GREAT POWER COUNTERINSURGENCY

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GREAT POWER COUNTERINSURGENCY

• SMALL WARS and SPECIAL OPERATIONS
• Michael McClintock
• Human Rights First
• November 2005

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Comparative Experience 1950

• European Powers
• Colonial Small Wars and Pacification
• Irregular Warfare
• Behind the Lines Resistance/UW
• Decolonization and Revolutionary War

• United States
• Indian Wars
• Punitive Expeditions
• Constabulary Role
• Pacification/Small War (Philippines)
• Behind the Lines Resistance/UW

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Sources The Small Wars Model

• Marshall Bugeaud, conqueror of Algeria
• Maréchal Joseph Simon Galliéni/ Maréchal Luis
  Herbert Lyautey
• C.E. Callwells Small Wars, Their Principles and
  Practices (1896)
• Sir Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (1934)
• U.S. Marines, Small Wars Manual (1940)

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Small Wars Defined

• C.E. Callwell, 1896
• Small War a campaign by a regular army against
  irregulars, or forces in which their armament,
  their organization, and their discipline are
  palpably inferior to it.
• Foreign wars of this kind include expeditions
  undertaken for some ulterior political purpose,
  or to establish order in some foreign landwars
  of expediency, in fact.

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A Related but Separate Track Irregular and
Special Warfare

• United Kingdom
• TE Lawrence
• Orde Wingate (Sudan, Palestine, Ethiopia, Burma)
• Special Operations Executive (SOE)

• United States
• Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
• CIA (1947)
• Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare
  (1951)
• Guerrilla Warfare FM 31-21 (1951)

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Small Wars Doctrine after WWII

• United Kingdom Continuity from Small Wars to Low
  Intensity Operations
• France Small Wars and La Guerre Révolutionnaire
• United States Jumping the Small Wars Track
• Behind the Lines Doctrine to Center Stage
• OCPW/Special Operations Division (1952)

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Basic Statements of UK Doctrine

• Sir Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (1934).
  The objective is the restoration of order
  through the use of minimum force.
• Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist
  Insurgency (1966), stressed tough administration,
  population control, and adherence to law. Decried
  use of high intensity military force or dirty
  tricks.
• Sir Frank Kitson, author of Low Intensity
  Operations (1971), stressed practical
  counterinsurgency. There was little special
  about it it was mainstream British army. (Kitson
  retired in 1985, Cmdr in Chief, UK Land Forces.)

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Basics of UK Doctrine

• Population control through strong civil and
  military administrative structures.
• Strong foundation in law enforcement as tool and
  source of legitimacy.
• Emphasis upon the primacy of intelligence.
• Only limited role for elite commando-style strike
  force.

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Basics of the French Small War

• Quadrillage (an administrative grid of population
  and territory)
• Ratissage (cordoning and raking)
• Regroupement (relocating and closely controlling
  a suspect population)
• Tache d'huile' The 'oil spot' strategy
• Recruitment of local leaders and forces
• Paramilitary organization and militias

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French Colonial Maxims

• By destroying the administration and local
  government we were also suppressing our means of
  action.
• The result is that we are today confronted by a
  sort of human dust on which we have no influence
  and in which movements take place which are
  unknown to us.
• Algerian governor-general Jules Cambon 1894

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French Colonial Maxims

• "A country is not conquered and pacified when a
  military operation has decimated its inhabitants
  and made all heads bow in terror the ferments of
  revolt will germinate in the mass and the
  rancours accumulated by the brutal action of
  force will make them grow again.
• Maréchal Galliéni

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French Political Warfare

• The Doctrine of Guerre Révolutionnaire
• The threat was ideological and global
• Revolutionary warfare was total war
• Counteraction required both military and
  political action
• No measure was too drastic to meet the new threat
  of revolution.

