goals
and measures for attaining them. Troop shortages during Eelam Wars I–III had
another, less obvious impact on operational performance. Resource constraints
led military leadership to scour the armed forces for available manpower. Units
frequently rotated between short cycles of combat operations, rest and reconstitution, and training, often spending as little as three months in a given cycle.
The lack of manpower was the most overt manifestation of the armed
forces deficiencies at the time, but it was not the only one. Training was
substandard, as was small-unit field craft. Units did not engage in aggressive
patrolling and sought to avoid engaging in firefights with more aggressive and
better-prepared LTTE small units. The ground forces lacked mobility because
they did not have modern armored vehicles or armored personnel carriers to
carry troops into battle.
Eelam War IV: “The Final War”
The “Final War” in Sri Lanka had several defining characteristics that set it
apart from the previous decades of conflict. First, a government determined
to defeat the LTTE was elected. The new president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, put
the country on a course to end its protracted civil war through a decisive
military defeat of the LTTE. The new government made it clear that it was
not interested in fighting in order to negotiate a bad deal but that it was
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interested in fighting in order to win, that is, to impose terms. The president
began by placing key personnel, with the same agenda, in top leadership positions. He asked his brother, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, to serve as defense secretary. He also named Major General Sarath Fonseka as army commander.
This team of senior civilians and military officers was tasked with selecting
the best performers to prepare the military for its coming trial against the
LTTE. In the words of Sarath Fonseka,
When I took over, most officers had the mentality that we cannot win this war,
as had been the case in the past three Eelam Wars. But my belief was that with
the right strategy and right selection of meritorious officers at every level, the
LTTE could be defeated. So I personally selected capable Division, Task Force
as well as Brigade commanders, not on seniority, but based on their past capabilities in the battlefield. I handpicked these officers on their merits. I placed
my confidence in them.14
No longer were the air force and navy to act as orphans fighting their own
separate wars without coordination with each other and with the ground
forces as was the case in the past. The defense secretary acted to ensure that
the Sri Lankan Navy (SLN) and Sri Lankan Air Force were prepared for the
challenges ahead.
The armed forces were instructed to develop new technological, operational, and tactical responses to the LTTE or to learn from what had worked
for other militaries faced with insurgencies.15 Each service innovated effectively.
The Sri Lankan Navy proved to be at the cutting edge of innovation in
Eelam War IV. The maritime arm of the LTTE, the Sea Tigers, was a significant
military problem for the Sri Lankans. The LTTE had developed a maritime
capability to supply its forces in Sri Lanka; that needed to be defeated. The
combat component of the Sea Tigers used swarm tactics by several small
boats, including suicide boats to attack and sink larger SLN vessels such
as the Israeli-built Dvora corvettes. Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda
assumed command of the Sri Lankan Navy and proved to be a visionary
leader. He transformed the SLN into an effective fighting force using innovative tactics combined with increased use of intelligence and international
cooperation. He listened to junior officers’ suggestions concerning technological, operational, and tactical improvements and innovations and adopted
what he thought might work. Admiral Karannagoda developed an innovative
scheme he termed the “Small Boat Concept.” The scheme was based on new
equipment, designed by Sri Lanka’s Naval Research and Development Project
L essons of M odern War 191
Office, and new tactics that copied the Sea Tigers’ asymmetric naval tactics,
but on a much larger scale that managed ultimately to overwhelm the naval
arm of the LTTE.16
Air Marshal Roshan Goonatilake was appointed as commander of the
air force in June 2006. He effectively integrated new aircraft and technology into his force, then used the new assets to execute aggressive air raids
and perform critical casualty evacuation operations in support of ground
operations. With the help of the Pakistanis, the Sri Lankan developed a
cadre of forward air controllers—pilots attached to ground forces—whose
mission was to ensure that the air force could coordinate effectively with
ground forces and thus bomb LTTE targets with precision without hitting
friendly forces.
The ground forces witnessed considerable changes too. Though the entire
ground forces structure from combat arms to combat service support went
through retraining, reequipment, and increase in personnel numbers, one of
the most notable aspects of the changes in the ground forces was the immense
importance that the military put on the increase in the number of specialist
infantry units and in their enhanced training. Small units dominated the tactical
level of operations. Analysis of the past dictated the development of innovative concepts, blending conventional and unconventional warfare concepts
and tactics to suit the nature and environment of the conflict. Small groups of
light infantrymen with specialist equipment and sharpened individual and team
skills wiped out their LTTE opponents. There were a number of factors that
influenced the introduction of this concept. The military wanted to avoid the
misuse of its meager quantity of special operations forces and commandos as
infantry, which had been done in the past to shore up poorly trained infantry
forces, particularly if they were about to buckle. Heavy casualties resulted
due to the employment of mass formations against an elusive guerilla army.
The LTTE’s concept was to combine guerilla warfare, positional defense, and
IEDs to slow down and inflict heavy casualties by the extensive use of indirect
fires. The army’s response was the Special Infantry Operation Teams (SIOTs).
Developing the overall quality and competency of the infantry was influential
in the training process, as the infantry had suffered miserably in Eelam Wars
I–III. The primary reasons for developing this concept include to improve
tactical intelligence surveillance and target acquisition, to enhance lethality
by improving the effects of the superior firepower of the security forces, to
improve decision-making and the application of combat power at decisive
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points, to reduce casualties by operating in dispersed small groups, and to
reduce civilian casualties by improving precision in operations.
SIOTs were trained and organized for small group operations on the lines
of irregular warfare. This includes subconventional operations and guerrilla
and counterinsurgency warfare. The training and development of these forces
were undertaken through carefully planned training exercises. Infantrymen
for the SIOTs were selected for a forty-four-day advanced infantry platoon
training, which was designed to maintain the combat efficiency of the infantry platoon throughout the peace period. On being selected from this course,
students underwent a comprehensive training program designed to develop
the skills essential for special infantry operations missions. The training was
conducted over a period of three-and-a-half months. The transformation and
success of the infantry in defeating the LTTE through this concept could be
expressed in three progressive stages: contest, impact, and success. The contest was for the jungles, and the teams operated on wide fronts infiltrating
and striking the terrorists along the front, the rear, and flanks. They provided
quality intelligence, which enhanced the lethality of the main ground forces
as they conducted their operations. The actions of these teams compelled the
LTTE to commit their best small units and cadres and reserves to contest the
jungles, and this denied them much needed reserves to counter main force
operations. The next stage was impact: the teams dominated the jungles and
gained moral ascendancy over the LTTE. This took time, but the LTTE finally
lost the contest for the jungles, their critical bases, and the ability to wage typical guerilla warfare. The teams suffered heavy casualties, but their successes
influenced the main-line infantry to become more motivated and to seek to
emulate their colleagues.
It is clear that the SKLAF did learn lessons from its baleful experiences in
Eelam I–III. It was able to use these lessons to change the armed forces for
success in Eelam War IV. Any definitive analysis of the lessons learned by Sri
Lanka, however, will need to wait until academics and strategic analysts get
greater access to Sri Lankan records and officials. Indeed, the “history” of
the Sri Lankan war is still contentious, as reflected in General (ret.) Sarath
Fonseka’s recent revisionist history directed at the official narrative propagated by the officials of the former Rajapaksa ruling “dynasty,” which lost
the presidential elections early in 2015, much to its chagrin.17
What lessons can other militaries learn from the Sri Lankan experience?
This may not be as clear-cut as what Sri Lanka itself learned to reverse the
L essons of M odern War 193
litany of failures and finally to achieve success. However, we can point to some
things that might be pertinent. First, in the highly acclaimed U.S. Army and
Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Generals David Petraeus and
James Amos wrote that “a successful counterinsurgency campaign” depends on
the creation of a “flexible, adaptive force,” one that is able to match—indeed
supersede—the tactical and operational agility of the insurgents.18 Conventional armies do not so easily adapt and change; even one as small and as
lackluster as the Sri Lankan military before the war itself and during the first
twenty-three years of it. However, it did so in the final years and that is why
it was able to win.
But how it did this is a story in itself, and one that still requires further
research. To be sure, strong support came from the political leadership, which
gave the military what was within its power to give. The military personnel
played a role in the transformation of the military; whether it was the senior
officers who played the key role in bringing about the transformation—former
senior officer Sarath Fonseka, chief of the defense staff during Eelam War IV,
has not been remiss in trying to “hog” all the glory for himself—or whether it
came as a result of pressure from below—junior and middle-ranking officers
in the field with vast operational experience—is not clear either. For example,
while in Sri Lanka I was told two different stories concerning the innovation
known as the Small Boat Concept: one story stressed that it was senior naval
officers, particularly the energetic Admiral Karannagoda, who developed the
doctrine. Another story, which I find equally if not more plausible, was that
junior naval officers, who had experienced the devastating impact of Sea Tiger
attacks, were the ones who developed the SLN counter-swarm doctrine. The
truth could be more prosaic: that junior-level innovation had met with the
institutional and resource support of the senior ranks.
The SLKAF adapted and became more flexible. However, it did not adopt
the Western model of hearts and minds counterinsurgency. For the Sri Lankans, the application of overwhelming force to defeat the LTTE and then apply
development afterward was the way they chose to go. The premise was that
the Sri Lankan government could only win the hearts and minds of the Tamil
population after it had defeated the organization that held the population “in
thrall.” This may not be palatable to Western expeditionary forces that are
entering a foreign country to set up a new legitimate authority or in support
of the existing authority, which is facing insurgent opposition. Many nonWestern countries, Russia, and countries in the Global South may not have
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A hmed S . H ashim
the luxury of ethical and moral qualms of Western powers, qualms that strike
many, and rightly so, as quite hypocritical given the less than savory record
of Western counterinsurgency.
However, there is one lesson that is pertinent to all countries faced with
the quandary of such complex wars: the need for domestic support. These
kinds of wars are protracted and costly, and result in the death or wounding
of thousands of “native sons.” Lack of domestic support for such endeavors
can have a deleterious impact on the political fortunes of ruling elites and of
military operations. In Eelam War IV, the Sri Lankan government paid considerable attention to mobilizing public support for the “final effort.” This was
necessary to justify the increase in the defense budget while everything else had
to wait and in the quest for the manpower needed to fill the ranks of the armed
forces. In order to mobilize popular support, the government had to promise
that they intended to attain victory and not fight in order to negotiate with a
terrorist entity yet once more. Mobilization of this kind for an almost total
war has its insidious effects in any country and also unintended consequences.
Total mobilization requires the juxtaposition of “us” versus “them.” Those
designated as “them” would then be dehumanized as evil and an enemy with
whom one cannot negotiate. Sri Lanka was not remiss in using the mobilization
potential of the Buddhist religious hierarchy to indoctrinate both the Sinhalese
population and the military in preparation for Eelam War IV.
Sri Lanka is part of the Global South, a region where many states are dealing with perennial internal wars pitting a government against some kind of
ethno-sectarian or ideological separatist insurgency. While it is clear that the
war held lessons for Sri Lanka, military officers and defense officials from a
number of countries in the Global South—Thailand, the Philippines, Sudan,
Iran, Pakistan, and Nigeria—hurried over to Colombo, the capital, see what
they could learn. Global South COIN is under-researched and under-theorized.
Not surprisingly, there is little in the way of comparing and contrasting Global
South irregular war experiences, including lessons that they could learn from
one another. Most of the recent works on lessons of irregular war are dedicated to the experiences of Western expeditionary forces engaging in fighting
insurgents overseas.
Is the Sri Lankan victory of relevance to Western expeditionary counterinsurgency forces? Most people in the West would argue that it is not.
Most often they focus on the moral and ethical pitfalls associated with the
Sri Lankan way of counterinsurgency, which witnessed significant civilian
L essons of M odern War 195
casualties during the end game. Sri Lanka’s victory was not elegant in moral
and ethical terms.19 Indeed, it set off a storm of criticism in the West that still
continues to reverberate. The moral and ethical judgments passed on the Sri
Lankan victory by various parties, particularly in the West, is irrelevant to our
discussion of policy, strategic, operational, and tactical factors.
One could argue that the Western wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were
considerably more difficult enterprises than was the Sri Lankan effort against
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Western powers faced very porous
borders in both instances, which made it very difficult to defeat the insurgencies. However, the fact that Sri Lanka is an island really meant nothing in
the war. First, India is barely thirty miles away, and for a number of years
it was a permissive environment for the Tamil insurgents, who found ready
refuge and succor in largely Tamil southern India. India aided and abetted
the insurgents until it realized that it was contrary to its national interests.
Second, the LTTE ensured that Sri Lanka remained porous by building and
maintaining the only insurgent naval and maritime logistics capabilities to
date.
Western counterinsurgency forces have the luxury of withdrawing from
the war; that is why they are called expeditionary. The Sri Lankan government did not have the luxury of easily withdrawing from the war, as that
would have been tantamount to utter defeat and a loss of one-third of the
territory and two-thirds of the coastline. In this case, the LTTE would have
had to convincingly defeat the Sri Lankan military and destroy the political
will of the government and the Sinhalese people’s commitment to continue
the struggle. The LTTE was not capable of doing that in Eelam IV; rather it
was the insurgent organization and its supporters who had their political will
and military capabilities eviscerated.
Notes
1. Eelam War I (1983–1987); Eelam War II (1990–1995); Eelam War III
(1995–2002); and Eelam War IV (2006–2009).
2. D. Selvadurai and M.L.R. Smith, “Black Tigers, Bronze Lotus: The Evolution and Dynamics of Sri Lanka’s Strategies of Dirty War,” Studies in Conflict
and Terrorism 36, no. 7 (2013): 547.
3. Martin van Creveld, Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War: Historical
Perspectives, The Washington Papers, No. 24, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1975), ix.
4. Thomas Marks, “Counterinsurgency and Operational Art,” Low Intensity
Conflict and Law Enforcement 13, no. 3 (2006):174.
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A hmed S . H ashim
5. Brian Blodgett, Sri Lanka’s Military: The Search for a Mission, 1949–2004
(San Diego: Aventine Press, 2004), 35.
6. Gotabhaya Rajapakse, “Sri Lanka’s National Security,” PRISM 4, no. 4
(2014): 139.
7. Cyril Ranatunga, Adventurous Journey: From Peace to War, Insurgency to
Terrorism (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa, 2010), 68.
8. Interview with former Special Operations Forces officer, Colombo, June
2009.
9. Edgar O’Ballance, The Cyanide War: Tamil Insurrection in Sri Lanka,
1973–1988 (London: Brassey’s, 1989), 76.
10. Ibid., 6.
11. Interview with former Sri Lankan army officer, Colombo, June 2009.
12. Blodgett, Sri Lanka’s Military, 49.
13. Sarath Munasinghe, A Soldier’s Story: An Account of the Ongoing Conflict and the Origin of Terrorism in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Pannipitiya, 2007).
14. Nitin Gokhale, Sri Lanka: From War to Peace (New Delhi: Har-Anand,
2009), 52.
15. Interviews with senior officers in Vavuniya, northern Sri Lanka, June
2009.
16. See Tim Fish, “Sri Lanka Learns to Counter Sea Tigers’ Swarm Tactics,”
Jane’s Navy International (March 2009), 20–25; Tim Fish, “Interview: ViceAdmiral Wasantha Karannagoda, Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy,” Jane’s
Defence Weekly (April 22, 2009), 32; Rafik Jalaldeen, “Combined Operation
Conducted by the Forces Brought Victory,” Daily News, 3 June 2009, http://
www.dailynews.lk/2009/06/03supstory.asp?id=s10.
17. “General Sarath Fonseka Reveals Untold Story of Eelam War
IV,” Daily Financial Times, 10 March 2015, www.ft.lk/2015/03/10/
General-Sarath-Fonseka-reveals-untold-story-of-eelam-war-iv.
18. The U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007), preface.
19. See Malik Neal, “How Not to Win a War,” The American Interest, March 23,
2015, http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/23how-not-to-win-a-war.
Chapter 11
OPERATION ENDURING
FREEDOM—PHILIPPINES
LESSONS LEARNED FROM A SPECIAL
WA R FA R E A P P R O A C H T O C O U N T E R T E R R O R I S M
AND COUNTERINSURGENCY
David S. Maxwell
The purpose of this chapter is to provide lessons for consideration for training, preparing, planning, and execution of future operations in support of
a friend, partner, or ally to advise and assist in their internal defense and
development programs so that they can defend themselves against lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, and terrorism.
I base this chapter on my personal experiences as a U.S. Special Forces
battalion commander in Asia from 2000 to 2002 and as the commander of
the Joint Special Operations Task Force—Philippines (JSOTF-P) executing
Operation Enduring Freedom—Philippines (OEF-P) 2006–2007. The chapter
will provide an overview of special operations conducted, the context pre- and
post-9/11, and selected lessons learned.
Army doctrine describes two special operations activities in FM 3-05 Special Operations: special warfare and surgical strike. Surgical strike is the most
visible and well-known special operation, with the best examples being the
raid that killed bin Laden; the recent mission in Syria that killed Abu Sayyaf;
and the concept of F3EAD—find, fix, finish, exploit, assess, and disseminate—
which was developed to the highest order in Iraq and Afghanistan.1
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D avid S . M axwell
This chapter will examine U.S. strategy and operations through the lens of
special warfare. After providing an overview of the complex threats we will
look at the pre-9/11 actions that provide important context, then the actions
taken after 9/11; conduct an analysis of the mission and the campaign design;
and then describe selected vignettes to highlight key lessons learned.
Although JSOTF-P stood down on 1 May 2015, its work will be sustained
through persistent engagement by special operations forces under the Joint
U.S. Military Assistance Group Philippines at the U.S. Embassy.
Background and Context
The U.S. military and special operations in particular have a long relationship with the United States’s longest-standing treaty ally and only territory
that was a U.S. colony. Since declaration of independence in 1896 and its
ceding to the U.S. by the Spanish in 1898, the Philippines has faced and
continues to face myriad threats, from the occupation and annexation by the
United States and then the Japanese in World War II to the Huk rebellion,
communist and Moro insurgencies, and multiple terrorist organizations. To
this day it is a microcosm of complex examples of resistance, rebellion, revolution, insurgency, and terrorism.
The threats include separatist insurgencies from the Moro population in the
southern region of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, including remnants
of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which signed a peace agreement establishing the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao in 1996; the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which continued the insurgency until
a tenuous peace agreement was signed in 2015; and splinter groups such as
the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and the Musari Breakaway Group.
There are multiple terrorist and kidnap-for-ransom groups, including the Abu
Sayyef Group (ASG), Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), and the Pentagon Gang. Finally
there is the existential threat to the Philippines posed by the Communist Party
of the Philippines and the New Peoples Army, which seek to overthrow the
Philippine government. The Philippines also suffer violent election conflicts
and clan conflicts, or “ridos.” All of these groups represent the varied forms of
revolution, resistance, and insurgency and criminal violence that have created
a very difficult and dangerous security situation for the Philippine government
and its citizens.
It is important to understand the pre-9/11 activities of U.S. special operations forces (SOF). Since the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 199
from the bases at Subic and Clark, the U.S. military has engaged in exercises
to maintain interoperability and regional expertise. These include the major
Joint Chiefs of Staff exercise Balikatan and the COPE series of U.S. Air Force
exercises as well as the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training naval
exercises. Special operations conducted persistent engagement through joint
combined exercises and training. However, in the late 1990s and early 2000
the terrorist threat was rising in the region. A notable event was the Sipadan
crisis, in which numerous civilians were taken hostage in Malaysia by the ASG.
This and other emerging threats drove Ambassador Michael Sheehan, who
was the Department of State Ambassador for Counterterrorism, to initiate a
security assistance program to establish a Philippine national counterterrorist
force, the Light Reaction Company (LRC). The Special Operations Command
Pacific (SOCPAC), under the command of Air Force Brigadier General Donny
Wurster, was provided the resources and directed the 1st Battalion, 1st Special
Forces Group to deploy a mobile training team to organize, train, and equip the
LRC. This force was to be modeled on the U.S. Pacific Command’s in-extremis
forces that was part of the 1st Battalion under the command of SOCPAC.
There are some lessons from this effort that are important for future engagement in special warfare. First was the importance of relationships. At
the first Pacific Command-Armed Forces of the Philippines planning meeting
for this mobile training team, the 1st Battalion commander, the operations
officer, and a senior NCO subject matter expert attended the meeting. Some
senior U.S. officers did not feel it was appropriate for an NCO to attend the
meeting with members of the Philippine General Staff but reluctantly allowed
him to participate. At the start of the meeting a number of Philippine generals greeted the master sergeant warmly, as they had been training with U.S.
Special Forces and in particular this master sergeant for nearly two decades.
During the meeting they turned to him numerous times for his expert advice
on how to conduct this mission.
Another issue was in equipment fielding. Subject matter expert NCOs developed the equipment list, which included everything from weapons to body
armor and night vision devices to radios. These NCOs took a long-term view
of the mission and recommended that the LRC be equipped with .45 caliber
pistols rather than 9mm. This conflicted with the desires of the Security Assistance Office, but the NCOs were adamant and ultimately successful. Their
rationale was that the Philippines produced .45 caliber ammunition indigenously, which would allow them to be self-sufficient and not dependent on
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U.S. ammunition supplies. This is one example of fielding the right equipment
that is best for the host nation and for the mission though it goes against the
normal practice of providing all U.S. equipment identical or at least similar
to that of U.S. forces. It is important to understand the broader situation and
host nation capabilities, provide self-sustaining solutions to problems, and
not by default create forces in the U.S. image.
Actions Post-9/11
During the training of the first LRC on 27 May 2001, the Dos Palmas kidnapping occurred. Three Americans, Martin and Gracia Burnham and Guillermo Sobero, and a Filipina, Deborah Yap, along with some twenty other
Filipinos, were taken hostage by the ASG and brought to Basilan Island in
the Sulu Archipelago in Southern Mindanao. Mr. Sobero was beheaded the
next month while ransom demands were made for the hostages. The Philippine government wanted to immediately deploy the LRC despite not having
completed training; however, U.S. leadership was able to convince the Philippine leadership to complete the training, and they subsequently deployed
on Sunday 8 July following graduation on Friday 6 July. This illustrates the
typical desire of senior military and political leaders to employ SOF as the
solution to almost every problem even when not prepared. It reinforces one
of the Five SOF Truths: “Competent special operations forces cannot be created after emergencies occur.”
Because of the identified and confirmed problems with the LRC, the 1st
Battalion commander was given permission to deploy to Zamboanga, Mindanao, to meet with the LRC leadership to assess the issues and report back to
SOCPAC and the Pacific Command. This was to take place on 12 September,
but with the events of 9/11 it was delayed for two days and the meeting took
place on 14 September. At the same time SOCPAC was already assessing the
situation, and since the ASG and JI were known to have direct links to alQaeda planners anticipated that U.S. action against them might be ordered.
This presented a conflict in campaign planning. On one hand, some U.S. senior
leaders were focused on the immediate crisis of U.S. hostages held on Basilan,
while on the other hand there was the need to address the long-term problem of supporting the Philippine government and military against its broader
threats of insurgency and terrorism. This resulted in the initial geographic
focus on the island of Basilan where the hostages were located, with a broader
campaign plan to advise and assist the Philippines in both counterterrorism
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 2 0 1
and counterinsurgency operations throughout the conflict area in Mindanao
and the Sulu Archipelago.
In October 2001 the SOCPAC commander directed the 1st Special Forces
Group commander, then Colonel, now retired Lieutenant General David P.
Fridovich to conduct an assessment and develop a campaign plan to support
the Philippine government and military (the Terrorism Coordination and Assistance Visit, or TCAV) to assess both the U.S. hostage situation and the
broader terrorism and insurgency threats facing the Philippines. He assembled
a team of operations, intelligence, and logistics planners along with naval
special warfare and air force special operations planners and deployed them
to the Philippines. Included was a Special Forces Operational Detachment
Alpha team to provide security as well as local expertise, since it consisted of
those who had advised the LRC and had long-established relationships with
key personnel. One example of a long-term relationship was between the
1st Battalion commander and the Philippine Task Force Zamboanga commander, who together had attended the Infantry Officers Advanced Course
at Fort Benning in 1985 with small-group instructor then Captain Joe Votel.
When the assessment team reached Zamboanga, then Colonel Alexander Yano
was waiting at the ramp of the C-130. This relationship would prove very
important in subsequent years, as General Yano eventually became the army
commander and ultimately the commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). There is no way to forecast such long-term relationships, but
those established as a result of International Military Education and Training
(IMET) can sometimes pay dividends when the right personnel are at the right
place at the right time. IMET can be a very important investment.
At the same time as this assessment visit was taking place, the 5th Special
Forces Group (SFG), the CIA, and the U.S. Air Force were already conducting
unconventional warfare operations in Afghanistan. There is one important
difference between the 5th SFG and the 1st SFG at this time. 5th SFG was
conducting operations in-extremis in response to the 9/11 attacks to go after
al-Qaeda and the sanctuary provided by the Taliban in Afghanistan. 1st SFG
was able to plan and conduct deliberate operations rather than conduct an
in-extremis deployment. Prior to deployment it was able to conduct a detailed
assessment from the strategic level to the tactical level. In addition this was a
combined assessment that included frank and detailed discussions and assessments with the Philippine military leadership at every level. At the conclusion
of this assessment Colonel Fridovich developed a detailed campaign plan
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and presented it to the SOCPAC commander, then Brigadier General and
now retired Lieutenant General Donny Wurster, and eventually to the Pacific
Command commander, now retired Admiral Dennis Blair, who approved it
and took it to the Secretary of Defense for ultimate approval by the National
Command Authority.2
What is most important is that this campaign plan with its critical assumptions and lines of effort formed the foundation for operations from 2002 until
2015, when OEF-P was officially ended. The campaign plan was regularly updated and adjusted on the basis of ongoing assessments and changing conditions,
but the basic concepts identified in the October 2001 TCAV effort remained.
However, the campaign plan was far from perfect and was not initially
executed as envisioned by Colonel Fridovich. For one, the original plan took
a holistic approach to the problem of the terrorist groups operating throughout Mindanao. It also accounted for the MILF insurgency and the ongoing
peace negotiations. It recognized the threat from the communists (again it is
important to keep in mind that the communists were and are the existential
threat to the Philippines—today along with the Chinese, of course). The final
approved campaign plan was limited to operations on Basilan Island, which
is where the American hostages were being held. Furthermore, operations
that would impact the peace negotiations with the MILF were prohibited.
Finally, no U.S. support could be provided to the AFP in its fight against the
Communist New People’s Army because they had no linkage to al-Qaeda.
This was the start of the myopic focus on terrorism rather than on holistic
and effective security operations to address multiple threats against the United
States’s longest-standing treaty ally.
By December SOCPAC had deployed Joint Task Force 510 to Zamboanga
in Mindanao to receive army, navy, and air force special operations forces as
well as enablers.
The Mission
Although the mission statement evolved over the course of the campaign, the
2006–2007 mission statement that was written by then Lieutenant Colonel
Bill Medina is arguably one of the best and worthy of study:
JSOTF-P, in coordination with the Country Team, builds capacity, and
strengthens the Republic of the Philippines security forces to defeat selected
terrorist organizations in order to protect RP and US citizens and interests,
while preserving RP sovereignty.
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 2 0 3
This short mission statement identifies some critical elements in the overall
campaign plan. The first is acknowledgment that operations must be in coordination with the Country Team. Although this was a Title 10 named operation in support of the Global War on Terrorism, as it was called at the time,
JSOTF-P and SOCPAC leadership recognized that the military effort had to
be nested in the mission strategic plan of the Chief of Mission. Interestingly,
one of the first to use the now famous phrase “diplomacy, development, and
defense” was Ambassador Kristie Kenney. She truly believed in the so-called
“3Ds” and worked hard to integrate all three. There was tremendous embassy
support for military operations, and the JSOTF worked hard to support diplomacy and development. There was an excellent working relationship that
is illustrated by the weekly planning and coordination meetings. Nearly every
Wednesday the JSOTF leadership (commander, J2, J3, and command sergeant
major) would fly to Manila to first meet with all U.S. intelligence agencies,
then attend the political-military coordination meeting, and finally have a
private meeting with the ambassador to discuss plans and coordinate future
efforts. These substantive meetings resulted in effective intelligence sharing,
coordination of development efforts with USAID, and strategizing on ways
to influence the national leadership to best support the plans of the Philippine
security forces dealing with the threats in Mindanao.
Note that the mission statement emphasizes building capacity and strengthening security forces rather than only military forces. From the initial assessment and due to the experience of U.S. Special Forces personnel as well as plain
common sense it was understood that the security problem could not be solved
solely by the application of military power. There was a lack of police and law
enforcement capability in Southern Mindanao (as well as operational courts
and judges). The police that were present dressed in military-like uniforms,
carried long guns, and required military support to conduct law enforcement
operations. It is somewhat of an urban legend that military forces can only
train, advise, and assist other military forces but cannot operate with police
forces. However, since the need to take a holistic approach with all military
forces was identified in the assessment and written into the campaign plan
when the execute order was issued, the authority to train, advise, and assist
law enforcement forces was provided. A number of initiatives were focused
on law enforcement. A simple one was an effort to simply influence police to
wear their blue uniforms rather than the military uniforms. Another was to
turn over checkpoints from the military to the police and move the military
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into background support roles. A major effort was to try to emphasize the rule
of law, and this meant getting the courts to function and judges back into their
communities. This paid off by 2006 and 2007 when there were a number of
atrocities committed by rogue elements of both the MNLF and the MILF as
well as the ASG. On Basilan Island ten marines were beheaded by the ASG in
an MILF-controlled area. Rather than conduct “scorched earth” or “scouring
operations” as were common in the late 1990s and prior to 2002, the AFP
requested and were granted warrants for the arrests of the perpetrators and
proceeded to conduct very surgical military operations with special operations
and law enforcement personnel.
On Jolo Island a rogue MNLF battalion commander initiated a week-long
offensive operation that resulted in the deaths of five civilians. Again, rather
than mount a large-scale military operation the AFP was able to have the police
obtain warrants for his arrest and then proceeded to conduct surgical military
operations in support of the police. This incident took place six weeks before
national elections. When elections occurred the opposition candidate won and
there was a peaceful transfer of power to the new governor of Jolo and no
interruption of the local election process. The rule of law began to take hold.
The mission statement also targets selected terrorist organizations. This is
in response to directives and Concept of Operations plans that direct operations against al-Qaeda–linked terrorist groups. Again the Philippines faced
security threats that went far beyond the ASG and the JI, but the myopic focus
of U.S. national leadership prevented a holistic and integrated approach to
advising and assisting our allied partners. It is ironic and frustrating that the
Philippine government was assisting the United States with its priority focus
on terrorism but U.S. leadership would not allow U.S. advisors to assist the
Philippines against their existential threat because it was not linked to alQaeda. It is only because of the relationships and trust established through
years of persistent engagement that this restriction did not undermine U.S.
and Philippine operations.
The final aspect of the mission statement regards protecting RP sovereignty.
This is one of the most important aspects of the entire mission. U.S. forces
conducting operations in support of a friend, partner, or ally must understand the issue of sovereignty and operate in such a way as to respect it. The
first indication of respect for sovereignty is simply using the correct name of
the country. Too many Americans, including military personnel, refer to the
Philippines as the Philippine Island or “the PI.” These terms harken back to
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 2 0 5
the colonial era when the Philippines was a U.S. colony. Instead the members
of the JSOTF referred to the Philippines as the Republic of the Philippines
or the “RP.”
But respect for sovereignty required much more than simply using the
proper name. The most important concept is to understand that in this operation the United States played an entirely supporting role. Special operations
forces had to operate using the fundamental though nondoctrinal principle of
“the art of leadership without being in charge or in command.” Said another
way, this could be “the art of leading by letting the right leaders lead.” Obviously this applied most directly toward our allies who were responsible for
execution of all operations because no U.S.-led or U.S. unilateral operations
were permitted by either the Philippine or U.S. governments. But it also applied to our interagency partners as well. The U.S. military is always the six
hundred pound guerrilla with both the host nation and the U.S. interagency.
However, in places like the Philippines it is best to minimize the footprint and
allow the right forces to be in the lead with U.S. special operations support.
This is a posture and operational environment the members of the JSOTF
worked hard to achieve and sustain. This kind of framework requires presence, patience, and persistence. U.S. SOF have to be in the right place at the
right time with the right people in order to influence operations (planning
and execution). Patience is a key element because host nation forces do not
operate the same way as U.S. forces so advisors must tailor their advice in
accordance with the established customs, traditions, doctrine, and capabilities
of the host nation and not simply offer U.S. advice or commit the worst crime
of an advisor: attempting to create the host nation forces in the U.S. image.
Finally, persistence is required because not only does the enemy have a vote,
operations will rarely take place as planned and mistakes will be made that
will require changes to the plan.
Campaign Design and Lines of Effort
The doctrinal basis for the JSOTF’s campaign plan is foreign internal defense
(FID) executed by soldiers who are informed by unconventional warfare
training and education. During the first half of execution of OEF-P, there
was no FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency doctrine. Not only have SOF had long
experience with FID, SOF and in particular U.S. Special Forces derive their
knowledge and expertise from the foundation of unconventional warfare,
and it is the education and training in UW that informs SOF on how to de-
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velop campaign plans to operate in what General Votel calls the “gray zone”
and others call the “missing middle” or even the “messy middle.”3 Special
Forces have long been students of the Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent
Strategies Studies originally developed by the U.S. Army’s Special Operations
Research Office at American University in the 1950sand 1960s. The U.S.
