Dec.10.2007
3:17 pm
by Chet
Ave Caesar!
SWJ’s Dave Dilegge takes on Ralph Peters (Go Dave!)
As Dave notes, the urge to solve political and social problems with brute force runs deep. Near the end, Dave quotes Steve Metz of the US Army War College [-- see correction in the first comment, below]:
As always, I’m green with envy over Ralph’s way with words. But this hasn’t shifted me from my long held position: in the broadest sense, there are two approaches to counterinsurgency. Treat it like war and either kill or cow those who oppose you (call it the “Roman” method). Or try and minimize the extent to which it is like war, stress the political and economic, and try and win support thereby undercutting the insurgency (call this the “British” method).
My feeling is that history suggests that the Roman method is more effective. The British method takes much longer and has a lower probability of success. But American strategic culture has simply taken the Roman method off the table for us. Where, I think, Ralph and I diverge is that I don’t believe that even the most articulate national leadership can sell the American public on it. The British were able to deviate from their own method–South Africa and, to some degree, Kenya–specifically because their public was not as engaged in the course of colonial wars as our public is in small wars. American strategic culture may be a terrible impediment, but we cannot wish it away. So we’re left with the British method even given all of its complications and shortcomings.
As delightful as it is to see anybody deflate Ralph Peters (although Peters has trumpeted his “kill them all” tough guy rhetoric for so long that he’s become a parody of himself), it’s disturbing that as astute an observer as Steve Metz has forsworn counterinsurgency and is pining away for tactics based on mass killings and genocide (… that the Roman method is more effective).
Van Creveld makes a strong case in his latest book, The Changing Face of War, that this is true where local governments are fighting local insurgencies (which also covers Peters’ case of the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya. Even there, however, the British were eventually forced out).
When it comes to suppressing insurgencies that are fighting foreign occupiers, however, nothing has worked very well since about the middle of the 20th century. The Belgians probably hold the modern record for use of the Roman method, killing by some estimates 50% of the local population in the Congo, but were still driven out. The Soviets didn’t hesitate to use it, and where is their empire? We killed several million people in Southeast Asia. Gen Hermann Balck told Boyd that shifting the Schwerpunkt towards Leningrad would probably have worked, but in the end, the excellence of the German Army couldn’t compensate for the fanatical opposition generated by Hitler’s racial policies (van C notes that forces available to Germany for long-term occupation would have amounted to less than 1% of the population of the planned Nazi empire).
As Gen Sir Rupert Smith writes in The Utility of Force, if you’re going to use coercion as your C/I tool, you can never, ever let up. The moral and financial toll this extracts eventually saps the moral foundation — in a democracy, popular support — for continuing the war. OK, it’s true that if you can kill 100% of the inhabitants, the job is easier, but somewhere along the line we have seriously degenerated into fantasy.
But I have a bigger bone to pick. American strategic culture is not “a terrible impediment.” It is our best counterinsurgency tool, perhaps our only effective one. Van Creveld also suggested that although nothing works well, the “British Solution” is the only one that stands a chance of working at all. As Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye explain in yesterday’s Washington Post:
More broadly, when our words do not match our actions, we demean our character and moral standing. We cannot lecture others about democracy while we back dictators. We cannot denounce torture and waterboarding in other countries and condone it at home. We cannot allow Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay or Iraq’s Abu Ghraib to become the symbols of American power.
The United States has long been the big kid on the block, and it will probably remain so for years to come. But its staying power has a great deal to do with whether it is perceived as a bully or a friend. States and non-state actors can better address today’s challenges when they can draw in allies; those who alienate potential friends stand at greater risk.
Or, to paraphrase Gen Petreaus’s own advice for counterinsurgency operations, you can’t win by manufacturing enemies faster than you can eliminate them.
Filed in 4GW - Articles, Constitutionality |
5 Responses to “Ave Caesar!”
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Hi Chet, actually, what you quoted was me citing Steve Metz to illustrate a point. I am, as ever, a believer in the tenets of FM 3-24. Hope all is well and like the new blog! - best, Dave
Dave –
Arrrrrgh! I had removed the formatting getting it ready to post (works better that way on Wordpress) and completely missed the introduction you had written in the sentence before. My apologies to you both!
