I was born and raised poor. Financially, my family was somewhere between The Waltons during the Depression and the Beverly Hillbillies – before they struck oil. Not that I noticed at the time. When I was young, all the people around me were generally in the same economic and social circumstances so there was no obvious disparity. It was not until my last two years of High School that I even became aware of it. I do not recall anyone giving me grief for my relative poverty; however, I became more conscious of my fiscal disadvantages relative to my more affluent peers. I started working after school and on weekends at 15. My immediate goal was to accumulate enough money to buy a car as soon as I was licensed to drive. I thought that one purchase would make all the difference. It did not. A cheap car – that my parents had to cosign for – did not change my social status. I still had little spending money and could not afford the latest fashions or other teenage status symbols. I was still a poor kid. It was a simple but very important life lesson.
I am not saying that growing up poor made me any more insightful, virtuous, or smarter, than someone born into a family of greater means. However, I did experience a lot in those first 18 lean years that gave me a useful perspective that ultimately proved to be professionally valuable. Later, I had the opportunity to apply and validate what I had learned. First, as a “school trained” guerrilla and eventually as someone who instructed newer Special Forces (SF) candidates on how to be successful guerrillas. Consequently, I have a practitioner’s understanding of what it takes for a guerrilla to “win” and – because they are two sides of the same coin – I also know what it takes for a counterguerrilla to prevail. I started collating and sharing my “poor man’s” insights on the subject with SF students about to be inserted into the Robin Sage exercise. While in “Pineland,” they have to work by, with, through, and alongside, a distrustful population while enhancing and effectively employing the ragtag guerrilla forces found there. It is harder than it might seem.
People in general, and Americans in particular, are prone to make one of two equally wrong assumptions when engaging people from foreign cultures, i.e. they are exactly like us…or nothing like us. Because we come from a rich society – even if we are not personally wealthy – it is often hard for American soldiers to discern and subsequently leverage the commonalities and the differences between themselves and their inevitably less fortunate foreign partners and adversaries. Moreover, the term “guerrilla warfare” itself has become old fashioned and out of style. We now prefer insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, or maybe irregular or asymmetric warfare instead. Asymmetric is perhaps the most overused and least helpful term. ALL warfare involves the combatants constantly seeking at least a temporary asymmetric advantage over their opponents. That is why I still prefer the classic term of guerrilla warfare, a.k.a. “small wars” or “poor man’s war,” because I believe it captures the normally smaller scale, limited resources, and intimate human dynamics of this kind of warfare better than the more modern terms.
I also avoid the phrase “hearts and minds.” It is vague and provides no useful guidance. Instead, I emphasize three terms: influence, manipulate and exploit. As in: How can I influence (or gain influence over) the people who have the power to help me do what I need to do? How can I manipulate the current situation into something more advantageous to my goals and objectives? And, what factors, conditions, attitudes or perceptions can I exploit to accomplish my mission? By definition, in military and financial terms, the guerrilla is always weaker and poorer than the counterguerrilla; however, influence is much, much more important than relative finances and force numbers. A better measure of relative strength is to ascertain what power (influence) the guerrilla wields with the population. Likewise, what power (influence) does the counterguerrilla have with the population? It is not the man that must be defeated, but rather his influence. Both sides have to remember that.
For a poor person, limited assets are a given and nothing in life is free. Therefore, poor people are understandably frugal – even miserly – with their resources. To get the most out of what little is available, it is important to know how and why things work in the target society rather than just observing what is going on. In the rural area where I grew up, everyone was a poor farmer. That is, most had other day jobs but almost all families tilled a vegetable garden and – if space allowed – kept chickens, a milk cow, and hogs to supplement their diet. It was a necessity, not a “lifestyle” choice. All those that could, also raised at least some tobacco and had a shed or even an entire barn devoted to drying the tobacco leaves. Once a year, tobacco brokers would come around and buy up those small batches of dried leaves. It was a vital cash crop that families counted on to plus up their incomes every fall. It was a significant and integral part of the local economy. The practice ended only because tobacco companies found it cheaper to get their product from larger-scale farm operations contractually affiliated with their brand. Consequently, the poor farmers stopped growing tobacco and life got a little harder for them.
Fast forward to Afghanistan, and a similar economic arrangement is in effect between the poor poppy farmers and the opium smugglers and profiteers. No matter how it is done, stopping the latter would have a devastating impact on the livelihood of the former. That, in turn, would naturally help guerrillas recruit more fighters and garner support from the disaffected population. In general, poor people do what they have to do to survive – often operating on the edge of the local laws. My father was a mechanic by trade. However, when I was young, he had a side hustle as a bootlegger and moonshiner. Bootlegging involves illicitly transporting booze from a place where it is legal and selling it for profit someplace it is illegal. Moonshiners simply make their alcoholic merchandise instead. In short, my father was a criminal. However, he was operating in a place where he had been born and raised. He had grown up with both his customers and local law enforcement. They were all his life-long friends and – in some cases – even relatives. Because of that familiarity, the law knew he had a wife and six kids and had little interest in taking him to jail where he would miss work and lose money. Accordingly, they rarely kept him in custody more than overnight and local judges let him off many times with warnings rather than fines. It was the socially accepted sliding scale of poor man’s justice for that time and place.
That vignette illustrates why any efforts to convert the population or the guerrilla to the American viewpoint are invariably a waste of time and energy; instead, strive to comprehend the locals’ point of view. A successful guerrilla or counterguerrilla understands that, minus the occasional foreign fighter, everyone killed on both sides (no matter how “righteous” the kill) is the son, brother, nephew or cousin of a local family, clan and tribe. They are NOT considered “bad guys” by the locals. Therefore, the population is not likely to help you, thank you or embrace your cause if it involves killing or jailing family. That does not mean you do not kill as many as you need too, but it does mean that you must fully understand the consequences. Recognize that you are also an outsider and will probably never be a “hero” to the locals no matter how long or hard you work with them.
