# Posted 1:48 PM by Patrick Porter  

KILLING INSURGENCIES: Ralph Peters has a combative (and ill-tempered) article in the Armed Forces Journal.

It is his rebuttal of America's new Field Manual on Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24), and of the 'PhD gang' whose theories he mocks.

It castigates the approach of General Petraeus, commander of the Multinational Force in Iraq who co-authored the Field Manual, and the 'Phd gang', which presumably includes today's class of 'warrior intellectuals' with their influence on American doctrine.

His argument, crudely put, is that insurgencies must be put down mainly with brute strength. Not hearts and minds.

Almost as a variation on Stalin's comment about people and problems and the value of removing people to solve problems, Peters seems to be arguing that because insurgencies are caused by insurgents, killing insurgents is most often the solution.

Peters also argues that this applies pretty generally throughout history.

This sits oddly with his other assertion against universal solutions, that 'the medicine for one type of insurgency can be deadly in another.'

However, his main argument is clear enough. My own response right now is more a series of questions and doubts rather than an alternative hypothesis. Mainly, I hope he is wrong.

He's right that the hard core of jihadists are bent on domination, martyrdom and apocalpytic conflict, and cannot be dissuaded peacefully.

This would not seem to be the case necessarily for all of those they recruit, however, or for the surrounding populations whose active support and information we need.

And its hard to argue against the proposition that many regimes have suppressed insurgencies successfully by simply applying overwhelming force, often indiscriminately.

He mentions Imperial Rome amongst others to support this.

But is that the only way realistically to prevail? I hope not. I'm not sure we would want to ape the methods of those who, for example, crucified rebel slaves to deter others, no matter how effective.

Do we actually want to fight the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq in the same spirit as the successful ones Peters mentions: the Indian Wars, the Boxer Rebellion or the Moro insurrection?

In the context of more global struggles, we might well suppress whole populations more effectively if we behaved like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, but then again, those efforts had mixed results.

Peters notes that insurgencies often rise or fall not on people power but on the role of third parties or external forces, such as the British support for the Spanish guerrillas, and on the back of media coverage. Which is true.

But if the role of outside powers and media scrutiny matter, a policy of uniformly unrestrained force might be counter-productive in that environment.

And the fate of insurgencies can rest on other things that are more political than directly military. The successful counter-insurgencies in Malaya and Greece were aided by certain political conditions: the communists in Malaya were mostly ethnic Chinese and regarded as interlopers, while the fallout between Tito and Stalin meant than the Greek communist insurgents lost their external patron.

In other words, COIN warfare is not necessarily a 'fight to the death', but a political struggle for legitimacy. Where events, friction and public opinion can tilt the balance.

Another difficulty here is that Peters talks about winning, but talks much less about the issue of winning to what purpose?

There is counterinsurgency simply to maintain dominance, and a more liberal concept of counterinsurgency, intended to create an environment where the native population can achieve political freedom, economic security and ultimately self-determination.

Obviously, those goals are not being met in Iraq. But I'm not convinced that Peters' alternative, of storming mosques rather than respecting them, or of fighting every battle like Fallujah, would be any more effective.

The more I read about these issues, the more the material and economic dimensions seem to matter. While culture and violence are often discussed, it seems that people embrace warlords, jihadists or 'ethnic demagogues' when there is a lack of law and order and where there is such material deprivation that they go back to their primary loyalties.

Despite all this, Peters work is always provocative and passionate, and gets the grey cells thinking.

Your views?

UPDATE: Thanks to all those who posted comments. The discussion reinforced my impression that for force to be the lone decisive element, other political preconditions have to be present, and they often aren't.

And 'hearts and minds' is not necessarily an opposite and hostile alternative to force, but a necessary step in locating and defeating the core of the insurgency.

Labels: GWOT and security issues, war and culture

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