[Although, I gotta tell you, it's just as depressing coming from Steve.]
Keep up the great work at SWJ.
Actually, the Roman method of conquest and counterinsurgency was not limited to destruction only, and was quite similar to that used by Britain in its imperial period in XIX century.
They were not Russia or Assyria. They certainly were rather severe when dealing with opponents and rebels, but, on the other hand, they were giving important benefits to those who decided to side with them. Rome offered nearly unlimited self-determination to the constituent polis, and where the polis organization took root, they were able to govern with nearly no military power. Their motto was “parcere subiectis et debellare superbos”.
More relevantly, their method of dealing with tribes - ie areas that were not fully organized into the polis system - had interesting aspects. See the accounts of Count Theodosius the Elder’s campaing in Mauretania
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Theodosius)
(http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ammianus_29_book29.htm)
His important innovation is nominating sheikhs of his own for the conquered tribes.
“…; and then, having devastated the greater portion of the country, our wise general appointed prefects of tried loyalty as governors of the different tribes through which he passed.”
It is obvious that the policy of treating the conquered like subhumans, indiscriminate massacres etc are counterproductive. If you tell people you will kill or enslave them regardless what they do, they will fight you. On the other hand, if the rebels can reliably threaten people with death, and you can at most threaten them with severe reprimand, people will obey the insurgents.
The American campaign in Philippines can serve as an example of a succesful counterinsurgency, which combined the severity in treatment of opponents with an efficent and beneficial administration of conquered territory.
As the negative example see:
After the Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition to Defeat in the East, A Monograph by Major Bob E. Willis Jr. U.S. Army
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA436298
But the present American campaign suffers most from a lack of clear aim. The various strategies of which we speak serve to pacify the conquered territory, some more, other less successfully. Americans, however, don’t want to conquer Iraq. Since they don’t rule, they cannot use the basic counterinsurgency tool - setting up of an efficent administration which can both offer a better life to peaceful, and eliminate insurgents, bandits, militias and the like.
The success of the campaign in that situation ultimately rests on a local government, usually weak, corrupt, inefficent etc.
BTW, for those who speak about the British “gentle” counterinsurgency: Do they remember Churchill’s idea of pacifying colonies with RAF? And the excellent results of that policy during the Iraqi rebellion in 1920?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,939608,00.html
My anser to people (nuts?) like that are to note (1) “times have changed” and (2) the Romans were not that brutal (rightly pointed out).
Re (1). Firstly populations are a lot larger now. Ok, lets decide to kill all 25 million Iraqis, how do you do it without nukes or chemical/biological weapons? Systematically take out town after town?
How many bullets will it take (reportedly 2 billion bullets have been used to date)? How many bombs and shells?
People will run and fight. And people are tough. Those that run will come back other day. Those that fight will cause losses. Even if only 1% of your forces get killed/injured per each extermination effort then multiply it out and you will soon have no forces left.
What if they run over the border to another country, do you follow them to exterminate them? What about the locals of that country, they will fight. Do you then start to exterminate them as well. Reductio ad absurdum. Keep this up and 25 million becomes 250 million or 2.5 billion.
Secondly, the advent of cheap available guns ended this idea long ago. Despite aircraft, artillary, tanks, et al, enough people with basic guns will cause enough losses to bleed you to death. And since they know you are out to exterminate them they will fight (as every person would do) with fanatical intensity. Read about the recent Israel/Hezbollah debacle. Handfulls of Hezbollah fighters holding out (and beating) vastly superior Israeli forces, fighting in the rubble of totally destoyed villages.
And regarding nukes/etc you could use those, but even then you wont kill everyone, plus the little detail of you having to abandon the area anyway, so you’ve won nothing (plus every, and I mean every, country in the world would have nukes/etc within a decade, so you could only do it once).
I find it amazing that some people trot out that old argument about the US losing these conflicts because “they are not ruthless enough”. Read some history. The US has employed total (barely just short of total genocide in some cases) ruthless force in every conflict it has ever been in, from the Indian wars onwards, with no holding back whatsoever.
Plus, the USSR, et al, held up as a model by some people, lost just as badly as the US has done.
Total piffle.