Op-EdsStrategies for a Global Counterinsurgencyby Jonathan Morgenstein and Eric Vickland U.S. troops in Iraq face an insurgency similar to those confronted by great powers for centuries. Insurgents hide, wait, and strike on their own timetables. They wear no uniforms and they utilize tactics of deception, ambush, and terror. The insurgents strike weaknesses and dictate the terms of the fight. Iraq is now a microcosm of the global struggle we facea comprehensive insurgency inadequately described as the global war on terrorism. In Iraq and around the world, we will never peacefully dissuade those dedicated to violence against us. They must be captured or killed. However, the enemy is not just Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups that share its messianic vision. It is also organized crime, black markets, and sympathetic local populations, all of which sustain the insurgency with cash, weapons, and intelligence. This global insurgency can only be defeated by severing the insurgents' connections to populations that sustain them. We must isolate and smother an enemy who thrives by delivering empowerment and vengeance to populations drowning in poverty, social humiliation, and political marginalization. These masses in return sustain the enemypassively with cover and actively with fighters. We have to convince those who passively support the insurgency that we are not their enemy. Unfortunately, our current strategy overemphasizing military force drives undecided millions into the insurgents' arms. Not only are we fighting the war wrong, we are fighting the wrong war. US forces in Iraq are coming to terms with essential lessons in dealing with insurgency: overwhelming firepower is often counterproductive; comprehensive reconstruction and information efforts win hearts and minds; the best sources of actionable intelligence are local populations; and lastly, indigenous law enforcement facilitates smaller US footprints, multiplying the effectiveness of all other efforts. These same lessons must also guide how we fight our worldwide struggle against Islamist extremism. Counterinsurgency concepts must form the core of our government's national security strategy. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches that such an approach be based on five equally vital pillars: targeted military force, intelligence, law enforcement, information operations, and civil affairs. Taken together, these pillars constitute a global counterinsurgencyan innovative and cohesive paradigm with which to guide America's national security policy. As General John Abizaid told Congress last September, defeating the insurgency ''requires not only military pressure...[but] all elements of international and national power." Counterinsurgency doctrine tells us that the military is only one of the five pillars, and if we are to win, it cannot dominate the other four. We were compelled and justified in militarily toppling the Taliban. But defeating future enemies will more likely demand targeted military force such as that being executed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Africa than traditional blunt instruments typical of the Cold War. Those who prioritize national missile defense over either special-operations capabilities or non-military tools of foreign policy understand neither the nature of our greatest threat nor how to defeat it. Our intelligence capabilitiescollection and analysis of informationmust be expanded and diversified. We must trace technology on weapons of mass destruction as well as materials proliferation before they spread. We must strengthen social intelligence that will provide essential understanding of the demographic and cultural geography within which our enemy hides. We must reinvigorate our human intelligence networks so that we can penetrate their networks. Some have downplayed the role of police work in defeating Al Qaeda. As 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean has observed, this complacency perpetuates the disjointed and dysfunctional nature of our law enforcement agencies, both within government and vis-a-vis international law enforcement bodies. This must change, because effective police operations are essential to suffocating the global insurgency. Our information operations effortsinstrumental in winning over the undecideds among whom the enemy hides and recruitsis woefully inadequate. We must promote America's charity, while exposing the enemy's hypocrisy. Civil affairs, ''development" in non-military terms, is aggressive economic and political development as well as cultivation of civil society institutions and human rights. Only when populations in the developing world obtain genuine economic opportunity, social dignity, and political empowerment will they no longer incubate the global insurgency. None of these pillars precludes other crucial components of our security policy: ending foreign oil dependency, reining in Iranian nuclear weapons development, and containing North Korea. Neither do they rule out wariness of rival great powers. We must rebuild the alliances that we need, yet have rubbed raw in the past six years, and we must close off geopolitical fissures that Russia and China will seek to exploit. However, the primary threat we face is the global insurgency, and defeating it will require a global counterinsurgency as the foundation of our national security and foreign policy doctrine. Jonathan Morgenstein is a program officer at the United States Institute of Peace. Eric Vickland is a lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of USIP, which does not advocate specific policy positions. In the News ArchivesNews Releases ArchivesRelated ResourcesContact |
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