Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

PAPER: "Producing Victory: Rethinking Conventional Forces in COIN Operations," by Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Ollivant, U.S. Army, and First Lieutenant Eric D. Chewning, U.S. Army Reserve, Military Review, July-August 2006

This is a good paper, which like much of the material on COIN right now, tends to fight the battle on two fronts: 1) gotta change from the Big Army/division past and 2) but don't wanna become too integrated with the non-military actors and thus lose our coherence--thus the reach for the do-it-all-ourselves motif of the analysis.

The opening sequence:

Our thesis is simple: The combined arms maneuver battalion, partnering with indigenous security forces and living among the population it secures, should be the basic tactical unit of counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Only such a battalion-a blending of infantry, armor, engineers, and other branches, each retrained and employed as needed-can integrate all arms into full-spectrum operations at the tactical level.1 Smaller conventional forces might develop excellent community relations, but they lack the robust staff and sufficient mass to fully exploit local relationships. Conversely, while brigades and divisions boast expanded analysis and control capabilities, they cannot develop the street-level rapport so critical for an effective COIN campaign. Unconventional forces are likewise no panacea because the expansion of Special Operations Command assets or the creation of stability and reconstruction or system-administration forces will not result in sustainable COIN strategies.2 Recent experience in Iraq affirms previously forgotten lessons: "Winning the Peace" requires simultaneous execution along the full spectrum of kinetic and non-kinetic operations.3 While political developments in Iraq and the United States might have moved past the point at which our suggested COIN solution would be optimal, we argue that the maneuver battalion should be the centerpiece of the Army's future COIN campaigns. This paper examines why the maneuver battalion is the premier organization around which to build COIN doctrine, and it identifies current obstacles and future improvements to such a battalion-centric strategy.

In the notes, my notion of SysAdmin forces is cited, directing the reader to the glossary definition, which reads in Blueprint and this site as:

System Administrators (SysAdmin) The "second half" blended force that wages the peace after the Leviathan force has successfully waged war. Therefore, it is a force optimized for such categories of operations as "stability and support operations" (SASO), postconflict stabilization and reconstruction operations, "military operations other than war" (MOOTW), "humanitarian assistance/disaster relief" (HA/DR), and any and all operations associated with low-intensity conflict (LIC), counterinsurgency operations, and small-scale crisis response. Beyond such military-intensive activities, the SysAdmin force likewise provides civil security with its police component, as well as civilian personnel with expertise in rebuilding networks, infrastructure, and social and political institutions. While the core security and logistical capabilities are derived from uniformed military components, the SysAdmin force is fundamentally envisioned as a standing capacity for interagency (i.e., among various U.S. federal agencies) and international collaboration in nation building.

Now, here's my problem with the author's effectively straw-manning both my concept and the SSTR notion from Binnendijk and Johnson: they're effectively declaring their circle of the Venn diagram (which I consider akin to the SysAdmin function as a whole) as all-inclusive, when it's just one among many (as my definition above argues). In fairness to Binnendijk and Johnson, they argued the force structure for SSTR ops, not for COIN, and didn't exactly declare the need to turn the entire US Army into SSTR forces.

As far as I'm concerned, I have no problem with the authors' real thesis: a battalion-centric approach to COIN. In general, I wouldn't argue that point because it's not my experience base. As somebody who helps the military think about the larger conditions and goals of war and its interplay with peace, politics, economics, demographics, ideology, etc., I argue the when, where, what and why. But I don't argue the how. As I wrote in BFA, "a man's gotta know his limitations," as Dirty Harry famously argued.

So how the US Army organizes for COIN is its own business. I just don't see that argument being the be-all and end-all for the host of conditions and scenarios we'll encounter in shrinking the Gap, because I believe all those other elements I list in my SysAdmin definition also come into play. If we look at COIN as the big enchilada, we'll miss far too often the situations where we can obviate that requirement by winning the peace up front. Plus, if we pretend COIN alone gets you an effective exit strategy, I think we'll be undershooting the mark by a ways.

On this point, see the discussion on economics in this paper. Pretty much the whole section excerpted here:

Economy and reconstruction.