Still, do not overthink the problem! Certainly, warfare – of any flavor – is a thinking person’s game. It always involves intuitively appreciating and leveraging fundamental human nature, but warfare is not rocket science. No one needs to have graduated from the Army War College to get it right. Indeed, guerrilla warfare specifically is routinely prosecuted almost exclusively by amateurs on all sides – not professional soldiers. Effort spent on fully understanding the local cultural dynamics is never wasted even down at the small unit level. Studying local history is useful for establishing a framework of understanding. However, appreciating something I call “cultural mythology” is far more important than history. Local mythology provides a much more accurate insight into how the population sees itself. History is not written or read by the masses. Mythology is the peoples’ narrative. Local mythology is constantly embellished and dutifully passed from generation to generation. Ask any Texan (or any American) about the Alamo. He or she will know the myth by heart but will likely be unaware of the real (unembellished) historical facts. Other peoples are no different.
In a poor society, a man’s pride or family honor is his most important possession. If that honor is threatened or perceived to be threatened, he will fight. As a case in point, De-Baathification was the single worst mistake we made in Iraq. It did not just take away a former low-level Baathist’s job. Rather it emasculated the Sunni men in front of their tribes, clans, and families. We stripped “poor men” from their position in society and denied them even a chance to earn a new place of respect in Iraq. It should come as no surprise that they eventually fought back in a poor man’s fashion. That is exactly what I would do in similar circumstances. The truth is that deliberate US policies created the Sunni guerrillas. It did not have to be that way.
I have not seen the latest version of FM3-24, Counterinsurgency. I thought that the first version was significantly flawed and I admit I have little confidence that the new version will be much better. I have heard – but cannot confirm – that it now includes “Shape” and “Transition” to bookend the “Clear, Hold, Build” mantra of the first version. As a cinematic warrior once said, “I do not think that word[s] means what you think it means.” First, I have always counseled that it is unwise to embrace the simplistic axiom that demands counterguerrillas expend enormous energy trying to physically “separate the guerrilla from the population.” Thereby – presumably – marginalizing his power and enhancing the counterguerrilla’s power until the guerrilla becomes irrelevant. Hence, the term “clear” for example, should not be (but usually in practice is) misinterpreted as essentially a tactical task, as in clearing a building. It implies that after forces have “swept” through a village or sector that the problem has been moved to the outside of our newly establish perimeter. So now, we “hold” what we have and our security can safely “face out” because that is where new threats will come from. It also implies that an uncertain, noncontiguous, and non-linear, environment can be rearranged into something very linear – and more comfortable – with a relatively simple maneuver of forces. Nonsense!
Then there is the culminating “build” phase that supposedly secures the peace – equally nonsensical. The predictable result of too many leaders visualizing guerrilla warfare through the lens of rich American builders rather than poor local farmers. In other words, too much money and not enough “common sense” – not that common sense is very common. In a guerrilla war, “clear” is more akin to a poor farmer clearing land for cultivation; in other words, a longer duration, hands-on, and “operational” rather than tactical process. Long story short, I would argue that successful guerrilla warfare requires combatants to think more like poor farmers rather than rich builders. Functioning societies are not akin to machines or building, they are instead analogous to living entities. They have to be healed not rebuilt. I would suggest that “build” could and should be replaced by “raise” or “grow” – as in raising a crop or a child. Anyone can readily build a government infrastructure. Every country on earth has one. However, one has to grow or raise (develop) a representative government or even a workable concept of governance. Just as we cannot kill our way to success, one cannot simply build our way out either. However, over time, we can help potentially grow/raise something that will be reasonably self-actualized and enduring.
Nevertheless, building is the American default because it is easier and faster than raising or growing. Besides, building gives the illusion of quick progress. In fact, during GWOT we established entire organizations tailored to do construction projects called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). PRTs were supposed to be optimized to “win hearts and minds” – but managed only to make Americans feel good temporarily. The PRTs chose which projects to finance and then measured their “success” by pointing to the number of projects completed and the fact that they had spent all their money. American PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq were worthless and even counterproductive to our objectives; in fact, the expenditure of allocated monies was so badly managed as to be criminal. Indeed, if PRTs were such a great idea, why not built Iraqi or Afghan led versions instead? Simple, the HNs governments (even Iraq that might conceivably have had the money) had no intention to continue supporting those kinds of projects after we left. So what was the logic of us doing it?
Still, as rich Americans, we almost instinctively move to “solve” issues by spending money. Throwing resources at a problem may create a short-term effect but will likely have no long-term impact. Again, we would be better served if we learned to think more like poor people. Watch a person raised in a poor culture build a warming fire. He will always use only the minimum fuel to survive. A man from a rich culture invariably builds a fire big enough to achieve comfort. He has little concern for conserving resources for an uncertain future. Even the poorest American has been raised in a culture when resources are abundant, available, and readily renewable. A man from a poor culture knows down to his bones that resources are a zero-sum game and always finite. To extend the poor farmer analogy, a farmer knows he cannot control the weather or other factors that may threaten his crop. But with the minimum of resources, he will still plant every year because doing so represents a better alternative for his future than doing nothing. Indeed, he hopes to increase the yield incrementally every year of his crop or his herd. He does not need peace, perfect security, or some guarantee of success in order to try.
Additionally, I advise anyone who will listen that any meeting with locals should have a concrete purpose…even if it is just to establish a working relationship. Do NOT fall into the “feel good” trap and have long, pointless discussions about how we can “help” the locals. I taught my people that it was best to deal with these engagements as business propositions. We only offer our “goods and services” pragmatically for something of equal or greater value from the other side. That cuts through the culture and language barriers no matter who we are dealing with. All cultures understand trade. It is no coincidence that trade is usually the first nonviolent and mutually beneficial interaction between two foreign cultures. I do not have to be an expert in the local history, culture, or language – or him in mine – to effectively haggle and find a workable balance between my wants and needs and his. I do not have to like the person nor do I need him to like me. It is just business and both sides can perceive themselves as winners. It works much better than the “I am here to help and give you free stuff out of the goodness of my heart” song and dance. Nobody in the world buys that BS.
