Stubbing David's Toe
Posted by Michael Cohen
David Shorr has offered an interesting critique below of my argument regarding the Powell Doctrine and its efficacy versus counter-insurgency doctrine. He makes the point that:
Sure, this is absolutely true, insurgencies fail all the time. In fact, they probably fail more often then they succeed. But that isn't the issue. The question at hand is whether the US should fight them in the first place and whether we have the political will to see them through. I'm hard pressed to think of any that the US has fought over the past century that would be considered a strategic victory for the United States. One could argue that the US was successful in defeating an insurgency in the Philippines. It also took many, many years, involved the deaths of as many as a million people (estimates vary) and was defined by terrible acts of torture by the United States. In short, it's not exactly a model we can or should replicate.
As for other counter-insurgencies fought by the US they are a trail of woe - in Somalia and Lebanon, we packed up after getting our nose bloodied and left both places in even worse condition than we found them. In Vietnam, we had some limited success at turning the tide against the insurgency but of course we lost the war and at a terrible cost. In Iraq, we had some limited success, although it's still an open question as to whether we are actually fighting a counter-insurgent campaign or a pacification campaign. But that hardly matters; I can't imagine David or anyone else would argue it was a good idea for us to get involved in a guerrilla fighting campaign in Iraq. It was a point brought home to me last night when I saw the excellent and harrowing "The Hurt Locker."
Ironically, I would make the argument that the only successful counter-insurgency the United States ever fought or at least the one that brought the most obvious strategic victory was the Civil War - and we weren't exactly using modern COIN tactics then.
David argues, "[T]he political will to see such conflicts to the end was in short supply on the U.S. side -- and in great supply among its enemies . . . except when it isn't." And David is right that factors vary from one situation to the next in general, but not really when the US intervenes in counter-insurgency conflicts. They almost always end badly or they force the US to pay far too great a price that is not commensurate with our national interests.
Now maybe our experience in Iraq has taught us the lessons of how to fight counter-insurgencies effectively. Maybe FM 3-24 is the holy grail that will ensure we are more successful at COIN in the future.
Color me skeptical.