The United Nations Office of Project Services and International Labor Organization recommends the implementation of a local economic development (LED) approach for economic stimulation in conflict areas. This bottom-up method is preferred to centralized, top-down strategies because "the best knowledge regarding local problems, local needs, local resources, local development potential, as well as local motivation for promoting change, exists on the local level [and] it is of fundamental importance that the local community sees its place in the future."17

Also stressing the importance of local economic actors, a World Bank report notes that "support for micro and small businesses is an appropriate early step in a post-conflict situation because these businesses are resilient and nimble, adapting quickly to new circumstances."18

The maneuver battalion plays a central role in LED strategy during COIN operations. Optimally, not only does the battalion have its own reconstruction monies, but it also facilitates international development agency access to small businesses, trade unions, local governments, and entrepreneurs. The counterinsurgent, the community, and aid agencies all benefit from local coordination of the economic, political, and security dimensions of reconstruction.

Even with the support of Army combat engineers and outside construction firms, reconstruction work must still leverage the support of local contractors. Through daily interaction with the population, the battalion is able to gauge the real impact of ongoing reconstruction and better allocate resources. If the campaign has yet to reach this level of sophistication, the battalion remains the only element able to provide sustained security for reconstruction projects. Such development should focus on employing military-age males, enfranchising repressed minorities, stimulating the local economy, and co-opting local leaders. All of these are critical parts of a successful COIN strategy.

Now, while that's a nice description, it's about as bare bones as you can get in scope and ambition: just get things humming enough locally and--as the next section provides--get the politics up and running just enough so we can leave. To me, this is COIN still captured by Powell Doctrine thinking of limited regret. Do no more than is required and keep it all a military affair (that argument comes later in the piece). Why? Because we can't trust anyone else to show up, which apparently includes allied militaries, who seem conspicuously absent from the logic of this piece, as does any private sector involvement beyond "local contractors."

I will be blunt here: leaving economic reconstruction and development to the military, or even the military armed with USAID expertise, is doomed to failure. And that failure dooms COIN.

Let's get real: neither USAID nor the military frankly know their asses from their elbows on private-sector market-capacity building. You put that zero and that other zero together and you've still got nothing. If you want to tell me you want a battalion-centric approach to fighting insurgents, then I'm willing to listen, but if you pretend the battalion's gonna cover that 80 percent non-kinetic, then I frankly think you're dreaming.

In today's globalized world, we'll define exit points as when foreign direct investment begins moving into any disconnected economy, and somehow, I just don't think that's a battalion-commander-level ability or call.

But the authors seem to think a bunch of micro-loans plus a usable local political machinery will cover their tracks:

The ultimate goal of COIN warfare is to "build (or rebuild) a political machine from the population upward."20 Initially, the counterinsurgent must empower, through elections or appointment, local provisional leaders.21

Nice, but no cigar, in my mind.

But when you get to the back-end discussions on that 80% non-kinetic, you begin to see the defensiveness that animates this piece--as in, we won't let you ruin this military by optimizing it beyond the kinetics-heavy side of COIN, as in, "that's as far as we'll go!"

CMO.

Civil-military operations are green-tab issues. Reconstruction, economic development, and community relations are not phases in war planning; they are principles of COIN. As such, the commander responsible for the security of a specific area must also be able to determine reconstruction priorities and control assets responsible for their implementation. An increased Army-level emphasis on CMO does not necessarily mean (and, in our opinion, should not mean) more civil affairs Soldiers or the creation of special reconstruction and security forces. Instead, we must acknowledge that money is the power behind CMO. Many vital non-kinetic actions-reconstruction, community outreach, information operations, and intelligence collection-are not possible without putting targeted cash into the local economy.

To me, the mindset here is guaranteed to fail, because--quite frankly--it doesn't aim any higher than being a foreign Hamas or Hezbollah, and all things being equal in any environment, I'm betting on the local insurgents being better able to create a welfare-dependent non-economy ruled over by political masters than having the Americans come in and try to do it on their own with whatever puppet government we're hoping to prop up.

There's too much smarting from Iraq in this piece. Here's the conclusion:

Our Army must plan for the COIN fight. Not only are we currently engaged in such a battle on strategic terrain, but our difficulties have surely not gone unnoticed by potential adversaries. We must expect this kind of fight again.

We have argued that the combined arms maneuver battalion should be the basic unit in COIN operations. Not only do we believe in the battalion's inherent abilities to conduct tactical full-spectrum operations, but we believe that other alternatives are impractical or carry a significant downside. The creation of pure nation-building, stability and reconstruction units, or system-administration forces, would divert Department of Defense dollars to forces that could not fight when (not if) we are again called on to engage in mid- to high-intensity conflict. Beyond this inefficiency, it is difficult to see these forces ever coming into existence. For all the talk of joint interagency task forces, it would be a monumental victory were we even able to embed representatives from the Departments of State, Commerce, and Justice in each divisional headquarters. Were we serious about truly implementing such interagency task forces in 2015, we would have seen platoons of diplomatic, economic, and legal trainees entering the system last year. We did not-and therefore the Department of Defense must plan to have its personnel continue to be the primary implementers of all aspects of reconstruction for the foreseeable future.

I understand this defensiveness, but the we-can-do-it-all-so-long-as-it's-our-preferred-delineation-of-COIN-as-Powell-Doctrine-MOOTW is just a baby step in thinking. Shrinking the Gap doesn't start and doesn't end with COIN. COIN is a particular procedure within a much larger universe of patient triage, care and rehabilitation. It describes a certain condition, akin to fighting off an infection, but that's it. Getting all defensive on the larger issues is understandable, but you don't want to take it too far in the argument.

As I wrote in BFA:

Because most of the world's militaries are built primarily to remain at home and defend the country from external attack, the disparity between the U.S. military and the rest of the Core's militaries is substantial in power-projection capabilities. In short, there is the force that can actually fight, and then there is the force that is primarily about moving that first force to some distant locale and keeping it replenished with supplies and all other manner of combat support, such as command and control, communications, medical, intelligence, and computing needs. America has both forces, but most countries have only the first force, and even that force is closer--in the vast majority of cases--to a peacemaking force in its firepower and overall combat capabilities than a true warfighting force that's capable of decisively defeating well-armed and well-defended opponents.

The point being, for America's military to marry up well with the rest of the Core's military contributions to a coalition SysAdmin force, our portion needs to concentrate its capabilities in high-end combat and those logistical and specialized support functions I described above. In sum, the U.S. SysAdmin force won't look that different from the one we have today, because if we play our cards right, the bulk of the low-end, boots-on-the-ground peacekeepers should come from other nations, leaving our troops to specialize in high-end counter-insurgency operations and logistical support to both our own troops and those of other nations. A third area where our force capabilities might logically overlap with those of our best and most able allies (e.g., Brits, Aussies, French) is in the training of indigenous security forces, especially in counterinsurgency tactics.

As I have subsequently made clear in my writings, when I talk of the lower-end personnel for SysAdmin functions, I'm thinking Chinese and Indians and militaries of that capability level. I don't see changing the U.S. military wholly into the SysAdmin force, but rather using it's higher-order capabilities as the hub to which lower-end forces can connect to create more powerful capabilities.

In my argument for a Department of Everything Else, I'm likewise arguing for marrying up those higher-end Army and Marine capabilities with expertise and resources from a wide array of subject matters. I have no belief that the Army or Marines can replicate, in micro, such capabilities within their ranks, and that having military officers "play" at being things they're not, like venture capitalists, is the height of amateurism. I simply want a bigger tent, but in building that bigger tent, whether I call it SysAdmin or DoEE, I believe the Army and Marines should largely still focus on that which they do best: the kinetics and the logistics. When they need economists, they should have economists. When they need anthropologists, they should get anthropologists. This is the age of specialization, not generalization. We should build both our military's components of the SysAdmin with that in mind, as well as our government's components, remembering that most of the bodies and resources must ulitmately come from other nations and the private sector.

Any attempts to do-it-all-from-within are--I argue yet again--doomed to failure. A US Army expecting to have to go-it-alone on future COIN will never sustain itself, nor will it be sustained by the American public, which already--I believe--realize the illogic of both our military-centric and government-centric approach to nation-building in Iraq (a term that sucks, because in conjures images of militaries and government bureaucracies and never quite seems to extend--much like this paper--into economics beyond a sad, sort of mimimalist, dependencia form of market development, which--again--I argue just won't do in this globalized economy in terms of pulling failed states into the Core over time).

Still, despite my bitching and the straw-man treatment from the authors, this is a good piece to read, signaling movement of the pile within the US Army.