Army Special Operations Command in partnership with the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Lab have built on this research and brought it up
to date for the twenty-first century.4 This provides the intellectual foundation
for study of these phenomena.
It is this focus on assessment that provides the ability for SOF to operate
effectively in this environment. The forces that routinely conduct special
warfare base their operations on assessments, and assessments are part of
the training and doctrine for all special warfare forces. As an example, U.S.
Special Forces conduct area studies prior to deployment and once deployed
conduct continuous area assessments. Psychological operations forces base
their work on target audience analysis, among other assessments. Civil affairs forces develop their plans on the basis of the large amounts of data
they collect from assessing local conditions as part of their Civil Information
Management process.
The first task that was conducted on Basilan was a structured assessment
of the security situation and the training level of security forces, as well as
economic, historical, and cultural conditions. Nearly thirty “barangays” or
villages were surveyed through use of a sixty-seven-question questionnaire to
gather data to inform the lines of operations and prioritize efforts. Colonel
Fridovich directed use of this questionnaire on the basis of his experience
conducting operations in Haiti. SOF personnel did not of course simply
go down the list asking questions. This was initially all done manually by
SOF personnel collecting information in their little green notebooks and
then transmitting data in files by radio.5 They internalized the information
requirements and in routine meetings and discussions elicited the information required to develop future plans and establish priorities of work. This
information was collated and analyzed at the Army Special Operations Task
Force (led by 1st Special Forces Group) and used to synchronize efforts
among military forces as well as other U.S. government agencies such as
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The four lines of
operation established in the campaign plan rested on the critical information
provided by assessments.
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 2 0 7
The first line of operation was training, advising, and assistance to build
the capacity and capability of the Philippines security forces. The objective
was to develop a secure and stable environment.
Training with AFP forces evolved over time. On Basilan, initial operations
focused on assisting the AFP to rescue hostages and eliminating the condition
of the island as a sanctuary. In a clear demonstration of national leadership’s
lack of understanding of how to operate in the gray zone, U.S. Special Forces
were restricted from operating at levels below the battalion command for
force protection reasons based on the flawed assumption that the battalion
commander would be away from the (non-existent) front lines. Soldiers overcame this restriction by working closely with the battalion commander and
interpreting the restriction to allow them to go wherever the battalion commander and his tactical command post was positioned.
In terms of training company- and platoon-size forces from the two army
and one marine brigades as well as the Philippine Scout Ranger and special
forces battalions, the methodology was simple. The unit would be assessed to
determine strengths and weaknesses. As each unit initially could not always
be removed from the field to conduct formal and deliberate training, advisors
would use rehearsals for actual operations as the training venue. The cycle
would flow this way: assess, train, rehearse, execute the operations, conduct
an after-action review, identify strengths and weaknesses, train to correct deficiencies, rehearse and execute the next operation. U.S. advisors would not be
part of the tactical operations, but since they would accompany the battalion
commander they were often in a position to observe forces in the field and
on the objective. This training shifted the focus from large-scale battalionsize movements to contact (or scouring operations, as the AFP soldiers called
them) to aggressive small unit patrolling to find and fix enemy forces and then
conduct planned attacks.
While improvement of tactical operations was important, advice and assistance went well beyond ground operations.
One important improvement was to provide the Philippine Air Force
with a night vision capability. Ground forces were reluctant to conduct
night operations because there was no chance of the wounded being medevaced until daylight. Therefore, Philippine helicopter pilots received night
vision goggles and extensive training by the Air Force Special Operations
Command’s 6th Special Operations Squadron, which had aviation FID as
its primary mission.
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Another improvement was in developing improved fire support, using artillery and, most important, close air support. By rigging gun cameras in Philippine OV-10 aircraft and MD-500 attack helicopters and using the overhead
imagery capability of the P3 Orion, air advisors were able to train Philippine
fixed and rotary wing pilots in rudimentary joint air attack capabilities and
significantly improve fire support. The film provided from overhead by the
P3 allowed the advisors to critique the training and eventually was used to
demonstrate to senior Philippine leadership and ground commanders the capabilities that improved commanders’ confidence in air support.
Advice and assistance were not limited to tactical combat operations.
JSOTF logisticians identified critical joint logistics shortfalls as a result of stove
piping and lack of interservice cooperation. By using the U.S. ambassador to
engage with senior leaders in Manila, we were able to transmit recommendations for how to improve logistics (in one case transport of fuel both for aircraft
and naval ships) and overcome some of the traditional interservice rivalries.
Finally, another nonstandard or overlooked activity fell under the Judge
Advocate. The main focus of Philippine military lawyers was on administrative law and advising commanders on enforcement of military regulations.
They had little if any operational law training or experience unless they had
participated in IMET. JSOTF Judge Advocate Generals assessed the problem
and developed various training programs to provide operational law capabilities, and this proved to be another method to focus the military on human
rights and the law of land warfare and to provide advice to commanders on
the conduct of operations.
The next line of effort is targeted civil-military operations (CMOs). Again,
all operations resulted from thorough and continuous assessments. We say
targeted because we focus on two targets, conditions and contested areas.
The obvious one is the conditions that give rise to revolution, resistance, and
insurgency (and terrorism). A comprehensive development effort by the Philippine military with U.S. military support and longer-term and larger-scale
development by the Philippine government’s Mindanao Economic Development Corporation and its partner USAID focused on changing conditions
through development. Schools, medical facilities, roads, livelihood programs,
and business development are all examples of development that can and is
providing long-term change.
The Philippine military, with U.S. support, focused on smaller CMO activities such as medical and engineering civic action programs to provide the
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 2 0 9
military access to the second “target”: contested areas. CMO was part of the
employment of the classic counterinsurgency method of the ink or oil spot. On
the basis of threat assessment, Philippine forces would move into areas that
had strong insurgent and terrorist presence. They would engage the population,
identify projects that would improve local conditions, and over time contribute
to undermining the insurgent and terrorist organizations. The presence of the
Philippine military would improve the local security situation and contribute
to denying sanctuary, mobility, and access to resources.
The local political and military leadership recognized the value of CMOs.
As an example, the Sulu Province governor had a problem with absentee
barangay chiefs or village mayors who would live off the island and only periodically travel to the villages that elected them. One of the military projects
that was routinely constructed was an “area coordination center,” which was
a building constructed in a barangay to provide a place to meet to coordinate
CMO projects with local stakeholders. It also served as a place for town
meetings as well as a farm-to-market structure serving as the central farmer’s
market. These simple buildings provided many local benefits, from the mayor’s
political activities to farmers and villagers being able to conduct business more
effectively and efficiently. The governor of Sulu asked the Philippine and U.S.
militaries to only build area coordination centers where the mayor pledged to
live full time in his barangay. This was designed to improve local governance.
The third line of effort is intelligence. Fusion centers were established at
the combatant command HQ (for example, Western Mindanao Command,
or WESMINCOM) and the task force levels. Tactical intelligence liaison took
place at the battalion level. Releasable U.S. national level and technical intelligence from both the military and other government agencies was fused
with the extensive human intelligence capabilities of the Philippine military
and government to improve targeting, disrupt networks, and achieve better
situational understanding. U.S. intelligence personnel assisted with terrorist
targeting and development of target intelligence packages. U.S. assets from
the Scan Eagle UAV to the sensors on the P3 to the forward-looking infrared
radar capabilities on SH-60 helicopters from the U.S. Navy were combined
with the various strategic and tactical signals intelligence assets to confirm or
deny information and augment human intelligence reporting.
One of the many successes of intelligence operations was the destruction
of the auxiliary network on Jolo Island that was responsible for providing
weapons and safe houses to support ASG operations. Their legitimate activities
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provided cover for their support. Analysts determined that they were communicating via citizens band radio using codes in indigenous dialects. Once the
code was broken and communications could be monitored, the Philippine Light
Reaction Company, Scout Rangers, and Navy SEALS conducted a simultaneous joint special operation to take down most of the network in a single night.
There is no doubt that intelligence operations were complex, frustrating,
and difficult, with different military and civilian intelligence agencies having
different authorities and restrictions. However, weekly coordination at the
U.S. Embassy with all the agencies greatly facilitated overcoming the friction
among U.S. organizations, and quality intelligence was able to be provided
to Philippine forces.
The final line of effort is influence operations. Extensive work was done by
Philippine and U.S. psychological operations forces to bring dissent and discord among the ASG fighters, as well by Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy
officials at the U.S. embassy to ensure transparency of U.S. activities and help
to build trust between the Philippines and the United States. The collaboration
resulted in numerous effects being achieved, with many still in progress. From
the development of a comic book series in multiple dialects focusing on local
heroes and their heroic actions to influence the youth toward productive lives,
to tip lines, to effective use of the Department of State’s Rewards for Justice
Program, all contributed to the influence line of effort.
Two areas stand out. First is the effort to build trust. From the initial
deployment to the current day, political opposition and anti-U.S. Filipinos
challenged the U.S. presence as saying that the United States wanted to turn
the Philippines into another Afghanistan. Despite information to the contrary from military and civilian leaders, Philippine and U.S., these challenges
persisted. However, over time actions did speak louder than words, as U.S.
forces did not conduct operations in the same way as Afghanistan and Iraq.
The U.S. operated truly in support of the Philippine government and never
assumed the lead in any operation and never conducted any U.S. unilateral
operations. The U.S. forces never had to resort to using the derogatory term
of “putting a Filipino face” on an operation because the Filipinos were always
in charge. The lesson is that not only do actions speak louder than words but
it also takes time to prove your word through those actions.
Finally, the most important aspect of influence operations was the enhancement of the legitimacy of the Philippine government and its security forces.
Although we employed extensive psychological operations products through
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both print and electronic media, as well as face-to-face contact, legitimacy
is best enhanced through action and only occurs over time. From a U.S. perspective it was imperative that the JSOTF avoid doing anything that would
undercut Philippine legitimacy, and this was an important part of all planning.
Operational Vignette
I would like to offer one vignette that is illustrative of special warfare operations and OEF-P.
Following the death of Janjalani in September of 2006, Abu Solaiman took
over command of the ASG. An eleven-month operation led to Solaiman’s death
in January 2007. How he was killed was a classic special warfare operation
in support of the Philippine military. In March of 2006, the ASG bombed the
Jolo coop and killed five and wounded twenty-six Muslim citizens. One of the
low-level ASG members became disgruntled over the killing of fellow Muslims and was significantly influenced by his wife, who had been influenced by
both psychological operations and CMOs. The dissent and discord program
emphasized not only the poor ASG leadership but also the Rewards for Justice
Program, which offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the
capture or killing of Abu Solaiman. She was also influenced by the care she and
her children were receiving from the Philippine government thorough medical
civic action and the construction of schools and clinics. She challenged her
husband by saying that the ASG had done nothing for her family and that he
should not support the ASG but instead help the government. She argued that
she could not even put milk on the table for her children yet there was a $5
million reward. This convinced him to become an informant with Philippine
military intelligence, and he eventually provided Abu Solaiman’s cell phone
information. Eventually national-level intelligence assets located Solaiman’s
handset in the jungle on Jolo Island, and an intelligence officer immediately
provided the information to Staff Sergeant Crysta Kovach, an intelligence
analyst in the JSOTF.
She recognized this as actionable intelligence and knew that there was a
U.S. Special Forces team advising the 6th Philippine Special Forces Company,
and they were going to conduct an operation in the vicinity that night. She provided the information and then with Staff Sergeant Light and Specialist Niece
put together a target intelligence package and transmitted it to the team so that
they could plan the mission. Kovach received that information at 1500 hours,
and by 1800 hours the Philippine 6th Special Forces Company was moving
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through the jungle to the location. At dawn they arrived at the ASG camp, and
Abu Solaiman left the perimeter for his morning constitutional; rather than
give up, he resisted and was shot and killed. The company cleared the camp,
killing a number of ASG and recovering significant amounts of information
on computers and cell phones as well as weapons. They sent a digital photo
over the radio to the task force HQ and the informant to make a positive
identification. The task force commander then asked the JSOTF to send the
FBI so they could take a DNA sample and confirm the death of Abu Solaiman.
In June of 2007 the informant, along with others who played a role, received
part of the reward, and he and his family were placed in witness protection.
This vignette illustrates all the lines of operation employed in this special
warfare campaign from advising and assisting to the importance of CMOs
and influence activities to intelligence cooperation among military and civilian
agencies. Although it took months to develop when actionable intelligence
was received, the forces were prepared to rapidly act and exploit it. This is
the nature of special warfare.
Conclusion
This chapter has touched on just a few of the many lessons and operations
that occurred as part of OEF-P following 9/11. The few identified in this
paper offer some important insights for the future.
First, SOF doctrine prior to 9/11 was effective. Foreign internal defense
conducted by personnel grounded in unconventional warfare with a UW mindset is an important part of a special warfare campaign.
Second, persistent engagement over time allows relationships to develop.
Persistent engagement and even IMET as shown here are investments in people.
It is impossible to predict when or if they will pay off, but they did in OEF-P
and they have in many cases around the world for U.S. forces (we should note
that while 5th Special Forces Group went into Afghanistan and conducted
UW in-extremis, they were able to benefit from and exploit the relationships
built with the Northern Alliance over the course many years before 9/11).
Third, the importance of host nation sovereignty cannot be overemphasized. While it is possible that some operations will be in failed states and
ungoverned spaces, the majority of U.S. operations will be in a sovereign
nation in support of a host nation government, and it is important to be able
to operate in such a complex political environment.
O peration E nduring F reedom — P hilippines 2 13
Last, special warfare and operations in a nation like the Philippines require
personnel and leaders who can truly practice the art of leading without being
in charge, and they must be able to exercise presence, patience, and persistence
to deal with the political friction and complexity and know how to focus on
achieving long-term effects rather than simply short-term gains.
Notes
1. Department of the Army, ADP 3-05, Special Operations, July 2019, p. 9,
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/adp3_05.pdf.
2. An interesting sidebar to this is that in the meetings in the Oval Office
with his national security staff, President Bush overruled Secretary Rumsfeld’s
objections to executing the plan because he had told President Arroyo he would
support her in the fight against terrorism. This was relayed to me at West Point
by the late General Wayne A. Downing, who was present at the meeting as the
counterterrorism advisor to the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
3. General Joseph Votel, “Statement Before the House Armed Services Committee,” 26 March 2015, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/
Votel_03-26-15.pdf.
4. USASOC, “Assessing Revolution and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) Studies,”
2011. http://www.soc.mil/ARIS/ARIS.html.
5. Subsequently the 1st Special Forces Group automated the questionnaires,
and improved communications systems allowed for more rapid collection and
dissemination of assessment data.
Chapter 12
LESSONS FROM THE WAR IN GEORGIA
Svante E. Cornell
On 8 August 2008, Russian forces invaded Georgia, ostensibly in order to
come to the assistance of Russian “citizens” in South Ossetia—a Georgian
autonomous region outside of the central government’s control. This initially
seemed a local conflagration to many, but in hindsight, the Russian invasion was a turning point in Russia’s international behavior, particularly as
it spelled the end of its adherence to the fundamental rules of the game in
international politics. Yet the international reaction to the war was muted.
Russian propaganda effectively deflected part of the blame on Georgia, and
within two months of the war, the global financial crisis erupted, focusing
minds on more important matters. In 2009, President Obama would launch
the “Reset” policy, and by that time, European nations had already normalized their relations with Russia. This experience was undoubtedly key to Russia’s calculations when it launched its effort to dismember Ukraine in 2014.
A number of lessons from the Georgia war are relevant. These center on
Russia’s statecraft, its practices that have now come to be termed “hybrid
war.” They also relate to decision-making in Russia, and the mix of strategic
thinking and opportunism that underlies Russian policies.
A Background: Eurasia’s Secessionist Territories
To understand the war in Georgia, it is important to keep in mind that the
collapse of the Soviet Union was relatively peaceful, as the collapse of mul-
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 15
tinational empires go. However, there were important exceptions to this, as
seven armed conflicts shook the successor states of the USSR in the period
from 1988 to 1995. Moldova and Tajikistan were two instances, but a full
five armed conflicts occurred in the Caucasus, which included numerous
territorial units defined by ethnicity. The Russian North Caucasus counted
seven different autonomous republics and autonomous regions—units with
lower levels of theoretical self-rule than the full Union Republics of the
USSR, which had all the trappings of independent states, from flags and parliaments to a nominal right of secession. Of course, all these rights existed
in theory only, being in many ways a farce of the Soviet system. Yet while
these institutions of self-rule were weak, they acquired relevance as the union
structures collapsed in the late 1980s. This led to a process of competing
nationalist movements often called “matryoshka nationalism” after the Russian dolls of the same name.1 Movements for independence arose among
Georgians, which in turn triggered responses from ethnic Abkhaz and Ossetians in the republic—who possessed their own institutions of nominal selfrule, and wondered whether it would not be better to remain within a large,
multinational USSR than be stuck with the increasingly nationalistic Georgia. Similarly, the neighboring Armenians and Azerbaijanis began agitating
both against Moscow and against each other, focusing their disagreements
on Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian autonomous province within
Azerbaijan’s borders.
To counter secessionist tendencies, leaders in Moscow made it clear that
there would be territorial consequences. Thus, even before the collapse of
the USSR, Georgians agitating for meaningful self-rule were told by Russian
leaders that “you will have problems with the autonomous regions.”2 This
was a thinly veiled threat: if you try to separate from Russia, we will mobilize
minorities that will separate from you.
Thus, from a very early stage, the conflicts in the Caucasus came to operate
on two separate but interconnected levels. First, of course, were the very real
disagreements between the local nations themselves, and second, the disagreements between the national republics and Moscow. This had a debilitating
effect on conflict dynamics, because it allowed the various nations of the
region to see the conflicts in completely different contexts. To Abkhazians,
for example, this was a conflict between Abkhazians and Georgians, pure
and simple. Russia was a factor, yes, but a secondary one. But to Georgians,
Moscow’s intervention meant that the Abkhazians and their grievances were
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not taken seriously. Many leading Georgians, especially in the early 1990s,
saw the secessionist minorities as beings without a will of their own, entirely
manipulated and controlled by Moscow. Even after the active hostilities ended
as ceasefires were negotiated between 1992 and 1994, this fundamental problem remained: Who were the parties to these conflicts? Because of the West’s
preoccupation with the Balkans and lack of interest for the Caucasus, there
was no real pushback against Russia’s efforts to impose itself as the broker
and keeper of peace in these conflicts. Thus, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
Russia was recognized by the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as mediator between the Georgians on one hand
and the Abkhazians and South Ossetians on the other; Russia also deployed
peacekeeping forces to the conflict zones. But these peacekeeping forces did
not operate under the aegis of the United Nations, and therefore did not abide
by the UN’s general rule that neighboring states to conflicting parties should
not be involved in peacekeeping. In fact, this created a time bomb, as peacekeeping and mediation was handed, under an unclear mandate, to a former
imperial overlord that had decisively sided with one of the conflicting parties
in each conflict, and intervened militarily to affect the outcome of hostilities.
Russia’s Manipulations: Conflict Party and Negotiator
When armed conflict broke out first in Karabakh, then in South Ossetia
and later in Abkhazia, the evidence of Russian participation was overwhelming.3 Already then, there is no doubt that Moscow was a military
party to the conflicts. This was the case particularly in Georgia, because
Moscow intervened there directly as well as by proxy. In Karabakh, Moscow’s role was more indirect, supporting Armenia’s war effort against
Azerbaijan. But while Russian military intelligence did activate North
Caucasian kindred peoples to fight for Abkhazia, it also deployed Russian
army, navy, and air force assets directly in fighting Georgian forces. This
was an early example of hybrid warfare: Moscow invariably denied being
involved, and even went as far as to accuse Georgians of bombing their
own positions in order to be able to blame Russia. The Russian aircraft
and navy vessels involved carried no insignia, and Russia disowned any
servicemen caught or killed by the Georgians. For example, Georgia managed to shoot down an SU-27 fighter jet over Georgian territory in 1992,
and pulled out a deceased Russian Air Force major from the plane—in
whose uniform’s pocket they found detailed instructions, including infor-
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 17
mation on the air base in Russia he had taken off from and was scheduled to return to. When the Georgian government went public, Russia’s
defense minister accused them of lying, disowning Major Shipko.4 Only
when the major’s widow appeared on Russian television were the Georgian claims irrefutably corroborated.
While the nature of power in Russia and the international environment
surrounding the Caucasus has shifted considerably, Russia’s aims have remained remarkably consistent. Azerbaijani and Georgian leaders were told
in no ambiguous terms what it would take for Russia to cease intervening in
their internal conflicts: it would take three easy steps. First, the countries had
to join the Commonwealth of Independent States, the successor organization
to the USSR—and, one could now add, the precursor to the Eurasian Economic
Union. Second, they had to accept the deployment of Russian military bases
on their territory. And third, their “external borders” had to be handed to
Russian border guards.5 That latter point is particularly interesting, because it
indicates Moscow’s refusal to fully recognize the sovereignty of these countries.
For by “external borders,” Moscow meant the borders of the former Soviet
Union—in Georgia’s case, its border with Turkey. Thus, once Georgia gave
in to Russian demands in 1994, Russian border guards were not deployed on
Georgia’s border with Armenia or Azerbaijan—which Moscow considered
an “internal” Soviet border. But they were very much manning the border
stations on the Turkish border, until Georgia refused to renew the agreement
in 1998. But to this day, Russian border guards control Armenia’s border
with Turkey, and a Russian officer will stamp visitors’ passports at Zvartnots
international airport in Yerevan.
In the mid and late 1990s, Azerbaijan and Georgia worked to wrestle
themselves out of the Russian embrace. They made some headway mainly
because of Russia’s internal troubles. From 1993 to 1999, the Yeltsin presidency gradually decayed, as did the Russian president’s health, and Russia
itself grew increasingly unstable. And most important, just across the border
in the North Caucasus, Russian leaders attempted a botched effort to rein in
the secessionist territory of Chechnya in late 1994, leading to a debilitating
war. Russia went on to lose the first Chechen war, generating shockwaves
across the region and beyond—and suggesting to leaders in the South Caucasus
that Moscow’s stranglehold on them may not last forever. Azerbaijan managed to avoid the deployment of Russian troops on its territory altogether;
Georgia ejected Russia’s border guards, but also scored a major victory when
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the OSCE’s November 1999 summit in Istanbul forced Russia to commit to
closing its military bases in Georgia and Moldova.
What was not visible to the participants at that OSCE summit was that by
then the tide had slowly begun to turn. In September, Yeltsin had appointed
Vladimir Putin as prime minister; a few months later, Yeltsin would step down,
and be succeeded by Putin. Putin, of course, would embark on a long journey
to restore Russia’s statehood and prestige, including its territorial domination
over the former Soviet space.
Crucially, Putin made the unresolved conflicts in the Caucasus a cornerstone of his policies. Indeed, it could be said that he and the various Russian
state agencies practiced and tested hybrid war there for over a decade before
applying similar instruments to Ukraine. In a 2013 article, Russian Chief of
General Staff Valery Gerasimov obliquely outlined this doctrine, while claiming it to be an analysis of the evolution of warfare in general—and some of
its core elements had indeed been practiced in Georgia. Gerasimov wrote,
among other things,
Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template . . . the role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and
strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power
of force of weapons in their effectiveness. . . . The focus of applied methods of
conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures—applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population. All this is supplemented
by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of
informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open
use of forces—often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation—is
resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.6
Georgia, more than any other country, was the proving ground for Russian
tactics of “non-linear war.” This was the case for pragmatic as well as more
idiosyncratic reasons. On a pragmatic level, Georgia was, and remains, the
weakest link in the east-west corridor linking Turkey and NATO territory
with the Caspian Sea and Central Asia beyond. The country is small, poor,
multiethnic, and politically fragmented, as well as geographically vulnerable—
one single road connects western and eastern Georgia with one another. By
contrast, Azerbaijan is larger and more homogenous, and has considerable oil
resources that provide its government with financial clout. This undoubtedly
was a major factor in explaining Russia’s preference for mischief in Georgia.
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 19
But to that should be added the emotional character to Russia’s relations
with Georgia. Georgia’s president in the 1990s, Eduard Shevardnadze, was
viscerally hated in Moscow for his role, as Soviet foreign minister, in the
collapse of the USSR. Putin later developed a similarly visceral hatred for
Shevardnadze’s successor, Mikheil Saakashvili, a contributing factor to the
war in 2008. This can be explained in part by personalities, but in part also
by the fact that Russian leaders appear considerably more vexed by the desire
of fellow Orthodox Christian nations to escape the Russian yoke than they
are by similar feelings among protestant Estonians or Muslim Central Asians.
In a sense, Moscow appears to approach the aspirations of non-Orthodox
peoples as business; but with Georgians and Ukrainians, it is personal. It is
no coincidence that the only two countries Russia has invaded since 1991
happen to be Orthodox Christian.
Indeed, in Georgia, Moscow used a set of instruments to which no other
former Soviet state had been exposed. First, Russia undermined Georgia’s statehood and independence by intervening more boldly than before in the unresolved
conflicts. It is important to note that the deterioration of Russian-Georgian relations was not triggered by the Rose Revolution and the advent of Saakashvili to
power: it preceded that, and instead coincided with the advent of Vladimir Putin
to power in Russia. As Andrey Illarionov has observed, the period 1993–1999
“was a time of relative stability and peace in the relations between Russia and
Georgia . . . this phase stands in distinct contrast to developments during the
five years prior to this period—1988–1993—as well as to events thereafter.”7
When Putin launched the second war in Chechnya in October 1999, he put
immense pressure on Georgia to allow the use of its territory in the conflict,
something Shevardnadze rejected. Over the next two years, this morphed into
a controversy over Georgia’s Pankisi gorge, a mountainous area bordering the
North Caucasus to which several thousand Chechens, including several hundred resistance fighters, had fled. This controversy got so heated that Russia
bombed Pankisi on several occasions—but every time, it denied having done
so. On the first anniversary of 9/11, Putin drew explicit parallels between Afghanistan and Georgia, calling the latter country a terrorist den, and threatened
military action.8 Only the introduction of the Pentagon’s Georgia Train and
Equip Program in 2002 checked Putin’s ambitions, as it provided Georgia with
the tools and capabilities to reassert control over Pankisi by itself.
In 2000, Russia imposed a discriminatory visa regime on Georgia, requiring
visas of Georgians but exempting residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
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Subsequently, Moscow began to distribute Russian passports en masse to
the populations of these two regions, in violation of international law. This
was followed by a claim that Russia had a right to defend its citizens abroad,
through military means if necessary—which turned out to be exactly the pretext Russia used when it invaded Georgia. Not stopping at this, Russia’s political leadership began floating the possibility of annexing Abkhazia and South
Ossetia. Meanwhile, Moscow staunchly resisted all efforts to internationalize
mediation, negotiation, and peacekeeping in the conflict zones.
Facing little international reaction to these aggressive moves, Moscow
by 2004 had essentially dropped the pretense of being an honest broker in
Georgia’s conflicts. It began appointing Russian officials to the military and
security services of the breakaway regions’ self-styled governments. Russian
general Soltan Soslaniev served as Abkhazia’s defense minister while Anatoly
Zaitsev became its chief of staff. Likewise, South Ossetia’s prime minister,
Yuri Morozov, and its security chief, Anatoly Barankevich, were among several Russian military officers in that breakaway republic’s government. South
Ossetia’s defense minister, Vasily Lunev, was a Russian military officer plain
and simple, having never set foot in the territory before his appointment. His
latest posting had been as military head of Perm oblast.9
With Russian officers came Russian arms: thus, in February 2003, Moscow
began to supply South Ossetia with heavy weapons, including a dozen T-55
tanks—followed a year later by seventy-five T-72 tanks. In 2006, Russia began
to build a military base near the town of Java in South Ossetia, designed to
host twenty-five hundred military personnel. These moves made a mockery of
Russia’s claim to playing a peacekeeping and mediation role in the conflicts,
as well as of any pretense that the separatist governments operated independently from Moscow.
Moscow also exercised economic instruments of policy. In 2006, coinciding with the Russian-Ukrainian energy crisis, energy supplies from Russia to
Georgia were cut off after mysterious explosions on Russian territory destroyed
the pipelines and power lines that carried gas and electricity to Georgia. No
perpetrators were ever brought to justice, and it is widely assumed that Russia blew up the infrastructure itself. Only months later, Russia imposed a
total ban on imports of Georgian and Moldovan wine, citing bogus quality
concerns (Russia consumed about 80 percent of both countries’ wine at the
time). In September 2006, after Georgia arrested several alleged Russian spies,
a full embargo was imposed—all transport, trade, and even postage links with
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 2 1
Georgia were ended. Georgians living in Russia were systematically harassed
for several months.
In 2007, Moscow escalated its policies to once again include military
provocation. In March of that year, Russian attack helicopters shelled administrative buildings in the Kodori Gorge, while on 6 August—a year to the day
before the descent to war in 2008—a Russian aircraft attacked a Georgian
radar station near South Ossetia. When a bomb that was dropped failed to
explode, international investigators were able to prove its Russian origin.
But Western leaders, mostly on summer vacation, took days to formulate a
response, and when it came it turned out to be soft-spoken.
By 2008, Putin had explicitly linked the conflicts in Georgia to the forthcoming Western recognition of Kosovo’s independence. On 16 April 2008,
Putin signed a decree instructing his government agencies to open direct trade,
transportation, and political ties to Georgia’s separatist republics, and to open
offices there. He then dispatched several hundred paratroopers as well as heavy
artillery into Abkhazia—according to Moscow, as part of its peacekeeping
operation. Utilizing railroad troops to repair the railroad linking Russia and
Abkhazia may have seemed an oddity, but railroad repairs were completed on
30 July. Thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of tanks sped down the
line ten days later, opening an entirely unprovoked second front to the war
that had just started in South Ossetia.
By 7 August 2008, days of escalating Russian shelling of Georgian posts
and villages in the South Ossetian conflict zone had led the Georgian army
to increase its deployment of troops there. What happened next is a matter
of dispute. Russia claims its invasion began after Georgia indiscriminately
shelled Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital; Georgia says it began an attack
only after a Russian tank column had already crossed the Roki Tunnel into
Georgian territory.
Triggers of Escalation
The war in Georgia is frequently referred to as the “five-day war,” or the
“August war.” These terms indicate that the war occurred during a finite
time period: it had a beginning and an end. But this is correct only in a narrow definition of the term war, such as the number of casualties in a given
time period. If the large-scale deployment of weaponry on another state’s
territory is taken as the criterion, war began in 2003. If the building of unauthorized military bases is taken to mean war, then war began at the latest in
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2006. If the usurpation of governing institutions on part of a state’s territory
means war, then war began sometime between 2003 and 2005.
In this sense, the relationship between Russia and Georgia is best understood as a conflict that began before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and
which has continued ever since, with various levels of intensity, and with
the use of various instruments and means. These have included diplomatic,
psychological, subversive, economic, political, and military means, deployed
individually or in coordination. And in this analysis, the conflict between Russia and Georgia is not over: the most acute military phase may have ended on
12 August 2008, but has continued ever since in different areas.
While the discussion above has focused on Russia’s role, this does not mean
that Georgia was a passive bystander to the conflict. Quite to the contrary, one
of the main reasons for the gradual escalation of tensions from 1999 onward
was Georgia’s policies. Far from accepting Russian demands to renege on its
independent foreign policy, or even reacting to these demands, Georgia under
Saakashvili increasingly became a functioning state, which developed its own
proactive policies toward the conflict zones, and lobbied internationally for
greater Western involvement and for changes to the status quo.
Saakashvili upon coming to power raised the European flag beside Georgia’s in front of the national parliament, in a powerful statement of Georgia’s
European aspirations. He also declared Georgia’s intention to seek NATO
membership. Shevardnadze had done that too, but Saakashvili’s successful
reform policies made this a bid for membership that could no longer be ignored
as utopian. Georgia also took assertive steps to achieve progress regarding
the conflicts. In 2004, Georgian authorities curtailed the widespread smuggling of drugs, untaxed cigarettes, and other contraband across South Ossetia,
which led to a serious skirmish with the separatists in which over twenty-five
people were killed. In 2006, Georgia took control of the mountainous Kodori
Gorge in upper Abkhazia, which had been dominated by a local warlord and
remained outside either Abkhaz or Georgian control. These measures were
seen as militaristic, but Tbilisi also made a series of political and economic
proposals to the separatist leaderships, and sought greater international participation in the processes of conflict resolution. Georgia reversed its earlier
policies of isolating the unrecognized republics, seeking instead to engage them
economically and win their hearts by presenting a renewed association with
Georgia as a path to Europe. Thus Tbilisi’s policies included a mix of carrots
and sticks. This mix, however, never gained coherence.
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 2 3
Thus Georgian policies played their role, but as Illarionov has noted, “it
is undeniable that both parties . . . took steps toward a military solution. . . .
