A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army

Abstract

Population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) has become the American Army’s new way of war. The principles and ideas that emerged out of the Army’s counterinsurgency field manual (FM), FM 3-24, published in late 2006, have become transcendent. The field manual has moved beyond simple Army doctrine for countering insurgencies to become the defining characteristic of the Army’s new way of war. In the American Army today, everyone is a counterinsurgent. It is easy to find examples of FM 3-24’s permeating effect in other Army doctrinal manuals such as FM 3-0, Operations, and FM 3-07, Stability Operations. Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV, the American Army general charged with writing the Army’s doctrine, recently stated: