Despite fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq for the better part of the past decade, counterinsurgency, or COIN, remains a tense subject for the U.S. Army, and it has not embraced the topic in its educational institutions. There is no single cause for this shortfall. Culprits include institutional bias toward conventional warfighting, an Army training and doctrine command stripped of active-duty talent to fill more critical warfighting skills, a lethargic education bureaucracy staffed largely by retirees and contractors, and confusion over the nature of counterinsurgency. Despite sporadic and halting efforts to incorporate the subject as a core competency, such instruction remains uneven in both quality and quality throughout the Army, to the detriment of operational performance.
The debate over whether and how to integrate COIN into Army education is an acrimonious one. Critics of institutionalizing this training argue that the success of the Iraq surge demonstrated the counterinsurgency capabilities of the Army and that the force is already too slanted toward COIN at the expense of conventional capabilities. They contend that further emphasis by the institutional Army base risks abandoning the ability to fight a major peer competitor. Some maintain that COIN doctrine fails to emphasize adequately the need for lethal force during operations.1
These critics raise valid points. Undoubtedly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have atrophied conventional warfighting skills, especially in branches such as armor, combat engineers, and artillery, which have seen their troops converted into ad hoc infantry to address manpower shortfalls. In preparing for deployment units receive training on skills relevant for COIN environments, such as cultural awareness, negotiations, and various tactical instruction, but get little holistic instruction on approaching such environments unless by local initiative. The Army's major training centers have converted from force-on-force battles to replicate COIN and stability operations, building mock cities to better reproduce the environments Soldiers will encounter.2 Despite this, the Army's counterinsurgency efforts continue to fall short overall, both in the schoolhouse and on the battlefield.
Getting COIN Principles Straight
The Army is happy to boast about the COIN instruction it affords its deploying troops. But this training is undermined by confusion about COIN's basic tenets. The National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California is the Army's premier deployment preparation site. Veterans are handpicked to evaluate and assist in training units headed for Iraq and Afghanistan to incorporate recent field experience. Until spring 2008, a large poster, boldly titled, "NTC's COIN Fundamentals," was featured prominently in the NTC's main training classroom (Figure 1). It lists NTC's conceptualization of counterinsurgency.
Compare that list with the historical principles of counterinsurgency from Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency (FM-3-24) in Figure 2:
If the Army's best training center, staffed by its best Soldiers, is bewildered two years after the doctrine was published and more than a year after the Iraq surge, then how badly confused must the rest of the Army be? While the NTC's "COIN Fundamentals" are admirable individual skills, they do not remotely constitute grounding in COIN theory or field execution. The good news is that in 2008 the discrepancy was identified. The list was relabeled "Individual Skills for the COIN Environment" and continues to be used. But the confusion remains and distorts the very serious debate over the amount and role of such education in the Army.
The Role of Doctrine and the Surge
The publication in December 2006 of FM-3-24 is often cited as a major factor in the success of the Iraq surge and an indication that the U.S. Army has finally embraced COIN as a core skill.3 However, the document's influence on U.S. Army operations is minimal at best. The turnaround in Iraq was well under way prior to its publication in December 2006, and few deploying commanders or staffs made time to integrate its doctrine before deploying in late 2006 or early 2007. Although General David H. Petraeus forced units to implement many of its principles in operations, the doctrine played little role at the tactical level. Even today, rarely has more than 5 percent of any training audience polled even opened the manual, much less read, internalized, or implemented its principles. While it is popular to attribute part of the shift in U.S. COIN approaches to doctrine, the surge's true roots lie in situational adaptation during Soldiers' second and third tours in Iraq and an exhausted Iraqi populace ready for change.
The Army has tended to resist integrating COIN into its curricula since the 1970s. To support mission-related advisory and staff assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's training and doctrine command has reduced its active-duty officer strength to barely two-thirds of authorization. Most of these positions were removed from posts such as Fort Leavenworth, which bills itself as the "intellectual center of the Army." As a result, the Army has outsourced much of its major thinking, training, concepts development, and futures work to companies such as SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, and other defense contracting firms.
By 2009, nearly four out of five members of the Army Command and General Staff College's instructional faculty consisted of civilian hires, mostly retired military officers. Many of these employees retired before the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. While most are dedicated, intelligent, and experienced, these instructors cannot reinforce the classroom lessons with current operational experience or shape curricula to meet present demands. Some consider themselves stalwart guardians of a conventional mindset, resisting change to address low-intensity threats. Many active officers, especially those keen for promotion, avoid these assignments, viewing them as career killers. Instead they choose lucrative operational assignments with higher promotion potential. The Army's failure to assign highly qualified, active-duty officers to intellectually demanding posts is compromising its ability to plan for ongoing conflicts. Thinking and educating roles are shifted instead to civilians and retirees.
An Inconsistent Approach
COIN is addressed to some degree in almost every school, but as the NTC example demonstrates, the academic qualifications of trainers vary. Since the Army has produced no formal COIN program, few of its instructors have a basic grounding in theory and practice beyond operational experience, that is, whatever worked (or more precisely, what the instructor thought worked) during their last rotation to Iraq or Afghanistan, if they have deployed at all. Training typically consists of PowerPoint slides that fluctuate from instructor to instructor, institutionally generated material, or direct lifts of presentations from COIN luminaries such as Dr. David Kilcullen. This variability contributes to a lack of rigor and poor understanding of the material.
