The Irrelevance of Counterinsurgency Theory

I have all kinds of disagreements with today's Max Boot column, but there's a deeper meta-level disagreement I also have with him and with General David Petraeus, "Front Man for Bush's Iraq Plan" namely that I don't see how all this stuff about counterinsurgency is even relevant to the situation in Iraq today. To the situation in Iraq in 2003? Sure maybe. Maybe even some time into 2004. Back then you had an insurgency/counterinsurgency dynamic. You had a political entity we were wholeheartedly backing -- the Coalition Provisional Authority -- and you had insurgent groups fighting against it. Chestnuts like "Which side gives the best protection, which one threatens the most, which one is most likely to win, these are the criteria governing the population's stand" were likely applicable then.

Today, though, we're beyond all that. The dynamic in Iraq has become complicated and multi-faceted. We don't wholeheartedly support the agenda of Nouri al-Maliki's political coalition. There are competing armed groups in Iraq whose power we'd like to check. There is, as everyone knows, a condition of multi-pronged civil war and we're not eager to take sides in it. Under those circumstances, however, handbooks about beating back insurgencies aren't relevant. If we had some coherent political goals, it would be worth having a discussion about methods of achieving those goals. But we don't have them. The administration's policy is based on the idea that the Middle East is meaningfully divided between an "extremist" team (the Mahdi Army, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, UPDATE: and al-Qaeda) and a "moderate" team (Israel, Sinioria, King Hussein, the United States, Mubarrak) and that we're trying to help the moderates beat the extremists. This is just a giant, baffling, analytical error and no number of handbooks is going to change it.

2/7/07 10:52AM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

Administration policy is to prolong the inevitable until it can be blamed on the Democrats.

Posted by: mal on February 7, 2007 11:13 AM

Matthew,

A gem.

Mal,

That's the most charitable explanation. The less charitable, and sadly much more likely, explanation involves a not so little place called Iran.

Posted by: Larry M on February 7, 2007 11:17 AM

I thought this plan was going to succeed "because it has to"?

Posted by: supersaurus on February 7, 2007 11:44 AM

Boot's nod to the Boer war is progressive by Peretz-ian standards.

Posted by: P O'Neill on February 7, 2007 11:52 AM

A gem, indeed. The reason we read Yglesias.

Posted by: H. Haller on February 7, 2007 12:05 PM

Bush's "surge" is a PR move, not a military one. It's like when sales of a crappy product are flagging, and the marketing department suggests pumping up the advertising in response. It doesn't fix the real problem, but it does at least paper it over so the CEO's can draw their checks for a little while longer.

Posted by: al-Anon on February 7, 2007 12:10 PM

Obviously I trust the opinion of a decorated war hero and retired brigadier general like Max Boot over some fresh kid like Yglesias.

Posted by: Linus on February 7, 2007 12:13 PM

It is an insightful post; the point that we do not seem to have any real political goals is good and needs constant reiteration. However, it's King Abdullah II of Jordan, not King Hussein.

Posted by: MRM in Hoboken on February 7, 2007 12:15 PM

"a decorated war hero and retired brigadier general like Max Boot"

Mr. Boot has precisely as much military experience as Matthew Yglesias.

Posted by: rea on February 7, 2007 12:22 PM

The idea of a "moderate Arabs plaus Israel-versus Shiia extremists" is fairly new Administration gambit (I think it dates exactly from the capture of an Israeli soldier by Hezbollah last year). Condi's birth pangs, etc.

It's just a way to set up an armed conflict with Iran, since Iran has standing armies and government buildings - the types of things our military is designed to destroy. And it has oil, which Cheney feels we need to entirely control, or at least profit his friends with.

Somehow, the completely Sunni (and Saudi) aspect of AlQuaida has gotten lost in all of this.

Posted by: HeavyJ on February 7, 2007 12:27 PM

There are times when something you read seems so obvious that you wonder why you hadn't said it yourself. There really is no one in Iraq for whom we are fighting. The government isn't what we want it to be, and no amount of pressure is going to change that. I doubt we could even stage a coup and put in place anyone amenable to our goals.

When the Maliki government called a halt on efforts to find a missing American soldier thought to be in Sadr city, it was made clear that given a choice between the American Army and the Shiite militias, they considered the Shiite Militias more important.

