Thread: ISAF's Vision For COIN

Originally Posted by S-2

"I know you are joking..."

Not really. Remember your drill sergeants?

"The catchcry in basic that the Recruit Training Instructors used to shoot at us was "do you want to kill somebody recruit? Of course you do, otherwise why would you be doing all of this training!"

Soldiers are in the business of mobilizing and applying firepower efficiently to achieve national objectives. The core competencies required to conduct a Corps mechanized attack are, by themselves, staggering.

The core competencies required to execute nat'l objectives of nation-building are equally daunting and span (probably) a greater overall portion of governance. The two above scenarios sit on the opposite ends of the conflict spectrum and aren't reconcilable today IMV.

We are fast approaching in America a point where there'll be a need for the Dept. of Nation-Buiilding. We'll quite likely be at this for some centuries. Right now I can think of three more nations that are immediate candidates for something similar-Somalia, Yemen, and Sudan. Most of sub-Saharan Africa frankly may qualify as time marches on. You've got an enduring problem with PNG that persists despite your best "kinder, gentler" efforts and a near equally disturbing climate in the Solomons. That doesn't even address Indonesia/E. Timor.

I'm not so sure that all elements of civil-military assistance, foreign military purchases, cooperative efforts, and more shouldn't be housed under one roof in America. Maybe then we meet the personnel management dilemma of career paths while also mobilizing and synchronizing resources better to match needs. Right now I'm uncertain whether America, even at this late date, fully understands all the relevant elements that might already exist within our own government much less how to deploy those resources effectively.

I don't believe that a switch can be flipped easily from the mindset needed in COIN to that required for clearing a trenchline with flamethrowers and cold steel. I also don't believe that full-blown combat ops are a thing of the past but do believe there are many latent enemies hoping we shall.

Part of what I was getting at with the second quote that perhaps I didn't make clear, is that from my training experience I don't understand how the Australian Army has managed to stay skilled in the "nation building" type roles such as peacekeeping and COIN. However, we have stayed skilled at it, the manner in which we dealt with Cambodia, Bouganville and East Timor 20 years plus after we left Vietnam. Given that I didn't get trained to do any of those things as an enlisted man and I didn't get to serve on those operations to tell you how they ran, I can only deduce that the institutional memory is kept somewhere else ... perhaps in the heads of the our officers? I know that much of the syllubus at RMC Duntroon revolved around the Australian experience in Vietnam, so I can imagine that those lessons would have been passed on.

My take would be that an officer should be well trained and smart enough to understand the difference between leading in a conventional war and in a nation building operation. If they know what is needed then they should be able to convey it to their NCO's and soldiers and if they are trained to be professional and well disciplined, they will do as they are told. If I am right about why we (and the British as well) managed to maintain that institutional knowledge, I'd hope that we ensure that future officers are encouraged to absorb the lessons of the WOT when it is over. There is nothing worse than having to re-invent the wheel.