Guerrillas Aren't Invincible

Starbuck of Wings over Iraq makes a good point while reviewing an article on why insurgents frequently lose:

"We in the Small Wars Community often take a pessimistic view on counterinsurgencies, focusing on the mistakes that the counterinsurgents make, rather than focusing on exploiting the mistakes of the insurgents. 59% of counterinsurgents are successful, so to steal another Life-of-Bryan-ism, we COINdinistas need to look on the bright side of life."

Like Chet Richards, I have some quibbles with the methodology used in the article's survey of insurgency. However, I think the article does do a valuable service. Sometimes asymmetric warfare theorists can make the enemy seem invincible while giving our forces all of the flaws. Insurgencies face substantial difficulties as well.

We shouldn't overestimate their strength or underestimate our capacity for adaption. As Mark Mateski pointed out in a RTJ comment:

"Given the many possible combinations of [groupthink] factors and effects, it’s a wonder good things ever happen. The main balancing condition is probably the simple fact that one’s opponent is also vulnerable to the same set factors and effects."

Study of insurgent mistakes also enables us to better exploit them in order to nip insurgencies in the bud. Projects like the USMA CTC's Harmony Web and JFCOM's detailed operational study of Al Qaeda's weaknesses demonstrate how we can apply leverage against them.

Still, analysis of insurgent strengths still serves a valuable purpose---showing policymakers that no form of war is easy, bloodless, or predictable. There is a real danger that policymakers will come to see COIN's set of social-science backed tools and methodologies as a kind of all-purpose tool that substitutes for strategy--the same way that McNamara saw systems theory and Taylorist scientific management. Emphasizing insurgent strengths and the immense difficulty and complexity of irregular war is a deterrent to simplistic policy instrumentalization of irregular warfare theory.

It is also important that COIN practitioners such as David Kilcullen have repeatedly argued against a flawed interpretation of irregular warfare theory. No one can come away reading the most recent counterinsurgency literature with a belief that the US should choose to engage in such conflict through massive intervention. It is is significant that Kilcullen himself, along with many other intellectuals who supported Petraeus during the Surge in 2007, opposed the Iraq war.

Still, as Zenpundit noted, the lack of grand strategy in America's current strategic debate leaves a dangerous space open:

"First, Kilcullen’s three principles are an operational and not a genuinely strategic doctrine. In fairness, no major COIN advocate has ever said otherwise and have often emphasized the point. The problem is that a lot of their intended audience - key civilian decision makers and opinion shapers in their 30’s-50’s often do not understand the difference, except for a minority who have learned from bitter experience. Most of those who have, the Kissingers, Brzezinskis, Shultzes etc. are elder statesmen on the far periphery of policy.

Secondly, this operational doctrine requires a sound national strategy and grand strategy if it is to add real value and not merely be a national security fire extinguisher. Kilcullen may say intervention is unwise but that is really of no help. Absent a grand strategy with broad political acceptance, policy makers, even professed isolationists, will find situational (i.e. domestic political reasons) excuses for intervention on an ad hoc basis. That George W. Bush entered office as a sincere opponent of “nation-building” and proponent of national “humility” should be enough to give anyone pause about a president “winging it” by reacting to events without a grand strategy to frame options and provide coherence from one administration to the next....Operational doctrine is not enough. It is untethered. It will float like a balloon in a political wind. It is crisis management without a destination or sufficient justification for expenditure of blood and treasure. If these blanks are not filled in, they will be filled in by others. "