Beyond Counterinsurgency: Why the Concept is Failing

Abstract

IntroductionThe changing face of modern warfare is revealed nowhere more clearly than in asymmetric surroundings where traditional approaches do not succeed anymore. Military forces are encountering numerous opponents who no longer consist largely of identifiable combatants, but rather are fighters who live among and within population, making them extremely difficult to identify. Although uprisings and insurgencies are not new developments, military's capacity to combat them was neglected in doctrinal thinking at beginning of twenty-first century. New trends and challenges and rethinking of military combat operations, as well as development of insights regarding a comprehensive approach, led to re-creation of counterinsurgency doctrine. The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, titled simply Counterinsurgency (hereafter, FM 3-24), was written during most recent conflict in Iraq. This process was largely driven by General David Petraeus. But United States' counterinsurgency strategy has shown disappointing results in Afghanistan, and critics are already calling for new approaches.1 Six years after publication of FM 3-24 frustration is widespread that current counterinsurgency approach in Afghanistan is not proving to be panacea that it was promised to be. From U.S. perspective, topic becomes even more important, as counterinsurgency is the strategy through which United States has expended greatest level of military resources since September 11, 2001.2Trends and Challenges in Contemporary Armed ConflictThe prospect of a full-scale conventional war with joint operations in a state-on-state scenario has become less probable in past twenty years, although possibility cannot be ruled out completely. While fundamental principles of war remain unchanged, character of military engagements has changed significantly. Not only has number of armed conflicts been declining since end of Cold War (to a low of only twenty-three armed conflicts in 2010), but ratio of casualties has changed as well.3 In beginning of twentieth century, more than 90 percent of killed and wounded persons were combatants, and only 10 percent were civilians; this ratio has reversed completely nowadays, to 90 percent civilian casualties and 10 percent combatants.4 The opponent, whether an fighter or terrorist, is no longer a 'combatant,' strictly speaking; making challenge for military forces even greater is fact that opponent is hard to identify within normal population. Examples include Taliban in Afghanistan, or pirates operating off coast of Somalia. Such opponents are challenging for conventional military forces, since they do not obey or act according to Law of Armed Conflict. Constraints or rules of engagement for military operations are not applicable to opposing forces such as fighters. As state-on-state scenarios have become less probable, multiple definitions for different types of conflict have arisen, such as guerilla wars, revolutions, low-intensity conflicts, three-block wars, small wars, or asymmetric wars - a proliferation of nomenclature that illustrates both diversity of conflicts and difficulty of defining modern wars.5 But although history shows us that irregular warfare is by no means only a modern phenomenon, it also bears out general lesson that warfare has most often been a secondary action to regular warfare.6 At present, warfare is frequently primary action of opposing elements, as they are normally not strong enough to oppose regular forces openly. In past, in conflicts featuring state actors, either of opposing sides could initiate a conflict, but in an insurgency only insurgents may initiate a conflict, although use of force might not be first instrument at hand.7 This condemns regular military forces to simply playing a waiting game, because preemptive strikes against population are not an option. …