The Insurgent's Response to the Defense of Cities

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000

Historically, guerrilla movements have had more success in the rural countryside than in the city. From the urban uprising of the Paris commune to the urban revolts in Shanghai, most urban insurrections have ended up smashed and leaderless. Usually, it is a mistake for the guerrilla to move into the city. In the city, the guerrilla is surrounded by a thousand eyes and a thousand jealousies. The government can mass forces and move rapidly within the city. The guerrilla force must stay small and fragmented in order to survive. The guerrilla cannot conceal large weapons and cannot conduct on-site training and rehearsals. In Peru, the Sendero Luminoso did well as long as they fought from the mountains and jungles. The government was able to respond effectively only after the movement shifted its forces to the cities. The Peruvian government conducted an effective urban information campaign against the Sendero Luminoso while building and conducting an impressive urban intelligence effort. Then the government smashed the movement. Sendero Luminoso is now resurrecting itself and making a comeback-in the jungles and mountains.

Pre-publication draft -final version available in Norheim-Martinsen, Per M., and Tore Nyhamar, eds. International Military Operations in the 21st Century: Global Trends and the Future of Intervention. Routledge, 2015. point to a future of operations conducted among civilians and, most often, with the objective of building government capacity. So while Western armed forces may not engage in operations on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq in the near future, campaigns to come will in all likelihood call for similar skill sets and capabilities -not least at the tactical level.

Six years have passed since the publication of Field Manual (FM) 3−24, Counterinsurgency. Embraced by sections of the military and civilian defense community seeking a fresh approach to the conflict in Iraq, the new field manual gained a political significance and profile unlike previous doctrinal publications. When General David Petraeus was able to incorporate some of the manual's core precepts into the new U.S. strategy for Iraq, and casualties and instability in Iraq declined over the following few years, both counterinsurgency doctrine and the people associated with it gained unprecedented influence. Since then, the buzz that counterinsurgency acquired has worn off—for several reasons. Most fundamentally, there is widespread frustration over the attempt to use counterinsurgency doctrine to stabilize Afghanistan. Second, there are now several counternarratives to the popular notion that U.S. counterinsurgency theory pulled Iraq back from the brink: key here is that local factors, not U.S. inputs, explain what happened during the period that Americans like to call the surge. Third, large-scale and protracted military operations to build nations, unify states, and establish legitimate and competent governments are undertakings that, even if workable, run counter to the fiscal realities facing the West today. In the end, the critics pile on, counterinsurgency is naïve in its assumptions, unworkable in its requirements, and arrogant in its unfounded claims of prior success. Based on the rise and decline of counterinsurgency over the past few years, this article seeks to assess the utility of this concept and its future as a defense priority and area of research. It concludes that the discussion of counterinsurgency is marred by the polarizing effects of the term itself, which have encouraged a bandwagon effect, both in favor of and now in opposition to the term. Lost in this heated and overly personalized polemic is a necessary and more careful analysis of what can and cannot be expected from this concept and its associated doctrine. By teasing out its contribution to military thinking , its limitations, and its proper use, this article seeks to identify those aspects of counterinsurgency theory that should be retained even if the term itself is once again cast aside. This conceptual discussion has more than mere academic import, as it will shape the way recent counterinsurgency campaigns are remembered and the likelihood of past mistakes being repeated.

2015

Having grown up in the war-torn Balkans during the 1990s, he developed a particular curiosity for understanding political events. His thematic areas of expertise are geopolitics and foreign policy, especially security. By geographical coverage, he has focused mostly on the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, and occasionally the Middle East and North America. His dissertation focuses on asymmetric warfare, specifically on understanding why states and state-like entities choose to militarily challenge much more powerful opponents. He earned an MSc in international relations and diplomacy from Leiden University (Netherlands) and a BA in political science from Simon Fraser University (Canada). Bobić has worked for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and as a contributing analyst for a private consulting firm. He has published one book, Words or Swords: Russia's Strategies in Handling Its Territorial Disputes (2013), and written several short articles for sources such as the Atlantic Sentinel and the Geopolitical Monitor. He may be contacted at marinko.bobic.unitn.it.

2019

This paper describes a new approach to the “soft” side of a counterinsurgency campaign. The program in question was developed by the 173rd Airborne Brigade with my assistance and tested in Afghanistan’s Lowgar and Wardak Provinces in 2010. The core element of this program is the use of local governments (districts) to rebuild trust between the Afghan people and their government. Trust between a people and their government is a fundamental element of a modern counterinsurgency campaign. The 173rd pilot was highly successful, suggesting that Afghanistan’s district sub-governors have the will and the capacity to serve their people. The details of this program and results can be found in de Tray, (2018) Why Counterinsurgency Fails, Palgrave and McMillan. This work suggests that the poor outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan – and Vietnam before them – might have stemmed from the fact that the US did not implement its counterinsurgency strategy as set out by David Petraeus and James Amos in The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Yonsei Journal of International Studies, 2012

Contemporary Security Policy, 2013

Despite a highly uneven track record, clear-hold-build has remained a dominant, even universal, approach to counterinsurgency. Its prevalence is rooted in its incontestable sequencing of operations and the attendant promise of a linear path towards peace. Yet the appeal of this approach also makes it deceptive and possibly dangerous. Clear-hold-build is not a strategy and must not be mistaken for one, as it has been in Afghanistan, where it inspired false hope for swift progress. Instead, it is necessary to reach a more problematized view of this approach and of what it aims to achieve. This article provides such an evaluation, proposing five principles that should guide its future application. These principles point to the need for a far deeper understanding of how security, development, and governance interact at the local level. Counterinsurgents must understand the relationships between aid and security, between government and governance, and between state and periphery. Where the central government is predatory or lacks support, clear-hold-build also raises difficult questions of authority, legitimacy, and control – questions that counterinsurgents must be capable of answering. Thus problematized, clear-hold-build emerges as a framework with heuristic utility; a schema that can be helpful in planning but which must at the time of application be populated by knowledge, substance, and skill. The implications of these requirements are troubling, particularly for those governments still in the business of armed intervention.

Journal of Conflict Studies, 2007

The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive. 1