Posted by: Njorl on February 7, 2007 12:28 PM

Yes, but Max Boot has a very martial sounding name.

Josh Marshall also had a post yesterday, pointing out that, despite all the dire rhetoric about how we can't afford to lose, failure in Iraq probably won't be too bad for us. As long as the oil keeps flowing, does it really matter who's in control?

Needless to say, the whole thing has been a total catastrophe for the Iraqis, but I doubt too many Americans will be losing sleep over that.

Posted by: Jim W on February 7, 2007 12:31 PM

Excellent. Outstanding. Really.

Now, explain how the ruling party and its minions become so incredibly stupid. (I'm serious. I'm really baffled at how it is, that Bush, clearly a moron, manages to turn all these other, accomplished people into liars and morons.)

Posted by: Bruce Wilder on February 7, 2007 12:44 PM

This is probably the best argument I've read for why we should get out now - this and that article by Luttwack in the NYT (why nothing about that one here?) yesterday.
I'm still not for withdrawal, but I'm not sure how to deal with the issues MY brings up here.

Posted by: Berger on February 7, 2007 02:21 PM

Boot points to the central requirement for any effort at political stability. You need to provide physical security first. We've failed at that. Not enough troops. We don't have the will to provide enough troops and the weak and fractured Iraqi government apparently doesn't have the capability or will either.

In most insurgencies there are multiple contending parties. Iraq is not a whole lot different. So the "this is a civil war" meme doesn't mean that counterinsurgency doctrine isn't relevant. We always had to try to make friends with those we didn't want to fight. It's certainly the case that an imposed authoritarian government, martial law and all that, might have made providing security a whole lot easier. But that wasn't the "freedom" vision of the neo-cons.

All that said, Boot is pretty much whistling in the wind, and as many have pointed out is no soldier.

Posted by: chew2 on February 7, 2007 02:30 PM

"The administration's policy is based on the idea that the Middle East is meaningfully divided between an "extremist" team (the Mahdi Army, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, UPDATE: and al-Qaeda) and a "moderate" team (Israel, Sinioria, King Hussein, the United States, Mubarrak) and that we're trying to help the moderates beat the extremists."

Not true. The Middle East is sort of a ménage à trois with Israel, the Shia and the Sunnis. Yes the U.S. dislikes the Syrian dictatorship (which assassinated Hariri), the theocracy of Iran, the Mahdi Army (financed by Iran), Hamas & Hezbollah (both financed and helped out by Syria and Iran). Yes Iran is Shia. However Hamas (elected to power b/c of Bush against Israel's wishes) is Sunni, the Sinioria government is Sunni. Hezbollah is Shia as is the Iraqi governming coalition, which includes the Mahdi army. The Kurds too, are Sunni but secular.

So it's not the U.S. + Israel + the Sunnis against Iran and the Shia. Also, the U.S.'s policy of advocating democracy is against the interests of the Saudi Kingdom and the Egyptian dictatorship. What's novel is that Iran and Saudi Arabia are jointly trying to calm down the situation in Lebanon. Hopefully they will do the same for Iraq where Iran finances the anti-American Sadrists and the Saudis, or elements of its elite, support the Sunnin "insurgents."

Having said this I realize what the party line is: It's All Bush's fault! And none of these parties have any agency or responsibilty...

Thomas Friedman had a good column today. Oh, and I believe a military confrontation with Iran would be disasterous. And I seriously doubt it will happen.

Posted by: Peter K. on February 7, 2007 02:39 PM

Well, this is all no problem. We could go ahead and dismantle the existing Iraqi government and re-establish a US governing authority that would pacify the country. Then we'd have a nice, raging insurgency to quash. It would be like a do-over.

Posted by: StJoe on February 7, 2007 03:04 PM

Peter K,

You don't understand Iraqi politics well enough. SCIRI and Dawa are both anti-American, pro-Iranian parties - certainly traditionally. You might have heard about that guy the US accused yesterday of the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing? He's in SCIRI, which is supposedly a part of the "moderate" forces. SCIRI was created by the Iranian government in 1982 and fought for Iran in the Iran/Iraq war. Dawa helped found Hezbollah, and the current PM of Iraq is in Dawa.