Nevertheless, it appears obvious that the initiative in most, if not all, of those
steps lay with the Russian-Abkhazian-South Ossetian coalition.”10
To Russia under Putin, Georgia’s assertiveness and success were the chief
regional threats to Russia’s aims to restore its domination and control over
the states of the former Soviet Union. The Kremlin linked Georgia’s revolution to the one in Ukraine the next year, and saw it as potentially beginning
a wave of democratic revolutions that would bring Western-oriented leaders
to power throughout the post-Soviet world. This was not only an obstacle to
Putin’s ambitions of restoring Moscow’s empire but a direct threat to his own
power, as the cancer of popular uprisings could very well spread to Russia
itself—not least if the Ukrainian revolution succeeded. For that reason, Putin
was determined to roll back the “color revolutions” that had brought proWestern leaders to power in Tbilisi and Kiev, and which had put Georgia and
Ukraine on a trajectory toward NATO membership.11 This was the fundamental dynamic that led to war: Russia had the initiative, and Georgia responded.
However, this does not explain the triggers for the escalation to war in
2008. No definitive answer to this question is available, but it is clear that
the two parties did not stumble to war—quite to the contrary, Moscow purposefully escalated the tensions from spring 2008 into summer, with what
appears as a clear intention to trigger military action. That timing was by no
means carved into stone, and could in all likelihood have been rolled back
by a robust international effort; yet instead, Western actions inadvertently
hastened the process.
To begin with, Saakashvili was seen in Russia, and in some circles in Europe, as a client of the George W. Bush administration. But the Bush administration was on its way out; following the disastrous 2006 mid-term elections,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who cared about the former Soviet
space, was replaced by Robert Gates, who was almost exclusively focused
on salvaging Iraq. Moreover, the Bush administration was heavily unpopular
in Europe. Thus America was distracted, and the Western alliance divided.
The Western states provided Moscow with an opening in two concrete ways:
first, they decided in February 2008 to recognize the independence of Kosovo,
thereby setting the precedent of dismembering a European state against its
wishes. Russian leaders warned that the West’s behavior in Kosovo would be a
precedent for Georgia, but Western leaders, beginning with Secretary of State
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Condoleezza Rice, emphatically (and correctly) denied any possible linkage.
But crucially, that did not prevent Moscow from creating one, and the West
did little to make sure a link was not created. Second, at the April 2008 Bucharest summit of NATO, the Bush administration tried and failed to obtain
a consensus for NATO Membership Action Plans for Georgia and Ukraine.
NATO leaders conceived of a face-saving gesture, promising the two countries
they would ultimately be made members, but refusing to provide them with
a road map to achieve that goal. This was the worst possible solution: as one
analyst has put it, it was akin to a homeowner in a crime-infested neighborhood putting up a sign that he would buy a Rottweiler—in two weeks.12 In
other words, for Russia, the time to act was now.
Russian War Aims
Russia’s military deployment during the brief full-scale war has led to debates regarding its war aims. Did it aim only to grab the secessionist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Or did it have broader aims, possibly
including evicting the Georgian government in Tbilisi?
Predictably, the two protagonists differ on the subject. Russia’s own claims
that it intervened purely to protect its “citizens” can be dismissed out of hand.
Not only did Moscow engineer these citizens and provoke the violence, it
also built a false media story of a “genocide” against Ossetians, alleging over
2,000 dead in Tskhinvali as justification. Yet subsequently, even the Russian
prosecutor’s office could not muster more than 160 bodies, including possible
combatants, in Tskhinvali. And simultaneous to the conflict, a massive cyberattack brought down the internet servers of the Georgian government and major
Georgian news outlets, helping Russia get a head start in the information war.
More important, perhaps, the conflict was not limited to South Ossetia.
As noted, Russia within forty-eight hours in an entirely unprovoked manner
opened a second front in the war in Abkhazia and inserted its forces deep into
Georgian territory, including the seaport of Poti, the town of Gori between
Tbilisi and South Ossetia, and the hills on the outskirts of Tbilisi. Russia also
established “security zones” in Georgia, from which it subsequently withdrew.
As for Georgian leaders, they have frequently argued that Russia was planning
to occupy the capital city and overthrow the government. However, there is
no concrete evidence that Russian forces had such far-reaching aims.
There is, nevertheless, evidence that Russia’s aim was regime change: in
a much-publicized incident during the war, Russian foreign minister Sergey
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 2 5
Lavrov told Secretary Rice in a telephone conversation that one of Russia’s
conditions for ending the war was “Saakashvili has to go.” Against Lavrov’s
wishes, Rice immediately publicized this demand.13 That demand, and Russian
troop movements near Tbilisi on 11 and 12 August, suggest that Moscow was
at the very least toying with the idea of entering the city. It is most likely that
such a move would not have been permanent, but rather intended to induce
panic in the city and force the Georgian government to leave the capital in
humiliation.
Ultimately, Russia’s exact war aims may never be known, because the war
did not proceed as Moscow had planned. The Georgian decision to begin
shelling advancing Russian troops on the night of 7 August has been widely
criticized as everything from “starting the war” to “falling into a Russian
trap.” But it is a fact that this shelling slowed down the Russian armored
column’s advance in a single file from the Roki tunnel linking Russia with
South Ossetia down to Tskhinvali. It took three days of fighting before the
Russians could take the city and move further south; indeed, Georgian troops
maintained the tactical advantage until 10 August, when they were exhausted
and unable to rotate while Russia’s numerical advantage won the day. But
by 11 August, the world had woken up to the war, and Western leaders were
already on the way to Tbilisi. French president Nicolas Sarkozy was already
in Moscow, trying to negotiate a ceasefire; the next day, he was in Tbilisi, as
was Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt on behalf of the Council of Europe,
while the leaders of Poland, Ukraine, and the three Baltic states held a vigil
at the Georgian parliament building. By this time, it was in all likelihood too
late to move into Tbilisi, as the cost for Russia would have been too high.
It is entirely possible that Saakashvili’s critics are right: had he not ignited a
conflict that was obviously coming, Georgia could at least have escaped much
of the blame for the conflict. But it is also entirely possible that by taking the
initiative in bringing the conflict to international attention, Saakashvili may
have saved Tbilisi from being invaded, as well as saved his own government.
With the Hindsight of Ukraine
Eleven years after the war, the history—or at least the historiography—of the
war in Georgia has been reshaped in part by events in Ukraine. Certainly,
Western leaders reacted more rapidly and forcefully this time, not least because of the precedent set in Georgia. And the war in Ukraine appears also to
have helped to temporarily rehabilitate former Georgian president Saakash-
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vili on the international arena. But Russia’s behavior in Ukraine suggests that
it drew lessons from the war in Georgia; it also provides the opportunity to
draw parallels, and perhaps indications regarding Russian motives.
To begin with, though discretely, the war in Ukraine has settled the debate
on culpability for the war in Georgia: no one now seriously argues that Georgia
bears the major responsibility for the war. This is a result of events in Crimea:
whereas Russia worked to manufacture an incident that would allow it to
invade Georgia in 2008, in Crimea it simply invented a justification out of
thin air. This was the notion that a supposedly “fascist” regime in Kyiv was
committing crimes against Russians there, an allegation that remains entirely
unsubstantiated. More important, the war in Ukraine—and particularly in
eastern Ukraine—has put the international spotlight on what is now called
Russia’s “hybrid warfare,” the combination of tactics that enables Russia to
have a fig leaf of deniability behind its actions. And here, Moscow is very
much making use of tactics and instruments honed in Georgia. The problem
is that in Georgia, there was a conflict between Georgia’s central government
and the Abkhazian and Ossetian separatists. In Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia
had to create, organize, and staff these separatist groups, and that after the
Russian annexation of Crimea had already exposed its tactics. Yet these events
are also important in providing a better understanding of the past, especially
the level of Russian manipulation and control over Georgia’s separatist entities. Especially before 2008, many Western analysts dismissed, or took with
a grain of salt, Georgian protestations that the secessionists were Russian
stooges. However, Russia’s unabashed manipulation in Ukraine has included
the systematic use of assets involved in other “frozen conflicts,” particularly
Moldova’s Transnistria region. Because Moscow’s tactics so closely parallel
those used in Georgia, Russia has laid bare its modus operandi, which allows
historians to speak with greater certainty about the logic behind events that
transpired in Georgia from 1999 to 2008.
A comparison between Georgia and Ukraine also suggests that Moscow
appears to mix a healthy level of strategic planning with operational opportunism. In Ukraine, plans for the annexation of Crimea had clearly existed for
some time, and were implemented when a permissive environment emerged
following the chaotic change of government in Kyiv. Similarly, Putin in 2012
publicly admitted that the war in Georgia had been planned at least since
2006.14 And just as Russian forces appeared to be preparing a move on Tbilisi
but were never given the go-ahead, Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have
L essons from the War in G eorgia 2 2 7
on several occasions prodded Ukrainian defenses in places such as Mariupol
but not yet given the order for a full-scale attack. This indicates that Russian
leaders are essentially making calculated gambles—prodding both their military adversaries and Western leaders, and making decisions on the basis of the
reaction they are likely to receive. This means that Russian military behavior
may be more susceptible than generally believed to clear, firm messaging from
the United States and its allies, especially if that is backed up by hard power.
In conclusion, the analysis above suggests the war in Georgia is not over.
Following the end of major hostilities in August 2008, Russia has simply
adopted other tactics in its determination to subdue the country, and has also
been preoccupied elsewhere. Russia did not achieve its objectives in 2008: it
failed to “flip” Georgia from a pro-Western to a pro-Russian country, and was
forced to accept the consolation prize of wresting away Abkhazia and South
Ossetia from Georgia. This is eerily similar to what happened in Ukraine:
the fall of Viktor Yanukovich indicated that while Europeans and Americans
may be willing to let Ukraine go, the Ukrainian people were not prepared to
meet this fate. That meant Putin had lost Ukraine: he was now forced to take
what he could grab. Indeed, the grandiose celebrations of the annexation
of Crimea in all likelihood masked the painful reality that Russia had lost,
perhaps forever, the prospect of controlling what most Russians think of as
“little Russia.” They have not given up, however, as Russia’s current policies
suggest it is hell-bent on undermining the statehood of Ukraine. Sadly, this
is true in Georgia as well. Russian intelligence has been linked to a series of
bombing attacks on Georgian soil; Russia is creating and bankrolling antiWestern organizations in the country; and Russia appears to have intervened
in October 2014 to secure the firing of Irakli Alasania, a pro-American defense minister who had just succeeded in securing an agreement with France
to procure an advanced anti-aircraft system that would have made a repeat
of 2008 much more costly for Georgia. Russia also continues to erect fences
separating Georgia from South Ossetia ever deeper into Georgian territory,
and to bankroll anti-Western forces in Georgian politics and civil society.15
The last chapter in this conflict remains to be written.
Notes
1. Ian Bremmer, “Reasserting Soviet Nationalities Theory,” in Nations, Politics in the Soviet Successor States, ed. I. Bremmer and R. Taras (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 22.
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2. Communication from the late Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, October 1997.
3. For details, see Svante E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers: A
Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus (London, Routledge, 2001),
323–354. Available online at https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2012/MVZ208/
um/35586974/Small_Nations_and_Great_Powers__A_Study_of_Ethnopolitical_Conflict_in_the_Caucasus__.pdf.
4. Thomas Goltz, “Eurasia Letter: The Hidden Russian Hand,” Foreign Policy (Fall 1993).
5. Rolf H. W. Theen, “Quo Vadis, Russia? The Problem of National Identity and State-Building,” in State-Building in Russia: The Yeltsin Legacy and
the Challenge for the Future, ed. Gordon B. Smith (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,
1999), 51.
6. Valery Gerasimov, “Tsennost’ nauki v predvidenii,” Voyenniy-promyshlenniy kurier, February 27, 2013, trans. Robert Coalson, http://vpk-news.
ru/sites/default/files/pdf/VPK_08_476.pdf. Available at Mark Galeotti, “The
‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War,” In Moscow’s Shadows, 6 July 2014, https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/
the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war.
7. Andrey Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparation for War, 1999–
2008,” in The Guns of August 2008, ed. Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr
(Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2009), 51.
8. “Putin Considers Strike on Georgia,” Moscow Times, 12 September 2002,
www.moscowtimes.ru/article/850/49/243668.htm.
9. Konstantin Preobrazhensky, “South Ossetia: KGB Backyard in the Caucasus,” Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 11 March 2009, http://cacianalyst.org/
publications/analytical-articles/item/11799.
10. Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparation for War, 1999–2008,” 49.
11. Thomas Ambrosio, Authoritarian Backlash: Russian Resistance to Democratization in the Former Soviet Union (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).
12. As stated to the author by Professor Brenda Shaffer of Haifa University.
13. Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Broadway, 2012), 668.
14. Pavel Felgenhauer, ”Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, 9 August 2012, http://www.russialist.org/archives/russia-putin-admits-russian-invasion-georgia-preplanned-814.php.
15. Niklas Nilsson, Russian Hybrid Tactics in Georgia (Washington, DC:
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, 2018), https://
silkroadstudies.org/resources/pdf/SilkRoadPapers/2018_01_Nilsson_Hybrid.pdf.
Chapter 13
RUSSIAN MILITARY DOCTRINE
AND EXERCISES
Phillip A. Petersen
There have been essentially four issues driving Russian General Staff thinking during the post-Soviet period. The first was the fundamentally shocking
realization that the “noncontact” and “netcentric” style of warfare being
realized, in particular by the American armed forces, was obviating the style
of warfare centered upon the conduct of massive operational-strategic scale
operations planned by the General Staff since the height of World War II.
Second, concerns over weapons of “new physical principles” and how such
new weapons might enable the so-called “American Conventional Prompt
Global Strike” strategy gave rise to a near-term solution dependent upon
the development of “new generation” nuclear warheads and a search for
enhanced survivability through greater mobility. Third, these technical challenges were further compounded by the loss of strategic depth, requiring
changes in the application of command-and-control principles to the conduct
of operations. Fourth, a net assessment of the overall military-technical situation led to a search for asymmetric thinking in compensating for inherent
inferiorities.
Not only was the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation noticeably
smaller than those of the Soviet Union and, except for Belarus, without allies,
the withdrawal from the forward position in Central Europe had resulted in
less depth for the conduct of operations. This new reality led to the downgrading of the Soviet-era Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern Theaters
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of Strategic Military Action (TSMA) in the Western Theater of War to three
Strategic Directions in one Russian European TSMA (initially referred to as
Western but subsequently changed to European so as to avoid confusion with
the TSMA and subordinate direction having the same name). The other two
continental TSMAs have been referred to as Southern and Eastern (see Map
13.1).1 Different types of “threats” were identified for each of these continental
TSMAs: Western (European)—“innovative armies with forms and means of
non-contact use of state-of-the-art forces and resources,” Southern—“irregular
formations and guerrilla warfare methods,” and Eastern—“a traditional approach to military operations with large concentrations of military personnel
and firepower in specific areas.”2
The operational planning of the Russian General Staff has been organized
around three core themes: (1) that managing “ethnic and religious divisions”
is not dissimilar to waging “coalitional warfare,” providing both vulnerabilities and opportunities that must be planned for and exercised; 3 (2) that
“noncontact” and “netcentric” warfare demands a transformation from a
traditional massed army to highly mobile flexible forces that may be rapidly
reconfigured during the course of conflict; and (3) that nuclear weapons are
to be fully integrated into the operational plan in case their use be required
to isolate the zone of conflict and break the will of the opposing forces and
coalition to continue the war.
Ethnic and Religious Divisions
The first operational planning theme—planning and training both to defend
against exploitation of and to exploit ethnic and religious divisions—has
been the central element of every operational-strategic exercise carried out in
the ZAPAD (West) and VOSTOK (East) exercise series, as well as in a number of other exercises of similar scale conducted since the end of the Cold
War. 4 While most Western analysts have been dismissive of Russian claims
that its military exercises were concerned with “antiterrorist” operations,
operational-tactical scale training for combating terrorism makes eminently
good sense given Russian views about the nature of warfare in the post–Cold
War period.
An examination of the operational-strategic scale exercises beginning in
1999 leads one to the reasonable conclusion that the General Staff has been
preparing for conflicts similar to that which Putin has been waging against
Ukraine: (1) the tactical deployment of airborne troops to block a terrorist
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 31
Map 13.1. Russian Continental TSMAs.
incursion as part of VOSTOK 2003; (2) the defense against “separatist and
radical religious-nationalist movements or international radical groups” as
part of VOSTOK 2005; (3) the exercise scenario with the Chinese involving combat against terrorism, separatism, and extremism in Cooperation
2005 immediately following VOSTOK 2005; (4) the containment of internal
armed conflict as well as “illegal armed formations” and “terrorist groups” in
VOSTOK 2007; (5) combating an uprising by the Polish minority in Belarus
in ZAPAD 1999 and ZAPAD 2009; and (6) the interdiction of a withdrawal
of illegal armed formations in ZAPAD 2013. These are only a few selected
examples to illustrate that the Russian General Staff understands, and has
been preparing for, the nature of contemporary warfare.
When General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, articulated the political strategy informing Russian military
doctrine in a speech to the Russian Academy of Military Science in January
2013, he explained that “war in general is not declared” as well as observed
that “the difference[s] between strategic, operational, and tactical levels, as
well as between offensive and defensive operations, are being erased.” In contemporary war “the focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the
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direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian,
and other nonmilitary measures—applied in coordination with the protest
potential of the population.” Still being warfare, “all this is supplemented
by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of
informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open
use of forces—often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation—is
resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.”5
What the army must be prepared for, noted General Gerasimov, is the
conduct of asymmetrical actions “enabling the nullification of any enemy’s
advantages in armed conflict. Among such actions are the use of special-operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanent operating front
through the entire territory of the enemy state, as well as information actions,
devices, and means that are constantly being perfected.”6 What is new about
Russian “new generation warfare” is a definition of “deep operations” that
extends operations throughout the territory of the opposing forces. Already
in the 2010 Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation it was observed that
a concrete feature of modern military conflict involves “the prior implementation of measures of information warfare in order to achieve political objectives
without the utilization of military force and, subsequently, in the interest of
shaping a favorable response from the world community to the utilization
of military forces.”7 The 2014 Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation
further elaborated on “the use of indirect and asymmetric methods of action”
to include “use of externally funded and run political forces and social movements.” The 2014 Military Doctrine even defined modern warfare as “the
integrated employment of military force, political, economic, informational
and other non-military means, implemented with the extensive use of the
protest potential of the population and special operations forces.”8
The Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kieselev made clear that the army must
be adequately prepared for information warfare when he declared, “information war is now the main type of war, preparing the way for military action.”9
Perhaps the best example of how Russian information warfare is contributing
to Russia’s military operations in Ukraine’s Donbas is the linkage established
by Dr. Phillip A. Karber between the so-called “humanitarian assistance”
convoys to the Donbas by the Russian Red Cross and the offensive combat operations conducted immediately after the white-painted trucks of the
Russian Red Cross have completed resupply operations.10 Nobody disputes
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 33
that such deliveries provide ample photo opportunities regarding the elderly
receiving some meager food and water rations. However, the implication that
the assistance must be “humanitarian” because it is conducted by the “Red
Cross” is undermined by the fact that there is absolutely no legal connection
between the International Red Cross and the Russian Red Cross—a so-called
“non-governmental organization” funded by the Russian government. Paint
military resupply convoys white, call them by a misleading internationally
recognized name, and not only get a “free pass” from interdiction, but take a
credit with global public opinion for providing succor to the suffering caused
by your own aggression.
In October 2013, two Russian military officers identified the nine elements
of “new generation warfare,” citing examples for many of the elements from
the experiences of Western armies.11 The elements identified in the article were
(1) non-military asymmetric warfare to establish a favorable socioeconomic
and political environment; (2) special operations to misdirect elites; (3) intimidation, fraud, and bribery; (4) destabilization operations and organization
of a military opposition; (5) introduction of armed insurgents and support
thereof; (6) clandestine military intervention; (7) use of electronic warfare
and high-technology reconnaissance to facilitate the destruction of resisting
forces; (8) overt intervention to occupy territory and suppress any remaining resistance; and (9) threats to use nuclear weapons, and to use precision
weapons to destroy nuclear power plants, chemical industry facilities, and
large hydroelectric power plants. The nine elements should not be perceived
as discretely independent of one another, as any number of them may be at
play at the same time.
Conducting exercises to train the Russian Armed Forces in the execution
of the various elements of “new generation warfare,” the General Staff routinely deploys into the field “aggressor forces” to train on lower-level forms
of violence and “friendly forces” to train on combating such violence with
all means up to and including the notional employment of nuclear weapons.
Hence, “aggressor” forces practice exploiting ethnic and religious diversity
to promote separatism; support separatist elements with arms and advisors;
practice the employment of as many as a thousand diversionary regulars in
support of the separatists; and exercise the employment of regular armed
formations to prevent the defeat of the faux rebellion. As part of what is presented as counterterrorism training, “friendly forces” in the exercises isolate
diversionary regulars of the aggressor forces and, along with Interior Ministry
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Troops, complete the destruction of the “illegal armed forces” and employ
nuclear weapons to isolate the conflict region from aggressor reinforcement
and compel negotiations. The practical effect of Russian operational-strategic
scale exercises is that, in providing “aggressor forces” field training, GRU
and FSB officers are trained to organize and lead terrorists and “illegal armed
formations” under cover of deceptive measures. As a result of the exercises,
the Russian Armed Forces are trained to use “partisan-style conflict” that
“practically eliminates the distinction between the actions of diversionary
groups, the regular army and partisan units” that “can be extraordinarily effective against opponents who rely only on regular units.”12 The fact that the
Interior Ministry Troops are trained to “pacify” occupied areas once major
offensive operations have terminated, and that these troops constitute as much
as 60 percent of the total troops training in an operational-strategic exercise,
suggests the General Staff’s solution to the manpower shortages frequently
cited as why the Russian Ground Forces would be inadequate to conduct a
major armed conflict with NATO.
Russian operational-strategic exercises since the end of the Cold War prepared the Armed Forces to conduct operations in the co-called near abroad.
Exercise lessons that were applied in Putin’s war to seize Crimea13 and prohibit
a truly independent Ukraine include the following: (1) ethnicity is a fundamental tool for both political justification and operational strategy, (2) subversion
via regular armed forces concealed as “illegal armed formations” is effective,14
(3) something similar to coalitional warfare strategy can be successfully employed to attack the opponent’s cohesiveness, and (4) political use of nuclear
threats is an effective instrument to delay or prevent the opponent’s timely
operational responses. Clearly, the information warfare waged in support
of the early stages of Putin’s war against Ukraine was successful beyond his
expectations.15 “The ideas and messages of faux NGOs and election monitors
[were] widely disseminated through authoritarian-backed media, propelling
their alternate reality abroad.”16 Not only did Putin’s special operations to
seize Crimea take Ukraine by surprise, it made Western capitals look foolish.
Since “the enemy” per se is not Ukraine, but European political culture as
represented by the European Union and defended by the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, the war being waged has already been expanded to the next
perceived point of the enemy’s vulnerability—the Baltic States. As observed
by Checkinov and Bogdanov, “information and psychological warfare aimed
at achieving superiority in the field of command and control and the moral
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 35
and psychological suppression of the armed forces and the population of the
opposing side will assume a leading role in new generation warfare . . . and
largely create the preconditions for achieving victory.”17 Thus, as noted in a
study by Johns Hopkins University, Putin’s strategic objectives are not aimed
against the EU and NATO, but against the Baltic States in an effort to show
that neither organization is capable of ensuring their security.18 Russian media
has been actively questioning the status quo in the Baltic States, suggesting
that, while the titular peoples of these states may have legitimate claims to
their own states, they do not represent all such claims, nor do they account
for the legitimate aspirations of the Russian-speakers living among them.
In this manner, current borders are questioned as being reflective of, in the
words of Chekinov and Bogdanov, the principals of “democracy and respect
for human rights.”
The Transformation to Highly Mobile and
Rapidly Reconfigurable Forces
The second operational planning theme—that “noncontact” and “netcentric” warfare demand a transformation from a traditional massed army to
highly mobile flexible forces that may be rapidly reconfigured during the
course of conflict, was reflected in the ZAPAD 1999 military scenario based
upon observations from the Yugoslav wars. As the focus of operational-strategic scale exercises shifted to the east, Russian military theorists continued
to examine a wide-range of missions that involved the armed forces and special units from the Interior Ministry and Emergency Situations Ministry in
the employment of geographically dispersed forces to wage integrated warfare with the employment of appropriate noncontact capability. The “need
to create mobile, self-sufficient troop groupings capable of being transported
to the threatened sector of the country’s territory”19 as reflected in the forcing of some eighty-five Permanent Readiness Brigades from Soviet-era divisions and regiments became, along with a resolution to the question of the
Operational-Strategic Command of Forces, the core issues of OSEN 2009,
with its one scenario for three Strategic Directions (LADOGA for the Northwestern, ZAPAD for the Western, and KAVKAS for the Southwestern).
Given the loss of “strategic depth” in central Europe, the Cold War roles
of military districts as instruments of mobilization of second echelon armies
and fronts for intermediate-level strategic commands seemed inadequate, potentially confusing, and even inefficient. After some debate between military
district commanders and the General Staff, it was decided to exercise the
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operational subordination of all forces in a military district to that headquarters during ZAPAD 2009. By the end of the following year, the General Staff
had recommended reduction of the number of military districts to four and
give them operational command of the forces on their respective territories.20
On the subject of the new brigade structure, the ZAPAD 2009 exercise
was, by Russian assessment, a disappointment. The new brigades, retaining
the firepower of divisions, were too heavy and cumbersome.21 Command
and control of the new brigades proved ineffective, suggesting that dispersed
operations be pushed to battalion-level forces created out of brigade assets to
accomplish specific tasks. The leadership of operations conducted largely by
battalion tactical groups in Putin’s war against Ukraine has generally proved
effective.
ZAPAD 2009 also made evident the results of limited numbers of unmanned aerial vehicles and other technical means basic to so-called netcentric
warfare. The unavailability of a sufficient number of drones and, in particular,
the lack of understanding by tactical commanders of how to employ them
effectively in providing fire support of the operational plans, was particularly
frustrating to senior commanders. As observed by Artillery Marshall Vladimir
Mikhalkin, “the West does not even have equivalents to some of our missiles and artillery systems. They are capable of carrying out any task. BUT
they need exact coordinates; and we have problems with that.”22 Within five
years, both the numbers of drones and the skill in employing them effectively
in service of operational-tactical maneuver seems to have been resolved. According to Dr. Phillip A. Karber, Russian drones appear to be ubiquitous over
the Donbas battlefield, and his first-hand experience with the time between
reconnaissance to strike gives a clarifying cognitive meaning to their description as “complexes.”23
Fourth-Generation Nuclear Weapons
The third operational planning theme—integration of new nuclear weapons—emerged as the Russian General Staff came to understand that its
armed forces would continue to be confronted by a diminished force-tospace ratio and that the mobilization basis of Soviet-era planning was not
sustainable. Already in 1997, scientists such as Rady Ivanovich Ilkaev, director of the Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF),
were making the following argument: “In the future, we may have other
sophisticated (conventional) weapons, but at the present we must rely on
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 37
nuclear weapons. If they are used at the local or regional level, there should
be no widespread effect—only the military mission. We must move away
from weapons of mass destruction to weapons for local use.”24 As research
in nuclear physics proceeded in this direction, Viktor Nikitovich Mikhailov,
scientific director of VNIIEF, made clear in 2002 that “we should also carefully approach the problem of developing low and super-low yield nuclear
weapons and precision weapons with nuclear warheads. Such weapons can
be realistically utilized in the event of large scale military conflict involving
the use of conventional arms or mass destruction weapons when there is a
threat to our country’s existence or worsening of the living conditions of our
people.”25
By the first half of 1999, the “nuclear fetishism” that had characterized
the Sokolovsky-era of Soviet military thought during the 1960s and 1970s
had returned with a vengeance. Russian military theorists were ready to state
boldfaced that “we believe nuclear weapons must be regarded as the principal
means of ensuring the military security of Russia and its allies at present and
in the near future. . . . ”26
Fulfilling the de-escalation function is understood to mean actually using nuclear weapons both for showing resolve as well as for the immediate delivery
of nuclear strikes against the enemy. It is advisable to execute this mission
using non-strategic (above all operational-tactical) nuclear weapons, which
can preclude an “avalanching” escalation of the use of nuclear weapons right
up to an exchange of massed nuclear strokes delivered by strategic assets. It
seems that the cessation of military operations will be the most acceptable
thing for the enemy in this case.
The condition for using non-strategic nuclear weapons can be as follows:
enemy use of mass destruction weapons or reliable discovery of his preparation for their use; destruction of our strategic weapons, above all nuclear
weapons, and also important economic installations (atomic electric power
stations, hydroelectric stations, major enterprises of the chemical and military industry, the most important transportation hubs) by enemy conventional
weapons; appearance of a threat of disturbance of stability of a strategic defense in the presence of a large-scale enemy invasion.27
Unlike the cumulative continuity model of American graduated escalation
during the Cold War, the discontinuous intimidation model of escalating to
de-escalate is directed at the vulnerabilities of both the opposing coalition
and perceived strengths and weaknesses of its individual members (Figure
13.1).
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Figure 13.1. Russian Theory of Nuclear De-Escalation. Source: V. I. Levshin,
A. V. Nedelin, and M. E. Sosnovsky, “O Primeenenii Yadernogo Oruzhiya Dlya
Deeskalatsii Voyennyskh Deistviy [On Use of Nuclear Weapons for De-escalation of
Military Operations],” Voyennaya Mysl, May 1999.
While the United States at one point explicitly forbade its nuclear weapons
labs from conducting research on what have been called “Fourth-Generation
Nuclear Weapons” under the arms-control ideological assumption that it is
possible to avoid nuclear use so long as the weapons remain “too terrible to
use,” this “bury one’s head in the sand” approach fails to address the challenge of one side having nuclear weapons of .02 kiloton or less and the other
only weapons of indiscrete size (in the range of tens of kilotons) and means
of delivery (as gravity bombs). The quandary of an appropriate contemporary
response to a discrete use of small-yield nuclear weapons by the Russians is,
in fact, rooted in a long disconnect in how Russian military planners and
Western arms-control theorists view the role of nuclear weapons. The Russians
explicitly reject the Western concept of nuclear deterrence, which the Russians
consistently translate into the Russian language as ustrasheniy, which means
“frightening” or “terrorizing.” The Russians attack this notion as a concept
that threatens an opponent with nuclear punishment for military misbehavior,
administered after it is too late to have any major military effect (that is, when
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 39
the use of nuclear weapons will not change the outcome of the conflict). On the
other hand, the Russians have a concept of deterrence which they consistently
express with the word zderzhivaniye, meaning “restraint,” as in the way they
relate to their own concept of the utility of military power. Unlike the punitive
killing called for by the Western concept ustrasheniye, zderzhivaniye restrains
the enemy through his perception that his opponent is actually prepared to do
battle at every level of conflict. In other words, the ability to restrain an enemy
is the by-product of one’s readiness to fight, unlike nuclear “terrorizing,” which
tends to serve as a substitute for the capability to fight.28
Russian military officers have been making statements since not later than
2009 suggesting that “there is no longer any need to equip missiles with
powerful nuclear warheads. We can install low-yield warheads on existing
cruise missiles.”29 That nuclear weapons will remain an essential foundation
of Russian military power has been made clear by the recommendations made
in that country’s 2014 defense posture review concerning nuclear weapons:
(1) the Strategic Rocket Forces will MIRV warheads and return to Strategic
Mobile Rail deployment, and (2) the active tactical nuclear warhead inventory
will be reduced from 2,500 to 2,050 modernized weapons to take advantage
of progress in developing smaller-size (weight/diameter/sub-kt yield) as well
as reduced-fission components (that is, cleaner). The 2,050 tactical nuclear
warheads are to be distributed to the following five categories, with not less
than 300 nor more than 600 in any one category: (1) air-delivered guided
gravity bombs and cruise missile warheads; (2) SS-26 ISKANDER missiles
of varying range; (3) tactical nuclear artillery, including two versions of the
self-propelled 152mm auto-leading artillery system armed with 50km+ RAP
nuclear rounds and treated as a “golden gun” not operating in battery formation; (4) air defense tactical nuclear sub-kiloton warheads for S-500 in tactical
ballistic missile role as well as for S-300/S-400 in “anti-stealth” role; and (5)
naval tactical nuclear roles, including surface-to-surface, air defense, homing
torpedo, and “tethered smart mine.”
