Update: COIN Curriculum

I've gotten a few responses to a recent post in which I discussed Maj. Neil Smith's recent SWJ article regarding counterinsurgency instruction in professional military courses.

One thing I've learned is that counterinsurgency (COIN) instruction seems to vary from course to course. Some officer basic courses get very little actual COIN instruction, whereas others get quite a bit of it.

I should note that it seems that my peers in the infantry seem to be getting significantly more COIN instruction than my friends in the aviation community. While I certainly feel that aviators need to understand the counterinsurgency environment, let's face it, we aviators tend to be over-glorified FOBbits.

Rarely will aviators actually have a "chai meeting" with the Iraqi police, or a leader engagement with the Afghan National Army. Interactions with the civilian population only occur when the worst happens--an aircraft shoot-down. Well, either that or getting assigned to a MITT, one or the other.

Indeed, an aviator's "core competencies" are irrelevant to the type of conflicts we are in. No matter if you're in Somalia, Iraq, or the Fulda Gap, pulling up on the collective means that the helicopter goes up and that you have to press the left pedal. (Unless you're one of my fans that flies a Eurocopter, in which case you put in right pedal).

Nevertheless, aviators will never know what types of units they will be assigned to. I personally found myself working as a battalion operations officer in a ground battalion in Honduras, watching Army Aviation from the infantryman's perspective, and was forced to teach myself some rudimentary Spanish and conduct joint airborne operations with the Honduran military. It was grossly unlike anything I had ever experienced, having been an aviation platoon leader and assistant S-3 in the 82nd Airborne Division, and I learned a lot from the experience.

Many aviators have found themselves in similar predicaments as well. With the operational tempo we are experiencing in the 21st Century military, officers will often find themselves thrust into situations they may not have been initially trained for. Even fighter pilots have found themselves riding in HMMWVs through the Iraqi desert!

This is why the "pentathlete" model is so important. We need to school our officers to be prepared for a wide range of potential assignments. That means preparing them to understand the role of the Army in conventional conflict, counterinsurgency, nation-building and disaster relief. To not do so will only set ourselves up for failure.

(The reader will excuse any rambling or incoherences on my part. After all, I'm participating in my favorite Saturday night activity)

Military Sports Analogies

I've written a bit for Small Wars Journal in the past few months, but nothing has generated as much debate (or, in some cases, agreement) as an article I wrote regarding the Army's concept of the "pentathlete" leader--leaders who are scholars and warriors, skilled in peace, war, civil administration, and adaptive to new forms of conflict.

I have to admit, I garnered myself a certain bit of notoriety. One captain actually approached me and asked me "Are you Small Wars Journal Captain [Starbuck]?" I have to admit that this is actually quite a high honor to be associated with SWJ. It also reminds me of the days when I was a moderator on my college's message board and people would look at me and say that they recognized me from that particular (notoroious) website. Yeah, I was social networking before it was cool.

I wound up with a lot of great responses (and with one quote in Foreign Policy magazine). Some respondants agreed, while some disagreed on certain points. Most, if not all, seemed to agree that we needed to find a new way to cultivate the leaders we need to succeed in the current operating environment. The model that we had been using for training, schooling and progressing our officers was one which was designed in the 1950s, when the US was preparing to win set-piece battles in the Fulda Gap in Europe, rather than the complex hybrid wars that the US is currently facing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the things that surprised me about the responses was the fact that there was more debate over the "pentathlete" analogy that I used than the content of the article at times. Honestly, I can't claim credit for the "pentathlete" concept, as it had been put forward by, I believe, General Schoomaker, a former Army Chief of Staff. Nevertheless, I spawned a few articles which suggested alternatives to the term "pentathlete". One captain said that he felt that officers were Triathletes, Not Pentathletes Yet. Foreign Policy magazine quipped that, after seeing the complexities of hybrid wars, military leaders would need to be decathletes.

But the best criticism came from Boss Mongo, who made some great points on the sports analogy, and actually came up with some suggestions for alternate professional education and development for military officers. Mongo compared military leaders to Boxers and those who practice Ju-Jitsu, with Boxers being the single-tracked conventional warriors, and those who practice Ju-Jitsu representing those who are skilled at conventional, unconventional and nation-building skills. Boss Mongo brings up the John Boyd-style point that the goal of ju-jitsu, much like that of any organism in life, is to increase (or retain) your own ability to act independently, while depriving your adversary of the same ability.

The strictures of boxing are immutable. The defeat of your opponent will only ever be achieved through the delivery system of your fists.