If anything, Sadr is the least pro-Iranian Shi'ite leader in iraq, although you are correct he is now receiving funding and weapons from Iran.

I could go on, but current US policy is esseentially a revision to the pre-9/11 middle east policy, which valued stability and strongly supported monarchies and dictatorships, even if they were very repressive, if they served US interests. This is a coherent policy in and of itself, but it is exactly the opposite of the rationale the Iraq war was based - that "creative chaos" and "democratic transformation" would do the region well. Well, we had some of that, and the results are pretty bad. Hence the current incoherence.

Posted by: Ben P on February 7, 2007 03:11 PM

Sinioria?

Hahahaha.

Good one!

Posted by: Nick Kaufman on February 7, 2007 03:18 PM

Mr. Boot has precisely as much military experience as Matthew Yglesias.

Untrue. Matthew Yglesias fought in WW2 and in the Civil War, including the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Hastings. He once killed over thirty Japanese soldiers and downed four Zero fighters using only his teeth.

Posted by: Julian Elson on February 7, 2007 03:24 PM

Peter K.

I am not really sure what you are driving at. Matt clearly thinks that the quote you give is not true. In fact, the whole paragraph is an attempt to explain why the administration's policy is incoherent and wrong. This explains why he ended that paragraph by pointing out that "This is just a giant, baffling, analytical error."

So what exactly is it again that you are meant to be disagreeing with in Matt's post?

Posted by: socratic_me on February 7, 2007 03:29 PM

"Mr. Boot has precisely as much military experience as Matthew Yglesias."

Rea: you're going to have improve your ability to sense subtle dry humor if you want to participate in the comments here. Nothing worse than taking a joke literally.

Posted by: MQ on February 7, 2007 03:34 PM

"Mr. Boot has precisely as much military experience as Matthew Yglesias."

Chh.

From his bio:

"At sixteen, Boot and his team of Wolverines almost single-handedly repelled the Soviet invasion of Colorado. With little more than their fathers' sawed off shotguns to defend themselves, and candy bars to eat, Boot and his motley crew - including C Thomas Howell and a young Patrick Swayze - rescued America from communist oppression and restored Ronald Reagan to the White House."

"During 1988's 'Operation Kurdish Freedom' Boot commanded a helicopter gunship team that prevented the mass slaughter of thousands of Kurds with poison gas provided to Saddam Hussein by terrorist agents in Afghanistan."

Posted by: Linus on February 7, 2007 03:36 PM

"I could go on, but current US policy is esseentially a revision to the pre-9/11 middle east policy,"

I disagree. For instance Bush allowed the Palestianian elections to go foward - AGAINST the wishes of Sharon and Likud - which led to a Hamas government. Look it up.

The "moderates" of the Shia government in Iraq are somewhat tied to Iran. Anti-war folks were predicting that Bush would install another Sunni strongman to lord over the Kurdish/shia majority as before. New boss same as the old boss.

At the time of Gulf War I, the Syrian dictatorship was given Lebanon so that they would go along with the war against Saddam. Recently, they were kicked out.

etc.

Posted by: Peter K. on February 7, 2007 04:32 PM

"[Yglesias] once killed over thirty Japanese soldiers and downed four Zero fighters using only his teeth."

Myth. It was actually done with the clever use of dental floss, but the confusion is understandable.

Posted by: Yuri Guri on February 7, 2007 04:45 PM

"Rea: you're going to have improve your ability to sense subtle dry humor if you want to participate in the comments here. Nothing worse than taking a joke literally."

MQ, the normal way to deal with subtle dry humor is to respond, as did I, in kind.

Oh, and fyi, I've been a regular commentor here since Matt was at Harvard and his brother Tristan was at Yale. . .

Posted by: rea on February 7, 2007 04:49 PM

"I disagree. For instance Bush allowed the Palestianian elections to go foward - AGAINST the wishes of Sharon and Likud - which led to a Hamas government. Look it up"

I agree. But that was at the end of 2005.

Since then: Hamas wins, a result the US didn't expect or really no how to react to. This, the nature of Iraq, Iran's gains, the Muslim Brotherhood's advances in Egypt, Hezbollah's increased popularity as a result of Summer 2006, intelligence and polling that suggests the weakness of the kinds of people the US likes who would do well in elections - which would bring populist anti-Americans and Islamists to power.