The nuclear play in Russian exercises, as well as Moscow’s bullying of
regional non-nuclear states, while consistent with the development of a capacity to deliver on both doctrine and strategy levels, has not been generally
appreciated as reflecting genuine changes in Russia’s military posture and
planning.30 During the first post-Soviet-era operational-strategic exercise in
ZAPAD 1999, the Russians admitted that they were “rehearsing one provision of Russian Military Doctrine—the use of nuclear weapons when all
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P hillip A . P etersen
measures for the organization of defense have been exhausted.” In this case,
the exercise scenario called for “compelling negotiations” through “preemptive use of a nuclear weapon.” Actually, more than several such weapons were
notionally used, as the Strategic Rocket Forces employed SS-27/TOPOL missile strikes against theater targets to isolate the battlefield, and cruise missile
strikes launched from Long Range Aviation aircraft were conducted against
Atlantic Coast ports of the United States to prevent reinforcement of the European theater. Finally, a notional nuclear strike against Warsaw was employed
to “persuade” other NATO capitals to agree to end the conflict.31 While
Moscow was more sensitive to the “bad press” generated by the notional use
of nuclear weapons in subsequent ZAPAD exercises, dividing the ZAPAD
exercises into components “played” independently could not disguise the link
between notional nuclear employment and the scenarios upon which the exercise play was based.
Notes
1. For purposes of clarity, what I am translating as Theater of Strategic Military Action or TSMA is, in Russian, teatr voyennykh deystvii (TVD). The proper
translation of this term has been a matter of debate. I myself have gone through
a progress of translations, from “theater of military operations (TMO)” to “theater of military actions (TMA)” to finally settle upon “theater of strategic military action (TSMA).” Western specialists on the Soviet military, in attempting to
explain the geographical concept of TVD to nonspecialists, have offered at least
three different translations during the Cold War. Theater of military operations
(TMO) is one of the most widely used. John Hines and I have used the expression “theater of military action.” Victor Suvorov (see International Defense Review, December 1984) argued that TVD means “theatre of actions on a strategic scale,” but he also argued for continued use of TVD to discourage Western
analysts from distorting the concept to fit their own preconceptions. Also see
Lieutenant Colonel John G. Hines and Dr. Phillip A. Petersen, “The Changing
Soviet System of Control for Theater War,” in SIGNAL, December 1986, pp.
97–110: “We essentially agree with Suvorov’s translation but disagree with his
advice. Because TVD does not mean anything to most Western readers, they are
very likely to make incorrect assumptions about what the concept represents. We
believe the most accurate and useful translation of the military term is, as Suvorov suggested, theatre of strategic military action (TSMA).” In the 1983 Soviet
Military Encyclopedic Dictionary and in a 1985 Soviet book devoted to clarifying and updating military terminology, the term “military action” (although
plural in Russian, the English equivalent is singular) as used in TVD is defined as
military action on a strategic scale. The same sources point out that smaller-scale
action at the operational and tactical levels is boyeviye deystviya, which literally
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 4 1
means “combat action.” “The phrase ‘military operations’ in the widely used
translation ‘theatre of military operations’ (TMO), therefore is a mis-translation.
Moreover, TMO fails to communicate to the nonspecialist what any Russian
military planner grasps immediately when he hears the expression TVD—that
is, a region identified for military action on a strategic scale.” John G. Hines and
Phillip A. Petersen, “Changing the Soviet System of Control: Focus on Theatre
Warfare,” International Defense Review 3 (1986); reprinted in Current News,
Friday, 20 June 1986.
2. Chief of the Ground Forces Main Staff, “Russia Needs Mobile Forces,”
ITAR-TASS, 23 September 2009.
3. See John J. Yurechko, Coalition Warfare: The Soviet Approach (Koln:
Bundes-institut für ostwissenchaftliche und internayionale Studien, 1986). Yurechko’s work on “coalitional warfare” also remains relevant for its own sake,
as the Russian General Staff continues to plan warfare against NATO with an
eye toward breaking alliance cohesiveness. In the ZAPAD 2009 scenario, for
example, the Russians “played” France and Germany as being unwilling to
honor their North Atlantic Treaty Organization Article Five obligations—i.e.,
they remained neutral during the conflict scenario. What this says about Russian
perceptions is disturbing, and clearly indicates that France and Germany have
conveyed impressions undermining deterrence of conflict in Europe.
4. It is inadequately appreciated that Moscow has well-founded concerns
about separatism, not only in the Caucasus but also concerning Siberia and Kaliningrad. “Putin has responded to the recent upsurge in separatist thinking in
Siberia by using his police powers to block plans for marches in support of federalization within the Russian Federation and then with his proposals to shift
ministries and launch a series of mega projects in that region.” Paul Goble, “Putin’s Development Plan for Siberia Driven by Fears of Separatism But May Spark
More, Analyst Says,” Window on Eurasia, 5 September 2014. “Kaliningrad’s
non-contiguous location, its closeness to European Union countries, and the fact
that 25 percent of its residents have Shengen visas and 60 percent have foreign
passports all have the effect of making ever more Kaliningraders look toward Europe rather than toward Russia proper.” Paul Goble, “‘Siberian Federalization’
Idea Spreads to Kaliningrad and Kuban,” Window on Eurasia, 13 August 2014.
5. This speech was later reworked and published as an article. See V. V.
Gerasimov, “Tsennost nauki v predvidenii [The value of science in forecasting],
Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurer, August 2013. The Russian Academy of Military
Science is headed by Army General M. A. Gareev. See Ulrik Franke, War by
Non-Military Means: Understanding Russian Information Warfare (Stockholm:
Swedish Defense Research Agency, 18 February 2015), 41.
6. Ibid.
7. Gregory Karasin, Russian deputy foreign minister, provided an example
of an effort “to achieve political objectives without the utilization of military
force” when he warned Ukraine that relying on a military solution to end the
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Russian-generated “rebellion” in the Donbas would be “the biggest, even strategic mistake” and could “lead to irreversible consequences for Ukraine’s statehood.” That this diplomatic bullying was not universally condemned can be considered a measure of the effectiveness of Russia’s so-called “new generational
warfare.”
8. 2010 Russian Military Doctrine archived at “Voyennaya doktrina Rossiyskoy Federatsii” Военная доктрина Российской Федерации [Military doctrine
of the Russian Federation], scrf.gov.ru (in Russian) and 2014 Russian Military
Doctrine archived at https://rusemb.org.uk/press/2029 (in Russian).
9. As quoted in Peter Pomerantsev, “Inside Putin’s Information War,” Politico
Magazine, 4 January 2015.
10. For a broad description of linkage between violence in Ukraine and Russian policy, see Philip A. Karber and Phillip A. Petersen, “The Eastern Front
in NATO Strategy—End of the Interregnum,” in NATO: Rethink—Realign—
React, 31–44 (Warsaw: Institute for Eastern Studies, 2016), 31–44.
11. Colonel S. G. Checkinov and Lieutenant General S. A. Bogdanov, “On the
Character and Content of New Generation Warfare,” Voyenna mysl’, October 2013.
12. Lieutenant General-Colonel and Doctor of Sciences Anatoly Zaitsev,
“Guerilla Methods: A Modern Army Should Be Able to Fight Without Front
Lines,” Voyenno-Promyshlenny kur’yer, September 2014. General Zaitsev is a
former deputy commander of the Transbaikal Military District and former deputy defense minister of Abkhazia.
13. In Crimea: The Road Back to the Motherland, a documentary shown
on Russian television, Putin revealed that “he personally oversaw the planning
of the takeover operation in Crimea” and in a Rossiya-1 interview he said that
“Russia planned a special operation on returning Crimea . . . [at] a specific planning event that went on till the early morning of Feb. 23, 2014, when he told his
special services that they ‘have to start the work on return of Crimea to Russia.’”
Furthermore, “Igor Girkin, a former defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said that the local parliament members were basically
held at gunpoint to support the annexation.” See Olena Goncharova, “Putin’s
Narrative on Crimea Annexation Takes an Evolutionary Leap,” Kyiv Post, http://
www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/putins-narrative-on-crimea-annexation-takes-an-evolutionary-leap-383183.html.
14. The effectiveness of regular armed forces concealed as “illegal armed
formations” clearly depends upon the conditions under which the operation is
conducted. For example, the effort by Russian intelligence in Saint Petersburg
and Rostov-on-Don to establish the so-called “Bessarabian People’s Republic”
in Odessa quickly collapsed when preempted by well-trained and loyal counterterrorist troops. See Ben Hoyle and Maxim Tucker, “Arrests Foil Russian Plan
to Spark New Revolt in Ukraine,” The Times, 2 May 2015, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/arrests-foil-russian-plot-to-spark-new-revolt-in-ukraine-dtxpr2qskrb, accessed 19 December 2019.
R ussian M ilitary D octrine and E xercises 2 4 3
15. Michael Birnbaum, “In Documentary, Putin Says Ease of Action in
Crimea Was a Surprise,” Washington Post, 16 March 2015, A11.
16. Christopher Walker, “The Threat of Zombie Democracy,” The Washington Post, 19 April 2015, A23.
17. Checkinov and Bogdanov, “On the Character and Content of New Generation Warfare.”
18. Briefing by W. Sam Lauber, AWG Russian Hybrid Warfare Study: Using
Crimea to Assess the Vulnerability of the Baltic States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University, Applied Physics Laboratory, 15 May 2015).
19. Viktor Litovkin, “Military Mobile Inadequacy,” Nazavisimaya Gazeta,
25 September 2009.
20. Discussions concerning the evolving character of contemporary war also
suggested a new geographical approach that may have been behind the formation
of a high command for the Arctic, raising questions in the minds of Western intelligence regarding control over those forces that would operate in what for decades had been referred to first as to the Northwestern TSMA and, subsequently,
the Northwestern Strategic Direction. See A. Yu. Maruyev, “Vector Approach to
Determining Geopolitical Interests of the Russian Federation,” Military Thought,
no. 12 (2010).
21. Interview with an unidentified major military expert, a Lieutenant-General, by Vyacheslav Tetekin, “Laying It on Thick: The Zapad-2009 Exercise: A
Professional’s View,” Pravda, 13 November 2009.
22. Interview with Artillery Marshall Vladimir Mikhalkin, in Genadiy Miranovich, “An Army One Wants to Serve In,” Red Star, 14 October 2009.
23. Karber, wounded in one of these fire strikes, sites the Ukrainian military
as having identified sixteen different types of drones being employed by the Russians in their war against Ukraine in the Donbas. See Dr. Philip A. Karber, “Lessons Learned from Russo-Ukraine: New Generation War, Coming to a Theatre
Near You?” in Briefing to the Ukraine Caucus, U.S. Senate, 12 November 2015.
24. George W. Ullrich, Advanced Physics Laboratory, “Some Implications of
4th Generation Nuclear Weapons,” briefing delivered to Multipolarity & Stability Seminar, 7 May 2014.
25. Ibid. The notion that an “economic threat” could lead to the employment
of nuclear weapons in response is especially disturbing given some of the recent
Russian statements regarding the possibility of expelling the Russian Federation
from the “SWIFT” system in response to Putin’s military aggression. Andrey L
Kostin, president and chairman of VTB (Russia’s second largest bank), warned at
the January 2015 World Economic Forum that Russia’s expulsion from SWIFT
would instantly lead to the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador from Moscow and
the recall of Russia’s ambassador to Washington. It would mean that “the countries are on the verge of war, or they are definitely in a cold war.” When asked
about the possibility of SWIFT sanctions, which would bar Russia from the international payment system, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev warned
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P hillip A . P etersen
that Moscow’s response would be “without limits.” Also see Fareed Zakaria,
“Sanctions Russia Will Respect,” The Washington Post, 13 February 2015, A19.
26. Major-General V. I. Levshin, Colonel A. V. Nedelin, and Conlonel M. Ye.
Sosnovskiy, “The Use of Nuclear Weapons to De-Escalate Military Operations,”
Military Thought (May-June 1999): 34–37.
27. Ibid.
28. This insight was, to my knowledge, first articulated by then Major John
G. Hines in Phillip A. Petersen and John G. Hines, “The Conventional Offensive
in Soviet Theater Strategy,” ORBIS (Fall 1983): 736–37.
29. Vice Admiral Oleg Burtsev, Deputy Head of the Russian Main Naval
Staff, RIA Novosti, 25 March 2009.
30. Mikhail Vanin, Russian Ambassador to Denmark, wrote, “I don’t think
the Danes fully understand the consequences of what will happen if Denmark
joins the American-led missile defense. If this happens, Danish war ships will become targets for Russian atomic missiles. . . . I want to simply remind you that it
will cost you both money and security.” Jyllands-Posten, March 2015. Even the
United States is not immune to Russian nuclear threats. During the March 2015
Elbe Group Meeting in Germany, Russian generals briefed by Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov on the messages he wanted delivered warned of three flashpoints
that could lead to nuclear war: (1) Crimea, where any attempt to return the annexed peninsula to Ukraine would be met “forcefully including through the use
of nuclear war”; (2) east Ukraine, where the supply of weapons by NATO to
Kyiv would be read as “further encroachment by NATO to the Russian border,”
to which “the Russian people would demand a forceful response; and (3) the
Baltic States, where the Russian security figures said they saw “the same conditions that existed in Ukraine and caused Russia to take action there.” See Polina
Tikhonova, “Russia Threatens Nuclear War to Drive NATO Out of Baltics,”
valuewalk.com/2015/04/russia-threatens-nuclear-war ; also see “Vladimir Putin
Threatens World War 3, Says Russia Could Invade Europe Within Two Days,”
INQUISITR, 19 September 2014.
31. See Sergey Sokut, “Balkan Option Fails. Repulsion of Enemy’s Nuclear
Air Offensive Rehearsed in the Course of Zapad ’99 Exercises,” Nezavisimaya
Gazeta (Electronic Version), 24 June 1999, 2; Aleksandr Koretskiy, “Russia Inflicted Nuclear Strike on United States. Only in Training for Now,” Segodnya, 2
July 1999, 1; Vladimir Yermolin, “Army Ready to Resolve Strategic Tasks,” Izvestiya, 10 July 1999, 1; Sergey Ishchenko, “Sergeyev Quoted on Nuclear Use,”
Trud, 10 July 1999, 1; and Major General (Retired) Vladimir Ivanovich Slipchenko, Beskontaktnyye voyny [Noncontact Wars], 1 January 2000, 121–211.
“This work is a further development of my precious book Voyna budushchego
[Future War] published in 1999 by the Moscow Public Science Foundation” in
the number of five hundred. The author happens to be in possession of a translated copy of both texts.
Chapter 14
OPERATION CAST LEAD
“ F R O M L I G H T D U T Y T O H E AV Y D U T Y ”
Scott C. Farquhar
The Israeli government convened a series of boards and commissions in 2006,
following the Second Lebanon War, to analyze the conflict; identify strengths
and weaknesses, successes and failures; and develop ways to rapidly improve
performance by incorporating these lessons into the Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF). Historian and military analyst David E. Johnson reviewed the IDF’s
performance in the Second Lebanon War, stating,
Hezbollah was a disciplined and trained adversary, operating in cohesive
small units and occupying good terrain. It also had a standoff fires (Anti-Tank
Guided Missiles, mortars, and rockets) capability. Thus, defeating Hezbollah required joint combined arms fire and maneuver, something the IDF was
largely incapable of executing in 2006. Fire suppresses and fixes the enemy
and enables ground maneuvering forces to close with him. Fire also isolates
the enemy, shutting off lines of supply and communication and limiting his
ability to mass. Maneuver forces enemy reaction. If the enemy attempts to
relocate to more favorable terrain, he becomes visible and vulnerable to fire. If
he remains in his positions and is suppressed, he can be defeated in detail by
ground maneuver. Thus, hybrid opponents like Hezbollah demand integrated
joint air-ground intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities that are similar to those used against conventional adversaries, but at a
reduced scale. Finally, the IDF’s highly centralized command and control system, which had been effective in confronting the intifada, proved problematic
against Hezbollah.
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Quite simply, during the Lebanon War the IDF was not prepared for
ground operations when standoff strikes did not force Hezbollah to meet Israeli demands.1
The man-hunting that consumed the IDF was not a lark or a fad; individual
suicide bombers killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in two waves of grotesque
terrorist offensives in the early 2000s, referred to as the intifadas. Israel placed
tremendous energy in preventing penetration of its borders. Offensive operations consisted of infantry squads raiding bomb makers and paymasters from
their bases and occasional targeted assassinations in which air force Apaches
targeted key individual terrorists with Hellfire missiles. Simultaneously, Israel invested massive resources in various missile-defense systems to protect
against short-range rockets, battlefield surface-to-surface missiles, and possibly
nuclear-capable IRBMs, combined with the extensive intelligence for preemptive or retaliatory strikes against those same threats. Despite its necessity, the
internal security campaign and strategic strike foci deteriorated the vaunted
IDF’s combat capabilities, which became painfully clear in the summer of 2006.
Operation Cast Lead: From Light to Heavy Duty
“At first everyone hoped, and everyone believed, that the war would
be fast-moving, mechanized, remote controlled, and perhaps even
easy.”
—Paul Fussell, Wartime2
Paul Fussell, a man of letters serving as a U.S. Army infantryman in World
War II, wrote the quote above while trying to explain to later generations
how prewar ideas tried to “convey . . . the firm impression of purposeful,
resourceful intelligence going somewhere significant, and going there with
speed, agility, and delicacy—almost wit.” He further notes that severe
trauma results when that optimistic imagination encounters reality.
Israel experienced this trauma after revamping and reducing its armed
forces following extricating itself from the eighteen-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Responding to an internal security threat from the suicide bombing campaigns of the early 2000s, the IDF ground forces focused on screening
the population from offensive operations focused on information-driven raids
for leaders, bomb makers, paymasters, or other personalities in the enemy terror gangs and their supporting political organizations. Meanwhile, the IDF’s
air forces focused the military and government on the potential for precision
O peration C ast L ead 2 4 7
strikes that could effectively destroy these networks by stand-off fires from air,
artillery, or commando raids. This strategy promised to significantly degrade
the enemy without incurring the crippling expense of maintaining a large
conventional force or requiring the political risk of taking casualties among
the citizen-soldiers of the IDF. Instead, Israel would apply purposeful and
intelligent forces with speed, agility, and delicacy enabled by the “Revolution
in Military Affairs,” taking advantage of advanced digital communications
technology and precision-guided weaponry. Israeli officials believed this revolution would replace rather than reinforce previous methods of combat. In
2006, they found out it did not. This chapter examines the IDF’s changes in
doctrine, procedures, and organization made in the twenty-eight months after
the Second Lebanon War in July 2006 and how they were applied in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza beginning in December 2008.
Operation Cast Lead was a three-week bombardment and punitive invasion of the Gaza Strip by the IDF in response to rocket attacks on south Israel.
In terms of their implications for the U.S. Army, the character and conduct
of the IDF in Operation Cast Lead are inapt and inexact in scale, scope, and
mission. The IDF is a small, conscripted, highly motivated force required
only to defend the Jewish state, and the ongoing conflict in Gaza is almost
miniscule in terms of time, space, and enemy capabilities. Nonetheless, there
are numerous lessons to learn, best practices to capture, and ideas to examine
and exchange with our Israeli or NATO allies.
The Second Lebanon War: Gathering the Facts
The Israeli government’s response to the IDF’s unsatisfactory performance
during the Second Lebanon War was swift and revealing. The prime minister,
Ehud Olmert, formed an investigative committee to examine the conflict.
Headed by a former Israeli Supreme Court Justice and renowned arbitrator, Eliyahu Winograd, what became known as the Winograd Commission
found fault with Olmert; his defense minister, Amir Peretz; and the chief of
the IDF General Staff, Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, concluding
that the IDF had not been ready for war. The commission’s report stated,
“All in all, the IDF failed, especially because of the conduct of the high command and the ground forces, to provide an effective military response to the
challenge posed to it by the war in Lebanon, and thus failed to provide the
political echelon with a military achievement that could have served as a
basis for political and diplomatic action.”3 After this stunning rebuke, Peretz
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and Halutz resigned and were replaced by former prime minister Ehud Barak
and Lieutenant General Gabriel “Gabi” Ashkenazi, respectively. Barak was
a legendary former commando who had commanded an armored battalion,
brigade, and division before becoming the IDF’s Chief of the General Staff
in 1991. Ashkenazi was an infantryman who fought in the Yom Kippur war,
the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue raid, and Operations Litani and Peace for
Galilee, and was head of Northern Command before becoming the IDF’s
Deputy Chief of Staff. Ashkenazi abruptly resigned from active duty in 2005
when he was passed over for selection as Chief of the General Staff in favor
of Halutz. Though he had served in the elite Golani brigade from conscript
through commanding officer, Ashkenazi was neither a commando nor, like
his predecessor, a fighter pilot.
Before resigning, and concurrent with the Winograd Commission, Halutz
established an internal IDF review that eventually grew to seventy teams that
studied the operations of the General Staff down through small-unit combat
actions in the Second Lebanon War. After taking command, Ashkenazi created
yet another team to review the findings of both the Winograd Commission
and the IDF’s internal study and recommend a way ahead.
Ashkenazi’s research, and that of his predecessor, was greatly aided by the
IDF adopting knowledge management (KM) methods from the U.S. Army,
industry, and academia. IDF commando units first applied a formal lessonslearned effort after their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2001. The
practice was continued during the intifada when it was also adopted by the
conventional forces. IDF units used a “peer assist” system in which officers
were temporarily attached to units to gain knowledge for their organizations
for training or operations, similar to the predeployment site surveys in U.S.
Army practice. After-action reviews became routine and were augmented by
candid “storytelling” of battle lessons by actual participants to units tasked
to conduct similar operations. Lessons-learned repositories were created that
allowed knowledge transfer across units. Units habitually checked with others
that had previously operated in an area, for written lessons and to connect
with personnel to gather operational knowledge. Communities of practice to
exchange lessons and best practices through KM became a routine and integral
part of battlefield procedures.4
One best practice was the addition of KM officers appointed in echelons
from division to battalion, facilitating the exchange of information regarding
friendly and enemy innovations. This practice, tactical and timely, started in the
O peration C ast L ead 2 4 9
IDF’s middle echelons and spread upward into professional military education
and downward to the lowest units. Eventually, the IDF created a formal KM
branch in its Ground Forces Doctrine Department (counterpart to the U.S.
Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate at Fort Leavenworth) to gather
and collate best practices to be codified into doctrine, tactics, techniques, and
procedures, and, conversely, create “quick turn-around” lessons from one unit
to another, across echelons.
The Second Lebanon War tested the IDF’s operational KM methods developed during years of internal security operations when it “needed real-time
learning to shift rapidly from its low-intensity conflict mindset to one adapted
to the hybrid type of warfare encountered.” The IDF’s Northern Command
immediately created the Center for Lessons Learned to produce an operations
update at its training base to fill any knowledge gaps, provide last-minute
focused training, and supply a daily digest of lessons learned.5
The picture was much less complete on the subject of IDF joint operations.
After the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, it did not conduct
exercises of its joint command-and-control system in a realistic training environment. Consequently, operational integration between Israel’s air and
ground forces became all but nonexistent. The IDF’s dismal air-ground integration in the Second Lebanon War forcefully demonstrated that the failure
to train together over the preceding six years resulted in the Israeli Air Force
(IAF) and Israel’s ground forces speaking different languages and operating
as though the other did not exist.
The commander in chief of the Israeli Air Force, Major General Eliezer
Shkedi, led the systematic lessons-learned efforts launched by Halutz and the
Winograd Commission. The commission found that all political parties and
a succession of IDF chiefs had greatly reduced investment in joint training
and focused on purchasing both high-technology command, control, communication, computers, and information systems and precision weapons.
These decisions were based on the conclusion that the era of major wars
against neighboring Arab states had passed, in part due these over-matching
capabilities of the IDF. Consequently, the IAF removed the close air support
(CAS) mission from their fighters’ role to focus on deep and precise strikes on
high-value targets. The IDF’s ground and air services even went so far as to
acknowledge in a signed contract that the former would provide its own fire
support with organic artillery and rockets, leaving the IAF free to concentrate
exclusively on deep-strike missions assigned by the General Staff.6
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The most important change in the IDF after the Second Lebanon War was
“the clear understanding by senior Israeli political and military leaders that
ground operations are an essential component of military operations. They no
longer believe[d] standoff attack alone, principally by air, can create success.”
Minister Barak and General Ashkenazi made it clear to the Israeli polity that
ground forces were necessary to achieve the nation’s military and security
objectives.7 The IDF abandoned the poorly understood and badly promulgated doctrine used during the 2006 campaign that had created “confusion
in terminology and misunderstanding of basic military principles.” Rejecting
the emphasis on “effects-based operations” and “systemic operational design,” the IDF returned to their pre-2006 doctrine until they could write and
inculcate a replacement.8
The Way Ahead: Teffen 2012
In September 2007, General Ashkenazi launched a five-year plan called “Teffen 2012” to increase the combat capability of the IDF. One of the major
goals of Teffen 2012 was to create “[a] decisive ground maneuver capability based on modern main battle tanks (MBTs) and other armored fighting
vehicles, attack helicopters, low altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
and transport aircraft.” The IDF also rethought the role of heavy forces,
concluding that the Lebanon War “suggests that if properly deployed, the
tank can provide its crew with better protection than in the past. The conclusion is that the Israel Defense Forces still requires an annual supply of dozens
of advanced tanks in order to replace the older, more vulnerable versions
that are still in service.”9 Thus production of the Merkava Mark IV tank resumed, and the IDF began fielding the Namer heavy armored personnel carrier (APC) built on the Merkava chassis. Additional resources were invested
in training and equipping reserve and active forces as well as “preparedness
and sustainability through expanding emergency stocks of munitions.”10
The long war in southern Lebanon (1982–2000) had produced a cohort
of IDF officers who began their service close to the end of the First Lebanon War and became battalion and brigade commanders by the time of the
withdrawal. This “Lebanese Generation” was then deployed into either the
West Bank region or the then-occupied Gaza Strip. According to one officer, “[W]e were trained wrong in Lebanon . . . as second in command . .
. I would command ten-man operations. The whole business of command
and control didn’t work right then.”11 For the following six years, that is,
O peration C ast L ead 2 5 1
twice the life-cycle of a conscripted company, the ground forces of the IDF
were consumed with internal security operations that compounded the tactical timidity and casualty-averse micromanagement of its officers. These were
small-scale operations, decentralized in execution, that were slow-moving,
based on intelligence painstakingly gathered on individual targets or in reaction to a riot or disturbance.
General Ashkenazi realized this generational lacuna existed and was determined to reintroduce the spirit of “initiative, independence, and offensivemindedness” into his officers. He did this by leveraging Israel’s enormous pool
of combat veterans, the creators of the IDF’s outsized reputation for stunning
victories. One of his adroit methods was to assign some of the retired senior
officers who had complained the loudest, in editorials or other forums, about
the IDF’s poor showing during the Second Lebanon War to assist in its reformation. His predecessor, Halutz, had begun this process by assigning the
complainers as heads of his seventy study committees; Ashkenazi followed
through by putting them to work.
The Israelis began preparing their military for a return engagement in Lebanon with a renewed appreciation for the importance of ground forces and a belief
that a rematch was almost inevitable against Hezbollah. The Israeli army went
“back to basics” after years of focusing almost exclusively on internal security
(IS) operations. The ground forces began to train extensively on atrophied (or
nonexistent) combat skills, particularly combined arms fire and maneuver. Before
the Second Lebanon War, the IDF trained roughly 75 percent on IS and only
25 percent on combined arms maneuver; after 2007 this ratio was reversed.12
The result was that tank units within the IDF Armored Corps focused
on their traditional roles and advantages of speed and firepower. Israeli armored brigades trained for months at the IDF Ground Forces Training Center
in Negev, Israel. The 401st “Tracks of Iron” Armored Brigade conducted a
twelve-week training exercise designed to sharpen the skills needed for armored
combat while also training in city fighting. The brigade commander emphasized their advantages in rapid advance, applying tanks’ protected firepower
and using smokescreens to mitigate the threat of antitank missiles. At the
company and battalion levels, IDF units also conducted extensive and realistic training in an area meant to replicate the terrain conditions of southern
Lebanon, against an opposing force using Hezbollah tactics.13
IDF reservists, particularly tank and artillery crews, were reunited with
their designated weapons systems and began training on the basics after years
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of performing other duties. In addition, the reserve forces started to receive
their full issue of equipment. With a new and lengthened training program
in place, the reserve armored corps began conducting live fire exercises and
participating in full-scale division maneuver training with combat and combat
support units. Unlike in 2006, when some reserve officers never met many
of their soldiers, these large exercises brought everyone in the organization
together. Furthermore, all reserve officers selected for command were sent to
the proper schools and directed to conduct regular exercises with all of the
forces under their command. The IDF was no longer placing all of its faith in
weaponry and intelligence, but returning to those fundamental qualities that
had made it a victorious force and respected regional power.14
The Teffen 2012 plan also envisioned further advancements in “precision
strike capability” by the IAF as well as “intelligence superiority through all
means of gathering.” IAF commander in chief Major General Eliezer Shkedi
and his successor, Ido Nehoshtanen, enacted a lessons-learned effort to correct
deficiencies and revise joint tactics, techniques, and procedures. Recognition
and response to these identified deficiencies led to a series of joint command
post exercises with IDF ground forces to inculcate a new pattern of regular
joint contingency planning and training.15
During the Second Lebanon War, the flawed doctrine and lack of joint
training caused both IAF and ground commanders to have a poor understanding of the proper employment of CAS. There was no joint lexicon developed
and little integration of joint fire planning or weaponeering. This meant there
was often insufficient trust or understanding by the ground commander of
what the IAF could and could not do on his behalf. One (of many) problems
encountered in joint operations entailed the use of unfamiliar terminology by
air crews and ground troops. Targets had as many as three different names,
dependent on whose maps were being referred to, and the ground commander
would not know whether a requested target had been successfully struck. All
too often, the tendency was to ask for a particular platform or type of munition rather than for a desired combat effect; an outgrowth of the casualty
and collateral damage-averse nature of the IS operations in Judea, Samaria,
and Gaza. Lacking the joint or air component version of the ground forces’
aforementioned KM and lessons-learned system, the IDF instituted a series
of air-ground dialogues.
These periodic roundtable discussions allowed air squadron and ground
brigade commanders to engage in capability briefings and solutions-oriented
O peration C ast L ead 2 5 3
discussion of joint issues identified by the Winograd Commission and the
military’s boards of inquiry. In connection with this unprecedented dialogue,
the IAF also flew a select few IDF brigade commanders in the back seats
of fighters to gain an appreciation of the strengths and limitations of highperformance aircraft in air-ground operations. Rather than parochialism over
doctrinal differences, all participants were committed to forging a common
language and better mutual understanding. A senior IAF officer was attached
to each IDF regional command to provide air planning and strike coordination. Finally, procedures to integrate artillery and air fires into maneuver
brigades were adopted and practiced, and air controllers were again assigned
to maneuver brigades.16
By late 2008, the IDF had transformed its joint doctrine, training, and
equipment after examining its shortcomings during the Second Lebanon War
against Hezbollah. It jettisoned its flawed doctrine and returned to the fundamentals of combined arms maneuver and air-ground coordination that served
it so well in conflicts before 2006. Airpower and precision fires were to be
integrated with trained ground forces to maneuver against the enemy and
deliver a quick and decisive defeat. As the IDF continued to train and equip,
it needed an opportunity to reassert its capabilities and exercise its deterrent
dominance over its enemies. A political upheaval in Gaza would provide that
opportunity. Despite the existence of a June 2008 Egyptian-brokered six-month
ceasefire agreement, the terrorist group Hamas, now the government of Gaza,
began firing increasing numbers of rockets into Israel. An unacceptable military
situation faced Israel; this time the IDF would be prepared.
Operation Cast Lead: Implementing Lessons Learned
The objective for Operation Cast Lead, as articulated by Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, was to attack Hamas leadership and its terrorist infrastructure and “to force Hamas to stop its hostile activities against Israel.”17
Hamas gained complete control of Gaza in 2007 after defeating Fatah in an
election and using its military wing to drive them from the coastal strip. By
2008, Hamas’s forces grew to fifteen thousand militiamen and became the
most organized and effective in Gaza. As analyst Anthony H. Cordesman
noted, however, Hamas’s defeat of Fatah, “occurred far more because of a
lack of leadership and elementary competence on the part of the Fatah/Palestinian Authority Forces than any great skill on the part of Hamas. Unlike the
Hezbollah, Hamas never had to develop the combat skills necessary to fight
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an effective opponent.”18 Though Hamas had quickly consolidated internal
political power, its militia lacked the time, space, training, discipline, and
Iranian advisors that Hezbollah enjoyed.
Hamas planned to duplicate in Gaza the credibility that Hezbollah gained
against Israel in southern Lebanon by defeating, or at least not being defeated
by, its military while attacking its population. Hamas, like Hezbollah, practices the Islamic military doctrine of Muqawama, or resistance to the outsider.
This is based on a war of attrition that favors the resistance, as Israel (or any
other Western power) is unwilling to accept (or, in some cases, even inflict)
the necessary casualties and sacrifices to defeat it.19
Hamas was planning to continue increasing the range and volume of its
rocket fire with their launching crews using tunnels and dispersion to survive.
Any ground assault by the IDF would be met by Hamas militiamen that were
dug in to their urban neighborhoods with prepared killing zones of mines,
booby traps, antitank weapons, and ubiquitous tunnels to maneuver. These
local units would fight independently of Hamas’s central command and attrit, exhaust, and demoralize the IDF until Israeli political will gave out or
international diplomatic pressure forced a ceasefire. Hamas’s leadership, like
Hezbollah’s, would go into hiding while broadcasting defiance.
