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Diffusion and Counterinsurgency
I start my week with diffusion on my mind: why do tactics, techniques, procedures and strategies migrate from conflict to conflict and from military organization to military organization? One of the reasons this subject is on my mind is the publication of my friend Michael Horowitz's new book by Princeton University Press. I just bought The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics
I can't say the same for Laleh Khalili's article in the new International Journal of Middle East Studies, which I just read this morning. On the one hand, I really appreciate the time and attention Dr. Khalili has devoted to considering counterinsurgency from a left-of-center, Russell Square perspective, although a lot of what she has to say seems mired in a post-colonial narrative that makes it tough for her to consider counterinsurgency operations in another context. Most of us counterinsurgency scholars, granted, prefer to consider counterinsurgency theory and operations from a purely pragmatic perspective, examining operations and strategies without considering the colonial context in which many of these operations were carried out in history -- and there are rather obvious scholarly weaknesses to this approach.
On the other hand, I find Dr. Khalili's attempts to link counterinsurgency as practiced by the United States and its allies to "counterinsurgency" as practiced by the Israel Defense Forces in the Palestinian Territories only expose her lack of understanding of the U.S. military. I feel I have a pretty good understanding of the debates and movement that brought counterinsurgency to the fore in U.S. military doctrine, training and thought, and I can't recall the IDF having ever been used as a reference point in those debates. The lone exception to this would be when folks use the IDF's performance in 2006 in southern Lebanon as a warning for what can happen when military organizations allow their "conventional" skills to atrophy while engaged in long-term low-intensity combat operations that demand a different skill set, but that's pretty much it. If anything, the adoption of population-centric counterinsurgency by the U.S. military has caused U.S. military officers and analysts to cast new doubts on the efficacy of Israeli strategies and tactics in the Palestinian Territories. (And in southern Lebanon, as my buddy Dan Helmer points out.) I looked through Dr. Khalili's extensive endnotes and didn't see the U.S. military's counterinsurgency manual referenced once. Maybe that's because you can't look at the way the United States wages counterinsurgency warfare and the way Israel occupies the Palestinian Territories and determine shared paternity. The tactical and operational preferences of the two armies are just too different, and I suspect the political aims of the combatants -- the Israelis wish to stay; the Americans wish to train up local forces and leave -- determine some of that. I just moved offices here at CNAS, but as soon as the e-mail is back up and running, I plan to write to Dr. Khalili and see if she wants to expand on this for the readership, because it is, at the least, an interesting topic for discussion.
i think i'll buy that for my
i think i'll buy that for my kindle...looks interesting.
but....the way to avoid colonialism is bootstrap COIN with indigeneous socio-religious structures.....ie, bricolage the existing socio-cultural (islamic) substrate.
colonialism was always thinly veiled missionariism and socio-religious proselytizing as a cover for resource exploitation.
like this-- "we are going to rape you, kill you, and steal your stuff, but its for your own good because we are bringing you the glory of our infinitely superior western culture and the Abiding Love of White Plastic Jesus."
It looks like Professor
It looks like Professor Horowitz's thesis aims more for the "how," rather than the "why" of diffusion. (No I haven't read his book, but why should that stop me from having an opinion?)
To answer your question of "why" does diffusion occur, I offer the following thesis in a friendly PowerPoint ready format:
Both State and Non-State actors adopt new weapons and TTP's because:
1) They're cool
2) They got their asses kicked
Point one nicely explains why third world countries and the US Congress keep buying advanced weapons systems they can neither man, maintain or employ effectively.
Point two is rather self-explanatory. There is nothing quite so Darwinesque as warfare. I highlight the past-tense. The instances of a military actor making correct rational choices about future threats and capabilities, then actively institutionalizing those changes are so vanishingly rare that the same handful of instances become faculty fodder for generations (i.e. Blitzkrieg and Hezbollah 2006).
Can this blog go one post
Can this blog go one post without a virtual hand job?
Otherwise nice post. I learned something from this one.
AM: You might want to get
AM:
You might want to get Robert Farley's (now at Patterson, U Kentucky) dissertation this topic.
(Incidentally, he blogs too - lawyergunsmoneyblog.com)
Thanks
ADTS
AM— “I feel I have a
AM—
“I feel I have a pretty good understanding of the debates and movement that brought counterinsurgency to the fore in U.S. military doctrine, training and thought, and I can't recall the IDF having ever been used as a reference point in those debates.”
Please reconcile this post with a 3 Jun 2010 posting, the guts of which follows:
• At one time, Israelis understood counterinsurgency much better than Americans, which is why U.S. officers looked to their Israeli counterparts for advice in the early years of the Iraq war. At one time, the Israelis understood that self-interest demanded subtlety, restraint, and attention to perception. As others have pointed out, these qualities have been disappearing from Israeli strategy and tactics, and the current right-wing government seems determined to isolate and destroy itself with the unbending principle of self-defense.