As a result the kinds of policies the US was pushing in 2004 and 2005 have been completely abandoned, and we've essentially reverted to the pre-9/11 strategy.

Posted by: Ben P on February 7, 2007 05:04 PM

"The "moderates" of the Shia government in Iraq are somewhat tied to Iran."

Mmm . . . ya think? SCIRI, aka the "Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq," created by Iran's security establishment in 1982? Who control teh Badr brigades, also part of the new Iraqi army and dominant members of the Interior Ministry, trained, funded, and equipped by Iran's Revolutionary guard?

Dawa is less tied to Iran, but their ties to Shi'ite oppositional politics are also longstanding and significant. Dawa is a "Sadrist" Party too, in that they derive their inspiration from Moktada Al-Sadr's father. Most of their members spent long amounts of time in exile in Syria and Iran. Indeed, the current PM Al-Maliki lived for over 20 years in Syria and was involved in the creation of Hezbollah in 1983.

The bottom line is that the democracy in the Middle East means results the US doesn't like or at the very least can't control to its liking. Hence the current incoherence.

Posted by: Ben P on February 7, 2007 05:11 PM

How would Bush have gone about stopping a Palestinian election?

Posted by: Ed Marshall on February 7, 2007 05:32 PM

The administration has been driven from the beginning by a bunch of mutually exclusive objectives. Which is why the press, in its effort to be fair to the president, is so irritating when it keeps pretending that maybe, just maybe the next six months will show signs of success, since what the press ought to be asking is - what exactly is success? When you don't know what you are fighting for, victory is bound to bite you in the ass. The inability of anybody in the press to ever press any member of the administration to explain how mutually contradictory goals could ever lead to success - for instance, bring a democracy in Iraq, which presumably means people get to vote, and an Iraq that supports America's middle eastern policy, which presumably means that the pro-American 2 percent in the country end up... winning. The traditional way to finesse this gap is corruption, and the Iraqi government is a pretty fine emblem of that.

Posted by: roger on February 7, 2007 10:37 PM

The Army said it already had a doctrine of counterinsurgency prior to the war. In 2004 they created an interim field manual
FM 3-07.22 When the new field manual (FM 3-24) was released the groundbreaking ideas highlighted in a few of the press releases were 'repairing sewer lines and liasoning with the local government.' The FM is readily available on the web and I encourage all of you to flip through it. Money quote from Dr. Conrad Crane, lead author of the FM, "This manual is not a solution for Iraq or Afghanistan, but it will prepare Soldiers and Marines for where we are going in the future and the enemies we will face."
The Army just wants to be ready for the next war.

Posted by: fighting the next war on February 8, 2007 04:36 AM

I have to take issue with a couple of things Matt writes. Firstly, this Administration has never wholeheartedly supported any of the Iraqi governing coalitions (from the Governing Council onwards, through Allawi, Jaffari and Maliki) even though it has done a good job of pretending to do so in public. Secondly, anyone who has ever been to Iraq will know that the situation there has always been complicated and multi-faceted, as much in 2003 as now. There have always been competing armed groups whose power we wanted to check - the Mahdi Army, Badr Corps, Peshmerga and a variety of Sunni insurgent groups were fighting each other almost immediately after the invasion - we just didn't seem to notice, since they were shooting at us more than at each other. Our political strategy then was hardly clearer than it is now, yet the methods for tackling insurgency mattered just as much. Wrapping villages in barbed wire doesn't endear us to the locals; we need better human intelligence to prevent suicide attacks that kill tens if not hundreds of people; improper search tactics can enrage an already hostile population. Security requires more than coherent political objectives. It requires military savvy, and part of that involves understanding (when we have an army trained to fight conventional warfare) how to fight "competing groups" armed with AK47s in an urban setting. This sounds to me distinctly like a need for a counterinsurgency strategy.

Posted by: Victoria Whitford on February 9, 2007 12:17 AM

Counter-insurgency?

Basically, there are two ways, same as it ever was.

One is to commit atrocities on such a scale that insurgents would either be afraid, or among those wiped out.

A humane approach is to have "our bastards" whom we aid, and who are our proxies. If we win, they are in heaven, if we loose, they are in deep doo-doo.

Posted by: piotr on February 9, 2007 04:29 AM

Thanks
Best regards
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