Now, I am going to share one of the keys to successful guerrilla warfare campaigns. To win that kind of fight, leaders do not necessarily have to be smarter, braver, more perceptive, or better resourced than their opponent; but they do need to have a little more imagination. Guerrilla wars are not won simply by maneuvering military forces to “close with and destroy the enemy.” Rather, a guerrilla or counterguerrilla leader must concentrate on influencing, manipulating and exploiting, everything that can be brought to bear to beat the other side’s ideology and power. It means routinely thinking outside of the doctrinal box because there is no cookie-cutter “book answer” to whatever situation a guerrilla combatant will face on the ground. Finally, no matter which side we are supporting, guerrilla warfare still means killing and destroying as required. Yet, we make the effort to gain and maintain influence and conserve our resources by only killing those that need to be killed – like zealots who cannot be co-opted for example. This does not somehow make guerrilla war into “touchy-feely” warfare, as some seem to erroneously think. It is the toughest of business and it requires multi-functional and imaginative guerrilla warfighters who can bring their A-game day after day.
De Oppresso Liber!
LTC Terry Baldwin, US Army (Ret) served on active duty from 1975-2011 in various Infantry and Special Forces assignments. SSD is blessed to have him as both reader and contributor.
One other factor that I often think about is longevity. In other words, how long will you be there as opposed to those you are trying to counter, and how does that factor in the local populations mind? Even if you are training up a local force, does your backing play an outsized role in their long term success? When you pull up stakes, will they be able to maintain that status?
I do no believe we have either the national will nor national temperament to succeed at countering guerrilla warfare.
Even now, the national political level discussion has reverted back to “end games” and “exit strategies” – and that doesn’t even include accounting for the actively subversive sympathies and actions of approximately half of the political and governmental class
Our counter insurgency / counter guerrilla “victories” are historically few, far between, incomplete, and usually prematurely discarded by our walking away, dusting our hands.
Maybe our strategy should be to ignore guerrilla lesions, wait a couple decades until they metastasize into full-blown nation-state or regional cancers, and then do the radical surgery (bombing, invading, force-on-force convention war, and the spending of vast mountains of dollars) that our nation truly excels at.
You make a valid point. However, I would argue that America’s domestic situation and the “actively subversive elements” of half the governmental and ruling class, is guerrilla warfare being waged against us internally in a way that is par excellence for the craft. Sun Tzu says that, “The Supreme Commander is the one who defeats his enemy without ever engaging in battle.” The American Left is on the verge of turning America into a Socialist dictatorship without ever firing a shot, or at least a very few. They’ve been able to accomplish this through the 100 year march through the institutions, as described by Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, where they have taken control of the education systems, entertainment industry, and overwhelmingly control most of the dissemination of information by which they can spread their ideology throughout the masses. Hence you have more Millennials willing to vote for an avowed Socialist than regularly attend church or synagogue.
As regards El Terryble’s remarks regarding happenings within this country and its governments, if real trouble kindles, one must consider the continuity of government contingency plans and who runs each one in every locality at every level in the tree. Where ideological differences are as high-contrast as here in this country, it is reasonable to assume that these enclaves of hidden “representative government” will take sides themselves and form pacts of cooperation.
They do right now as evidenced by the varying responses toward participants in recent civil disobedience events and other matters.
The puzzle for would-be fighters will be quite a complex and misleading one. I doubt many will stick their heads up
All fair points. I would only add a few things. We are in a perpetual state of conflict, and those conflicts are in various stages. Guerrilla warfare is but one stage. For example, you have nation states like Iran who are now in a completely different stage. There was perhaps a time when they could have been subject to guerrilla warfare, but that time is gone, for the moment. They have now emerged to use their state to gain more capabilities with which they can make full blown war, and they’ve simultaneously seeded their own guerrilla warfare units across the region to achieve their hegemonic desires.
Yet some still see appeasement as the best strategy to have Iran “eat them last”.
Point being that even in the face of emerging full blown war threats and complex guerrilla strategies it’s becoming harder to convince people they need to be addressed militarily.
Now combine that with this other contemporary group who seems to believe we can just keep cutting off snake heads, pull back everyone to Bragg and break the glass when we need it because, “forever wars” or something.
Conclusively and more to the point of this thread, we need long term consist guerrilla strategies that run across political administrations more than ever IMVHO.
One of the main problems with how America has fought guerrilla wars or small wars over the last fifty years, is that 1). Our officer corps is taught to be apolitical, and ruthless pursuit of victory has pretty much been a no-go since World War II. A political and dogmatic chauvinism led to a robust and efficient, if cruel by today’s standards, execution of the small wars of the last 19th and early 20th centuries. 2). Due to our immense wealth, being the first society in history where the biggest factor affecting the poor is obesity, American’s generally do not have an appreciation of the base motivators of 95% of the world’s population, as this article makes clear. And 3). And most importantly, guerrilla wars are primarily wars of intelligence, Mao stated that for every armed guerrilla there where a thousand eyes monitoring the enemy, and America is abysmally bad at Humint and espionage historically, which are inherent traits of the two prime ideological catalysts for guerrilla wars over the last hundred years: Marxism and Islam. We should look to the Israel and it’s military, security and intelligence services in how to wage hybrid intelligence wars in the modern domain.
El Terryble,
Allow me to expand on your first point. Warfare has to hurt. The goal is to make it hurt one side significantly more than the other. Today, there seems to be the idea that we can destroy “things” while somehow avoiding hurting people at all. That is absurd. If what we are destroying does not inflict pain it is simply not a valid military target.
However, inflicting severe pain on an opponent need not involve wholesale slaughter of noncombatants. Look at Sherman’s campaign across Georgia. His forces went out of their way to avoid civilian casualties but systematically destroyed everything that could allow the South to extend the war. He made it hurt. Read “The Hard Hand of War” for a fuller explanation.
Years later, Sherman advocating killing the buffalo in the west in order to deprive Native Tribes of their main source of food. He reasoned that would force the Tribes onto reservations without having to kill any more of them then necessary. He wanted to hurt rather than slaughter – if possible.
Killing and cruelty for cruelty sake will likely fan the flames of guerrilla resistance and prolong the war. But controlled pain, if properly applied to cultural pressure points can bring the war to a quicker and potentially less bloody conclusion.
