No More Easy Wars

[pbi]

While it is true no conventional armies have "won" an insurgency, I was thinking of the approaches that have been used by Imperial powers from the time of Alexander III, and most effectively by the Romans and the British during their rise to Imperial power. It was used by the US to win the "Indian Wars" and it can be argued the Chinese are also using this approach in Tibet and Xinjiang...

The Romans were very effective south of Hadrian's Wall. North of that, I don't think even they would have claimed to have had real control. The British generally did well in India (but, I think, lots of "co-opting" going on there...), but then never pretended to really control the Northwest Tribal Areas, which was probably much more like a real "insurgency" than what they encountered in most of India.

The Indian Wars may be a good example. But then again maybe they worked out because the Indians largely had no place to go (even had they been inclined to leave their tribal areas). IIRCC, the ones that fled north into Canada were made to understand by the NWMP that Canada was not a base for operations against the US.

 

[Old Sweat]

The Indian Wars may be a good example. But then again maybe they worked out because the Indians largely had no place to go (even had they been inclined to leave their tribal areas). IIRCC, the ones that fled north into Canada were made to understand by the NWMP that Canada was not a base for operations against the US.

There is a very intriguing and informative book about the Comanches called Empire of the Summer Moon by SC Gwynne. The tribe - and that is not a good description because they were loosely organized at best - dominated the southern plans for more than two centuries once they mastered the horse. The Comanches drove the Spanish back into Mexico/New Mexico and in the mid-nineteenth century pushed the line of American westward expansion back east for 100-200 miles. The last unconquered remnants were finally forced onto reservations in what is now Oklahoma by the disappearance of the Buffalo herds and by the US Army, which finally had adapted to the conditions, chasing them down. It is a fascinating read that knowingly or not addresses the issues of little wars.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I would even go so far as to say that the British Army only contributed to the final political outcome in Northern Ireland: it did not decide it.

Bang on. And that's likely the model of the future: a blended military/political approach.

This collaborative approach is, of course, the most difficult thing for the Generals, equivalent Terrorist commanders and Politicians to swallow, which is largely why NI took 30 years, 3000 dead (approx. times 5 wounded) to sort out. Even Malaya/Borneo ran from '48 to the mid-60s.

And it's not over yet, of course, in NI/Sri Lanka/Iraq/Afghanistan etc etc, which is the other awful truth about these things that national leaders of all stripes dislike intensely.

 

[pbi]

Bang on. And that's likely the model of the future: a blended military/political approach.

This collaborative approach is, of course, the most difficult thing for the Generals, equivalent Terrorist commanders and Politicians to swallow, which is largely why NI took 30 years, 3000 dead (approx. times 5 wounded) to sort out. Even Malaya/Borneo ran from '48 to the mid-60s.

And it's not over yet, of course, in NI/Sri Lanka/Iraq/Afghanistan etc etc, which is the other awful truth about these things that national leaders of all stripes dislike intensely.

We could argue that it's not just "the model of the future": it's the current practice. Or, at least, it's stated to be the current practice.  From my vantage point in the command/staff training world (both in uniform and out) over the last five years, I'd have to say that the extent to which the Comprehensive Approach is really accepted by people varies an awful lot. It's entrenched in our doctrine manuals, but you know what those get used for..... >

By "people" I mean both military and OGDA. For some commanders and their staffs, it was a no-brainer that they embraced and got on with, breaking down some important mil/OGDA barriers along the way. For others, it was really just an irritant that got in the way of more important stuff (an attitude more prevalent amongst staffs than amongst their commanders). "Influence Activities" too often got treated as an after-the-fact "bandaid", or check-in-the box. (And, for the record, I'm not an IA Koolaid-drinker: it's just another good and useful tool in the box, but you have to use it properly to get any value out of it...)

On the OGDA side, my take was that the ground-level and junior folks for the most part got it and were willing to give inter-agency cooperation a good go. At least, the majority of the ones involved in the training events I have worked on, certainly were. The people at the top of these OGDAs also knew it was the political flavour of the month and went with it. It was (IMHO) the twenty-year folks in the middle who were suspicious and obstructive.

As you point out, the Comprehensive Approach doesn't tend to produce classic, smashing victories and massive upheavals over night, or in days and weeks. Changing the minds of a population, or of a committed movement, takes time. It is also conditions-based success, rather than timeline-based success. Thus it becomes very difficult for the Govt of the day to answer the inevitable Opposition cry of "And how much longer will our soldiers be in "X" land?"

 

[Edward Campbell]

At the level of grand strategy, which doesn't happen very often, it was the Roosevelt method. President Roosevelt set the grand strategic aims for the war and the subsequent peace. Stimson and Marshall (and Knox and Forrestal and King, too) were primarily responsible for winning the war, the military strategy, while people like Cordell Hull and Henry Morgenthau Jr were responsible for "winning the peace" on the broad terms that Roosevelt had described. Roosevelt rarely interfered in the details of the military strategy (he was very, very different from Churchill) but he did take a detailed role in the grand strategy, until illness made it too difficult. He refereed the (early 1942) Stimson-Marshall vs Knox-King dust up which resulted in the Europe First decision, and he was intimately involved in the decision to partition Europe between Stalin and the (less than unified) West. He also sided with Marshall, overruling Morgenthau, in deciding, very, very late in his life, that de-nazification would have to take second place to rebuilding Europe. But, broadly, he saw the war as a continuum: mobilizing (military and industrial) > fighting > victory > peace > reconstruction. He assembled and led a civil-military team that did them all.