Armor Magazine Counterinsurgency Selected Works - US Army

“The ordinary civilian caught in the middle between government and insurgent forces should
be the main objective of insurgent or counterinsurgent operations. Civilians are the center of
gravity and the aspect of this particular struggle that can tip the favor from one side to another,
thus enabling insurgents to recruit local citizens to join the insurgency, and encouraging the
local populace to support the insurgency by providing a base of operations or hospitality to the
insurgent, as well as financial and other means of support.”
sional to understand the intricate details that drive a countryman
to turn away from his government for ideological purposes.
Social reasons could involve anything from religion to race,
which create deep divisions among all parties involved in the
conflict and become sectarian in nature. If it were an internal
conflict involving a government force against a sectarian group,
then we would possibly find insurgents and government forces
crossing lines to support the sectarian group with whom they
have a religious or ethnic alliance. This was very common during
the Balkan wars in the 1990s, after the former communist
state of Yugoslavia divided into six independent states.
Political friction also tends to spark an insurgency. These political
causes range anywhere from a particular group wanting
to live under the rule of a monarch, or in the case of Fidel Castro
and Cuba in 1959, a socialist movement that ended up ejecting
the corrupt Batista government from power. In the case of
Castro, this is very similar to the earlier discussion of the Islamic
political organization of Hezbollah. The Castro movement
sought to discredit the Batista government through propaganda
or information operations, which was used to target the center
of gravity or local populace. The main objective of this campaign
was to inform the center of gravity that the Batista government
was not providing basic needs to the local populace. Sustenance,
medical needs, education, and basic social services would be
given in return for support of the revolutionaries. This propaganda
led to materiel, manpower, and sanctuary support to the revolutionaries.
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Economic reasons tend to coincide with political reasons. Poor
economic conditions can cause people to give up on their government,
or as a member of the bourgeoisie, can significantly
impair a state’s economy. In an industrial society, the bourgeoisie
(middle class) would cripple a state’s economy through refusing
to work or consume the goods that an industrial nation produces.
The Russian Revolution is an example of a bourgeoisie
insurgency — the government and economy fell to the wrath of
communism because the bourgeoisie was not represented and
not treated fairly in the industrial complex. 10 The economy causes
a nation to appear viable or broken. If other nations cease to have
faith in the market of a certain country, this
might spur a revolution. The disgruntled worker
has every opportunity to become an ideologue,
social or political insurgent.
Dr. Echevarria believes that the military professional
should understand the more intricate
political and social situation in a country.
This allows the military professional to
understand a potential enemy and grasp all
aspects of warfare, not just high-intensity
conflict. The problem is this type of warfare
does not appeal to the military professional
because it is not just instructional; it requires
an intellectual mind to figure out what
is causing the internal strife — the tougher
issue is developing an exit strategy from such
a conflict.
During high-intensity conflicts, the combatants
can always sign peace accords and return
to their countries. They can also cede
control of the terrain they have occupied, if
it no longer appeals to their strategic interests.
The insurgency does not allow for such
a retreat or peace accord; the fight is personal
because it usually involves countryman against countryman.
These feuds normally reignite century after century, and potentially
can only be prevented through the use of peacekeepers.
Serious intellectual thought, coupled with instructional methods,
are the only way to fight these small-scale wars. Most western
countries and militaries have taken part in trying to extinguish
the flames of insurgent conflict, but why have they failed
more times than not?
The United States, Russia, Great Britain, and France have, at
one time or another, been faced with an insurgency. The problem
is that armies do not plan for this phase of combat operations,
and tend not to be focused on a civilian enemy that rejects
their occupation of a country they have no right to occupy. The
key term is “occupy” because it highlights the fact that occupying
forces are not welcome and are forced to occupy a country
through the means of invasion, whether sanctioned, or not, by
the world community.
The western world has typically had difficulty containing or
eliminating insurgencies. Jeffrey Record in Beating Goliath,
Why Insurgencies Win, presents 12 characteristics the United
States and other western countries exhibit. These characteristics,
which equate to 12 “tragic flaws,” continuously cause western
countries to struggle when dealing with insurgencies. These
countries tend to be: apolitical; astrategic; ahistorical; problemsolving,
optimistic; culturally ignorant; technologically dependent;
firepower focused; large scale; profoundly regular; impatient;
logistically excellent; and sensitive to casualties. 11
To facilitate a successful counterinsurgency, one must understand
the usefulness of Record’s 12 characteristics, for starters:
apoliticalness describes how a country ventures into war without
considering the political outcome of the country occupied;
and astrategic is the bridge between the war and post-war rebuilding
operations, which requires developing a plan of how
to get from combat operations to stability operations. Record
agrees with Dr. Echevarria’s assertion that military professionals
need to study all aspects of military history (ahistorical) during
peacetime. He also believes that western countries do a poor
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