This paragraph especially struck me, because I know how true it is. In the early years of the GWOT, I remember reading Israeli after action reports from combat actions in the Second Intifada, paying especially close attention to what tactics they felt were working and which ones the Israelis felt were ineffective. Other guys in my unit at the time described exchanges they had made to Israel and how they had always learned something from their peer units over there.
You are either getting intellectually sloppy or stupid, which is it?
Dear Andrew As I have
Dear Andrew
As I have written you in an email, I am grateful for your reading of the piece. I do appreciate that Israeli COIN is mostly a litany of lessons NOT to be learned, but I also would like to point out that Shimon Naveh is involved in operations design projects with the US army, and that there have been practical learning interactions between the two militaries.
I would also like to point out that the bits about the connection between US and Israeli military practice are actually a very very very slender slice of the article.
Finally, yes, I am definitely a left of center academic with no intention to contribute to the pragmatic betterment of COIN. But there is room for us all in the debate, and I am grateful for your respectful disagreement.
Regards
Laleh
Can Israeli strategy really
Can Israeli strategy really be defined as COIN? It's more akin to keeping a lid on low-intensity civil war. There are some aspects and tactics attributable to COIN in the Israeli approach, due to adoption of insurgency techniques by the Arab forces. But like you said, the American and Israeli political approach is widely divergent. The Americans can pivot in any context. Today they're killing Taliban, tomorrow they'll make a grand bargain with them and leave. The Israelis have no room to pivot. They have written off the Palestinian population as hostile in the foreseeable future, because it is, leaving intelligence collection to signals and coercion, not collaboration.
Regarding "force-building", let's all remember that Israel provided the handguns to the nascent PA security forces in the 90s, assisted in their training, cooperated in intelligence and deployment, only to have those weapons and training used against Israeli citizens. Right now the US is building a Palestinian army for the PA, supplying it with heavy weapons, APCs, proficient squad-level tactics, etc. Who do you think those weapons and tactics will be turned against the next time the PA leadership decides to reignite a war?
the Israelis wish to stay; the Americans wish to train up local forces and leave
The Israelis have nowhere to go. If they don't engage in security operations in the territories they expose their population centers to attack. The Americans can pivot and leave at will, and maybe New York will get hit again, and maybe it won't. With Israel, there are no maybes.
For details of the
For details of the Israel/United States military relationship that was enhanced in the early years of
the Iraq War, see: Paul Rogers, A War Too Far: Iraq, Iran and the New American Century, (London: Pluto
Press, 2006), especially pp 96-97 and 159-60. See also: Barbara Opall-Rome, “Israeli Arms, Gear Aid
U.S. Troops, Defense News, 25 March 2004.
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/sites/default/files/Iran%20Report%...
h/t to Stephen Walt's blog
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/05/short_takes_bloomberg_on_...
ADTS
I was reading your
I was reading your commentary regarding Laleh Khalili's approach to writing about COIN , i.e.. "from a left-of-center, Russell Square perspective,.." becoming " mired in a post-colonial narrative that makes it tough for her to consider counterinsurgency operations in another context...."
What are the "rather obvious scholarly weaknesses to this approach" if I may ask?
Actually, Dr. Khalili cites
Actually, Dr. Khalili cites FM 3-24 in footnote 3 on page 2. Just keeping you honest.
Also, just because many academics find the parallels between COIN and previous imperial pacification programs striking doesn't mean that they have nothing to contribute. After all, FM 3-24, Kilcullen, Nagl, et.al. also cite European imperial wars as examples (positive and negative). The habit of decontextualizing previous wars enables scholars and military intellectuals to take "lessons learned" from particular 'variables,' while ignoring the geopolitical and cultural contexts that often doomed European efforts to assert control. Wars are not sets of attributes or equations built from different elements, they are real conflicts between ways of life and forms of rule. Each is unique enough that "pragmatic" considerations should focus far more on the particular history of the actors and region than on trying to find useful tidbits in failed and brutal colonial wars.
Rabi'a al-Adiwyya says that wedding outside powers (US/NATO) to "the existing socio-cultural (islamic) substrate" marks a significant departure from colonial warfare. Isn't that exactly what the British did? Do we really want to consider India/Pakistan, Cyprus, or Israel/Palestine successful?
The point is that COIN's advocates explicitly draw on colonial and Cold War 'lessons,' ignoring the infamy that these wars' memories provoke around the world. If we don't want to be seen as colonials, perhaps we should think more carefully about why someone might see us that way.
Diffusion and
Diffusion and counterinsurgency.. May I repost it? :)
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