It also manifests itself in erratic performance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Units cannot execute a common COIN vision as part of a broader campaign plan, usually because of the personalities of battalion and brigade commanders.4 This leads to confusion and distrust among the local population, as a new unit arrives every 8 to 12 months with its own theory of operations. One commander may emphasize engagement and cooperation, while the next executes aggressive operations to ferret out insurgents. Consistent doctrine and education will help limit these variations in approach among commanders and units.
A more dangerous consequence of the current ad-hoc approach to COIN education is that it relies on recent combat experience as a foundation. Operational experience is essential to instruction, but it must be paired with an equal grasp of theory to be effective across operational environments. Without theoretical knowledge of insurgency, leaders find it harder to identify the critical differences between environments and select an appropriate response to the situation.
Instead of teaching COIN theory, the Army has chosen a checklist approach, a staple of its 1990s process-based method of training. Current instruction, based on lessons gained in Iraq, leaves the impression that if a unit uses combat outposts, conducts civil affairs, empowers local militias, engages in information operations, and builds governance, success will magically follow. The sequence and method of employing these tools are far more important than their individual value. Ingredients must be used in the right amount, in the right order, and at the right time, to bake a good cake. Without a background in insurgency history and theory, force effectiveness is reduced.
Fixing the Problem
Remedying COIN instruction in the Army requires embracing the recently published capstone doctrine, Field Manual 3-0 Operations, which in 2008 directed the Army to conduct "full-spectrum operations." The Army was to provide an agile force capable of applying offensive, defensive, and stability operations to address challenges ranging from major conventional war down to peacekeeping, COIN, and humanitarian operations.5 This new doctrine would argue for a larger and more considered role for COIN in classroom instruction.
As a first step, the Army senior leadership must direct and support integration of COIN and related low-intensity subjects into educational curricula as part of a full-spectrum education. Senior leaders must demonstrate active, sustained involvement, otherwise the institution will find ways to mitigate or slow the integration. While commanding the Combined Arms Center from 2005-2006, General Petraeus mandated a COIN survey course for all majors attending staff college. The course won wide praise and was one of the highest rated by its students. But within months of his departure, the course was relegated to elective status, with certain topics and themes integrated into other programs of instruction.
Four Imperatives
Leaders at all levels should be required to perform four basic functions related to understanding insurgencies, at grade-appropriate levels. They must be able to analyze a COIN environment and its effects; analyze and understand the nature, strategies, and methods by which an insurgency operates; articulate the tenets of COIN doctrine and theory; and plan and execute operations within a COIN environment, integrating joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational partners to achieve stability. These four imperatives provide a baseline of competencies from which to develop educational programs related to counterinsurgency, as well as metrics to evaluate them.
Implementing these principles in the educational base requires support for the instructors and suitable training materials. The Army has yet to designate a task proponent for COIN to oversee its implementation within the force. It should do so, placing it at one of its existing schools and centers with the requisite knowledge to achieve such a task.
Integrating COIN does not require divestiture of conventional warfare competency. Conventional instruction should continue to be a major point of emphasis for the Army to maintain land dominance. Forcing the debate into either/or choice between conventional and COIN education is small-minded and underestimates the adaptability of our institutions and our Soldiers. Military history is replete with leaders who succeeded along the spectrum of conflict. Indeed, many desired COIN traits are relevant to conventional fighting as well. The ideal COIN leader would be adept at rapid learning, recognizing patterns, and translating that knowledge to action, traits critical to any environment.6
The Army must operate along the full spectrum of conflict. It will continue to undertake missions short of major conventional war when the nation requires it, whether the institution would prefer to do so or not. Preparing Soldiers for this environment is a moral imperative. Army leadership must evaluate and make the necessary hard choices to balance its military educational curricula. Our present difficulties in Afghanistan confirm that COIN is not a lesser task of conventional warfighting but requires unique preparation. The Army must complement the hard-fought counterinsurgency experience gained by its operational force with the educational foundation to match it.
1. Gian Gentile, "Let's Build an Army to Win All Wars," Joint Forces Quarterly, 1st Quarter 2009, pp. 27-33.
2. J. J. Sutherland, Army Training Turns to Tackling Counterinsurgency, 12 January 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99156039.
3. Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, (New York: Penguin, 2009).
4. Sean Naylor, "Stryker Soldiers Say Commanders Failed Them, 26 December 2009, http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/army_afghanistan_mixed_signals_122109w/
5. Department of the Army, FM-3-0 Operations, Leavenworth, Kansas: Defense Printing Office, 2008.
6. George Reed, Craig Bullis, Ruth Collins, and Christopher Paparone, "Leadership Development: Beyond Traits and Competencies," The Future of the Army Profession, by Don M. Snider, edited by Lloyd J. Matthews, (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005), pp. 585-600.