In contrast to the IDF’s unpreparedness in southern Lebanon in 2006
and Hezbollah’s effective deception and security operations, Israel collected
an unprecedented amount of highly useful information on Hamas. Israeli
targeting was based upon extensive intelligence about Gaza gathered during
years of occupation from its capture from Egypt in 1967 to its withdrawal in
2005. Ironically, Hamas aided this effort when it (literally) defenestrated Fatah
and occupied government buildings and other structures in Gaza rather than
continue being insurgent fugitives. Surveillance by multiple means allowed
the IDF several advantages in Gaza that aided intelligence collection, unlike
during the previous fight against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon.
Unlike the compartmented terrain of steep valleys and hilltop villages and
towns through which the IDF had to attack in southern Lebanon, Gaza is
primarily a flat coastal plain with only a few low hills. On this pleasant topography, however, is one of the world’s most densely urbanized areas, which
created significant tactical challenges for the IDF. As noted, Hamas relied on
underground facilities for command and control, storage of weapons and
munitions, and tunnels for smuggling to generate revenue and supply munitions and trained personnel from Egypt and the Sinai. By design, these were
O peration C ast L ead 2 5 5
located under or in close proximity to the densely populated areas, including
a number of decades-old UN “refugee camps” in and around their objective
of Gaza City. As many as eight thousand smugglers operated over eight hundred tunnels in this elaborate underground system that were a key target for
the Israeli military.
On 4 November 2008, the IDF launched a raid that killed six Hamas
terrorists within the Gaza Strip. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and announced it would end the ceasefire on 18 December 2008. This
declaration of hostilities alerted Israel of Hamas’s intentions, method, and
date. Unlike Hezbollah, which spent six years preparing for an Israeli attack,
Hamas was unready to fight the IDF as it was still trying to consolidate its
political power in Gaza. Hamas was also deploying all of its newly acquired
weapons while attempting to establish a secure communications network and
supply operations.
Despite this lack of political and military readiness, Hamas continued to
fire hundreds of rockets into Israel throughout November and December. Like
Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas had greatly underestimated the scale and scope
of the impending Israeli response that they were provoking. After completing
military preparations that included implementing a highly detailed deception
plan convincing Hamas that it had no plans to engage in anything other than
tit-for-tat reprisals, the IDF began Operation Cast Lead.
Stage One: Air Offensive
At 11:30 a.m. on 27 December 2008, the IAF launched an opening wave
of airstrikes with F-16 fighter jets and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters,
striking 180 planned targets within a span of 220 seconds. This bombardment, the largest ever carried out in Gaza, was a carefully planned “decapitation” strike to kill selected Hamas leaders and destroy command facilities,
weapons storage sites and rocket assembly plants, training camps, smuggling
tunnels, communication networks, and other targets with precision-guided
weapons.
In the weeks following the initial strikes, IAF F-16s and AH-64 Apaches
continued to blast Hamas facilities while also inflicting severe damage to
Gaza’s infrastructure. The short distance from home airfields and Hamas’s
lack of air defense allowed IAF aircraft to carry maximum ordnance and fuel
loads. The Israeli intelligence community comprehensively assessed Gaza and
developed a highly detailed composite picture of terrorist facilities, including
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rocket-launching sites and tunnels, that was overlaid with civilian facilities such
as schools, hospitals, and mosques. More than 80 percent of IAF munitions
were precision-guided in order to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, and their effects were carefully calibrated to targets, including reduced
explosives or, in some cases, unfused.20
Defying the IAF’s precision-guided onslaught, Hamas rocket teams continued their fire into Israel, killing and wounding several civilians. On 28
December, Hamas increased the number of rockets and mortars fired into
Israel and began using longer-range rockets to attack the major cities of Ashkelon (population 110,000), Be’er Sheva (185,000), and Ashdod (210,000),
and more than two hundred towns and villages; this range included nearly
15 percent of the Israeli population and many vital infrastructure facilities.21
Unlike in 2006, the Israeli population weathered the attacks without panic
and flight despite these deaths and injuries. Better preparation renewed the
Israeli population’s stoicism, along with their government’s ability to achieve
“expectation management” through spending millions of dollars in both passive and active defense measures. These included an advance warning system of
sirens and cellular telephone alerts, construction of household “safe rooms,”
and deployment of the as-yet unproven “Iron Dome” antimissile system.22
The initial air strikes against Hamas successfully destroyed many key targets and killed important Hamas commanders. Despite the IAF achieving most
of its tactical objectives, the IDF as a whole had still not achieved its strategic
objective of either defeating Hamas or forcing a ceasefire. Most important, to
reestablish deterrence, the IDF’s ground forces had to demonstrate, to itself
and its enemies, that it had overcome its failures of the Second Lebanon War.
After an intense debate between Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister
Barak over the conduct of the campaign’s next phase, the IDF continued with
its plan. On 3 January 2009, after the release of a communiqué that defined
the nation’s objectives, the IDF began Operation Cast Lead’s ground phase.
Stage Two: Ground Attack
The “second stage” or ground offensive of the IDF’s campaign in Gaza had
objectives that were tangible and achievable: reinforce deterrence, weaken
Hamas, and reduce the threat from infiltrators and rockets over time. This
phase was restricted to fewer than ten days to prevent a build-up of negative publicity against Israel due to the seemingly merciless air bombardment,
prevent perception of a reoccupation, reduce IDF casualties, and reduce pos-
O peration C ast L ead 2 5 7
sible regional instability by triggering an enemy’s adventurism (or supporting attack). In any case, the ground attack into Gaza was a contrast to the
confused, reactive, and piecemeal IDF response to Hezbollah. This time, the
Israeli military was prepared to move forward with a well-conceived plan
and predetermined objectives. Unlike in 2006, they would do so with a suitably trained, highly motivated ground fighting force.
During the last days of December 2008, IDF’s two-star Southern Command
ordered its 162d “Gaza” Armored Division to begin moving its units into assault positions along the border. The Gaza Division was a one-star regional
headquarters possessing a skilled staff with an expert knowledge of the local
terrain and the intentions of their enemy. For the ground offensive phase of
Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza Division was assigned four maneuver brigades:
two infantry (Golani and Givati Brigades), one airborne infantry (Paratroopers
Brigade), and one armored (401st Tank Brigade). These brigades, commanded
by colonels, would operate as independent task forces, complete with their
own artillery and air support. Several IDF reserve brigades would also be assigned to the Gaza Division as the offensive progressed.
In the weeks before joining the Gaza Division, IDF brigades were task-organized for their assigned or anticipated missions. Infantry and armor companies
cross-attached, and engineers, air controllers, intelligence, artillery forward
observers, attack helicopters, UAVs and their control stations, and the myriad
of smaller medical and support teams were divided up from their parent units
and attached to the brigades. The land and air forces units rehearsed their
assigned tasks in the planned ground attack. Last, the armored forces (tanks
and heavy armored personnel carriers) bolted or welded on additional armor,
including “belly plates” applied to vehicle undersides to thwart shaped-charge
mines and anticipated volleys of antitank guided missiles.23
The Israeli advance commenced in darkness during the early hours of 3
January 2009, with the four brigades attacking simultaneously to encircle
Gaza City, drive rocket-launching teams out of range of Israel, and force
Hamas fighters from their prepared defensive positions. IDF Combat Engineering Corps’ sappers created lanes to allow the tanks and infantry to
advance by clearing mines and booby traps set by Hamas. One brigade
(Paratroopers Brigade) attacked from north to south along the Mediterranean coast to turn Hamas forces out of their rocket-firing positions; a second
brigade (Givati Brigade) attacked south of Gaza City, driving east to west,
and then faced north to isolate Gaza City; while the third (Golani Brigade)
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attacked in the center between the other two and oriented on Gaza City’s
northeast. The Golanis were tasked with the difficult mission of penetrating
into the city itself to clear out rocket launchers. Last, the 401st Tank Brigade
attacked east to west and then faced south, back-to-back with the Givati
Brigade, blocking the routes running north and cutting Hamas’s supply lines
from the tunnels in the south (Sinai and Egypt). Southern Command’s two
regional brigades screened Israel’s western border with Gaza, wary of tunnels or other infiltration methods.
Proceeded by UAVs, the IDF’s combined arms formations avoided predictable avenues of approach and attacked using maneuver and firepower to
preempt ambushes. They conducted most attacks at night to disadvantage
Hamas, who lacked night vision devices, and maximize the IDF’s night operations training. Upon approaching objectives or built-up areas, Israeli infantry
dismounted from their APCs to close with the enemy while over-watched by
tanks and supported by combat engineers in armored vehicles. The combination of infantry advancing in armored carriers and teamed with tanks reduced
risks and increased maneuver options. Support provided by armored ambulances and recovery vehicles allowed the IDF to operate within the enemy’s
fire zone and maintain its momentum in a lethal urban battlefield. Heavily
armored Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers cleared avenues of approach, allowing
the bypass of likely ambush sites and minefields. The IDF’s mounted maneuver was accompanied by artillery-delivered smokescreens and mortar fire to
suppress enemy positions and prevent ambushes. All of these missions were
executed rapidly to sustain the initiative and prevent Hamas from regrouping
and consolidating a viable defense.24
IDF units maneuvered to bypass Hamas strong points and avoid their fires.
As necessary, the IDF cleared those using precise fires and the armored D-9
bulldozers. The IDF extensively employed the Tsefa mine-clearing system to
explosively reduce minefields (its intended use) or to blast movement corridors
through built-up areas. In sharp contrast to the fighting in 2006, the Israeli
ground forces returned to the basic fundamentals that had served it so well in
the past—audacious combined arms maneuver supported by devastating firepower. In Gaza, the IDF brigades used maneuver to cause the enemy to react,
move from their prepared positions, and expose themselves to fires or assault.25
The analyst and historian David Johnson summarized the IDF’s application
of its lessons from the Second Lebanon War and the essence of both mission
command and combined arms maneuver in his monograph Hard Fighting:
O peration C ast L ead 2 5 9
The operation’s focus was on brigade operations, and the brigade commanders were given the authority to execute within the plan. Given the terrain and
the fleeting nature of the enemy, this approach was much more successful
than the very centralized approach used in Lebanon. The IDF had learned in
Lebanon that, in the absence of pressure from ground forces, its adversaries
knew how to avoid detection and attack by overhead platforms. In Gaza,
IDF ground maneuver “forced the enemy to react, to move, to expose himself. Taking them from amorphous in nature to shaped, which is critical in
an urban area.” Thus, ground maneuver was critical in creating targets for
ground and air fires. Fires were also important because they paralyzed the
enemy [by] fixing his position. This allowed IDF ground forces to close with
Hamas fighters who were reluctant to expose themselves to attack from air or
artillery.26
The IDF’s leadership at all levels markedly improved compared to its performance
during the Second Lebanon War, where many commanders remained in their static
command posts. In Operation Cast Lead brigade and battalion commanders “led
from the front,” and several were wounded. Another significant change was that
Operation Cast Lead was fought at the brigade level compared to the intifada
internal security environment and the Second Lebanon War, which were fought
at the division level with its attendant command-post-centric methods. The Gaza
Division headquarters assigned each brigade its own axis, objectives, and mission, and subsequently monitored and coordinated their respective progress. This
command-and-control arrangement greatly improved the division commander’s
responsiveness to the battle and afforded many more opportunities for initiative.
The overall operation was orchestrated from Southern Command in coordination
and consultation with GHQ in Tel Aviv, with little of the skipping-over echelons
and micromanagement seen in the Second Lebanon War.
The IAF assigned a Forward Air Operations (FAO) officer to each maneuver brigade, allowing commanders “practical control” of air assets. IAF
FAO now had the authority to direct close air support engagements that had
required the Chief of Air Force’s approval in 2006. These flight‐qualified
liaison officers had trained with their new partners and their supporting air
squadrons. Now, rather than using separate languages and terminology, the
voices on the radio were familiar, as were the services’ idiosyncrasies. One
IAF Apache squadron commander went so far as to instruct “[his] pilots to
consider themselves the flying tank of the brigade commander.”27
Positioning IAF officers in maneuver brigade headquarters created further
trust, understanding, and responsiveness between the air and land components.
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Rather than its previous practice of centrally controlling air strikes, most targets were now nominated by IDF brigade commanders. The IAF progressed
from providing on-call CAS to offering up proactive CAS, whereby the IAF
spoke daily with the brigade commanders rather than waiting for requests.
In Operation Cast Lead, IAF attack helicopters were now directly subordinated to ground brigade commanders who could count on dedicated,
around-the-clock support from them on request. By the time the counteroffensive against Hamas had become imminent, the IAF attack helicopters had
essentially become an army aviation force. The IAF ran even greater risks by
placing attack helicopters into airspace where fighters were attacking, thereby
increasing its CAS effectiveness supporting ground maneuver.28
Throughout the air-land portion of the campaign, IDF ground maneuver
elements supported the IAF rather than the other way around by shaping
Hamas forces’ dispositions. This then created both targets and a clear field of
fire for IAF fighters and attack helicopters. One IAF officer described the new
air-land cooperation as “groundbreaking.” He enthused,
The concentration of air assets in a tiny territory permitted unparalleled airland coordination. These included UAVs clearing around corners for infantry
platoons, Apache helicopter gunships providing suppressive fire during movements by small units, jet fighters employed to remove mines and IEDs and to
prepare the terrain for ground movements, as well as overwhelming firepower
ahead of ground advances, servicing even the smallest unit.29
Each brigade was assigned a UAV squadron with ground-control operators at
its command post to direct air strikes from standby attack helicopters and, if
necessary, fighter jets. Aerial surveillance from Heron, Hermes, and Searcher
UAVs and Apache attack helicopters provided unprecedented and responsive
close air support. IDF command posts were equipped with advanced digital
systems, greatly improved plasma displays, and ergonomic, operator-friendly
software providing situational awareness through at least a dozen UAVs continuously in flight over Gaza. These provided real-time thermal and visual
video views to battalion and brigade CPs and actionable targeting. The UAVs
flew just ahead of advancing combat formations, transmitting color imagery
of potential ambush sites and enemy dispositions.
The IDF had also formed robust intelligence “fusion” cells at the battalion- and brigade-level tactical operation centers manned with Arab-speaking
combat interrogators, geospatial specialists, and IAF liaisons. The IDF also
benefited from human intelligence provided by anti-Hamas sources as well as
O peration C ast L ead 2 6 1
various technical signals intelligence. These fusion cells and all-source intelligence collection were combined with the technique of pushing products to
the small-unit level to improve targeting and situational awareness. The higher
collection assets were sometimes attached to tactical units as well.30
As useful as all of this gathering (and dissemination) of information was to
the IDF, particularly before attacking, the IDF still required combat intelligence
once the ground forces were in contact with the enemy. Informants, overhead
surveillance, and electronic eavesdropping could not reveal the specific locations of some underground facilities and their contents, the location of mines
and booby-trapped buildings, and positions for rocket launchers.
The IDF’s initial air attacks also resulted in an unexpected vulnerability:
after the IDF destroyed all known positions, personalities, and facilities, Hamas
switched to previously undetected alternates or replacements.31 A similar situation arose after the IDF’s unexpected ground maneuvers; after outflanking and
turning Hamas out of their expected ambush positions, the Israeli infantryarmor teams then had to gain and maintain contact with groups of Hamas militiamen. Although dispersed and disorganized, these militia remained dedicated
and undefeated within the densely populated outskirts of Gaza City. Despite
Israel’s intelligence agencies’ superb work and the UAV’s constant surveillance,
the battle still hinged on a series of movements to contact at the tactical level.32
IDF infantrymen and engineers had to painstakingly blow loopholes through
walls to clear buildings and basements that could contain any combination
of antitank gunners, booby traps, kidnapping tunnels, or terrified civilians.33
By 5 January 2009, fighting was limited due to Hamas’s efforts to avoid
direct-fire contact with the IDF at all costs. Occasionally a trapped or dedicated
unit would initiate a firefight; one of these melees between Hamas and the
Golani Brigade resulted in three Golanis killed and twenty-four wounded in a
fratricide when a supporting IDF tank mistakenly fired into the building they
were occupying.34 Meanwhile, the IAF continued its attacks as did the Israeli
artillery, often directed by the omnipresent UAVs droning overhead. These attacks, coupled with the relentless searching by IDF ground troops, kept Hamas
under constant pressure and on the move. The IAF struck targets identified
by Israeli intelligence, hitting 250 targets in Gaza between 6 and 10 January.
Dénouement
Israel faced significant international pressure for a ceasefire due to the number of Gazan civilian casualties and the deteriorating humanitarian situa-
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tion. On 7 January 2009, Israel opened a humanitarian corridor to allow aid
shipments into Gaza. On 17 January, Israeli officials announced that they
had met military objectives and the IDF would enact a unilateral ceasefire
at midnight on 18 January. On that date, Hamas and other terrorist groups
agreed to stop launching rockets into Israel for one week in exchange for IDF
withdrawal from Gaza and resumption of border crossings for humanitarian
aid, food, and other necessities. Three days later, the last Israeli troops left
Gaza and Egyptian mediators resumed discussions with Israel and Hamas to
extend the ceasefire by a year or more.35
Conclusions
The IDF’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against Hamas was impressive in
its ability to gather information on an enemy, operationally deceive it, and
then maneuver decisively against it. Though lacking the combat prowess of
Hezbollah, Hamas still held many advantages and could have potentially inflicted great harm to the Israeli military with its defenses and to her civilians
through rockets and terrorist attacks via the sea or tunnels. The IDF proved
its agility by institutionally adapting to overcome its weaknesses through
professional study and self-reflection, creating and promulgating a new doctrine, and retraining and restructuring its ground and air components. These
changes resulted in an effective joint force that incorporated its mandatory
(active) and reserve troops in a successful combat operation less than twoand-a-half years after the Second Lebanon War debacle. Israel inflicted a
decisive defeat on Hamas, clearly reestablishing deterrence by demonstrating
its military competence and political resolve.
Throughout Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s Hezbollah and Syrian enemies
were quiet and have remained so. In fact, as of this writing, Israel has suffered
no attacks from either, and the collapse of the latter has engulfed the former
in a brutal sectarian regional war that has replaced the Israeli-Arab conflict
as the Near East’s most vexing.
The IDF demonstrated it had learned from the Second Lebanon War in
refining an effective air-land campaign plan against Hamas. The IDF visualized
a joint campaign from the first moments of its planning to ensure the effective
exploitation of airpower in support of ground maneuver. The obligation of
fixed-wing aircraft to provide close air support of ground forces, rather than
exclusively conducting deep strikes, was returned by mutual assent. In execution of the plan, the Gaza Division commander, an army brigadier general,
O peration C ast L ead 2 6 3
had an IAF colonel at his side who provided uninterrupted direct air support
for the planning and conduct of combat operations. The IAF’s main Air Operations Center remained outside the command-and-control loop other than
for transmitting rules of engagement and special instructions to participating
IAF air crews.
This chapter began with a literary reference, from light to heavy duty, to
explain that the optimism that sober military and political leaders developed
in order to not face or repeat the gruesome stalemate of the Great War’s
trenches was not an anachronism. Two of the three most commonly referred-to
writings on Operation Cast Lead reference a return or at least a conservative
view: “back to basics,” “glory restored,” and, simply, “hard fighting.” There
is little in these works that have the wide-eyed optimism of Douhetist “precision strike” or Admiral Owens’s “information dominance” seen in various
doctrines produced by Israel after 2000 or the United States in the post–Cold
War period. Instead, it’s the grim business of strapping on more armor, toughening up the troops, building cohesive teams, and integrating ground and air
forces into an offensive combined arms force. The IDF abandoned its previous vague, unproven, and poorly understood doctrine that ran counter to its
own principles of war. Instead, it returned to mission and aim, initiative and
offensive, continuity of action, and the maintenance of morale and fighting
spirit. Humbled after 2006, the IDF reembraced the heavy-duty tasks required
of closing with their enemies in offensive combined arms maneuver.
The IDF was able to reach Israel’s strategic and political objectives during Operation Cast Lead by the General Staff forcing the prime minister and
defense minister to articulate what they wanted to achieve through military
force: reinforce deterrence, weaken Hamas’s infrastructure, and reduce the
amount of rocket fire. General Ashkenazi asked the hard, clarifying questions
at the operation’s initial planning and ensured the joint force and the regional
Southern Command had nested and understood these achievable objectives, a
task made easier by clear doctrine using a simple terminology. IDF commanders executed a clear, phased plan and, in contrast to the Second Lebanon War,
without undue interference from Tel Aviv.36
The employment of units by the IDF in Operation Cast Lead shows the necessity of a combined arms force that can gain and maintain direct-fire contact
with an enemy and retain its freedom of maneuver through obstacles including urban terrain. The IDF offensive was centered on four ground maneuver
brigades—two infantry, one airborne infantry, and one armored; all were
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equipped with armored vehicles (tanks, heavy APCs, and armored bulldozers).37 These types of heavy units are required to fight and successfully close
against hybrid forces that are trained and equipped with weapons larger than
small arms. Infantry and medium mounted units (such as Stryker BCTs) can
complement heavy units, particularly in urban and other complex terrain, but
cannot provide the survivability, lethality, or mobility of a heavy unit. Quite
simply, heavy forces reduce operational risks and minimize friendly casualties.38
Complementary to heavy units and toughened troops, robust formations
also contributed to the IDF’s success and must be examined as well. When
a joint force commits to wage a campaign, it must be, in the words of one
military thinker, “built to outlast” its opponents:
Existing hybrid warfare theory aptly demonstrates both the nascent nature of
this form of conflict, as well as its utility against militarily superior forces. Specifically, this is done with the synergistic combination of irregular and regular
qualities in protracted warfare to exhaust the superior force. Hybrid threats
will emerge, and will be conceptually built to last. It may be impossible to
completely avoid the Groznys, Mogadishus, and Bint J’beils of the future via
preparation or strategic adroitness, so there must be an adequate model to
guide unified action against a hybrid threat.39
Ground forces must be able to sustain extended contact with the enemy and
deliver continual offensive maneuver against it until its will is broken or its
means to resist destroyed. The IDF ground forces could not do this to Hezbollah in 2006, but were able to against Hamas in a matter of days. Prevailing
against a more powerful or state-sponsored force, the period must be months
and years.
The IDF was able to create the necessary teamwork and synergy by forming
its estranged tribes back into a joint family. The air force no longer eschewed
the ground forces’ close air support requirements, despite its vital (and growing) long-range strike mission needed for strategic deterrence. The IAF was able
to surge its capabilities and provide responsive joint fires to engaged ground
forces in complex terrain while avoiding fratricide and reducing collateral
damage. Round-table discussions, joint exercises, and continual practice allowed improved technique built on a shared bond that had also been allowed
to loosen.
Notes
1. David E. Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War: Insights from the
Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010), 4.
O peration C ast L ead 2 6 5
2. Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World
War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 3.
3. Council on Foreign Relations, “Winograd Commission Final Report,” 30 January 2008, p. 4, para. 20, http://www.cfr.org/israel/winograd-commission-final-report/
p15385.
4. One problem identified by the IDF during the fighting in southern Lebanon was a lack of doctrine or even an organization for its development.
Instead, units began publishing “how to” documents for low-intensity operations based upon their experiences. A contributing factor to this doctrinal
vacuum was the absence of professional forums for IDF leaders to discuss
doctrinal issues. The IDF was not the first military to face this problem: “The
army’s efforts against such diverse enemies . . . took place in such different
contexts and over such a long span of time that whatever common elements
might have been present were either too obvious to merit discussion by the
officers involved at the time or too hidden from their view to be discerned.”
John M. Gates, The U.S. Army And Irregular Warfare, College of Wooster,
https://discover.wooster.edu/jgates/files/2011/11/fullbook.pdf, accessed 28
December 2019.
5. Steven Mains and Gil Ad Ariely, “Learning While Fighting: Operational
Knowledge Management That Makes a Difference,” Prism 2, no. 3 (June
2011): 165–176, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/e26469126.
6. Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Forging Jointness Under Fire: Air-Ground Integration in Israel’s Lebanon and Gaza Wars,” NDU Press, no. 66 (3rd Quarter,
2012); Author’s notes from briefing by Eliot Cohen to USA CGSOC, 17 Sept.
2006.
7. Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War, quote p. 4.
8. Matt M. Matthews, “Hard Lessons Learned,” in Back to Basics: A Study
of the Second Lebanon War and Operation CAST LEAD, ed. Scott C. Farquhar (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009), 22, 11–15,
quote p. 8. Since its founding, the IDF’s tactical-level ethos of command had
stressed initiative, independence, and offensive-mindedness in preparation for
an eventual war against a conventional army. The nature of warfare in southern Lebanon in the 1990s had changed these attitudes; fear of Hezbollah retaliation to collateral deaths led senior commanders to micromanage planning to
minimize consequences. Tamir Libel, “Crossing the Lebanese Swamp: Structural and Doctrinal Implications on the Israeli Defense Forces of Engagement
in the Southern Lebanon Security Zone, 1985–2000,” Marine Corps University
Journal (Spring 2011): 77; author’s discussions with IDF officers at Fort Leavenworth in 2009 and 2010, and Latrun, Israel, in September 2009.
9. Both quotes from “Armed Forces, Israel,” Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessment—Eastern Mediterranean, 13 January 2009, referenced in Matthews,
“Hard Lessons Learned.”
10. Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War, 4–5; see also Yaakov
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Lappin, “IDF Breaks 33-Year Silence on M48 Tamuz Missile Launcher,” Jane’s
Defence, 6 August 2015.
11. Libel, “Crossing the Lebanese Swamp,” 79.
12. Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War, 6.
13. Matthews, “Hard Lessons Learned.” The 401st Armored Brigade is the
one that was badly ambushed in southern Lebanon’s Wadi Saluki in July 2006,
suffering eight killed, dozens wounded, and numerous vehicles destroyed and
damaged.
14. Mathews, “Hard Lessons Learned.”
15. Lambeth, “Forging Jointness Under Fire,” 50.
16. Paul Darling, “Joint Targeting and Air Support in a Counterinsurgency,”
Air & Space Power Journal (September-October 2012), 58; Lambeth, “Forging
Jointness Under Fire,” 52; Russell W. Glenn, Glory Restored? The Implications
of the 2008–2009 Gaza War in Times of Extended Conflict (Norfolk, VA: U.S.
Joint Forces Command Joint Irregular Warfare Center, 2010), 13.
17. Abe F. Marrero, “The Tactics of Operation CAST LEAD,” in Farquhar
(ed.), Back to Basics, 89.
18. Anthony H. Cordesman, “The ‘Gaza War’: A Strategic Analysis,” Final
Review Draft, Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2 February 2009, 5.
19. Penny L. Mellies, “Hamas and Hezbollah: A Comparison of Tactics,” in
Farquhar (ed.), Back to Basics, 53–56.
20. Israeli intelligence pinpointed more than six mosques in Gaza City that
were arsenals, a fact confirmed by huge secondary explosions after they were
attacked. David Eshel, “New Tactics Yield Solid Victory in Gaza,” Aviation
Week & Space Technology, March 11, 2009.
21. “The Operation in Gaza, 27 December 2008–18 January 2009: Factual
and Legal Aspects,” The State of Israel, July 2009, 18, quoted in Russell W.
Glenn’s monograph, Glory Restored?
22. Jim Zanotti et al., “Israel and Hamas: Conflict in Gaza (2008–2009),”
Congressional Research Service, 5 January 2009, 3.
23. Johnson, Hard Fighting: Israel in Lebanon and Gaza (Santa Monica,
CA: RAND, 2011), 133–34.
24. Marrero, “The Tactics of Operation CAST LEAD,” 92–99. The engineer’s Puma, like the infantry’s T-55-based Achzarit, is a Centurion tank with
the turret removed and its hull reinforced with various types of applique armor.
25. This maneuver, the dilemma posed by General Patton’s “Two way attack,” is discussed extensively by James B. Hickey in CALL Special Study “Closing with the Enemy: Company Team Maneuver,” March 1998; Marrero, “The
Tactics of Operation CAST LEAD,” 93. There is a great deal of negative press
coverage on the alleged illegal use by the IDF of incendiary white phosphorous
(WP) rounds. The Law of Land Warfare does not prohibit the use of WP against
enemy personnel. Typically WP is used to create “immediate smoke” since other
types of smoke rounds cannot provide an instantaneous smokescreen. The IDF
O peration C ast L ead 2 6 7
used the U.S.-made 155mm M825A1 smoke round that detonates in the air and
showers the ground with small felt wedges soaked in WP.
26. Johnson, Hard Fighting, 134, emphasis added.
27. Glenn, Glory Restored? 13.
28. Lambeth, “Forging Jointness Under Fire,” 51–52.
29. Matthews, “Hard Lessons Learned,” 30; see also Darling, “Joint Targeting and Air Support,” 58–60.
30. Marrero, “The Tactics of Operation CAST LEAD,” 91.
31. The author refers to this paradox as the “Panzer Group West Scenario”;
early in the Normandy Campaign, “ULTRA” radio intercepts revealed the location of the HQ of the German’s Panzer Group West. The Allies waited patiently
in order to mask the success of their codebreaking and thereby continued to
harvest intelligence. Once Panzer Group West ordered a counterattack, it had
outlived its usefulness and was quickly destroyed by an air attack. See Williamson Murray, “ULTRA: Some Thoughts on Its Impact on the Second World
War,” Air University Review, July-August, 1984.
32. Again from David Johnson’s Military Capabilities for Hybrid War,
7: “Individual high‐value targets moved once the IAF had completed its
initial attacks, however, making them harder to find. The same explanation
applies to IDF ground forces: once hostilities began, monitoring the adversary’s tactical activities introduced intelligence requirements of an entirely
different character than those demanded pre‐hostilities. This observation
suggests that caution may be in order regarding future intelligence expectations for any military. Contingencies in areas other than those where intelligence can dominate in times of relative peace are likely to see commanders
in receipt of information at the beginning of conflicts more akin to that
available at the beginning of the Second Lebanon War than Operation Cast
Lead.”
33. Glenn, Glory Restored? 13–14. See also Marrero for the IDF’s use of
Oketz (“Sting”) teams of military working dogs as well as robots and “Bull Island” hand-launched cameras to reconnoiter (“The Tactics of Operation CAST
LEAD,” 94–95).
34. Why so many soldiers were in one building is unknown, as similar incidents occurred to the Golanis in 2006 and were strongly discouraged in the
IDF’s daily quick-turnaround lessons learned.
35. “War Termination Doctrine and Lessons,” Research & Analysis Report
# 4–12, Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) Analysis Support Team, 20
February 2012, 73–74.
36. Matthews, “Hard Lessons Learned,” 29. Readers should ask whether
they would accept a “reduced” amount of high-explosive rockets impacting on
their neighborhoods or demand their elimination.
37. The Paratroopers Brigade were mounted in venerable U.S.-made M-113
APCs equipped with additional armor. Losses, including seven soldiers to an
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S cott C . F arquhar
RPG hit, caused a reexamination of that vehicle’s suitability. Subsequent operations in Gaza in 2014 saw IDF reliance on the Namer heavy APC.
38. David E. Johnson, Heavy Armor in the Future Security Environmen”
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2011), 4–6.
39. Richard B. Johnson, “Built to Outlast: Operational Approaches to
Hybrid Warfare,” monograph (thesis), School of Advanced Military Studies,
United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, May 2012, 23.
Chapter 15
AN INCOMPLETE SUCCESS
S E C U R I T Y A S S I S TA N C E I N C O L O M B I A
Douglas Porch
Security assistance has a checkered record of success.1 There are several
structural reasons for this, beginning with the haphazard, disjointed, uncoordinated way in which security assistance operates as a means and end of
policy, a pattern of confusion and cross-purposes that confounds even those
who administer it. The difficulties of setting a policy and a strategy to achieve
it exist on multiple levels, beginning with the absence of consensus about
how to administer such aid and what political and strategic ends it serves.
