by Jason Alexander
The American Experience in Irregular War: From Practice to Policy, and Back Again
Thesis Summary more
The American Experience in Irregular War: From Practice to Policy, and Back Again
Thesis Summary
Jason S. Alexander
America has a long and robust experience with irregular warfare. It is no stranger to insurgency or counterinsurgency. In fact, America was born of insurgency and has remained engaged in such irregular endeavors for centuries. It may even be argued that America is as much shaped by irregular conflict, such as the Indian Wars or Vietnam, as it is by conventional wars, including such wars as World War I, World War II and Korea.
However, America has had mixed results with irregular war. Before the modern age of irregular warfare, corresponding with Mao’s arrival as an insurgency leader and thinker, America maintained a strong record of success in irregular war, utilizing overwhelming military force to defeat adversaries. Such pre-Maoist successes include the Indian Wars, the Philippines, and event the eventual defeat of Civil War era Confederate guerrillas and revolutionaries. However, once modern insurgency emerged, with the Maoist theories of harnessing the adversary’s strength and turning perceived strengths into weaknesses (i.e., the Maoist approach to irregular war advocates merging military, populist, and political approaches), America has struggled in irregular conflict. Once Mao demonstrated that a weaker side can emerge victorious through this new and more comprehensive approach to conflict, America lost in Vietnam and then sought to avoid overt counterinsurgency warfare in general. However, global events pulled the U.S. back into global irregular war following September 11th, and the U.S. entered Iraq and Afghanistan in large scale only to be quickly confronted by growing populist based insurgencies mirroring Maoist-styled conflict. America slowly responded after years of floundering in both countries, rewriting and re-evaluating the entire American approach to counterinsurgency and stabilization. However, the conclusion of both Iraq and Afghanistan are still in doubt despite these major shifts in thinking. Further, the outcome for both countries still remains unknown despite tremendous amounts of resources that have poured into the countries as part of the new approach to irregular war. This thesis seeks to explain why the modern American approach to irregular conflict has proven unsuccessful since Vietnam and continuing today.
The rethinking of irregular warfare has developed new approaches to irregular war. One such approach is that the U.S. needs to better understand how to perform counterinsurgency at the grassroots practitioner level rather than driven by theory and doctrine aimed at merely reshaping strategic level thought. In addition, the new approach argues for an agreed upon and uniformly practiced methodology across the U.S. agencies working in irregular conflict environments. America’s historical record of irregular warfare reflects methodology that has been ad hoc at best and performed in stilted fashion due to competing strategies dependent upon constantly changing leadership. But new methodology has emerged, which consolidates “best practices” throughout history, and advocates a deeper and more refined understanding of the local population, placing population grievances as paramount to achieving success. This nascent methodology argues that the practitioner must focus on the local levels, have a comprehensive approach to uncover “sources of instability” (i.e., primary grievances driving violence), and that all U.S. government agencies and affiliated organizations in the conflict must coordinate and integrate for the sake of enhanced continuity and synchronization. Otherwise, those organizations and agencies tasked with performing counterinsurgency and stabilization risk working at cross-purposes, perpetuating, and even driving conflict with misapplied funding and programming. Further, the emerging methodology has consequences not only applicable to irregular conflict, but transcends beyond existing conflict, potentially assisting in humanitarian intervention, pre- and post-conflict environments. In short, the new methodology argues that it is in everyone’s interest to understand and mitigate conflict before local conflicts become war, and once peace is restored to maintain that peace.
The introduction of the thesis evaluates how and why insurgencies have become so prominent in the world today. The introduction begins by discussing the frequently nuanced intricacies that define irregular war, such as turning the adversary’s strengths into weaknesses and the critical concept of “human terrain.” Both concepts advocate that in irregular conflict “winning” the population is significantly more important than capturing physical terrain. Secondly, the introduction discusses why insurgency is so important to the American “way of war.” The chapter illustrates that not only has irregular war given birth to the American nation (i.e., American Revolutionary War), but it has always been a far more prominent form of war for America than conventional conflict. This is particularly the case in the modern age with the growing abundance of small, fragile, and fractured nation-states. Therefore, from a strategic as well as American historical and cultural perspective, irregular conflict is arguably more important than any other form of conflict in the modern world.
Chapter I discusses the topic of the American historical experience in irregular conflict. The chapter illustrates that the American war experience is defined as much or more by irregular conflict as it has by large conventional wars with which Americans closely identify. The chapter uses as case studies the most prominent irregular conflicts, such as the American Revolutionary War (a study which examines America as the revolutionary insurgents); the American Civil War (with special focus on the popularly-supported Confederate guerrillas); the Indian Wars; the Philippines campaign; the Small Wars years (i.e., the early 20th Century campaign throughout Latin America), and Vietnam. The current engagements such as Iraq and Afghanistan are discussed in detail throughout the following two chapters. The intent of this chapter is to provide the reader with an understanding that America has a long history with irregular war and has approached such conflict in a wide variety of ways, the lessons of which are promptly forgotten, or never documented, following the conflict.
Chapter II begins the examination of policy and practice of the American style and approach to irregular conflict. In the previous chapters the thesis argues that the American approach to such conflict was ad hoc at best and largely driven by key individuals rather than a stable policy and based on sound principles. In this chapter, the thesis narrative advocates moving beyond ad hoc approaches, which are counterproductive to irregular conflict and often drives the conflict rather than ameliorating the extant conflict factors. Due to American irregular war “ad-hocisms,” U.S. involvement often made a troubled situation worse and frequently reduced the chance for earlier conflict resolution during the conflict. In turn, with unmitigated conflict ongoing within the population, insurgencies were able to further de-legitimize U.S. supported governments and create new opportunities to win popular support for themselves and their cause. In order to deal with these challenges, the chapter examines the new and innovative methodology called the District Stability Framework (DSF), which seeks to understand the local population’s grievances, design population-focused programs, and measure the effect of these programs. The DSF methodology is keened focused on mitigation of local level grievances and conflict drivers, based on the theory that the reduction of local conflict drivers will ultimately undermine insurgent influence upon the population. Further, the chapter demonstrates that the DSF methodology is an effective approach to coordinate and synchronize interagency efforts in irregular conflict environments, ensuring efforts are aligned and working toward common objectives.
Chapter III moves beyond the nuts-and-bolts of the structure, approach, and constraints of the DSF methodology and examines the wider applications and implications of the methodology. This chapter views the topic of stabilizing fragile, failing and failed states from a much wider lens arguing that just as the U.S. requires a common interagency approach to states dealing with irregular conflict; it also requires a common approach to humanitarian assistance, pre-conflict, and post-conflict states. This chapter argues that the DSF can serve as the appropriate methodological platform on which to build the interagency approach. As such, the chapter argues that the appropriate approach to instability and fragility must be a focus on integrating civil and military capabilities, defining a common methodology to identify local sources of instability, devising and implementing activities to diminish them, and measuring their effectiveness in stabilizing the area. Fortunately, a new approach based on historical “best practices” now exists in the form of the DSF. If effectively applied, the DSF has the potential to mitigate current conflict and guide humanitarian assistance to greater effect, both of which have the potential to save lives in the future.
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