revistaieee7

JOURNAL OF THE SPANISH INSTITUTE FOR
STRATEGIC STUDIES
Luis Francisco Cepeda Lucas
Infantry Lieutenant Colonel, Military Staff Officer. Máster en Military Art and
Science, General Studies, in 2009, Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) y Máster en Military
Art and Science, Theater Operations, in 2010, Fort Leavenworth (Kansas)
E-mail: lucepedalu@hotmail.com
CLAUSEWITZ’S THEORY ON WAR IN
THE FIGHT AGAINST INSURGENCY
(COIN): IS IT STILL VALID?
Abstract
Following the bloody attacks on Washington and New York on September
11, 2001, the United States got involved in a Global War on
Terror, GWOT, leading military forces to insist on dedicating most of
their human resources and materials in the fight against Islamist fanaticism
and extremism throughout the world, in particular in Afghanistan
and Iraq. But the need to confront this specific type of adversary in these
two scenarios, and within its particular context, led the armed forces
to adopt a special form of military power, different from that which had
traditionally been used to face a conventional adversary.
Thus, the war on insurgency (COIN) in the last decade became the
main focus for the American armed forces and for those from other
western countries, with multiple implications in the organizational and
doctrinal fields, and, above all, in the change of mindset of its participants,
more prone to combat an adversary in symmetric terms, and
with the application of maximum strength combat for a rapid and total
destruction. In short, it meant a change in the paradigm of the preferred
use of force in the military culture, and the way to wage war by the
members of Western armies, particularly of the United States.
Therefore, the adoption of what may be called the “COIN paradigm”
has dominated the action of the American armed forces to fulfill their
mission in Afghanistan and Iraq up to the strategic change imposed
by the Obama administration in 2012, moment in which there was a
redirection of priorities of the essential postulates of the security and
defense policy of the United States toward the Asia-Pacific scenario.
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