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A Political Approach

• Psychological warfare, the 5iéme Bureaux
• Counter-Terror
• Counter-Organization
• Indoctrination
• Population Control
• Specialized Administrative Sections (SAS)
• A forerunner of CORDS
• Adding indoctrination and control to resettlement
• helping these people while rooting out the
  rebels

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Two Sides of the UW COIN

• Terrorism to Fight Terrorism
• Para's 11th Shock Regiment/SDECE Dirty Tricks
  unit.
• Dispositif de Protection Urbaine, DPU, organized
  pied noir "counterterrorists.
• The Red Hand terrorist organization used
  counterterror against the nationalists.
• A popular deviceis the auto boobytrap
  technique Dept. Army Pam. 550-104, Sept. 1966

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Battle of Algiers

• January 1957 cordon and search.
• Screening 100,000 40 Casbahs men
• 24,000 were detained most were systematically
  tortured.
• 3,000 disappeared having died under torture or
  been secretly executed.
• FLNs Algiers infrastructure broken, briefly.
• Frances claim to hearts and minds lost.

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Battle of Algiers

• Armys most decorated officer, General Jacques de
  Bollardiére, confronts Colonel Massu over orders
  institutionalizing torture, as an unleashing of
  deplorable instincts which no longer knew any
  limits.
• Issues open letter condemning the danger to the
  army of the loss of its moral values "under the
  fallacious pretext of immediate expediency"
  (imprisoned for sixty days).
• Other senior officers join in protests as danger
  to army.
• Paul Teitgen, Algiers Prefecture head, who had
  survived years in Gestapo custody and in Dachau,
  resigns, and speaks out on torture and refers to
  war crimes.
• Conscript soldiers tell of their experiences.
  Gangrene.

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Battle of Algiers

• By 1960 "the enemy was able to re-establish his
  organization and once again to take control of
  the population...The victory...had gone for
  naught."
• Colonel Roger Trinquier, head of the Dispositif
  de Protection Urbaine, DPU and author of Modern
  Warfare.
• French public and government disaffection with
  war leads to terrorism and military revolt.
• May 1958 coup backed by Gen. Massu and Gen.
  Salan Fall of Fourth Republic.
• General Raoul Salan heads Organization Armée
  Sécret terror campaign against French State.
• April 1961 Generals Coup.

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Some Tactics Subvert Strategy

• Army officers agreed only with the tactical
  concepts of the doctrine, and either ignored or
  rejected their wider nonmilitary implications.
  Peter Paret, French Rev Warfare, 64
• Bombings, murder, and other terror tactics
  undermined legitimacy and generated resistance.
• Torture generated hatred and resistance and was
  corrosive within the army and French society
  itself.

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Can Counterinsurgency Strategy Tolerate Official
Lawlessness?

• Unconventional Warfare
• Operations occur in areas dominated by hostile
  power and will generally be illegal.
• Organizing resistance forces
• Covert operations
• Guerrilla warfare/Terrorism

• Counterinsurgency
• Actions reinforced by legal authority and
  legitimacy.
• Organizing and training foreign troops and
  irregular forces.
• Organizing and leading foreign forces

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Is Counterinsurgency Unconventional Warfare?

• Foreign internal defense
• operations may require
• unconventional warfare
• techniques, e.g., guerrilla
• warfare, to deny support to
• the insurgents
• FM 31-22, Dec. 1981

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Where are We Now?

• Waghlesteins the U.S. Army has an 1894 Doctrine
  for Counterinsurgency
• Special Operations and Modern Doctrine
• Special Operations Role Expansion (while the
  regular army goes its own way)
• Two Extremes with No Middle Way High Intensity
  Warfare and Special Warfare Combined (wither the
  Small War)

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Special Operations Forces Role Expansion

• Unconventional Warfare
• Counterinsurgency
• Commando support, high-intensity warfare
• Counterterrorism
• Counter-narcotics
• Civil Affairs

• Logistical support for foreign allies
• Training foreign regular armies
• Training foreign special ops forces
• Joint and combined exercises
• Peacekeeping