TLB
TLB,
I agree wholeheartedly with your statement on my first point above that, “Today, there seems to be the idea that we can destroy “things” while somehow avoiding hurting people at all. That is absurd. If what we are destroying does not inflict pain it is simply not a valid military target.” This goes to my statement that our officer corps has been made apolitical from an ideological perspective and even to some degree infected with the Marxist-Progressive virus that is destroying American society and a future for our children. “Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.” America was created by revolutionaries who pledged, “their Lives, their Fortunes, their Sacred Honor”; men who risked everything to achieve victory against the world power of that time. For whatever reason, as a society, we lack that motivation to even protect ourselves, or punish our enemies to act as a deterrent, even though we are materially the wealthiest nation in human history. We argue about what the 47 genders are and what pronouns are required for them, and engage in a self-defeating therapeutic culture of grievance and victimhood. Success breeds material largesse, material wealth breeds complacency and decadence, and complacency and decadence leads to destruction. America never seemed to have a problem winning or finishing wars until the last 50 or so years.
I have never and would never advocate or tolerate “wholesale slaughter of noncombatants,” under any conditions other than say a situation as what happened in World War II with the firebombing of Dresden and Japan. There will always be collateral damage in war, innocent people will end up being killed no matter what precautions are taken, and that must be weighed against tactical, operational, and strategic considerations; but, IMHO, ground troops that target noncombatants or rape, or loot, should be shot or hung after a court martial as an example to maintain discipline.
Targeting the enemy is another thing entirely, and this is really my point. We, as in the United States of America, do not do what is necessary in prosecuting War so as to be able to pass on to subsequent generations the blessings we inherited as American’s. I’ll give you several examples as it relates to our current and ongoing Guerrilla war against the forces of Global Jihad.
1).In 2007 in Karbala, Iraq, a Hezbollah operative named Ali Daqduq and an Shia Iraqi named Qais Khazali undertook an operation directed by the IRGC- Al Quds Force that resulted in the kidnapping an killing of five US Army soldiers. Both Daqduq and Khazali were later captured and handed over to the US. Under interrogation and through captured documents, it was reveled that they were operating at the behest of Iran and the IRGC. In December of 2011, the Obama administration released Daqduq to the Iraqi’s and back to Lebanon, instead of getting every bit of information you can out of him and then executing him as we would a German saboteur caught in civilian clothes operating as a partisan in the United States during World War II.
2). At about this same time, American intelligence became aware that 1) Iran was seeking a nuclear weapons program. 2) the post-September 11 Anthrax investigation had been botched by then FBI Director Robert Mueller, with the Anthrax likely coming from a foreign source. 3). The IRGC and Qassem Soleimani in conjunction with Hezbollah and Imad Mugniyeh, had provided travel for at least 9 of the nineteen September 11th hijackers from training camps in Afghanistan through Iran, into Lebanon using Iranian military transport, so as to conceal their movements. It was also revealed that Iran continued to harbor high level al Qaeda operatives such as bin Laden’s son and possibly bin Laden himself at one point, as well as others. The Obama adiministration knew all this and gave Iran $150 billion and a nuclear deal where inspections of their military compounds were off limits. Why?
3). Everyone is familiar with Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who probably stabbed an Islamic State fighter to death and was pardoned by President Trump. Why is the United States releasing terrorists like Ali Daqduq and the Taliban Five, yet prosecuting war hero’s like Eddie Gallagher for doing what needs to be done in by taking out what is tantamount to Hostis Humani Generis -enemies of all mankind -Islamic State subhuman cockroaches ?
Why was there not mass resignations among the American officer corps? After many of these issues there should have been. Why were people like Qassem Soleimani, Muqtada al Sadr, and AQ Khan not targeted for liquidation circa 2003? Imad Mugniyeh wasn’t killed until 2008, when he had directed the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing, the kidnapping and killing of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, and killed a US Navy sailor on a hijacked TWA airline. We do not ruthlessly prosecute war and utilize the dialectical mechanisms of War to inform our enemy.
This month marks the 75th Anniversary of the landing on Iwo Jima. The Marines that took Iwo and Army and Marine troops that later took Okinawa, operated under laws of war called “reciprocity”, where they didn’t engage in the torture that the Japanese Imperial soldiers practiced, but they didn’t take prisoners except to get operational intelligence before the Japanese in question were dispatched. Our Jihadist enemies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are basically subhuman barbarians that would kill, rape, or enslave every single American if they could get away with it. We shouldn’t be taking prisoner’s except to get information, and we sure as hell shouldn’t be giving them habeas corpus rights as the Supreme Court gave Guantanamo Jihadists under Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush.
None of this is in anyway a rant directed at TLB or the loyal and patriotic readers and producers of SSD. But something is rotten in Denmark and the fish rots from the head. All one has to do is take a look at what happened to the FBI under Jim Comey with Operation Crossfire Hurricane and the Hillary Clinton e-mail fiasco, and it doesn’t take a college degree to know that we are losing the war to keep America a free country and the greatest nation on earth.
Well said. Occum’s Razor wins again. As a guy, that happened to have the same background as the author, the fight is not a military or civil affairs front. Guerrilla’s are the ones that stay behind, after your tour is finished in the box. The point being no level of advanced thinking or War College diploma will put your side as the “winner” until history is written. Thinking like the indigenous is not limited to someone of limited means but, growing up an inch on this side of starvation helps drive home how “asymmetric” warfare (I detest that term) can be prosecuted to change the civil population view (pride and zero sum gain concepts). This article drives home EXACTLY what goes thru everyone’s mind in the “beaten zone”. Well said.