Are the supported forces to develop along their own national pattern, or
to be interoperable clones of U.S. forces, or to be merely reinforcements to
U.S. and allied forces? And if this were not enough, allies operating in the
same country sometimes fail to coordinate programs. Part of the problem of
disarticulation is conceptual, stemming from the fact that security assistance
stands at the crossroads of law; politics; and Washington’s increasingly dysfunctional interagency process, characterized by feeble cooperation between
the Departments of State and Defense. As one senior U.S. military officer
told the author, “There’s no Goldwater-Nichols (law) for U.S. security assistance.”2
At best security assistance may achieve tactical and operational success
by standing up units capable of fighting effectively on the battlefield. Security assistance may also deliver a very circumscribed influence for the United
States. At the low end, it offers a recipe for complete disillusionment. Billions
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of dollars were lavished in a “whole of government” effort to bolster the
ARVN and its parent government. But at least one could argue that Saigon
fell in 1975 to a conventional military invasion backed by two major foreign
powers. An Iraqi government and military that has received generous, even
profligate, security assistance for over a decade appears at the time of writing
incapable of confronting a rag-tag band of ill-armed Sunni mercenary jihadists
even with the backing of U.S. air power. If the U.S. security assistance proves
powerless to rescue the relatively modern and religiously homogenous Shia
government and armed force, can the less sophisticated and ethnically diverse
Afghanistan be far behind?3
On the face of it, Colombia appears to offer a story of unequivocal “whole
of government,” security assistance success, one of the few in the contemporary
era. When secretaries of state or Pentagon spokespeople are at a loss to report
good news, or are caught lying about the progress of stability operations in
Afghanistan,4 they can always point to Colombia as a bright spot—perhaps
the only one—in the recent history of U.S. security assistance policy.5 “Colombia’s dramatic gains serve as a beacon of hope for other countries that
today are besieged by the violence and blight of insurgency and drug trafficking,” declared a recent study. “They demonstrate that nations can, with
internal political will and persistent American support, overcome seemingly
intractable obstacles.”6 According to its boosters, Plan Colombia, a $6 billion
program launched in 1999 to swell and restructure the Colombian military
and police, offered an unprecedented interagency effort that imposed exacting
human rights standards, reinvigorated Bogotá’s relationship with its citizens,
and got buy-in from both the Colombian military (Colmil) and the government.7 The Colmil expanded its numbers from 145,000 in 2000 to 236,000
by 2008, while the defense budget rocketed from $5.7 to $10.4 billion in
2012.8 Simultaneously, following a multiagency approach, the U.S. Department of State worked to streamline Colombia’s cumbersome criminal justice
system, promote and protect human rights through aggressive prosecution of
human rights violators, support Colombia’s millions of persons displaced by
the conflict, and reinforce the Government of Colombia’s (GOC’s) capacity to
implement effective programs. It also promoted programs to retrain deserters
from illegal armed groups, more closely link the justice system and police,
clear land mines, and so on.9
While it is certainly true that Colombia’s future looked bleak at the turn
of the twenty-first century, on closer examination, however, Colombia also
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 71
showcases the limitations, as well as some unintended consequences, of security
assistance reform. This chapter will argue that many Colombian regions have
witnessed a triumph of counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics in a strategic vacuum
of government presence. Critics complain that Colombia’s rehabilitation is,
at best, incomplete in the wake of the November 2016 peace accord between
the GOC and the FARC. An estimated twenty FARC bands never accepted
the peace deal in the first place and instead went rogue, an occurrence with
ample precedent in previous Colombian stand downs. The accord failed to
garner popular unanimity in Colombia—in fact, its unpopularity contributed
to the installation of Iván Duque, a hard-right opponent of the peace deal, as
president of Colombia in August 2018. Since his election, Duque had failed
to implement at least one third of the provisions of the peace accord, and
slow-rolled another third. Duque’s hostility to the peace accords has had a
possible knock-on effect in the murder of an estimated 137 former guerrillas, while the numbers of assassinated civil rights workers and their clients
number in the hundreds.10 As a result, and possibly with the encouragement
of Venezuela, in late August 2019, several former FARC leaders announced
their intention to resume the guerrilla struggle in alliance with the ELN, who
shunned a peace deal with the GOC.11
One is left to wonder how much really has changed in Colombia despite
over a decade of U.S. security assistance. Even the initiation in 2012 of peace
talks between the GOC and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP), appeared to follow established patterns
of conflict in Colombia, rather than break new ground—that of a successful
military offensive, followed by negotiation. Internal conflicts, and the political
and criminal groups that support them, come and go in Colombia. La Violencia, the civil war between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party ignited
in 1947, was eventually extinguished by a negotiated settlement in 1958.
President Belisario Betancur (1982–1986) opened negotiations with several
rebel groups and amnestied guerrillas, much to the chagrin of the Colmil. The
M19 insurgency disarmed after an amnesty in the late 1980s. The Ejército
Popular de Liberación dissolved in 1991 following peace talks with the government.12 The FARC’s late-twentieth-century surge was facilitated in part by
negotiations with the government of President Andrés Pastrana (1998–2002),
which accorded them a large swath of territory in the south of the country
known as the Despeje where they were immune from attack. Even a hardline opponent of the current peace talks with the FARC, former Colombian
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president Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), negotiated the demobilization of the
so-called Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) between 2003 and 2006.
In doing so, however, Uribe may have created an even more stubborn threat to
Colombia’s internal security, as the AUC mutated into criminal gangs involved
in cocaine trafficking and extortion, and who may now account for more
civilian deaths than do Colombia’s main insurgent groups.13
What have been the components of Colombia’s latest security assistance
experience? One can take a formulaic approach, as does David Spenser with his
checklist of “lessons learned.”14 These, of course, are nice to have. But context
is everything—a security assistance officer may search in vain for Spenser’s
preconditions of “leadership,” “political consensus,” “institutional strength,”
and “inability of opponents to adapt” in Mali or Libya, not to mention
Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor might all governments be as receptive to U.S.
“advice” as has been that of Bogotá, which has fostered a close relationship
with Washington at least since World War II. In other words, there is no
“clash of civilization” dimension to the U.S.-Colombian relationship. On the
contrary, Colombia appears to be the one province of Gran Colombia whose
ruling elites, in contrast to those of its immediate neighbors in recent decades,
appear to be robustly pro–United States. While defending what it sees as its
own interests and organizational culture and with a few prominent lapses,
most notably the “false positive” scandal which came to light in 2008,15 the
Colombian officer corps has, on the whole, proven receptive to U.S. security
assistance, eager to modernize at least on a technical and doctrinal level, and
able to adapt tactically and operationally to the evolving security environment.
But even in this Latin citadel of security assistance triumphalism, the ability
of significant U.S. intervention and cash to influence the modernization of
Colmil structures, cultural attitudes, and ultimately political choices has
exposed its limitations.16 Furthermore, in 2015, Spenser’s strategic ingredients,
which in 2012 appeared to have driven the FARC into terminal decline,
looked more like perishable commodities than sure-fire success formulas.17
Spenser is certainly correct that Álvaro Uribe defined the political and strategic
parameters for success. Critical to Uribe’s achievement and too frequently
overlooked was the demobilization of the AUC, a conspiracy of paramilitary
groups with which too many military units had been collaborating.
Demobilization was hastily organized and poorly administered. This led to
some unintended consequences, most notably the conversion of some of these
bands into criminal organizations called BACRIM that now often cooperate
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 73
with their former guerrilla enemies, most notably in the commerce of illegal
substances.18 But one of the main benefits of paramilitary demobilization is
to have forced the military to undertake consolidation on its own rather than
outsource population control to brutal proxies.19 Paramilitary demobilization
was followed by a sharp decline in the noncombatant homicide rate.20 Second,
Uribe shook up the military; fired generals who resisted reform, were accused
of corruption, or who lacked operational aggressiveness; and tightened the
supervision of security policy and strategy to the point of micromanagement.21
Like World War I French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, Uribe also
believed that “war is too important to be left to the generals” and so forced the
military and police to consolidate the towns and major highways in response to
constituent complaints of kidnappings, extortions, and skyrocketing insurance
rates, rather than chase guerrillas around the jungle.22 It escaped the notice
of no one that while Uribe proved eager to take the fight to the insurgents, he
gave the paramilitary groups significant incentives to stand down.
But Uribe’s level of “leadership” may be difficult to sustain in democratic
environments—after all, even Winston Churchill was voted out of office in July
1945 in the middle of the Potsdam Conference. Uribe’s two-term presidency
is frequently and justifiably credited with allowing the GOC to gain the
upper hand in the struggle against Colombia’s multiple insurgencies. But this
required a bruising fight to amend the Colombian constitution, central in the
view of many to the character of Colombian democracy, to allow consecutive
presidential terms. And even eight years of Uribe leadership may ultimately
prove to have been insufficient to sustain the momentum of Colombia’s
counterinsurgency. Indeed, the former president’s legacy has arguably now
become a complicating—not to say negative—factor in Bogotá’s attempt to
maintain peace with the FARC, or even to maintain Colombian civil-military
relations on an even keel.23
This is because controversy over the ongoing negotiations with the FARC
remind one that there never has been a “political consensus” over the nature
of the threat posed by Colombia’s assortment of nonstate actors. Nor has
unanimity emerged over the optimal strategy to deal with insurgents, at least
since the 1950s. As former King’s College, London, scholar Jorge Delgado
notes, the political debate between supporters and opponents of negotiations
with the FARC is simply a reprise of past conflict-termination strategies, from
which Uribe himself has not been immune.24 Historically, even the Colombian
military has divided between those who view Colombia’s evolving insurgent
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landscape as the product of legitimate peasant grievances that must be
addressed with a menu of political, social, and economic reforms, and others
who agree with Uribe that the FARC constitutes a cluster of narco-terrorists
who must be annihilated on the battlefield. “Traditional Colombian politicians
were in favor of dialogue with the armed groups, as the solution to violence,”
Uribe recounts in his memoirs. “In my opinion they erroneously equated
appeasement with civility, as if the only function of the State was to act as
mediator, instead of being the guarantor of security and territorial control.”25
Framing Colombia’s conflict as a product of “terrorism” offered Uribe several
advantages: it aligned Colombia’s struggle with Washington’s “War on Terror”;
it placed the emphasis on military “victory” that focused efforts on a technical
upgrade of the Colmil with U.S. security assistance; it obviated the need for
a political process to engage an “illegitimate” criminal adversary; and it did
not require a “whole of government” outreach, except as an afterthought, to a
population that was terrorized rather than aggrieved. Uribe critics go further:
defining Colombia’s conflict as a counterterrorist struggle also allowed the
GOC to ignore the humanitarian crisis among Colombia’s huge population
of internally displaced persons (IDPs), the existence of war crimes, or that the
FARC and other insurgent groups might be regarded as a legitimate actors
in some remote and especially frontier communities and among those whose
livelihood depends on coca production.26
At a fundamental tactical level, these counterinsurgency and counterterrorist positions are not incompatible—one can improve conditions which allegedly
foster popular discontent with incumbent government while simultaneously
eliminating insurgents. But in this debate, “classic” COIN theorists, at least
since JFK’s brain trust Walt Rostow spawned the “Alliance for Progress” in
1961, have focused on the alleviation of the underlying conditions that they
believe cause insurgency. This underpins the current approach of the State
Department and USAID in Colombia, which seeks to give the most disadvantaged Colombian citizens a reason to support the GOC rather than the
insurgency.27 By agreeing to negotiate with the FARC, the Santos government
acknowledged the political, rather than the merely “terrorist,” dimensions of
the conflict. But this can lead to mixed signals and a confusion of purpose and
strategic direction in the “leadership.” As Delgado writes,
“The one thing that these two Colombian military traditions hold in common
and which has ensured a degree of inner consistency in Colombian military
thought across the years is mistrust of civilians. This is a product of several
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 75
intertwined factors: the absence of clear political guidance; the lack of a strategy-making process; the discontinuity in government posture towards the insurgents which oscillates between belligerence and compromise; and finally
the requirement to adhere to civil rule of law protocols which, the military
feels, both unduly ties their hands in the conduct of operations and puts them
at risk of prosecution should they overstep some invisible boundary as defined
by the courts.”28
So, one man’s “leader” may be another man’s opportunist.29 To a majority of Colombians, at least during the 2014 presidential elections, Santos’s
commitment to peace singled him out as a courageous and visionary leader
willing to assume political risks to bring a lasting peace to a country historically churned by murderous factional disorder. Opponents of negotiations
led by Uribe strongly dissented, arguing that the army has always been on
the cusp of victory against—fill in the blank. But the Santos camp argued
that Colombia’s endemic civil disorder defies a military solution. War tends
toward the absolute and becomes increasingly difficult to constrain within
the bounds of policy. If there is a chance for peace that could turn a corner
on Colombia’s violent history, save billions of dollars in military expenditure,
and allow Colombia to become a “normal” state, why not seize it? Santos’s
problem was at least in part that he imagined that with most of the country
FARC-frei, the insurgency was no longer on the front burner of Colombia’s
political concerns. Therefore, he did too little to sell his case. This debate in
Colombia is at least a half-century old, one which holds security assistance
hostage to Colombian, not U.S., priorities.
Critics led by Uribe believed that Santos was at best naive, at worst reckless, and put at risk a successful strategy of aggressive military action against
the FARC in favor of perilous political negotiation. This placed hard-won
military gains in jeopardy, frayed the fabric of civil-military relations, fell
increasingly out of favor with a growing segment of the Colombian population, and delivered Santos’s, and Colombia’s, political future into the hands
of an unscrupulous band of Bolivarian bandidos. At the time, even Sergio
Jaramillo, Colombia’s High Commissioner for Peace and one of the GOC’s
negotiators with the FARC in Havana, conceded that growing popular and
political impatience with the peace negotiations placed its success in serious
jeopardy. He also admitted that any agreement hammered out in Havana
would be meaningless if rejected on the ground, which has happened in the
past, and with Duque appears to be happening again, apparently much to
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Jaramillo’s chagrin.30 The most notorious example was the case of the Unión
Patriótica, a left-wing political party formed in part by former guerrillas in
the 1980s. After modest success at the polls, many leaders and activists were
assassinated by criminal elements and members of the security services who
regarded the Unión Patriótica as the political arm of the FARC. This precedent
weighted heavily on the negotiations.31
Whatever the merits of the current Colombian political dispute over the
value of negotiations, the point is that “political consensus” may be elusive,
especially in a COIN environment in which COINdinistas may themselves be
divided over “hard” and “soft” approaches to allegedly “biddable” populations. Those who take a long view like Colombian specialist Daniel Pécaut
argue that violence and rebellion are endemic in a nation with a precarious
sense of national identity. Historically, Colombia’s tortuous geography has
spawned multiple, competing regional centers of power; frontier zones to
which the state came late and lightly in the twentieth century; and a diversity
and fluidity of elites ready to deploy violence through private militias to extend
their control over populations. For these reasons, Bogotá has never managed
to consolidate its power as have states in South America’s southern cone. At
the same time, rebellion lacks sufficient coherence or geographical following
to succeed on a national level. Instead, social and political conflict diffuses in
local struggles which, in the view of Uribe, can be contained through the application of military force. When seen in this context, competition between the
GOC, the FARC and other insurgent groups, and criminal gangs conformed
to past patterns. While history may not be destiny, efforts to modernize the
state have been undermined by corruption caused by the drug culture, which
became rampant from the 1970s on. This sustains conflict; exaggerates social
disparities; collapses the “friend-enemy” dichotomy because even rival groups
frequently cooperate on a business level and to divide territory among themselves; and undermines institutional legitimacy.32 For all of these reasons, a
linear relationship between security assistance and successful state building
has proven elusive, even in Colombia—especially in Colombia.
One may also query Spenser’s other two explanations for Colombia’s
success: “institutional strength” and the “inability of opponents to adapt.”
Institutional strength, of course, is a relative concept. To hold the Colombian
state, which exists on a South American continent with its own political history and social interactions and which is also fighting an internal conflict,
to the same levels of democratic accountability as, say, Switzerland, would
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 77
be both unrealistic and unreasonable. At its most basic, Colombia evinces
a pattern of democratic accountability, a more-or-less functioning judicial
system and history of civilian control of the military. Others, and not simply
left-wing insurgent groups like the FARC, however, argue that Colombia is
an imperfect democracy corrupted by elite manipulation of the democratic
process, judicial lethargy and intimidation, a political culture with high tolerance for criminality, the corruption of drug money, and so on.33 According
to this view, Colombia’s endemic violence is not the product of “bad actors”
but a rational and even legitimate activity in a restrained civil democracy that
seeks to preserve the “natural” differences, collective allegiances, and private
networks in society rather than reconcile them by investing in its own people.34
“What is noteworthy is that the approach used by the Colombians is ‘classic counterinsurgency’,” insists Thomas Marks.35 This is a confusing assertion
for at least three reasons. First, “classic counterinsurgency” theory assumes
that there is a popular grievance that has created a constituency for revolutionaries to exploit. But as noted above, President Uribe had defined Colombia’s
conflict as a criminal narco-terrorist challenge, not an insurgency anchored
in a legitimate set of social, economic, or political grievances. This helps to
explain the second paradox of Marks’s explanation—the virtual absence in
Colombia of a “whole of government” stabilization scheme to eliminate the
grievance(s) and win the “hearts and minds” of the population. Finally, it
all rather depends on what Marks means by “classic counterinsurgency.” In
many respects, Colmil success stood the traditional British model of “aid to
the civil” on its head, because there is no “civil” in Colombia’s outback or
even in many of its major cities.
Colombia’s counterinsurgency may indeed be “classic,” as Marks contends,
not the least because it has been extremely violent, especially before 2003 when
much of it was outsourced to paramilitary groups who, often in cahoots with
the military, carried out the most frightful atrocities, which included massacres
of entire populations and other “spine-chilling” refinements of cruelty.36 That
Colombia post-election of Uribe to the presidency in 2002 did not witness the
concentration camps, calorie control, and other excesses that have characterized “classic” counterinsurgency campaigns from Cuba in the late nineteenth
century through Vietnam’s “strategic hamlets” was largely due to Colombia’s
Constitutional Court. After barely a week in office, on 12 August 2002, Uribe
declared “Zones of Rehabilitation and Consolidation,” a status that conferred
significant “public order” powers on the military. However, on 25 November
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2003, the Constitutional Court stripped the military of judicial powers conferred by the Uribe decree.37 In the interim, however, the populations in these
rehabilitation zones endured the rigors of martial law—the military recorded
the names and income of every household that was given a code. Soldiers had
to right to stop citizens in the street; ask for name and national ID number;
and inventory what one was carrying, especially cooking oil, rice, and batteries (used in IEDs), all of which was recorded. Night patrols informed by the
redes de cooperantes (civilians enlisted to report suspicious activity) would
carry out arrests, or seal off a neighborhood and perhaps round up the males
and take them to the football stadium, where a hooded caratapada (snitch)
pointed out those allegedly working for the insurgency.38
But Colombia’s Constitutional Court outlawed aggressive “population
centric” strategies similar to those used by the British in Malaya, Kenya, and
in the early years in Northern Ireland. Colmil officers were forced to improvise
a “bottom up” “hearts and minds” process in the true sense of the word, systematically rolling up the insurgents’ logistical infrastructure, before isolating
and wearing down the main FARC forces. In the process, officers prioritized
and sequenced the targeted illegal groups; restructured military intelligence;39
and created mixed teams of military, law enforcement, and judicial agents
able to collect evidence, make arrests, and successfully prosecute insurgents.
But “classic counterinsurgency” has often proved elusive. Unfortunately, as in
Vietnam, the war in Colombia has witnessed an emptying of the countryside
in many areas that has created an unprecedented number of desplazados. This
makes “hearts and minds” difficult to apply. It has also complicated the land
tenure issue, one of the main planks of the Havana negotiations, as abandoned
farms are often occupied by squatters and local records are too scarce or subject to alteration to establish definitive claims to ownership.
Finally, the Colmil applied a territorial control strategy that required the
creation of a layered force structure that ran from village militias, known as
soldatos de mi pueblo, to hard-hitting special forces and riverine units. The
climax of local campaigns can be categorized as a saturate, locate, and decapitate strategy that finished off the remnants of beleaguered FARC fronts
in many areas and hopefully killed their leaders. However, a strategy that in
retrospect may appear as an unfolding of a logical progression was instead
the product of constant improvisation, adjustment, and individual initiative
that had to accommodate local realities. Colombian COIN has been “classic”
insofar as spreading an oil spot of military occupation was certainly central to
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 79
the territorial consolidation focus of Uribe’s Politica de Defensa y Seguridad
Democratica (Democratic Security Policy—DSP), published in 2003. This
balked the FARC’s 1982 “Strategic Plan for the Seizure of Power” by increasing
the size of the Colombian armed forces and professionalizing it to a greater
degree. In this way, the Colmil opened the roads connecting Colombia’s major
cities; disrupted the FARC’s “mobility corridors,” especially in Cundinamarca,
the home department of Bogotá; and probably halved the FARC-EP’s strength
through battlefield attrition, desertion, an aggressive amnesty program, and
government occupation of many of the FARC’s traditional recruitment areas.
The FARC continued to recruit in those marginal areas where government
presence is weak and services are virtually nonexistant, as in Catatumbo,
Arauca, and Putumayo.
U.S. security assistance also proved to be a critical element of success in
three areas—air mobility, technical intelligence, and special operations. It
also helped the Colmil to rationalize its doctrine and planning procedures,
as well as training and manpower processes, combat medicine, human rights
training, and so on.40 All of this allowed the Colmil to increase its comparative advantages against the FARC and other insurgent groups, atomizing and
forcing them to seek refuge in remote areas of the country and across borders
in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador. In the final analysis, Colmil success
has depended on niche upgrades paid for in part by $4 billion in U.S. equipment and training.
So far, the efforts of the Colombian state able to follow up military success
with effective institutions of government, social services, and infrastructure
has proven disappointing. Realizing the absence of instruments of pacification,
in May 2004, the Centro de Coordinacíon de Acción Integral (CCAI) was
created by the presidency as a multiagency apparatus to provide services to
citizens in pacified areas. In 2007, at the beginning of his second presidential
term, Uribe upgraded the DSP into the Política de Consolidación de la Seguridad Democrática [Policy of Consolidation of Democratic Security]. The
CCAI established a doctrina de acción integral to provide a strategic vision to
coordinate the activities of various agencies to get them on the same page, as
well as to “strengthen the capabilities of the defense and security sector” and
to adjust to the tactical and operational adaptations of the insurgents, fortify
the rule of law, and bolster citizen confidence in the armed forces.
Unfortunately, Colombia’s counterinsurgency campaign also demonstrates
in full Clausewitz’s dictum that “the results of war are never final.” In many
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areas, the GOC failed to consolidate battlefield advantage with the creation
of viable and legitimate local and regional governments. Police were slow
to follow in the wake of the army and marines as they must be paid out of
municipal taxes, which are often nonexistent.41 Therefore, even a successful
COIN campaign in a region may leave a law-and-order vacuum in its wake.
Nor did “consolidation” solve the land tenure problem, which has left many
peasants as insecure as ever.42 The result has been that the Colmil and CCAI
have in fact become the indispensable organs of an interminable “consolidation.” “In fact, what Colombia is witnessing in many areas is the shortcomings
of a technocratic ‘government-in-a-box’ counterinsurgency (COIN) formula
that proved to be the Achilles heel of the French in Indochina and Algeria,
and which ultimately doomed General Stanley McChrystal’s 2010 ‘surge’ in
Kandahar and Helmand,” writes Delgado.43
The inability of the Colombian state to stabilize many remote regions,
especially in coca growing areas, threatens the success of the Havana peace
process. Indeed, Jaramillo was lucid about the challenges confronting the
Colombian state even after the peace negotiations with the FARC ended in
an agreement. With the prescience of experience and historical awareness, he
listed the provision of human security, to “get people to play by the rules” in
the face of potential spoilers; the application of justice in a conflict in which
human rights violations have become an almost daily occurrence; the resolution of land tenure issues; the integration of former combatants into society;
and finally, how to substitute legal crops for profitable coca cultivation, a
policy whose success has so far eluded Bogotá.44
At least we are left with the FARC’s inability to adapt to the Colmil’s
offensive, according to Spenser. Unfortunately, despite the apparent success
of Plan Colombia and the DSP, one must not oversell its benefits for at least
two reasons. First, the FARC was no Vietnam People’s Army in its heyday
of the 1960s–1970s, and indeed did have difficulty responding militarily to
a more aggressive Colombian armed forces and police posture. One view is
that the FARC was an ideological relic of the 1950s that had undergone a
drug cartel conversion. Its leadership was more concerned with preserving
its profits than in founding a Bolivarian independent republic in the jungle.
This makes it difficult to socialize its quasi-literate peasant recruits into its
political message. By 2016, child soldiers and coca growers formed much of
its popular base, while the behavior of its cadres more often resembled that
of a criminal cartel than an organization inspired by revolutionary idealism.
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 8 1
Its lack of security consciousness and requirement for a technological and
logistical expertise not normally found among its rank and file has made it
fairly easy to infiltrate and disrupt. These developments forced the FARC to
shatter into ever more minute groups and shelter in the jungle depths or across
the border in Ecuador and Venezuela.
Another view is that at its core the FARC was an organization with a political agenda. By agreeing to negotiations in Havana, the goal of which was to
achieve a political settlement over land use and pave the way for the FARC’s
participation in Colombia’s political institutions, the government of Manuel
Santos accorded it de facto recognition as such. So it was the FARC which,
despite tactical setbacks, maintained control of the strategic momentum of
the conflict. Despite the Colmil-led rollback of the insurgency, the FARC had
not gone away, but remained a persistent menace in many peripheral areas
and a key player in the illicit drug trade.
A second reason to be more cautious about the benefits of Plan Colombia
was that it increased the potential for spoilers, as Jaramillo recognized. Expanding military organizations in weak states is seldom sustainable or riskfree. Where a strong institutional context for security assistance is lacking,
military organizations swollen with arms and recruits upon whom the state
relies for survival can challenge the constraints of civilian control and create
post-conflict headaches. This happened in El Salvador in the 1980s, where
the military became so large, well-armed, and politically empowered by U.S.
assistance that even conservatives saw accommodation with the rebels as the
only way to bring an increasingly predatory and politically assertive soldiery
into line.45 Even in Colombia, which has a tradition of the rule of civilian
control of the military, President Santos met with vocal resistance to his decision to negotiate with the FARC from the military, often in alliance with
right-wing political elements led by Uribe, who is expected to hold Duque’s
feet to the fire, especially in the face of a declaration of war by a rump of
former FARC leaders.46 Indeed, the fear of the military was twofold: first, that
Santos, a former defense minister, would sign away at the peace table the victory that the military believed with some justification that it had won in the
field. Second, that a successful disarmament and integration of the FARC into
the political process would simply be the prelude to rehabilitated guerrillas
and their NGO allies stalking the halls of the Colombian congress demanding trials for soldiers accused of human rights violations. For this reason,
Santos was forced to conceed jurisdiction of human rights cases involving the
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military—the infamous “false positives” whereby murdered civilians are passed
off as guerrilla kills allegedly to satisfy the demands of senior officers eager for
“body count” evidence of aggressive COIN tactics—to military courts, where
convictions may surely prove hard to come by.47 But this obviously has not
proven enough to discourage spoilers, inspired by the successful dismantling
of the Unión Patriótica. Of course, the greatest “spoiler” of all has proven to
be the GOC, which has simply refused to honor much of the peace agreement
signed in its name. The FARC leadership has proven reluctant to acknowledge
that Colombia is no longer the aggrieved peasant paradise of the 1950s but
has evolved into a largely urbanized society for whom “Bolivarianism” holds
little appeal. Most observers believe that the FARC’s chances to jumpstart its
now demobilized movement are virtually nil.
Despite the fact that Colombia is habitually regarded as a COIN success,
the rollback of the FARC in the first decade of the twenty-first century can
be regarded as a tactical triumph in a strategic vacuum. The “lessons” of
Colombia serve to emphasize the limitations of security assistance, for several reasons. First, the alleged formula for success that combines “leadership,” “political consensus,” “institutional strength,” and “inability of
opponents to adapt” seldom transfers to other conflict environments. Furthermore, these characteristics have proven to be ephemeral, contested, or
incomplete elements of Colombia’s evolving strategic environment. Third,
security assistance has failed to change the organizational culture of the Colmil. It provided technical upgrades, most notably in the areas of air mobility, technical intelligence, and special operations that facilitated a reversal
of battlefield fortunes, admittedly at a low ebb for the Colmil in 2000. It
also must be acknowledged that the Colmil possessed the professional and
technical expertise, and the organizational motivation, to successfully incorporate U.S. imported innovations up to a point. However, the impact of
these reforms proved limited. For social, political, and economic reasons, the
Colmil counted insufficient numbers of officers to accompany its expansion.
Its NCO corps lacks the strength it otherwise might have if the institutional
culture reflected a “career open to talent.” Therefore, while U.S. security assistance in Colombia imported niche upgrades, it failed to trigger wholesale
institutional reform.
The long view suggests that what has been exceptional in the context
of Colombia’s history was less the Colmil’s successful tactical surge of the
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 8 3
twenty-first century’s first decade, but rather the scale of the FARC’s unprecedented success of the late 1990s. This combined drug money, which gave the
guerrillas the resources to expand, with the inept response of the government in
the 1990s to the rise of the FARC challenge, especially under President Ernesto
Samper (1994–1998). By 2000 if not before, control of much of the country
had slipped from the hands of the government into those of guerrillas and
paramilitary groups. Nor did U.S. policy in this period, which focused exclusively on coca eradication and which ostracized Samper as an official tainted
by corruption, help to stabilize this deteriorating situation. It may be argued
that what $6 billion in security assistance has bought is the reestablishment
of the 1980s status quo ante in Colombia, one which, as Pécault has noted,
combines a government with a frail presence in many peripheral regions, pitted
against a panoply of dissident criminal and insurgent groups whose political
and commercial actions diffuse in local struggles and temporary alliances.
In the view of Uribe, these actors can be contained through the continued
application of military force, as they always have been. This would obviate
the requirement for an investment of state resources in economic upgrades to
promote social mobility, acknowledge the possible legitimacy of some of the
insurgency’s political critiques, or necessitate a recalibration of political power.
A contrary view is that the GOC should cash in on its temporary military
advantage to break Colombia’s cycle of violence to achieve a stable peace.
Instability in peripheral regions impacts the center. It discourages economic
investment; promotes criminality, corruption, and other sources of disorder;
places populations under control of nonstate actors, which isolates entire
communities; and produces massive diasporas of people fleeing violence or
criminal control. For those who elect to enlist, illegal systems provide alternative, if risky, avenues of social promotion that normalizes criminal behavior
and promotes “shadow citizenship.” While “shadow communities” monopolize violence and promote forms of rough justice, they also impose civic
cooperation (leyes de convivencia) and security. This bolsters the legitimacy
of nonstate actors, while undermining that of the GOC, represented on the
local level almost exclusively by the army and police. All of this undermines
civility; delegitimizes the government, which can provide neither security nor
opportunity, leaving citizens feeling abandoned by Bogotá; and erodes the
nation’s social fabric.48
In the view of his critics, former President Santos’s bet on “biddable”
populations and “government in a box” stabilization approaches that aimed to
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remove the sources of conflict ran counter to Colombia’s history and culture.
The government lacked the resources for its ambitious program of agrarian
development to end coca production, land redistribution, social and infrastructure development, political participation, and satisfaction of victim’s rights.
Solving any one of these issues would prove a huge challenge. Also, given
Colombia’s violent history, especially the fate of the Unión Patriótica, the
potential for spoilers remained. Duque’s calculation must be that managing
a smoldering social/criminal conflict on the margins is simply a feature of
Colombian reality which the security forces are now in a position to handle.
Therefore, he sees no requirement to honor a peace agreement negotiated by
his predecessor.
In the final analysis, security assistance offers a one-dimensional approach
in a multilayered historical and national context. It is also hostage to political
fortune. By engaging, the United States becomes just another player—and not
necessarily the most important one—in an evolving political and strategic landscape in which local priorities and influences predominate. Security assistance
also assumes the burden of host government weaknesses as well as strengths,
like the absence of a process of strategy formulation and discontinuity of government policy. Even the most accommodating of governments, like that of
Bogotá, are shaped by their own strategic culture and act in their own political
interests, not those of the United States. Security assistance may even serve to
exacerbate those tensions rather than resolve them. All of these elements have
combined to make security assistance in Colombia an incomplete success.
Notes
1. “Security Assistance is a group of programs, authorized under Title 22 authorities, by which the United States provides defense articles, military education
and training, and other defense-related services by grant, loan, credit, cash sales,
or lease, in furtherance of national policies and objectives. All SA programs are
subject to the continuous supervision and general direction of the Secretary of
State to best serve U.S. foreign policy interests; however, programs are variously
administered by DoD or Department of State (DoS). Those SA programs that are
administered by DoD are a subset of Security Cooperation.” See Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Security Assistance Management Manuel, http://www.
samm.dsca.mil/chapter/chapter-1, accessed 19 November 2019.
2. Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986
streamlined and clarified the chain of command in the U.S. military. The State
Department, at least in the view of soldiers, forms the weak link in the partnership both organizationally and because it is underfunded. Yet often soldiers
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 8 5
treat security assistance as merely an extension of a U.S. basic training regimen,
whether or not it is compatible with host-country tradition, culture, and military
experience. In part because the priorities of security assistance are not seriously
debated among the principals in Washington, confusion plays out in-country,
where the ambassador and his security assistance team within the embassy country team may be unclear, or at odds, over the goals and potential effects of a
mission. Nor is the in-country chain of command clear, as the chief of the SAO
answers to the ambassador as head of the country team, the Combatant Command, and the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The attache reports also to the Defense Intelligence Agency. These issues are discussed
in Douglas Porch, “Expendable Soldiers,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 25, no. 3
(2014): 696–716, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2014.893974.
3. Emmarie Huetteman, “U.S. Defense Secretary Blames Iraqi Forces for
ISIS Victory in Ramadi,” New York Times, 24 May 2015, http://www.nytimes.
com/2015/05/25/world/middleeast/us-defense-secretary-blames-iraqis-islamicstate-victory-ramadi.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=fi
rst-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news. For Afghanistan, see
Mujib Mashal, Joseph Goldstein, and Jawad Sukhanyarmay, “Afghans Form Militias and Call on Warlords to Battle Taliban,” New York Times, 24 May, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/world/asia/as-taliban-advance-afghanistanreluctantly-recruits-militias.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&modul
e=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.