JiuJitsu opens a myriad of options. The ultimate goal is, unlike boxing, not to render your opponent insensate (although that will happen, if he's inexperienced or stubborn or some combination thereof) but to convince him to submit to your will. The analogy between the grappling arts and warfare is comprehensive and enduring enough that Clausewitz (military readers, pause to genuflect) opens up On War with it.

But the greatest advantage of the officer/judoka analogy is the employment of means and ends in both endeavors. Jiu-Jitsu is playing chess with your body. The jiujitsuka has to evaluate his opponent's strengths and weaknesses, formulate a plan to neutralize his strengths and exploit his weaknesses, and then lure him into following your plan, fighting your fight (hello, OODA loop, anyone?), until he submits--all while under physical and mental duress. The opponent's submission can be contrived by a choke, a joint-lock, a strike (Atemi-waza, for you "it's all about grappling and throws" fanatics), or by simply just exhausting him.

The similarity with an officer invested in the COIN fight is that the judoka has to choose the appropriate tactics and techniques, the appropriate amounts of force (blunt trauma), and the condition of the opponent at the endstate (dead, maimed, injured, or merely chastened).

Mongo goes on to address a number of issues facing the development and education of officers. I had initially (and still do to a certain extent) backed the higher education of officers. Many of the members of the "council of colonels" that provided much of the guidance for the Surge of 2007 were combat veterans with advanced degrees. Advanced degrees can certainly be helpful, and, by the way, offer a well-deserved break in a career after a deployment or two. However, Mongo also proposes that officers spend time working with either a governmental agency (US State) or Non-Governmental Agency (Red Cross). The organizational skills learned by military officers can prove useful to the management in these agencies, and the skills learned there prepare officers for work in areas where they may have to deal with a plethora of different actors.

Humanitarian assistance missions in other countries--or possibly even within our own country--will require that military officers be effective civil-military administrators and be able to work with non-governmental or governmental agencies to restore security. They must be able to synchronize the efforts of all actors within a theater, even when actors may range from organizations such as Doctors Without Borders to Blackwater. These are skills that typically aren't learned if our leaders move from one check-the-block job to another, where they are apt to spend more time discussing Line Item Numbers on a property book than they are discussing population security.

Whether you call it a triathlete, pentathlete, decathlete or judoka, it's obvious our promotion system, career management, and educational and development systems need a serious re-boot.

Another leadership vignette for the counter-insurgent

One of my fellow bloggers in Iraq, Boss Mongo, has commented on a number of personalities well-known in the counterinsurgency field. many of whom have proven to be quite eccentric characters.

Last month, Mongo commented on an article from Small Wars Journal which discussed the various character attributes of T.E. Lawrence, whom I've commented on a number of times before. (By the way, the author of that article is awesome) My fascination with his character goes back a number of years. I knew of Lawrence largely from his role as a recurring character in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (circa 1990), where he assumes the role of an archaeologist specializing in the Middle East. Years later, as a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division, I attended the 3 1/2 hour long movie Lawrence of Arabia at, believe it or not, an art-house theater in Fayetteville, NC. Yeah, there actually is one of those theaters in downtown Fayetteville, believe it or not. Anyway, what struck me about the character is that he, like I was at the time, was a bored lieutenant on someone's staff--over-educated and under-employed; he had a far greater sense of Middle Eastern politics and military strategy than his peers, and he was stuck with a mundane job. In his case, his job was to re-draw maps for briefings (which, in today's terms, would probably be akin to making PowerPoint slides).

Well, Mongo has introduced us to a new personality for all of us in the counter-insurgency/hybrid/4GW/pentathlete camp: a British intelligence officer named Orde Wingate. Mongo links to a book on Amazon about him (which, unfortunately, is not in Kindle format, so there's yet another book to lug around Iraq). Wingate had fought against the Arabs in Palestine, and had fought the Italians in Ethiopia alongside a brilliant strategist named Halie Selassie, a man who would gain future fame under the name "Ras Tafari". (Halie Sshould be no stranger to those who read The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War). He designed unconventional campaigns to prevent the Japanese from taking India and guerilla campaigns in Burma.

Now with brilliance comes a certain level of eccentricity. Lawrence had his peculiarities, but Wingate has him beat hands down. One tale described Wingate lying on his cot naked, combing his body hair with a toothbrush. Which, of course, is strange to us in the year 2009 because we've all discovered the art of manscaping. (Yes, admit it)

So thanks to Mongo, I have yet another book in my reading cache. I swear, I haven't been able to catch up on all the reading I want to do here. Looks like I'm going to have to finish off a few books when I take my mid-tour leave in a month or two.

Focus: We've discussed Lawrence and now Orde Wingate as leadership vignettes for counter-insurgents and "pentathlete warriors". Who else would you suggest as a pentathlete soldier?