Guerrilla Warfare is more to the political side of the Politics-War continuum as stated by Clausewitz in his maxim that, “War is Politics by other means”. (If, “War is Politics by other means”, then it must be understood that Politics is War by other, less violent means). Both War and Politics are functions of power, the utilization of power, and its proper moral and functional use. Man is a political animal, whether he believes so or not. Man seeks to maximize his “power” relative to his environment, which may just be feeding his family and surviving. Ultimately, one cannot have a discussion on War or Politics without considering the moral element: right and wrong, Good and Evil. Guerilla Warfare blurs the lines between the Good and the Evil, and ultimately seeks to drain a more powerful adversary. The key to winning a guerrilla war is ideology and will. Every guerrilla force has an ideology, whether it be Communism, ethnic identity, Sunni or Shia Islam (Islam being a political ideology as much as a religion), or just opposition to a occupational force or tyrannical government. Ultimately, in order to succeed as a guerrilla you must disseminate your ideology to the point of critical mass to be able seize control of the levers of power. Mao Tse Tung referee to this as the final phase and purpose of guerrilla warfare. When fighting guerrilla’s, a man objective should be to separate and root out the hard ideological adherent from the populace they seek to infuse with their ideology. After attacking and sorting the ideological underpinnings of the guerrilla movement, or creating mindset throughout as much of the populace as one can, you must erode your enemy’s will. Entire treatises have been written about this, but two books that should be on every guerrilla or counter-guerrilla fighter’s bookshelf should be Mao’s “On Guerrilla Warfare: edited with a foreword by Samuel Griffith III”, and “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, where the last 50 pages are probably the best military treatise you’ll ever read. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/on-guerrilla-warfare_samuel-b-griffith_mao-tse-tung/572780/item/7606364/?mkwid=%7cdm&pcrid=395931190724&pkw=&pmt=&slid=&plc=&pgrid=83211845752&ptaid=pla-838337054151&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_Yiel4bU5wIVyp6zCh0ynw3mEAQYAiABEgJVjfD_BwE#isbn=0252068920&idiq=7606364
Thank you, Sir! I am looking out for FLC Part IV. It is great and informative series.
Chris,
I have not forgotten. Some subjects just take longer to “percolate” then others.
TLB
Here’s the bottom line: COIN is BS. Period. End of story.
It can *only* be attempted by a government which is indigenous, and has credibility and respect – note: not *fear* – by the population. The government’s troops must be able to speak the local language, understand the local culture because *they grew up there*, and must respect the local population. Then they have to be able to put the equivalent of a platoon in *every neighborhood* for the long term until the enemy force has been defeated.
And most importantly, there has to be a valid reason for opposing the guerrilla – meaning the guerrilla itself has no valid reason to exist – and if a guerrilla force doesn’t have the support of the population, it will fail in the long run anyway (albeit it may cause much damage in the meantime, if it’s supported by outside forces.)
The US does *not* qualify on *any* of these characteristics. Unfortunately the US is *not* going to learn this any time soon because the goal of the US is hegemony over other peoples for reasons of *money* – which attitude is universally despised by virtually every local population in the world.
I don’t know about BS (maybe more of a gilded turd?) but COIN involving large numbers of conventional troops is definitely wasteful. The history of COIN is a mostly a history of failure, suffering and ephemeral results at best. Conventional forces are not really trained, equipped or organized for COIN but of course, they do windows when tasked to do windows. IMO, COIN demands really clear goals, timelines and specialized troops…none of which are usually possible/easy to achieve. I agree with Baldwin that we don’t get the chance to choose the fights we get into and everyone should be prepared for whatever great or poorly wrought solution the pols and GO’s devise in times of need. FWIW, “large scale” COIN seems to be something of an indulgence that nations engage in when they don’t feel they are facing existential threats. Those days would seem to be in our past.
Richard,
You are entitled to your opinion about COIN. However, reality and history has shown that wars – guerrilla and otherwise – are “come as you are” affairs. Whether we like it, or are ready for that kind of conflict, or not. A professional soldier does not have the luxury to assume that he will only have to fight wars that he is fully trained or comfortable with fighting. We have to prepare for all the worst-case scenarios.
In 1940 the French Generals thought they had it whipped with the Maginot Line. Until those pesky Germans came up with Blitzkrieg and suddenly fixed fortifications were irrelevant. The Iraqis were even more accommodating by arraying their forces in a traditional defense in Kuwait during Desert Storm some 50 years later. Our superior air forces easily defeated them in detail. Smart enemies will not be so accommodating.
Future opponents –even larger nation-states like China and Russia – are unlikely to engage in a symmetrical attrition based contest with us. They will employ asymmetrical forces and capabilities to strike where we are weaker. That means cyber, surrogate, and hybrid forms of direct and indirect confrontation. I would argue that guerrilla warfare campaigns are actually something we obviously need to get significantly better at executing then we are now.
I agree with you that local forces must take the lead role. Still, because the local security forces are inevitably amateur counterguerrillas at best, – as I mentioned in the article – they need some help to figure out what right looks like. Unfortunately, during GWOT, the perpetually impatient conventional US and Coalition forces would more often than not push the locals aside because “we can do it better.” Of course, that absolutely destroyed any confidence those local forces might have in themselves as well as any confidence the population might have with those forces.
I would disagree with you about a couple of other points. If the indigenous government already has “credibility and (mutual) respect” of the population there would be no guerrillas. Even if funded and supported by outside factions, guerrillas would have no popular support and would be quickly eliminated. . Note what happened to Che when he tried to export his revolutionary template outside of Cuba. Therefore, it is always a question of the local government regaining and then maintaining a minimum amount of that credibility and respect with the population. Again, they may need professional help getting it right.
Finally, putting a platoon in every neighborhood and trying to “guard everything” is a poor strategy for fighting guerrillas. Filling the streets with armed soldiers does NOT engender a sense of security but rather one of anxiety and heightened threat. It makes the guerrilla seem more powerful than he is and actually broadcasts a sense of fear and weakness on the part of the government. The population will also quickly resent those security forces if they are seen as a magnet attracting guerrilla violence directly into those neighborhoods. Just some things to think about.
TLB
Are you really considered “poor” by US standard, when you can’t afford own car at 15 and newest fashion??
Dr. Blutwurst,
Yes, by U.S. standards we were well below the poverty line – and stayed there. I’d say that made us officially poor. As I said, I did not feel poor until I was old enough to notice those material things. But I saw my mother and father working their fingers to the bone every day just to tread water.