4. Craig Whitlock, “At War with the Truth,” The Washington Post, 9 December 2019.
5. “A Path to Peace: Country Development Cooperation Strategy 2014–
2018,” USAID Colombia, 13 June 2014, 8, https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/
files/documents/1862/USAID%20Colombia%20CDCS.pdf.
6. Mark Moyar, Hector Pagan, and Will R. Griego, Persistent Engagement in
Colombia, JSOU Report 14-3, The JSOU Press, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida,
2014, 49.
7. Oscar Naranjo, “Colombia Shows the Value of Cooperation,” New York Times, 25
April 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/07/a-lesson-in-futiltyfor-thepentagon/colombia-shows-the-value-of-military-cooperation.
8. Andres Schipani, “Security for Export,” “The New Colombia” supplement, Financial Times, 4 June 2013, 16, 18, http://www.ft.com/intl/reports/
new-colombia-2013.
9. Department of State, FY 2010 Mission Strategic Plan, 2–3, 6.
10. Megan Janetsky, “How to Keep the Colombian Peace Deal Alive,”
Foreign Policy, 8 September 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/08/
how-to-keep-the-colombian-peace-deal-alive-farc-duque-uribe-colombia.
11. Nicolas Casey and Laura Jakes, “Colombia’s Former FARC Guerrilla
Leaders Calls for a Return to War,” New York Times, 29 August 2019, https://
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/world/americas/colombia-farc-rebel-war.html.
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D ouglas P orch
12. A faction of the EPL survives in Catatumbo on the Venezuelan border.
13. “Profiles: Colombia’s Armed Groups,” BBC News, 29 August, 2013,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11400950.
14. David Spenser, “Lessons from Colombia’s Road to Recovery, 1982–2010:
Strategic Issues in US/Latin American Relations,” CHDS Occasional Paper 2, no.
1 (May 2012): 6–7.
15. The “false positives” scandal involved some military units dressing up
murdered civilians in jungle camouflage and passing them off as guerrilla kills
to improve their “body count” tally. This resulted in the resignation of General
Mario Montoya, whose insistence on raising the “body count” tally as a measure of unit aggressiveness was credited for the scandal. Another scandal was the
so-called “Jamundí massacre,” which saw fifteen military officials convicted of
murdering ten police officers from an elite, U.S.-trained and supported antinarcotics unit.
16. For instance, Colombia’s refusal to broaden the recruitment of its officer
corps beyond the limited output of its traditional military schools has left the Colombian army and marines desperately under-officered. NCOs must also finance
their own training. The ability to resign from “NCO school” after a year of service often becomes a way to shorten conscript time and avoid combat. “Professional soldiers” are often those who have no other career option but to enlist for
fifteen years at a pay scale that most would regard as exploitive. The ability of
families with cash to buy out of military service allows the Colmil to finance their
often lavish military clubs and other business interests.
17. “En ese sentido est preciso decir que las FARC no solo no han aumentado
su capacidad de daño, sino que el año 2012 han dedicado todos sus esfuerzos a
defender sus últimas posiciones geográficas y a sobrevivir como organización,
pasando a ser un fenómeno regionalizado, que oculta su debilidad military detrás
del uso del terrorismo como vehículo de propaganda para tartar de proyectar
una fortaleza inexistente.” Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Las FARC. Acorraladas y a la defensa, Dirección des estudios estratégos, March 2013, 13.
18. Annette Idler, “Arrangements of Convenience in Colombia’s Borderlands:
An Invisible Threat to Citizen Security?” St. Antony’s International Review 7,
no. 2 (2012).
19. Douglas Porch and María José Rasmussen, “Demobilization of Paramilitaries in Colombia: Transformation or Transition?” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 31, no. 6 (2008): 520–40.
20. Although it is not clear whether there is a causal relationship between
AUC demobilization and the fall in the homicide rate, the paramilitary groups
were notorious for carrying out civilian massacres to guarantee control over
certain areas. Wesley Tomaselli, “Colombia’s Homicide Rate Hits Lowest
Level in Twenty-Seven Years,” 7 January 2013, http://colombiareports.com/
colombias-homicide-rate-falls-again-in-2012-hits-lowest-levels-in-27-years.
21. Adam Isacson, “Re-Sheathing the Sword: The Uncertain Future of
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 8 7
Colombia’s Civil-Military Relations,” World Politics Review, 30 April 2013, 3,
4, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12902/re-sheathing-the-swordthe-uncertain-future-of-colombias-civil–military-relations.
22. Ortega Clavijo and Miguel Mauricio, Acciones y Reacciones Estratégicas: Adaptaciones las FARC a las Innovaciones Operacionales de las
Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia Durante la Política de Defensa y Seguridad
Democrática [Strategic Actions and Reactions: Adaptations of the FARC to
the Operational Innovations of the Armed Forces of Colombia under the
Democratic Security and Defense Policy] (Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Uniandes, 2011). Cited in David A. Rodriguez Camacho, “Counterinsurgency
Lessons from Colombia: An Assessment of Colombian Army Transformation 1998 to 2010” (master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December
2014), 63.
23. Bello, “The Dogs Bark in Colombia,” The Economist, 1 November 2014,
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21629454-despite-intransigence-farcand-opposition-peace-process-still-alive; “Santos Tells Colombia’s Military That
Disloyal Members Will Be Sacked,” Colombia Reports, 4 December 2014, http://colombiareports.com/santos-tells-colombias-military-disloyal-members-will-sacked;
“Army Cyberspies Monitored Colombian Peace Negotiators, Magazine Reports,”
The Guardian, 4 February, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/
colombia-farc-peace-talk-negotiators-spied-on-magazine-reports.
24. Jorge Delgado, “Colombian Military Thinking and the Fight Against the
FARC-EP Insurgency, 2002–2014,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 11 May 2015,
5–7.
25. Álvaro Uribe Vélez, No Hay Causa Perdida (London: Penguin, 2012),
101. Quoted in Delgado, “Colombian Military Thinking,” 3.
26. Annette Idler and Borja Paladini Adell, “When Peace Implies Engaging the
‘Terrorist’: Peacebuilding in Colombia Through Transforming Political Violence
and Terrorism,” in Researching Terrorism, Peace and Conflict Studies. Interaction, Synthesis, and Opposition, ed. Ioannis Tellidis and Harmonie Toros (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 130–132. The UN and NGOs estimate
the number of IDPs in Colombia at between 3.2 and 4.9 million. United Nations
Information Centre for Western Europe, 3 June 2015, http://www.unric.org/en/
colombia/27002-a-refugee-in-their-own-country-the-fate-of-the-colombian-idps-.
27. Department of State, FY 2010 Mission Strategic Plan.
28. Delgado, “Colombian Military Thinking.” Delgado points out that in
an interview in late 2001, the chief of the Armed Forces at the time, General
Fernando Tapias, insisted that the goal of the military campaign which came to
fruition under Uribe was to force the insurgency into negotiations, not produce
decisive victory. The object, explained General Tapias, was “obviously not killing 30,000 guerrillas. What it is about is to weaken them militarily until they see
in negotiations the best way out of the conflict. The Guerrilla must understand
that it cannot take power by force. Estamos Ganando,” Semana, 24 Sept. 2001,
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D ouglas P orch
www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/estamos-ganando/47396–3, cited in Delgado,
13.
29. Louise Højen, “Opportunist or Visionary for Peace: Comprehending
Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 3
November 2014, http://www.coha.org/opportunist-or-visionary-for-peace-comprehending-colombias-president-juan-manuel-santos.
30. Talk by Sergio Jaramarillo, Oxford University, 13 May 2015; Janetsky,
“How to Keep the Colombian Peace Deal Alive.”
31. Steven Dudley, Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia
(London: Routledge, 2004); Daniel Pécaut, Las FARC: ¿una guerrilla sin fin o sin
fines? (Bogotá: Grupo norma, 2008), 50–51; “Colombia’s FARC Rebels Face Possible Dangers in Return to Politics,” PRI, 20 September 2013, http://www.pri.org/
stories/2013–09–02/colombias-farc-rebels-face-dangers-possible-return-politics.
32. Pécaut, Las FARC: ¿una guerrilla sin fin o sin fines?, 17–21. On cooperation between the FARC and BACRIM, see Annette Idler, “Arrangements of
Convenience: Violent Non-State Actor Relationships and Citizen Security in the
Shared Borderlands of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela” (D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, 2014).
33. Max Manwaring, Nonstate Actors in Colombia—Threat and Response
(Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, May 2002), 13–14. This is corroborated by this author’s visits to Medellín and the Montes de María in 2010,
where there were frequent complaints of judicial intimidation, the absence of
police because municipalities lacked the means to pay for them, the weakness
and corruption of local government institutions, and the continued influence of
local landowners with connections to paramilitary groups or narco-traffickers.
34. Daniel Pécaut, L’Ordre et la violence. Evolution socio-politique de la Colombie entre 1930 et 1953 (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1987), 17.
35. Thomas A. Marks, “Regaining the Initiative: Colombia Versus the FARC
Insurgency,” in Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, ed. Daniel Marston and
Carter Malkesian (London: Osprey, 2008). Read in the online version, which
does not list page numbers.
36. Human Rights Watch, Smoke and Mirrors: Colombia’s Demobilization
of Paramilitary Groups, vol. 17, no. 3 (B) (August 2005) : 20, https://www.hrw.
org/sites/default/files/reports/colombia0805.pdf. On paramilitary links to the
military, see Human Rights Watch, The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military
and Paramilitary Links, vol. 12, no. 1 (B) (1 February 2000), http://www.hrw.
org/reports/2000/colombia/. See also Dudley, Walking Ghosts.
37. Chairperson’s statement, “Situation of Human Rights in Colombia,”
United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, n.d., 5www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Hurido- ca.nsf/(Symbol)/OHCHR.STM.CHR.03.2.En?Opendocument.
38. See Douglas Porch, “The Hunt for Martín Caballero,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35, no. 2 (April 2012): 249–50. Officers told this author that they
A n I ncomplete S uccess 2 8 9
used this technique often, even after it was outlawed. The caratapada was often
a corporal.
39. Douglas Porch and Jorge Delgado, “‘Masters of Today’: Military Intelligence and Counterinsurgency in Colombia, 1990–2009,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 21, no. 2 (June 2010): 277–302.
40. Moyar, Pagan, and Griego, Persistent Engagement in Colombia, 50–59.
41. Indeed, the FY 2010 Mission Strategic Plan recognized the strengthening
of the police as a priority; see pp. 1–2.
42. William Neuman, “Push for Colombians to Stop Farming Coca Falls
Short,” New York Times, 2 June 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/
world/americas/effort-to-switch-colombian-farmers-from-coca-falls-short-ofhopes.html?hpw&rref=world&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=w
ell-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well.
43. Jorge Delgado, “Counterinsurgency and the Limits of State-Building: An
Analysis of Colombia’s Policy of Territorial Consolidation, 2006–2012, Small
Wars and Insurgencies 26, no. 3 (4 May 2015): 408–9. See alsoPorch, “The Hunt
for Martín Caballero.”
44. Talk by Sergio Jaramarillo, Oxford University, 13 May 2015.
45. William Deane Stanley, “El Salvador: State-Building Before and After Democratisation, 1980–1995,” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 1 (August 2006):
101–14.
46. Janetsky, “How to Keep the Colombian Peace Deal Alive.”
47. Isacson, “Re-Sheathing the Sword.” These fears have been fed by the
2010 sentencing to thirty years in prison of Colonel Plazos Vega for the disappearances of M19 hostages during the 1985 siege of Bogotá’s Palacio de Justicia;
see http://nuevomundoradar.hypotheses.org/895.
48. Idler, “Arrangements of Convenience,” 196–97, 204, 208, 212, 214,
217–19, 223, 228–30.
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CONCLUSION
Thomas G. Mahnken
For better or worse, the contemporary world offers a rich set of cases to
inform soldiers and scholars as they seek to understand the character and
conduct of contemporary war. In addition to the conflicts examined in depth
in this volume, Russia’s war in Ukraine offers insight into the use of political warfare and hybrid operations combining military and non-military
instruments of coercion.1 The Syrian civil war provides an example of a very
different approach to counterinsurgency from that employed by the United
States and its allies and partners in Iraq and Afghanistan.2 Russia’s support
to the Assad regime has further allowed Moscow to use Syria as a massive
combat training and experimentation opportunity for its armed forces. 3
Finally, the war in Yemen offers insights into, among other things, the use
of proxies and advanced technology by regional powers.4
Several themes stand out from these conflicts. The first has to do with the
value of history to the military profession. The chapters in this volume demonstrate that understanding the past and applying it to the present and the
future is a task that is both necessary and challenging. At one level, the nature
of war is unchanging. As a result, soldiers and scholars can derive great value
from studying the past, whether the Peloponnesian War, the American Civil
War, or the Iraq War. At another level, however, the character and conduct of
war evolves as politics, society, and technology change. Thus contemporary
insurgencies differ from the wars of national liberation of the previous generation, just as the growth and spread of precision strike systems and ubiquitous
sensing have changed the shape of modern war. At yet another level, each war
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is different, the result of unique political objectives and the interaction of the
belligerents, as well as friction, probability, and chance. As this volume shows,
the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka each possess unique features that make extrapolating from one set of circumstances to
another challenging. Success in drawing insight from experience requires the
ability to differentiate the enduring from the transitory and the consequential
from the trivial. Moreover, the fact that every war is unique ensures that even
if one applies the right lessons for today, those lessons may not be beneficial
for tomorrow.
A second theme that emerges from this book has to do with the role
of institutions in learning military lessons. Learning useful military lessons
requires both the attention and involvement of leaders as well as flexible
structures to internalize those lessons and learn from them. The cases of the
Iraqi surge and Colombia under the leadership of Alvaro Uribe stand out as
successes in this regard. However, as several of the chapters in this volume
demonstrate, absent leadership involvement, bureaucracies are likely to ignore
lessons, particularly those that are inconvenient or bring to light weaknesses
or shortcomings. Conversely, too rigid a process can lead lessons to turn into
dogma. Just as it is possible for military organizations to ignore experience,
it is also possible to over-learn a lesson.
The third theme has to do with the perennial challenge of measurement in
military affairs. Metrics can be useful, but only if they truly clarify, rather than
obscure, what is happening on the ground and help soldiers and statesmen
determine how military forces are doing in achieving their political objectives. Moreover, as Peter Mansoor notes in his chapter on Iraq, data are no
substitute for cogent, useful analysis. Fewer, but more meaningful, metrics are
better than a mountain of data detached from policy, strategy, and operations.
Fourth, the cases discussed in this volume demonstrate that the process of
identifying problems and developing solutions takes time. It is one thing to
gain insight. It is another to translate that insight into successful action. All
too often those studying efforts at adaptation from afar or with the benefit
of hindsight tend to discount just how difficult it is for any organization to
change, as well as how much time even successful efforts take.
Fifth, the chapters in this book demonstrate the importance of understanding one’s adversary, both as a war unfolds and in retrospect. Kevin Woods’s
chapter demonstrates vividly just how differently Saddam Hussein’s regime
saw things in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War from how the political and
C onclusion 2 93
military leadership of the United States and its allies saw them. Similarly,
Philip Petersen’s chapter illustrates how Russian military leaders think about
contemporary military doctrine differently than their counterparts in the West.
War is a contest of belligerents, and any account that does not give weight to
the policies, strategies, operations, and forces of each side is incomplete. It
nonetheless frequently takes years or decades to understand the perspective
of the other side through interviews, access to archives, or other sources. The
fact that we are still in the process of understanding how North Vietnam’s
leadership saw the Vietnam War more than four decades after the fall of
Saigon should remind us of just how much we have yet to learn about even
more contemporary conflicts.5
It is not just the perspectives of adversaries that are underrepresented in
accounts of contemporary wars. A sixth, related theme that emerges from this
volume has to do with the importance and difficulty of understanding allies
and partners, including the host nation forces. This volume’s case studies are
rife with examples of misperceptions and miscommunication between U.S.
forces, those of their allies, and host nation forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
the Philippines.
Finally, the chapters in this book highlight both the unity and the diversity
of modern wars. On the one hand, they demonstrate the enduring value of classical concepts, including the need to match strategy to policy, the importance
of assessment and reassessment, and the difficulty of terminating a war successfully. At the same time, contemporary wars exhibit considerable diversity,
ranging from insurgency to high-intensity operations fought on land, at sea,
in the air, and in cyberspace by insurgents, militias, and states.
Notes
1. Colonel Liam Collins, “A New Eastern Front: What the U.S. Army Must
Learn from the War in Ukraine,” Modern War Institute, 16 April 2018, https://
www.ausa.org/articles/new-eastern-front-what-us-army-must-learn-war-ukraine,
accessed July 27, 2019; Amos Fox, “The Russian-Ukrainian War: Understanding the Dust Clouds on the Battlefield,” Modern War Institute, January 17, 2017,
https://mwi. usma.edu/russian-ukrainian-war-understanding-dust-clouds-battlefield, accessed 7 July 2019; Margarita Jaitner, “Russian Information Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine,” in Cyber Warfare in Perspective: Russian Aggression Against
Ukraine, ed. Kenneth Geers (Tallinn: NATO CCD COE, 2015); Michael Kofman
et al., Lessons from Russia’s Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (Santa
Monica, CA: RAND, 2017); Niklas Masuhr, “Lessons of the War in Ukraine for
Western Military Strategy,” CSS Analyses in Security Policy 242 (April 2019).
294
T homas G . M ahnken
2. Andis Kudors and Artis Pabriks, eds., The War in Syria: Lessons for the
West (Riga: University of Latvia Press, 2016); Daniel Byman, “Six Counterterrorism Lessons from the Syrian Civil War,” Lawfare Blog, 27 February 2018,
https://www.lawfareblog.com/six-counterterrorism-lessons-syrian-civil-war, accessed 25 July 2019; Michael Ratney, “Post-Conflict Stabilization: What Can We
Learn from Syria?” PRISM 7, no. 4 (November 2018): 49–63.
3. See, for example, Roger McDermott, “Russia’s Military Leaders Exploit
Lessons from Experiments in Syria,” Eurasian Daily Monitor 16, no. 105,
https://jamestown.org/program/russias-military-leaders-exploit-lessons-from-experiments-in-syria, accessed 24 July 2019.
4. Ben Nimmo, “Lessons from the Air Campaigns Over Libya, Syria, and
Yemen,” Parameters 46, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 81–95.
5. An outstanding contribution to this understanding can be found in LienHang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in
Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
.
INDEX
Abu Sayyaf (ISIL leader), 197
Abu Solaiman, 211–12
academic historians: and the future,
16–17; vs. military practitioners,
9–12, 17, 19; vs. policymakers,
7–8, 9, 19; vs. political scientists,
12; Spiller on, 13
Acton, Lord: on history, 17
adaptation: FM 3–24 on, 193;
historical lessons regarding, 83,
118–19, 162–63, 170, 292; by
military organizations, 36–40,
61, 66–67, 81–84, 89, 118–19,
159–61; to technological change,
32–36, 37–40, 83, 134, 181, 190,
291
adversary’s perspective, 2, 292–93.
See also Iraq invasion of 2003
Afghanistan: Afghan local police
(ALP), 114, 138, 145–46, 174;
Afghan national army (ANA),
104, 107–8, 109, 111, 114,
117–18, 119, 125, 130, 131,
138, 139–42, 145, 147–49, 161,
173–74; Afghan national police
(ANP), 104, 105, 107–8, 109,
111, 114, 117–18, 119, 125,
128, 138–39, 140, 141, 142–45,
146–49, 151, 161, 173–74;
Al-Qaeda in, 102, 104–5, 109,
122–23, 157, 159, 160, 201;
Babaji, 124–25, 131; CivilianMilitary Planning and Assessment
Section (CMPASS), 166; civilians
killed in, 110, 119, 125, 149; vs.
Colombia, 270; corruption in,
144, 145, 146–47, 148, 150–51,
168–69, 174; counterinsurgency
(COIN) in, 2, 103, 105–15,
116–17, 119, 135, 145, 146,
151, 159, 160, 162, 163, 168,
169, 171–72, 174, 175–76, 291,
292; counternarcotic efforts in,
123, 168; counterterrorism in,
2, 103, 104–5, 109, 115–16,
118, 122–23, 157, 168, 169,
174; district support teams
(DSTs), 165; drawdown of U.S.
military after surge, 102, 104,
109, 116–18, 125–26, 157,
296
I NDE X
162; forward operation bases
(FOBs), 130; Ghazni Province,
104, 107, 116, 118; Helmand
Province, 66, 78, 105, 106,
112, 114, 116, 118, 123–35,
162, 280; historical lessons of,
2, 59, 60, 62, 94, 102, 118–19,
123, 126–35, 149–52, 158–64,
168–69, 170, 172, 175–76, 292;
insider/green-on-blue attacks, 117;
Integrated Civil Military Action
Group (ICMAG), 165–66, 172;
intelligence collection in, 169–70,
174; vs. Iraq, 83, 103, 105, 106,
113, 126, 134, 141, 145, 149,
157, 169, 197, 270, 293; Kabul,
164, 165; Kajaki Dam, 124, 130;
Kandahar Province, 105, 106,
112–15, 116, 118, 124, 280; the
Korengal, 107; Kunar Province,
104, 107, 112; Laskhar Gah,
124, 125–26, 128, 132; Logar
Province, 112, 116; Marjah, 112,
125; metrics regarding, 151–52;
Ministry of Defense, 138, 139,
140, 142, 147; Ministry of
Interior, 138, 140, 142, 143, 146,
147; Musa Qala, 130; Northern
Alliance, 122, 141, 148, 212;
Office of Interagency Provincial
Affairs (IPA), 164–65, 175;
Paktika Province, 104; Paktiya
Province, 104; Pashtuns in, 141,
168; vs. Philippines, 2–3, 210,
293; political conditions in, 110,
174–75; provincial reconstruction
teams (PRTs), 104–5, 107, 110–
11, 117, 123, 132, 134, 135, 160,
164, 165–66, 175; Senior Civilian
Representative (SCR), 165; special
operations forces (SOF) in, 104,
106, 109, 113, 114, 122, 134,
148, 160, 197, 201, 212; vs. Sri
Lankan civil war, 2, 195; surge of
2009–2011, 103, 108–16, 160,
161–62, 164, 165, 166–67, 174;
Taliban in, 102, 103, 104–7,
109–10, 112–13, 115, 116, 118,
122–35, 139, 147, 148, 157, 159,
160, 161, 162, 168, 201; U.S.
Country Team model in, 164–66,
171; U.S. drawdown, 102, 104,
116–18, 119; U.S. organizational
friction in, 162–64, 168–69, 170;
U.S. spending in, 107, 116, 117,
118, 157; vs. Vietnam war, 102,
118, 158–59, 163, 167; Wardak
Province, 112, 116. See also
International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF)
Afghanistan Study Group Report
(2008), 144
Afghan National Civil Order Police
(ANCOP), 143–44
Akhundzada, Sher Mohammed, 128
Alasania, Irakli, 227
Algeria, 280; French Army in, 41, 42
Al Jazeera, 81
Allen, John R., 117, 146
Alliance for Progress, 274
Allison, Graham T.: on Thucydides
trap, 9
Al-Qaeda: in Afghanistan, 102,
104–5, 109, 122–23, 157, 159,
160, 201; bin Laden, 116, 197; in
Iraq, 56–57, 62, 70, 73, 114; links
to, 200, 202, 204; in Pakistan,
104–5, 107, 115–16; September
11th attacks, 102, 138, 157, 159,
170, 197
American Civil War, 25–26
American Revolution, 24
Amos, James: U.S. Army and Marine
Corps Counterinsurgency Field
Manual/FM 3–24, 58, 59, 82,
105, 171–72, 193, 205
amphibious warfare, 35
analogical reasoning, 14, 15, 16, 18
INDEX
“Angriff im Stellungskrieg (attack in
Position Warfare)”, 28–29
Annales school, 18
Armenia, 215, 216, 217
Arnold, Henry “Hap”, 39
Aron, Raymond, 15
Arroyo Macapagal, Gloria, 213
Ashkenazi, Gabriel “Gabi”, 248, 250,
251, 263
Asia Foundation, 147
ASTOR (airborne stand-off radar),
129
Australian military in Afghanistan,
105
Azerbaijan, 71, 215, 216, 217, 218
Baltic States, 234, 244n30
Barak, Ehud, 248, 250, 253, 256
Barankevich, Anatoly, 220
Battle of the Atlantic, 36–37
Belarus, 229
best-case analysis, 51, 55, 56
Betancur, Belisario, 271
Beyond G-N, Phase 2 Report, 171
Biden, Joseph, 109, 125
Bildt, Carl, 225
Bin Laden, Osama, 116, 197
Bismarck, Otto von: on historical
lessons, 40
Blair, Dennis, 202
Blair, Tony, 75–76, 77–78
Bloch, Marc, 13–14, 87
Bogdanov, S. A., 234, 235
Bonn Agreement (December 2001),
142
Bosnia, 82
Braudel, Fernand, 17–18
Breaky, John, 40
Bremer, L. Paul “Jerry”, 52
British Air Force: Air Staff, 38, 40;
Bomber Command, 39; Fighter
Command, 37–38, 39; helicopters
in, 127–28; Special Air Service
(SAS), 73
297
British Army: adaptation in, 82–83,
84; in advisory role, 71, 76, 80; in
Afghanistan, 2, 66–67, 68, 69, 72,
75, 76, 78, 82–83, 105, 106, 112,
113, 122–35; campaign command,
123, 131–34, 135; force generation,
123, 126–28, 134; Future Army
2020 Program, 134; General
Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), 129; and historical
lessons of WWI, 29–30; intelligence
collection in, 123, 128–29, 134; in
Iraq War, 2, 52, 66–78, 80, 82–83,
84, 126–27; National Contingent
Commander, 75; Operation
Charge of the Knights, 67, 70–71,
72, 74–75; Operation Fingal,
122; Operation Hamkary, 113;
Operation Herrick, 122, 123–34;
Operation Moshtarak, 125, 129,
131, 133; Operation Panchai
Palang, 124–25, 127, 130–31;
Operation Sinbad, 69, 80–81;
Operation Veritas, 122; relations
with Iraqi militias, 67–69, 70–71,
73, 81; during revolt of the tribes in
Mesopotamia, 42; during surge in
Iraq, 67, 69; urban tactics of, 72–73;
vs. U.S. military, 67, 69, 71, 72, 74,
76, 78, 82, 83, 84; during WWI,
29–30, 44n7; during WWII, 47n50
British Marines, 124; Operation
Jacana, 122–23
British Navy: during Battle of the
Atlantic, 36–37; during WWII,
36–40, 38
Brown, Gordon, 67, 127
Bull, Hedley, 15
Burnham, Martin and Gracia, 200
Bush, George W., 55, 104, 105,
213n2
Canadian military in Afghanistan,
105, 106, 114, 133
298
I N DE X
Carr, E. H., 19
Carter, Ashton, 171
Carter, Nick, 113, 115, 133, 134
Checkinov, S. G., 234, 235
Chemical Ali, 90–91
Chiarelli, Peter, 61
Chilcot, Sir John, 67–68
China-US relations, 9
Churchill, Winston, 36, 38, 273
Clark, Frank, 35
Clark, Jonathan, 18
Clausewitz, Carl von: factors
distinguishing war, 81; on
Napoleonic Wars, 24, 25; on
results of war, 279; on starting a
war, 43; on war as continuation of
policy, 53
Clemenceau, Georges, 273
Clinton, Hillary, 116, 166, 172
close air support (CAS), 249, 252,
260, 262–63, 264
CNN, 81
Cohen, Eliot, 12
Colombia: vs. Afghanistan, 270;
Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia
(AUC) demobilization, 272–73,
286n20; Centro de Coordinación
de Acción Integral (CCAI), 279,
280; Colombia military (Colmil),
270, 271, 272, 273–75, 277–78,
280, 281, 282–83, 286n16,
287n28; Constitutional Court,
277–78; counterinsurgency
(COIN) in, 3, 117, 271, 273–75,
276, 277–80, 281–83, 287n28,
292; counterterrorism in,
274–75; democracy in, 276–77;
Democratic Security Policy–DSP,
279, 280; drug trafficking in,
270, 276, 277, 280–81, 283, 284;
Ejército Popular de Liberación
(EPL), 271, 286n12; ELN, 271;
FARC, 3, 117, 271–74, 275–76,
278–79, 280–82, 283, 286n17;
Government of Colombia (GOC),
270, 271, 273, 279–80, 282, 283–
84; human rights violations in,
270, 272, 280, 281–82, 286n15;
internally displaced persons
(IDPs), 274, 287n26; vs. Iraq,
292; peace accord, 271, 280, 282,
284; Plan Colombia, 270, 280,
281; relations with United States,
272, 274, 284; Spenser on, 272,
276, 280; Unión Patriótica, 276,
282, 284; U.S. security assistance
to, 270–71, 272, 274, 275, 276,
279, 280, 281, 282–84; vs.