I worked a lot of hours and saved every dime for about 18 months just to put a down payment on that first 10 year old jalopy. It was a 64 “utless.” The “C” had been knocked off by a previous owner in a fender bender or it would have been a high mileage Cutless. But it was mine and the Bank’s. I had to keep working just to make the payments. I mostly kept riding my bike to school because I often couldn’t afford gas – which was only about 25 cents a gallon at the time. Of course I wrapped it around a telephone pole during my senior year.
As a new Army PFC in 1975, I felt well off because I was pulling in almost as much money as my father – and I did not have a wife and kids. My family was certainly poor enough to make my point.
TLB
I wrote this reply with the intent of merely venting to myself, and with no intent on actually putting it up. After thinking about it, though…?
Shit needs to be said, and I apologize to anybody reading this who doesn’t deserve the hate, although I’ll be damned if I can think of any by name, at the moment. I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there in the ranks of our fine commissioned officer corps and the upper echelons of the enlisted force who’ve simply kept their heads below the parapet, and who haven’t taken a long, hard look at what the fuck we’re really doing in Afghanistan.
To them, I apologize and simply say that if this doesn’t apply to you, then it’s not addressed to you. Y’all might want to smell the coffee, however, and recognize what is really going on around you in your beloved institution.
Sometimes, you have to recognize that what you love is killing you, and not worthy of you in any way, shape, or form–Co-dependency is an ugly thing, particularly when you’re not even aware of it.
Those of you who *are* responsible for the sorry state of affairs? Get fucked. You’ll get yours, eventually, you who betrayed the sacred trust your troops put in you when they put their lives in your hands. I don’t doubt but that will only be in whatever afterlife you’ve earned, but it will happen. They’re probably going to have to open another circle in Hell, just to accommodate the scope of what you’ve done.
_____________________________
In this post, we see displayed the reason we’re losing this war–If you can be said to lose such a thing, and if you can call it a war. Not so sure about either of those, to be honest.
Firstly, the essential issue on display here is that we have an office corps and military that can’t identify the enemy, or understand what the real center of gravity is in this “not-war”.
Y’all think the Taliban is the problem–The in-country “guerrilla army” that we’ve been trading punches with since 9/11.
Meanwhile, we’re paying the Pakistanis billions of dollars, subsidizing their military, which is basically a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ISI, or the group further up the chain that really runs Pakistan, the ISI, and the Pakistani military together. They created the Taliban, they ran it, and they’ve run it since about the time they were created shortly after the Soviets pulled out.
Do none of you highly-trained “military leaders” grasp the fucking fact that bin Laden was “hiding” in plain sight, in Abbottabad, in a compound likely provided by those same Pakistani interests which created, subsidized, and approved of everything that the Taliban did before, during, and after 9/11? Do none of you comprehend the implications of that fact?
How fucking stupid are you people? Seriously? COIN? This isn’t a fucking COIN situation, you fucking morons, this is an unconventional war being run from the back offices of one of our fucking “allies”, and you lot can’t be honest enough with yourselves or your troops to admit to that fact, confront our equally moronic politicians and then either get the fuck out or cut the Gordion knot and destroy the Cordyceps fungus-equivalent that has hijacked the Pakistani nation-state, and which is our real enemy.
Insurgencies are organic things, arising out of the populace. You get those when you crank down the pressures on that populace, and they decide it’s better to die than put up with your bullshit. Insurgencies do not need subsidy and encouragement from outside agencies, the way the Taliban has to have. Insurgencies arise from the mass, like bread dough rising. You don’t have to pump in the gasses to make that happen–Natural conditions make it so.
On the other hand, unconventional war requires outside intervention to keep things going, and that’s what we have going on here: Outside agency pumping in the money, the resources, and the people to keep it all afloat. Remove the outside agent, and the problem evaporates because there are no real underlying conditions to keep it going.
The mujahedeen fought the Soviets because the Soviets were trying to erase their religion and culture, replacing it with Communism. Note that we’re not doing that to the Afghan public, and are instead scrupulously observant of their rights. Nobody on our side has been blowing up mosques or forcing anyone into doing much of anything–Those little girls going to school aren’t being rounded up at gun point and forced into them, their parents are sending them there. The conditions for a true, organic insurgency aren’t really there, so why are we seeing what we are?
Because it’s not a fucking insurgency.
It’s a goddamn unconventional war we’re in, with the Pakistani Islamicists. Give it whatever bullshit name you like, whether it’s “Fourth-Generation War” or some other buzzword, it’s not a fucking insurgency. Those can be addressed by the same means the Brits fought the Communists in Malaya, or how we fought the same sort of thing in the Philippines–So long as you don’t have an outside agent pumping in the money and the personnel, you can call it COIN.
The minute you have a North Vietnam or another nation-state directing things and providing support, that’s now a war between nations that hasn’t been declared, and is being fought in the shadows. You win those by breaking the will of that enemy to provide the support and safe havens that they are to the supposed “insurgents”. Addressing the insurgents is a waste of time, because they’re not the ones making the decisions, or doing much more than being cat’s paws for the country you’re actually at war with. All you’re doing in that situation is playing a massive and expensive game of whack-a-mole, wasting time, money, and the lives of your men. So long as someone is pumping the quarters into the machine, the game is going to go on.
It’s really ironic to note that the Islamicist cadre that has run Pakistan since day one has managed to put things over on the oh-so-sophisticated and highly educated “elite” class of these United States. They didn’t graduate from Harvard or Yale, they didn’t come out of USMA, but they’ve displayed performance in the last twenty-odd years that none of the graduates from our fine institutions have managed.
Instead, they’ve taken you lot to the fucking cleaners, and somehow persuaded everyone that they’re not the problem.
bin Laden. Abbottabad. What the fuck does it take to wake you people the fuck up? How do you suppose he got there? Who do you suppose paid for that, and why the fuck did you allow that state of affairs to exist? The follow-on to confirmation that bin Laden was actually hiding out in the plain view of the Pakistani elite should have been a series of nuclear weapons, delivered and centered on every Pakistani military facility in existence. Instead, you nodded your heads and continued to sign the fucking checks for them to keep paying the Taliban to go into Afghanistan and kill your own fucking troops.
I despair, sometimes, I really do. The mass political/military leadership in the United States is so venally self-interested and incompetent that it’s led our troops into this goddamn mess, and has yet to be honest enough to point out that the fucking Emperor is wandering about naked and groping the public while masturbating furiously in their faces.
In case the fact has escaped you “military professionals”, your main job at the national level is to advise the politicians on military-related matters. This would be one of them, and if the felching politicians don’t listen, you then have a responsibility to your troops to lay it on the line and make an issue of it publicly by resigning your commission in protest. You don’t continue to play charades and send your men into the utterly depraved maw of a useless and endless war. Let alone, help the enemy to do it to them.
The really outrageous thing here is that we’re basically paying for this whole travesty. Pakistan would be a poverty-stricken failed state if it weren’t for two things: The Saudis using them as a cut-out to get nuclear weapons, and us being the goddamn idiots we are and paying for them to kill our own troops.
Just how fucking far do you suppose the Taliban would be getting, if they didn’t have the Pakistani madrassas, safe areas, and logistics support they get in Pakistan? Do none of you fucking idiots in the sainted hierarchy not notice that the Pakistanis are using the same model against us in Afghanistan that we helped them use against the Soviets, with the only difference being that the Pakistanis have managed to pull off an incredible ju-jitsu move, and have us simultaneously basing much of our logistics effort in their country (which is making a lot of them very wealthy…), and paying them to subsidize the very people we’re fighting in Afghanistan? Not to mention, ripping us off to the tune of millions in “lost material/wastage” in shipping?
Seriously–How fucking stupid are you people? Collectively, I mean–The officer corps has failed this nation on such an incredibly massive scale in this regard that it is barely comprehensible. You almost have to posit either mass delusional insanity or some fictional conspiracy for it to be believable.
Fucking COIN… This is not a “COIN” situation, dumbasses. This is a fucking situation where we’re paying, as a nation, and at your fucking behest, people to kill our troops.
That’s either so fucking fundamentally incompetent that I can’t come up with the words to describe it, or it is venal beyond belief. Stupidity could not possibly account for this situation, or most of the people in our government’s security apparatus wouldn’t be able to breathe without someone reminding them that they needed to do so every few seconds.
You want to “end the war in Afghanistan”? Here’s what you do: Cut the fuckers off from their support and infrastructure in Pakistan by identifying the true “center of gravity” in this not-war, and going after the Islamicist dipshits that have run Pakistan since the Partition. The enemy is not some half-ass tribal type, but the carefully coiffed and suited assholes in offices around Peshawar and Abbottabad who pay our money, that yougave them, to recruit, train, equip, and then transport said semi-literate dumbasses into Afghanistan to kill our soldiers with our tax dollars.
You really might as well cut out the middleman, and quit sending in soldiers–Just pick out a random selection here in the states, and put a bullet into their heads out in front of the next self-congratulatory “ceremonial formation” you decide to hold. It’d be kinder, and you’d still have the same effect of their parents and kin paying for the bullet they’re killed with.
Oh. I guess the optics might be a bit bad, were you to have the honesty to do that.
Although, to be quite honest, there’s another center of gravity in this war, one I’m increasingly coming to see as the real enemy: Our own feckless felching politicians and “leadership” who’ve gotten us into this dead-end mess, and who refuse to recognize what they’ve done. God help the lot of you when the troops finally recognize your essential incompetence and overall venality. Not to mention, your utter lack of regard for their lives and well-being.
Fucking COIN. How stupid are you people? Seriously? COIN? This isn’t a COIN situation, you morons–If it was, it should have ended not too long after we destroyed the Taliban field forces and drove them out of the country. Instead, you lot allowed them a “safe refuge”, yet a-fucking-gain, same way as you morons allowed the VC to have North Vietnam, and this time, you set it up so that instead of the Soviets paying for it, we are. How fucking stupid do you people get, really?
Fuck me. Seriously, just fuck me blind so I don’t have to keep seeing and talking to people coming back from the “not-war” crippled for life physically or mentally.
Elements of the officer corps in this country has fundamentally betrayed their responsibilities to the nation and the soldiers they lead with this bullshit, and when the time comes that the body of the nation comes to realize that, most of you are going to get what you’ve been giving us in the ass right between the eyes. The majority of you who are responsible are going to wind up penniless and despised, if not dangling from ropes. Along with, unfortunately, a lot of collaterally-damaged men of good will who really weren’t paying attention or aware of what’s been going on. Bad shit happens when the page turns…
COIN. What a fucking joke. You fucks are paying people to kill our soldiers, and arguing about the number of insurgents that can dance on the head of a pin. This is not a goddamn “insurgency”–It’s a war being fought from a battlefield you assholes won’t even deign to recognize or fight on.
Fuck, at least in Vietnam the set of incompetents we had then made the Soviets pay for it all. You people are taxing the shit out of Americans to subsidize the Pakistanis who pay the Taliban to kill your own fucking soldiers. What the fuck does that make you, America’s “elite” officer corps? Aside from venal, incompetent, and entirely unfit to lead American enlisted soldiers? It’s a wonder any of you can stand in front of your soldiers and maintain eye contact. There should have been mass resignations in the force by now, if any of you were living up to the bullshit standards you go on and on and on about in your cute little “change of command” homilies and lectures to the troops.
If this doesn’t apply to you, in the commissioned ranks, ignore it. But, look around at the rest of your peers, and think about what you are taking part in. Consider where it is all going, and what’s going to happen, once enough of the people you’re supposed to be “serving” (which term I apparently misunderstood the definition of, during my own time before the flag…) figure out what has been going on since around 2003, and how many of their sons and daughters have died under your “leadership” due to “insurgents” that were trained and supplied with funds that they they were taxed to hell and back to pay for.
Why the fuck haven’t any of you spoken out? Why are you still participating in this madness? Why no resignations, no letters to Congress? Why the fuck aren’t we in Pakistan, rooting out the people who actually run the Taliban, using our money?
COIN… I’d laugh my ass off, but the Gods of the Copybook Headings already are. Hubris has been on stage for the last seventeen years or so, but I can hear Nemesis warming up in the wings. She’s gonna be doing one hell of a solo on you sorry lot.