Vietnam War, 277, 278, 280
Congressional Research Service
(CRS), 147
Connell-Smith, Gordon: on
contemporary approach to
history, 13
contemporary approach to history,
1–2, 8, 13–16; analogical
reasoning in, 14, 15, 16, 18;
vs. contemporary history,
13; counterfactual thought
experiments in, 18; defined,
13–14; dialectical mental plane,
18; functional mental plane, 18;
and holistic outlook, 14; and
interdisciplinary setting, 19
Cordesman, Anthony H., 253
counterfactual thought experiments,
18, 87
counterinsurgency (COIN): in
Afghanistan, 2, 103, 105–15,
116–17, 119, 135, 145, 146,
151, 159, 160, 162, 163, 168,
169, 171–72, 174, 175–76,
291, 292; in Colombia, 3, 117,
271, 273–75, 276, 277–80,
281–83, 287n28, 292; vs.
counterterrorism, 56–57, 103,
105, 109, 116, 169; historical
lessons regarding, 58–59, 73, 80,
INDEX
161, 175; in Iraq War, 58–59,
68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 80, 82, 103,
105, 119, 161, 291, 292; length
of counterinsurgency conflicts,
54–55; in Philippines, 2–3, 205–6,
209; population-centric approach
in, 105–6, 108, 110, 119, 124,
125, 129, 130, 131, 149, 160,
171, 278; in Sri Lankan civil war,
2, 183, 184–86, 192, 193–95
counterterrorism: in Afghanistan,
2, 103, 104–5, 109, 115–16,
118, 122–23, 157, 168, 169,
174; in Colombia, 274–75; vs.
counterinsurgency (COIN), 56–
57, 103, 105, 109, 116, 169; in
Iraq, 2, 56–57; in Philippines, 2–3,
199, 202, 204, 213n2
Crane, Conrad, 56
Crocker, Ryan, 52–53, 80
Cuba, 277
Cuban Missile crisis, 42
cultural differences, 62, 118, 149,
150–51, 159, 186
299
Ecuador, 281
Edelman, Eric, 163
Eikenberry, Karl, 106, 114, 139
El Salvador, 281; counterinsurgency
in, 117
Eurasian Economic Union, 217
European Union, 234, 235; Police
Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL),
143, 145
explosively formed projectiles (EFPs),
68–69, 73, 83
Dadullah Lang, Mullah, 115
Dannatt, Sir Richard, 76, 126, 127
defense in depth, 28, 29
De Gaulle, Charles, 41
Delbrück, Hans, 15
Delgado, Jorge, 273, 274–75, 280,
287n28
Denmark, 244n30
Douhet, Giulio, 263
Dowding, Hugh, 37–38
Downing, Wayne A., 213n2
Drayson, Lord, 83
Dunford, Joseph, 146
Duque, Iván, 271, 275, 281, 284
Durbin, Robert, 107–8
DynCorp Aerospace Technology, 142,
144
Fatah/Palestinian Authority, 253
Field Manual 3–07 Stability
Operations, 171
Field Manual 3–24,
Counterinsurgency, 58, 59, 82,
105, 171–72, 193, 205
Fischer, David Hackett, 17, 18
Flournoy, Michelle, 171
Flynn, Mike: Fixing Intel, 169–70
FM 3–05 Special Operations, 197
FM 3–24, Counterinsurgency, 58, 59,
82, 105, 171–72, 193, 205
Fonseka, Sarath, 190, 192, 193
Fourth-Generation Warfare, 11
France: political conditions, 41; during
WWI, 28, 29; during WWII,
64n25. See also French Army
Franks, Tommy, 55, 95
Freakley, Ben, 106
French Army: in Algeria, 41; and
historical lessons of WWI, 30;
during Indo-China war, 40–41,
42; during Revolution, 24–25,
26, 41; during WWI, 28, 29, 30,
44n7; during WWII, 30, 32
Fridovich, David P., 201–2, 206
Fuerth, Leon, 173
Fuller, J. F. C., 10; on constant tactical
factor, 79
Fussell, Paul, 246
Eaker, Ira, 39
Garner, Jay, 56
300
I NDE X
Gates, Robert, 81, 83, 106, 108, 116,
166, 172, 223
Gaza War/Operation Cast Lead, 246–
47, 253–64, 266n20, 267n32
Georgia: Abkhazia, 215–16, 219–20,
221, 222, 224, 226, 227; political
conditions, 219, 222; Russian
war in, 3, 214, 216–27; South
Ossetia, 214, 216, 219–20, 221–
22, 224, 226, 227; vs. Ukraine,
225–27
Gerasimov, Valery, 218, 231–32
German Army: General Staff, 28–29,
30–31, 44n9; and historical
lessons of WWI, 30–31, 54; and
historical lessons of WWII, 31–32;
Oberkommando des Heeres
(OKH), 31–32; Polish invasion,
31–32; training in, 31–32; during
WWI, 26–29, 30, 31, 44nn7,9,
54; during WWII, 31–32, 47n50,
64n25
German U-boats, 32, 36–40
Germany: and Afghan police, 142,
143, 146; relations with Poland,
31–32; relations with UK, 9,
30, 32; relations with US, 32;
Schlieffen Plan, 32; unrestricted
submarine warfare, 32; during
WWI, 32; during WWII, 32
Giles, Barney M., 39
Girkin, Igor, 242n13
Goonatilake, Roshan, 191
Gore, Al, 173
Government Accountability
Office (GAO), 140, 142, 148;
Afghanistan Security Report
(2009), 146
Gray, Colin S., 12
Grisby, Wayne W., Jr., 60
Gulf War of 1991, 26, 88, 89, 90, 91,
95, 97, 103
Halutz, Dan, 247–48, 249, 251
Hamas, 253–55, 257, 258, 260, 261,
262, 264
Hamdani, Ra’ad, 97
Harris, Arthur, 39
Hegel, G. W. F.: on historical lessons,
10
Hezbollah, 265n8; vs. Hamas,
253–54, 255, 262; during Second
Lebanon War, 245–46, 251, 257,
264
Hindenburg, Paul von, 44n9
Hines, John, 240n1
historical analogies, 14, 15, 16
historical lessons: regarding
adaptation, 83, 118–19, 162–63,
170, 292; of Afghanistan, 2,
59, 60, 62, 94, 102, 118–19,
123, 126–35, 149–52, 158–64,
168–69, 170, 172, 175–76;
regarding balance between force
protection and operation among
the people, 60; from battlefield
experience, 25–29, 31–32, 36;
regarding campaign command,
123, 131–34, 135; regarding
civil-military integration, 132,
135, 187–88; regarding combined
arms fire and maneuver, 245;
regarding counterinsurgency
(COIN), 58–59, 73, 80, 161, 175;
defined, 8; as difficult to learn,
43; regarding domestic support,
194; regarding force generation,
123, 126–28, 134; regarding host
nation sovereignty, 204–5, 212;
of Indo-China War, 41–42, 280;
regarding intelligence collection,
60–61, 123, 128–29, 134, 169–
70, 174, 185–86, 267n32; of Iraq
invasion of 2003, 87–88, 97–98;
of Iraq War, 2, 40, 51–63, 71–74,
75, 80, 172; regarding leading
without being in charge, 205, 213;
regarding local security forces, 71,
INDEX
149–52, 174, 203–4; regarding
military organizations, 2, 17–19,
25, 26–32, 51–55; at operational
level, 29, 31–32, 33, 35–36,
43, 47n52, 58–59, 74, 75–78,
81–82, 123, 129–31, 134–35;
at organizational level, 61–62,
64n25, 161, 162–64, 168–69,
170, 175; for policymakers, 7–8,
9, 14, 19, 43, 51–55, 118, 119;
regarding political and military
interaction, 51–55, 119, 161–64,
165–68, 172, 173–74, 175–76,
187–88, 193; at political level,
25, 27, 47n52, 51–55, 75–77,
81; relationship to context, 42;
relationship to the enduring vs. the
transitory, 291–92; relationship
to the future, 1–2, 7–19, 63;
relationship to the present, 7, 13,
14, 15, 16, 18–19, 40; regarding
Russia, 214; regarding security
assistance, 272, 282–84; regarding
special operations forces (SOF),
59–60, 197, 198; at strategic level,
32, 33, 35–36, 40–42, 43, 47n52,
54, 55–57, 74, 75–78, 81–82; at
tactical level, 26–29, 31–32, 36–
40, 43, 47n52, 59–61, 74, 75, 78,
81–82; regarding technological
change, 36–40; Thucydides on,
8–9, 62; regarding unity and
diversity of modern war, 293–94;
regarding urban warfare, 72–73,
78; of Vietnam War, 42, 61, 102,
118, 158–59, 163, 167, 293; of
World War I, 26–32, 54, 263; of
World War II, 35, 36–40
historical possibilities and
probabilities, 18
historical prediction, 18, 19
historical recurrence, 9, 16
historical unpredictability, 19
historicism, 10, 12
301
Holbrooke, Richard, 145, 163;
as Special Representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP),
163
Holiday, Hershel L., 62
Holmes, Sherlock: on curious
incidents, 87–88, 97
Howard, Michael: on contemporary
approach to history, 14–16;
on historical lessons, 15, 16;
on historical uniformities, 16;
“width, depth and context”
formula, 15
Hughes, C. F., 33
hybrid warfare, 264; and Russia, 214,
216, 218, 226–27, 291
Ilkaev, Rady Ivanovich, 236–37
Illarionov, Andrey, 219, 223
improvised explosive devices (IEDs),
73, 83, 127, 128, 140
India: relations with Sri Lanka, 188,
195
Indo-China War: Dien Bien Phu,
41; French Army in, 40–41, 42;
historical lessons of, 41–42, 280
Industrial Revolution, 24, 25, 26
information warfare, 57, 232–33, 234
intelligence collection, 52, 56, 67,
82–83, 115, 124; in Afghanistan,
169–70, 174; Flynn on, 169–70;
historical lessons regarding, 60–
61, 123, 128–29, 134, 169–70,
174, 185–86, 267n32; human
intelligence, 60–61, 134, 185–87,
260–61; by IDF, 245, 246–47,
251, 252, 254, 255–56, 260–61,
266n20, 267n32; during Iraq
War, 52, 60–61, 82–83; ISTAR
(intelligence, surveillance, target
acquisition, and reconnaissance),
50, 128–29, 134; in Philippines,
209–10, 211–12; during Sri
Lankan civil war, 185–87, 190,
302
I NDE X
191–92; “ULTRA” intercepts
during WWII, 267n31
interdisciplinary approach to history,
1–2, 8, 15–19
International Military Education and
Training (IMET), 201, 208, 212
International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF), 129, 132–34, 135,
146, 160, 164; establishment
of, 122, 138–39; McChrystal
as commander of, 73, 108–9,
110–13, 115, 119, 125, 131, 133,
141–42, 144–45, 169, 244, 246,
280; and NATO, 124, 140–41; Sir
David Richards as commander,
126
Iran: and Hezbollah, 254; influence
during Iraq War, 68, 70–71, 73;
Qods Force, 73
Iran-Iraq War, 90, 92, 99n13
Iraq: Ba’ath Party, 55, 88, 92, 93;
Fedayeen Saddam, 56, 58, 92,
93, 97; Operation Desert Fox
against, 90, 100n18; Operation
Northern Watch against, 88, 89,
90; Operation Southern Watch
against, 88, 89, 90; Shia, 68–71,
79–80, 91, 126, 270; Sunnis, 57,
62, 70–71, 114, 270; U.S. security
assistance to, 270
Iraq invasion of 2003: Baghdad
during, 91, 92, 94–95, 96, 97;
Basra during, 91, 93, 94, 96;
Dora Farms attack, 95, 101n32;
enemy courses of action (ECOAs)
identified, 94–95, 97; execution of
Iraqi defense, 95–98; vs. Gulf War
of 1991, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95,
97, 99n12; historical lessons of,
87–88, 97–98; Iraqi Air Defense
Command, 99n12; Iraqi ground
forces before, 91; Iraqi perceptions
of threat, 89, 90–91, 92, 94–95,
100n17; Iraqi preparation before,
92–95, 100nn20,27; Iraqi regime
choices, 88, 98n5; Nasiriyah
during, 96; Saddam Hussein
during, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94,
95, 97, 100n17, 101n32, 292–93;
Samawah during, 96; sources for,
88; Turkey during, 95, 96, 10017;
U.S. Apache helicopters during,
89; and WMDs, 97, 98n3, 99n15
Iraq War: Abu Ghraib prison, 53;
vs. Afghanistan, 83, 103, 105,
106, 113, 126, 134, 141, 145,
149, 157, 169, 197, 270, 293;
Awakening of Sunnis in Ramadi,
57, 62, 70–71, 114; Baghdad,
55, 58, 59, 70, 72, 80, 84; Basra,
67–69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80;
coalition dynamics during,
74–75; Coalition Provisional
Authority, 52, 57; conventional
forces vs. SOF during, 59–60,
73–74; corruption during, 71;
counterinsurgency (COIN) in,
58–59, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 80, 82,
103, 105, 119, 161, 291, 292;
counterterrorism in, 2, 56–57;
and democracy, 54; Emergency
Response Program, 73; ethnosectarian conflict during, 59,
64n29; Fallujah, 53, 72, 80;
Fedayeen Saddam during, 56,
58, 92, 93; Haqqani network,
115; historical lessons of, 2,
40, 51–63, 71–74, 75, 80, 172,
292; information warfare, 57;
intelligence collection during, 52,
60–61, 82–83; Iranian influence
during, 68, 70–71, 73; and Iraqi
Governing Council, 53, 55; Iraqi
military during, 2, 70–71, 72, 74,
76; Iraqi prisoners during, 53,
78, 79; and Islamic State, 51, 57;
Joint Task Force-7, 52, 58; metrics
during, 59, 292; Multi-National
INDEX
Corps–Iraq (MNC-I), 54, 58–59,
74–75, 81; Multinational Division
(South East) (MNDSE), 68, 69,
70, 74–75; Multi-National Force–
Iraq, 52–53, 57; Operation Fardh
al-Qanoon, 58–59; vs. Philippines,
2–3, 210, 293; planning for,
51, 55–56, 76; politico-military
lessons of, 51–55, 75–77;
population control during, 58–59;
reconstruction after, 52, 56–57,
76–77, 79; Sadr City, 72, 79–80;
and Shia, 68–71, 79–80, 126;
special operations forces (SOF)
during, 59–60, 70, 73–74, 96,
139, 146, 197; vs. Sri Lankan civil
war, 2, 195; strategic lessons of,
54, 55–57; and Sunnis, 51–52, 55,
70–71, 73, 114; surge of 2007–
2008, 53–54, 56–57, 58–59,
60–61, 64n29, 67, 69, 70–71, 80,
292; as unpredictable, 79–80; and
WMDs, 52, 66, 67
ISAF. See International Security
Assistance Force
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS),
51, 57, 81
Israel: and intifadas, 245, 246, 248,
259; Winograd Commission, 247,
248, 249
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF): afteraction reviews in, 248; Center for
Lessons Learned, 249; combined
arms fire and maneuver in, 245–
46, 249, 251, 252–53, 258–60,
262–64; command-and-control in,
245, 249, 250–51, 258–59, 263,
264n8; during Second Lebanon
War, 3, 245, 247–50, 251, 252,
253, 254, 256, 257, 258–59,
262, 264, 265nn4,8, 266n13,
267nn32,34; in First Lebanon
War, 250–51; General Staff, 248,
249, 263; intelligence collection
303
by, 245, 246–47, 251, 252,
254, 255–56, 260–61, 266n20,
267n32; Israeli Air Force (IAF),
249, 252–53, 255–56, 259–60,
261, 262–63, 264; knowledge
management (KM) in, 248–49,
252–53; Merkava Mark IV tank,
250; Operation Cast Lead/Gaza
War, 246–47, 253–64, 266n20,
267n32; Teffen 2012 plan,
250–53; vs. U.S. Army, 247;
white phosphorous (WP) used by,
266n25
ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance,
target acquisition, and
reconnaissance), 50, 128–29, 134
Jaish al Mahdi (JAM), 69–70, 73, 81
Japan-US relations, 36
Jaramillo, Sergio, 275–76, 280, 281
Johnson, David, 245, 258–59,
267n32
Jones, James L., 144
Karabakh, 216
Karannogoda, Wasantha, 190–91,
193
Karasin, Gregory, 241n7
Karber, Phillip A., 232, 236, 243n23
Karzai, Ahmed Wali, 113, 114
Karzai, Hamid, 110, 113, 114, 122
Kennedy, John, 274
Kennedy, Paul: on WWI, 26–27
Kenney, Kristie, 203
Kenya, 278
Kieselev, Dmitry, 232
Kilcullen, David, 157
King, Ernest, 35, 47n50
Kissinger, Henry: on historical
lessons, 7
Kiszely, Sir John, 17
Komer, Robert, 163, 170;
Bureaucracy Does Its Thing, 158
Kosovo, 82, 89, 221, 223
304
I NDE X
Kovach, Crysta, 211
Krulak, Charles, 78
Kurdish Peshmerga, 96
Lamb, Graeme, 81
land mines, 73
USS Langley, 33, 34
language training, 62
Lavrov, Sergey, 224–25, 244n30
Lawrence, T. E.: on practical work,
161, 176
Leigh-Mallory, Trafford, 39, 46n44
USS Lexington, 35, 36n32
Liddell Hart, Basil: on historical
lessons, 10, 15; Why Don’t We
Learn from History?, 10
Lloyd, Howell A.: on contemporary
approach to history, 13
Ludendorff, Erich von, 27–28, 29,
44n9
Lunev, Vasily, 220
Luvaas, Jay, 10–11
MacArthur, Douglas: on historical
lessons, 9
Mackay, Andrew, 129–30, 131
Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 36
Majid, Ali Hasan “Chemical Ali”,
90–91
Malaya, 61, 151, 278
Malaysia: Sipadan crisis, 199
Maliki, Nouri al-, 52, 70–71, 79–80
Marks, Thomas, 183, 277
Mattis, James, 53
May, Ernest R.: Thinking in Time, 14
McChrystal, Stanley: as ISAF
commander, 73, 108–9, 110–13,
115, 119, 125, 131, 133,
141–42, 144–45, 146, 169, 280;
population-centric approach
to COIN, 108, 110, 119, 125,
131; replacement, 113; as SOF
commander, 115, 169; Team of
Teams, 169, 170
McCully, Newton, 34
McKiernan, David, 107, 112
McNeill, Daniel, 106–7
MD-500 helicopters, 208
Mearsheimer, John, 12
media reporting, 81
Medina, Bill, 202
Medvedev, Dmitry, 243n25
Merlin transport helicopter, 128
Messenger, Gordon, 124
metrics, 59, 151–52, 292–93
Mikhailov, Viktor Nikitovich, 237
Mikhalkin, Vladimir, 236
military affairs: measurement in, 59,
151–52, 292–93; revolution in,
55, 247; theory and practice of, 1
Military Effectiveness project, 47n52
military organizations: adaptation
by, 36–40, 61, 66–67, 81–84, 89,
118–19, 159–61; historical lessons
regarding, 2, 17–19, 24, 26–32,
51–55, 61–62, 64n25
Millett, Allan, 47n52
Millis, Walter M., 14
Moffett, William, 34
Mohan al-Furayji, 69, 70
Moldova, 215, 218, 220, 226
Montoya, Mario, 286n15
Morozov, Yuri, 220
MPRI (Military Professional
Resources Incorporated), 139
Munasinge, Sarath, 189
Munich appeasement of 1938, 9, 43
Murray, Williamson, 12
Nagl, John, 61
Namier, Lewis, 16–17
Napoleon: on historical lessons, 9
Napoleonic Wars, 24–25
NATO, 52, 68, 174, 218;
commitment to Afghanistan,
108, 123; drawdown from
Afghanistan, 149; membership
sought by Georgia and Ukraine,
INDEX
222, 223, 224; Operational
Mentor and Liaison Teams, 148;
and Russia, 234, 235, 241n3,
244n30, 247; Training Mission–
Afghanistan (NTM-A), 140–41,
142, 145, 146
Nehoshtanen, Ido, 252
netcentric warfare, 229, 230, 235–36
Netherlands: military in Afghanistan,
105, 133
Neustadt, Richard E.: Thinking in
Time, 14
new generation warfare, 232–35,
242n7
Nicholson, John “Mick”, 106
Nigeria, 194
“No-Fly Zone” operations, 88
noncontact warfare, 229, 230,
235–36
Northern Ireland, 82, 151, 278
Obama, Barack, 108, 109–10, 113,
116, 125, 161, 214
Odierno, Raymond, 54, 59
Office of Military Cooperation–
Afghanistan (OMC-A)/Office of
Security Cooperation–Afghanistan
(OSC-A)/Command Security
Transition Command–Afghanistan
(CSTC-A), 139–40, 141, 143–44,
145, 146
Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA), 56
Olmert, Ehud, 247, 256
Omar, Mullah, 105, 117
Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
216, 218
Owens, William, 263
P3 Orion, 208, 209
Pakistan, 106, 122–23, 191, 194; AlQaeda in, 104–5, 107, 115–16
Pastrana, Andrés, 271
305
Patriquin, Travis, 62
Patton, George S., Jr., 10
Pearl Harbor attack, 36
Pécaut, Daniel, 276, 283
Peretz, Amir, 247–48
Petraeus, David: on adaptation,
193; and Afghan local police,
114, 129; on Anaconda Strategy,
56; Congressional testimony
(2007), 53–54, 80, 126, 207;
during Iraq surge, 52, 59, 115,
116; as ISAF commander, 146;
McChrystal replaced by, 113;
and Sunni Awakening, 57, 114;
U.S. Army and Marine Corps
Counterinsurgency Field Manual/
FM, 3–24, 58, 59, 82, 105,
171–72, 193, 205; on war as nonlinear, 79
Phase IV operations/reconstruction,
52, 56
Philippines: Abu Sayyef Group (ASG),
198, 199, 200, 204, 209–10, 211–
12; vs. Afghanistan, 2–3, 210, 293;
Air Force, 207–8; Armed Forces
(AFP), 201, 202, 204, 207, 208–9;
Basilan Island, 200, 202, 204, 206–
7; civil-military operations (CMOs)
in, 208–9, 211, 212; Communist
Party, 198, 202; counterinsurgency
(COIN) in, 2–3, 205–6, 209, 292;
counterterrorism in, 2–3, 199,
202, 204, 213n2; Dos Palmas
kidnapping, 200–201; influence
operations in, 210–11; intelligence
collection in, 209–10, 211–12; vs.
Iraq War, 2–3, 210, 293; Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI), 198, 200, 204;
Joint Special Operations Task
Force–Philippines (JSOTF-P), 197,
198, 200–213; Joint U.S. Military
Assistance Group Philippines,
198; Light Reaction Company
(LRC), 199–200; local security in,
306
I NDE X
2–3, 203–4, 209; Mindanao, 198,
200, 201, 202, 203, 208; Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),
198, 202, 204; Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF), 198,
204; New Peoples Army, 198, 202;
Operation Enduring Freedom–
Philippines (OEF-P), 2–3, 197,
200–202; sovereignty of, 204–5;
special operations forces (SOF)
mission statement, 202–5; threats
to, 198; U.S. Embassy, 198, 203,
210
Pickering, Thomas R., 144
Plazos Vega, Luis Alfonso, 289n47
Poland: military during Iraq War, 52
political scientists, 12
Portal, Sir Charles, 38, 39
Posen, Barry, 12
postmodernism, 8
Powell, Colin, 172
precision guided munitions, 89–90,
91, 96, 103, 115, 160, 233, 246–
47, 249, 256, 291
Putin, Vladimir, 241n4, 243n25;
policy regarding Baltic States,
235; policy regarding Georgia,
218, 219, 221, 223, 226; policy
regarding Ukraine, 219, 226–27,
230, 234, 236, 242n13
Qusay, 94
Rajapaksa, Gotabhaya, 184, 190
Rajapaksa, Mahinda, 189–90, 192
Ranatunga, Cyril, 184, 186–87
Rapid, Decisive Operations (RDO),
53, 58
Razziq, Abdul, 113, 115
Reeves, Joseph, 33, 34, 35
Reid, Brian Holden, 15
revolution in military affairs, 55, 247
Rice, Condoleeza, 172, 213n2, 223–
24, 225
Richardson, James, 34
Richards, Sir David, 82, 126–27
Rodriquez, David, 133
Rosen, Stephen, 12
Rostow, Walt, 274
Rothstein, Hy, 169, 170
Rumsfeld, Donald, 55, 64n16, 81,
104, 159, 213n2, 223
Russia, 193, 293; and asymmetric
warfare, 229, 232, 233; and
Crimea, 226, 227, 234, 242n13,
244n30; development of mobile
and flexible forces by, 230,
235–36; General Staff, 218, 229,
230–32, 233, 234, 235–36; and
hybrid warfare, 214, 216, 218,
226–27, 291; information warfare
in, 232–33, 234; Interior Ministry
Troops, 233–34; and management
of ethnic and religious divisions,
230–35; military exercises,
230–31, 233–34, 235, 236,
239–40, 241n3; and NATO, 234,
235, 241n3, 244n30, 247; new
generation warfare in, 232–35,
242n7; nuclear weapons policies,
230, 233, 236–40, 243n25;
Orthodox Christianity in, 219;
Putin, 218, 219, 221, 223, 226,
230, 234, 236, 241n4, 242n13,
243n25; relations with Baltic
States, 234, 244n30; relations
with Denmark, 244n30; relations
with Syria, 291; relations with
Ukraine, 214, 218, 219, 223, 224,
225–27, 230, 232–33, 234, 236,
241n7, 244n30, 291; relations
with United States, 244n30;
Theaters of Strategic Military
Action (TSMAs), 229–30, 231,
235, 240n1, 243n20; war in
Chechnya, 217, 219; war in
Georgia, 3, 214, 216–25; Yeltsin,
217, 218
INDEX
Ruttig, Thomas, 147
Saakashvili, Mikheil, 219, 222, 223,
225–26
Sacolick, Bennet S., 60
Saddam Hussein, 51, 55, 99n15;
during Iraq invasion of 2003,
89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97,
100n17, 101n32, 292–93
Samper, Ernesto, 283
Sanchez, Ricardo, 52
Santos, Manuel, 274, 275, 281–82,
283–84
USS Saratoga, 34, 35, 46n32
Sarkozy, Nicolas, 225
Scan Eagle UAV, 209
Schellendorf, Bronsart von: on
military history, 11
Schlesinger, Arthur J., Jr., on history
and the future, 19
Second Lebanon War: Hezbollah
during, 245–46, 251, 257, 264;
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)
during, 3, 245, 247–50, 251, 252,
253, 254, 256, 257, 258–59, 262,
264, 265nn4,8, 266n13, 267n32,
267n34
Seeckt, Hans von, 30–31, 32
September 11th attacks, 102, 138,
157, 159, 170, 197
Serbia, 89
Sheehan, Michael, 199
Sherman, William Tecumseh, 25–26
Shevardnadze, Eduard, 219
Shinseki, Eric, 55
Shkedi, Eliezer, 249, 252
Short, Claire, 76
SIGAR. See Special Inspector General
for Afghanistan Reconstruction
SIGMA war games, 41–42
Sims, William, 33, 45n28
Sinnreich, Richard Hart, 12
Snatch Land Rover, 127
Snow, C. P.: on historians and the
307
future, 12, 19; on two cultures, 8,
11, 12
Sobero, Guillermo, 200
social sciences, 12, 15
SOF. See special operations forces
Somalia, 78
Soslaniev, Soltan, 220
Soviet Union: collapse of, 214–16,
219, 222, 229–30
Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction
(SIGAR), 144, 147, 148
special operations forces (SOF): in
Afghanistan, 104, 106, 109, 113,
114, 122, 134, 148, 160, 197,
201, 212; bin Laden killed, 116;
F3EAD (find, fix, finish, exploit,
assess, and Disseminate), 197;
Five SOF Truths, 200; FM 3–05
Special Operations, 197; historical
lessons regarding, 59–60, 197,
198; integration with conventional
forces, 59–60; in Iraq War, 59–60,
70, 73–74, 96, 139, 146, 197;
and McChrystal, 115, 169; in
Philippines, 197, 198–99; post9/11, 197, 198, 200–202; pre9/11, 197, 198–200, 212; Special
Operations Command Pacific
(SOCPAC), 199, 200, 201, 203;
special warfare vs. surgical strike,
197–98
Special Representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP),
163, 175
Spenser, David: on security assistance
in Colombia, 272, 276, 280
Spiller, Roger J., 13
Sri Lankan civil war: vs. Afghanistan,
2, 195; battle of Mullaitivu, 188;
civilian casualties during, 194–95;
counterinsurgency (COIN) during,
2, 183, 184–86, 192, 193–95;
domestic support for, 194; end
308
I NDE X
of, 181–82; historical lessons of,
182, 192–95; and India, 188,
195; innovation in, 189–92,
193; intelligence collection
during, 185–87, 190, 191–92;
vs. Iraq War, 2; Killinochchi,
187; Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE), 181–82, 184, 186,
187, 188, 189–91, 192, 193–94,
195; National Intelligence
Bureau, 187; Naval Research
and Development Project Office,
190–91; Operation Liberation,
188; Operation Riviresa, 188–89;
Small Boat Concept during, 193;
Special Infantry Operation Teams
(SIOTs), 191–92; Sri Lankan
Air Force, 190, 191; Sri Lankan
Armed Forces (SKLAF) in,
181–95; Sri Lankan Navy (SLN),
190–91, 193
Staley, David, 17–18
Starry, Donn A., 19
Strategic Studies Institute, 56
Straw, Jack, 76
Sudan, 194
Suvorov, Victor, 240n1
SWIFT system, 243n25
Synnott, Sir Hilary, 77
Syria, 81, 197, 262, 291
Taji Counterinsurgency Center of
Excellence, 61
Tajikistan, 215
Tapias, Fernando, 287n28
technological change, 8, 47n50, 109,
229; adaptation to, 32–36, 37, 83,
134, 181, 190, 291; and American
Civil War, 25–26; explosively
formed projectiles (EFPs),
68–69, 73, 83; historical lessons
regarding, 36–40; improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), 73, 83,
127, 128, 140; and long-range
escort fighters in WWII, 37–40;
precision guided munitions, 89–
90, 91, 96, 103, 115, 160, 233,
246–47, 249, 256, 291; revolution
in military affairs, 55, 247;
social network revolution, 57;
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)/
drones, 57, 70, 72, 74, 82, 103,
115, 116, 124, 129, 160, 209,
236, 243n23, 250, 258, 260, 261
Terrill, Andrew, 56
Thailand, 194
Through the Looking Glass: White
Queen on memory in, 10
Thucydides: on historical lessons,
8–9, 62; History of the
Peloponnesian War, 8–9, 19, 62;
Thucycides trap, 9
Toffler, Alvin and Heidi: on ThirdWave Warfare, 11
Tosh, John, 11
Transparency International, 147;
Corruption Perception Index, 144
Uday, 93
Ukraine: Crimea, 226, 227, 234,
242n13, 244n30; Donbas, 232–
33, 236, 241n7; relations with
Russia, 214, 218, 219, 223, 224,
225–27, 230, 232–33, 234, 236,
241n7, 244n30, 291
United Kingdom: Department of
International Development
(DfID), 76–77; Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO),
76, 77; Industrial Revolution,
24, 25, 26; Iraq Inquiry, 67–68,
75–76, 77–78; Joint Intelligence
Committee, 67; Ministry of
Defence (MoD), 66, 77, 83, 126,
127–28, 134; Permanent Joint
Headquarters, 132; relations with
Germany, 9, 30, 32; relations
with Sri Lanka, 183, 184;
INDEX
Secret Intelligence Service, 67;
unpopularity of Iraq War in, 66,
78, 81. See also British Air Force;
British Army
United Nations, 100n18, 216; and
Afghanistan, 138–39; peace
operations, 135; Security Council,
79, 91, 138–39
United States: Bureau of Conflict
Stabilization and Operations
(CSO), 172, 175; Bureau of
International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement, 142; George
W. Bush administration,
51, 53, 54–55, 104, 213n2,
223–24; Center for Strategic
and International Studies,
171; CIA, 148, 160, 174;
Clinton administration, 173;
Department of Agriculture, 163,
165; Department of Defense,
83, 143, 144, 147, 171, 172,
219, 269, 284n1; Department
of Homeland Security, 170;
Department of Justice, 166;
Department of State, 110, 133–
34, 142, 143, 144, 163, 165,
166, 170, 171–72, 210, 223–24,
269, 270, 274, 284nn1,2; Drug
Enforcement Agency, 163, 164,
168; economic conditions, 103,
109, 116, 119; Foreign Service
Institute (FSI), 167; National
Security Council, 163, 171;
nuclear weapons policies, 238;
Obama administration, 54–55,
108, 109–10, 111, 113, 116,
125, 127, 214; Office of Security
Cooperation–Afghanistan,
143; Office of the Coordinator
for Reconstruction and
Stabiliization (S/CRS), 172;
political conditions, 41, 42,
109, 113, 116, 119, 161–62,
309
173; relations with China,
9; relations with Colombia,
272, 274, 284; relations with
Georgia, 219; relations with
Germany, 32, 39; relations
with Japan, 36; relations with
Russia, 244n30; Rewards for
Justice Program, 210, 211, 212;
security assistance from, 269–70,
271, 281, 282–84, 284nn1,2;
September 11th attacks, 102,
138, 157, 170; skepticism
regarding irregular wars in,
102–3, 109, 118; spending on
Afghan war, 107, 116, 117,
118, 157; unpopularity of Iraq
War in, 78. See also U.S. Agency
for International Development
(USAID); U.S. Army; U.S.
Congress; U.S. Navy
United States Institute of Peace
Academy, 175
Upton, Emory, 25–26
Urban, Mark, 73
urban warfare, 72–73, 78
Uribe, Álvaro, 272–74, 275, 276,
277–78, 279, 281, 283, 292
U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID): in
Afghanistan, 104, 113, 163–64,
165, 166, 168–69, 171; in
Colombia, 174; in Philippines,
203, 206, 208
U.S. Army: in advisory role, 61, 71,
114, 117, 139, 140, 141, 146,
148, 169, 203, 205, 207; Air
Force during WWII, 39; embedded
training teams (ETTs), 148; FM
3–24, Counterinsurgency, 58, 59,
82, 171–72, 205; force protection,
167–68; vs. IDF, 247; knowledge
management (KM) methods,
248, 249; and military education
system, 58; Operation Anaconda,
3 10
I N DE X
122; reform after Vietnam War,
170; training in, 61–62; urban
tactics during Iraq War, 72; during
WWII, 47n50
U.S. Congress: Goldwater-Nichols
Defense Reorganization Act, 170,
284; Iraq Liberation Act, 100n28;
Petraeus and Crocker testimony
to, 80, 126
U.S. Marine Corps, 32–33, 84,
96, 114, 141, 162; amphibious
warfare, 35; Marine
Expeditionary Force (MEF)
and British Army, 68, 126; in
Marjah, 112, 125; and Regional
Command–Southwest, 126, 133
U.S. Navy: Bureau of Ordnance,
46n50; carrier aviation in, 32–36;
fleet exercises in, 32–33, 34–35,
42; island-hopping campaign in
WWII, 36; Naval War College,
32–34, 35, 45n28; Pearl Harbor
attack, 36; war gaming in, 32–33,
34; during WWII, 35, 36, 46n50
U.S. Office of Reconstruction
and Humanitarian Assistance
(ORHA), 76
Van Creveld, Martin: on historical
lessons, 182
Vanin, Mikhail, 244n30
Venezuela, 271, 281
Viet Minh, 41
Vietnam War: vs. Colombia, 277, 278,
280; CORDS program, 158, 163,
167, 175; historical lessons of, 42,
61, 102, 118, 158–59, 163, 167,
293; and SIGMA war games, 41–42
Votel, Joe, 201, 206
war gaming, 32–33, 34, 41–42, 43
War of Spanish Succession, 25
Washington Naval Treaty, 46n32
weapons of new physical principles,
229
Weinberg, Gerhard, 32
Wellington, Duke of, 25
West, Bing, 107
whole-of-government approach, 52,
62, 162–63, 168, 171–72, 270,
274, 277
Wight, Martin, 12, 15
Winograd, Eliyahu, 247
World Bank, 147
World War I: Battle of the Somme,
27–28; historical lessons of, 26–
32, 54, 263; Nivelle Offensive, 28;
Treaty of Versailles, 30
World War II: Battle of the Atlantic,
36–37; “Firefly” variant of
Sherman tanks, 47n50; historical
lessons of, 35, 36–40; Pearl
Harbor attack, 36; Spitfires
as long-range escorts, 38–40;
“ULTRA” radio intercepts during,
267n31
Wurster, Donny, 199, 202
Yano, Alexander, 201
Yanukovich, Viktor, 227
Yap, Deborah, 200
Yeltsin, Boris, 217, 218
Yemen, 291
Yurechko, John J., 241n3
Zaitsev, Anatoly, 220