Settle down, Beavis.
That level of wit, brevity and repartee is seldom seen outside the VA counselor community.
Kirk,
Long time no see. I appreciate you and Terryable providing your unvarnished imput. Although I did not make my points as forcefully, we are more in agreement than not. However, I would challenge both of you to reconsider two points.
First, in reference to uniformed leaders, I would suggest that institutional and individual ignorance and, yes, gross incompetence are far more to blame for failure then political correctness or professional inertia. That was obvious to me. Even in the case of some senior leaders who were knowledgeable and competent they still had to work through layers of subordinate leaders who often were neither.
Second, I absolutely disagree with the idea of “mass resignations” as a means of initiating meaningful change. The military in our Republic is NOT empowered by our Constitution or the people – nor should it be – to “fix” civilian political leadership or countermand their decisions. Soldiers are obligated not to follow illegal orders; but we are equally obliged to follow all legal orders – even the stupid orders.
There is an old saying that all you get from falling on your sword is a bloody sword. A bunch of officers resigning would be in the news for about 5 minutes and would then be forgotten. Zero impact. If the best and most principled officers and NCOs actually did resign, that exodus would just provide promotion opportunities to those less capable and less principled who stay on.
That would certainly not make life any better for the Nation or for the soldiers in the ranks also left behind. So, if you are reasonably competent and principled it is your duty – an act of selfless service really – to stay in the fight and do what you can to mitigate the nonsense by providing as much good leadership as you can. At least that reasoning – call it rationalization if you will – worked for me. Good discussion!
TLB
I will add one concrete example. I mentioned De-Baathification in the article. That was a policy out of Washington – pushed by Iraqi Shia leaders – that was not supported by any of the uniformed US leaders in DC or in Theater.
I personally sat in numerous VTCs in which the generals tried to reason with the senior political leadership – up to and including the SECDEF – not to do it. That did not work. The generals did not give up and reattacked the issue time and again throughout the summer of ’03.
They gave their best military advise that it was counterproductive and ill advised – and, yes, even said it was stupid. When reason failed they begged and pleaded. The civilian leadership finally told the generals to shut up or resign. They shut up but stayed on. In that case, I have no doubt they did the right thing.
I witnessed similar confrontational situations many times during GWOT. In the end, the politicians always win. I certainly found that frustrating, but I also know it is how our system of government is supposed to work. The citizens – not the military – are supposed to hold our politicians accountable for their bad decisions.
TLB
I have to clarify one of my points above, about how one of the main reasons America fails at being able to counter guerrilla warfare, or is at most batting .222 over the last 60 years, is that its officer corps has become apolitical. Guerrilla warfare being primarily about using the populace as an instrument for the mass dissemination of a political ideology on behalf of a core cadre of armed political adherents in order to seize control of the levers of power, the United States Military Officer cadre as become divorced from its a priori ideological purpose. The United States Army was founded as a guerrilla army under George Washington from militia, such as the Son’s of Liberty. The Colonial Army did join battle with the British on a conventional level, but George Washington’s overall strategy was no different then the one that Ho Chi Minh and Gen Giap used effectively against the French and later the ROSV and the American’s. General Washington and the Founding Fathers were able to harness the benefits of a revolutionary political ideology by inculcating an armed force and a rather small minority of the population with this ideology; motivating them to defeat a much larger and superior force with skilled leadership. The Colonials could wage war knowing they controlled the moral center of gravity, and as Napoleon said, “The moral aspect of War is three to one to the physical.”
The American officer corps has been depoliticized for the most part —separated from the moral center of gravity rooted in American history, it’s founding documents, its culture, and traditions; or even worse adopting a neutered genuflection subservient to a foreign ideology of political correctness and Progressivism. Granted, the military was one of the last bastions of American Ideological virtue and traditionalism, even past the election of Barack Obama in 2008; but things have changed drastically and for the worse over the last ten years. It is indicative of the problem when there was nary a peep from the military establishment as the Obama administration eviscerated America’s military capabilities, released terrorists, surrendered the South China Sea to the ChiCom PLA, set free traitors and deserters(Bradley Manning and Bowe Bergdahl), and prosecuted American troops for slapping al Qaeda terrorists and Afghan pederasts; but under Donald Trump there has been outright insubordination, and possible violations of the UCMJ in some cases, by the likes of Adm. McCraven, Gen. Michael Hayden, James Clapper, and LTC Vindman and his brother.
Officers and enlisted take different oaths of entry into the military, with officers pledging to, “…protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic”, with the enlisted oath adding a clause to obey the orders of the President. Officers are not beholden to the President of the United States, they serve him as Commander in Chief under the Constitution. American military officers should be as well versed in the Constitution as they are their MOS, reading not just America’s founding documents, but the Federalist Papers and Washington’s farewell Address. This is why America loses wars, because we don’t know who we are anymore, and the people tasked with protecting that which hold’s us together are AWOL or actively working for the wrong side. There’s notable exceptions, such as Admiral James Lyons, LT GEN Jerry Boykin, and former Marine Corps Commandant, Gen Al Gray but far too many flag ranked officers sit back as the Republic burns and domestic enemies beholden to a foreign ideology, Marxist-Progressivism, rape the Constitution.
If a Marxist-Communist, like Bernie Sanders, is elected president, something that would threaten the very survival of the United States, then the US military officer corps has a sworn duty to intervene if the Marxist President violates the Constitution, which would be inevitable. Just like DoD Investigators should be conducting a parallel investigation to AG Barr and USA Durham in reference to attempts by those at the State Department, DOJ, FBI, CIA, FISA courts, and the Obama administration to steal the 2016 election, stage a coup against a duly elected president, and turn America into a socialist dictatorship. Only when we know ourselves and rid the city of the traitor inside our own walls can we deal with the enemy outside our gates.
A well placed spy is worth a million men in the field.
This is how to wage war against a stronger, technology advanced society through “War by means other than violence.” https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/turkey-proves-refugees-are-weapon-treat-them-one-daniel-greenfield/