Defeating Insurgencies: Adaptive Campaigning and an Australian Way of War
The past of guerilla warfare and insurgency represents both the shadow of things that have been and of those that will be.
- Ian F W Beckett1
Insurgencies will continue to define the character of future war, just as they have defined countless wars throughout history. Today, ‘the global routinisation of violence has spawned entire generations for whom protracted conflict is normal ... youth see violence not as an aberration, but part an [sic] intrinsic aspect of life’.2 Coupled with the unprecedented availability of highly lethal weapons and explosives, relatively permissive conditions for the international movement of people and information, and the belief that change can be achieved at the end of a gun, it takes little to spark insurgency in such a context. As we can see with events in Iraq and Afghanistan, in today’s globalised world an insurgency ‘can weaken or undercut a government, hinder economic development and access to global capital, or at least force national leaders to alter key policies’.3 Undoubtedly, inter-state warfare, including great power conflict, is very much alive and well in the twenty-first century and should not be quickly dismissed. However, in the coming decades the Australian Army is going to be called upon to defeat, or at least contribute to the defeat of, an insurgency more often than it will be called upon to defeat a great power in inter-state warfare.4
It makes sound strategic sense then, if we are to maximise the utility of the Land Force across the greatest range of likely tasks, that the Land Force is appropriately postured, equipped, trained and educated, and sufficiently agile to prevent or defeat contemporary and future insurgencies. Army is currently meeting this challenge primarily through implementing Adaptive Campaigning.5 As the Australian Army’s capstone future operating concept, Adaptive Campaigning not only provides a solid foundation for defeating today’s insurgencies through an operational framework that is distinctly Australian, but also positions Army to deal with future insurgencies as the character of insurgencies inevitably change.
Adaptive Campaigning - Army's Capstone Operating Concept
Adaptive Campaigning provides conceptual and force modernisation direction to Army to ensure it remains postured to meet the demands of complex operating environments. The concept builds on the already established and widely accepted concepts described in Complex Warfighting. It is firmly rooted in the Clausewitzian tradition of understanding war and warfare as a fundamentally human activity, and draws heavily on historical and recent operational lessons learned to form its conclusions. The concept is also heavily influenced by the recognition that war should be understood as ‘conflict using both violent and non-violent means, between multiple diverse actors and influences competing for control over the perceptions, behaviour and allegiances of human societies’.6 Specifically, influencing populations and their perceptions is the central and decisive activity of war.
With this in mind, Adaptive Campaigning is defined as actions taken by the Land Force as part of the military contribution to a whole-of-government approach to resolving conflicts. The concept provides Army with a holistic philosophical framework for conflict resolution, as well as logically deduced design guidance for the future Army.7 The framework for conflict resolution is based on three fundamental pillars. The first pillar is that actions taken by the Land Force must be part of a whole-of-government approach and not conducted in isolation or without purpose. The second pillar, related directly to the first, is the requirement to adopt a holistic approach that considers tactical actions along multiple, simultaneous lines of operation to create conditions that achieve operational objectives. The third pillar is the recognition that to be successful the Land Force, and the approach taken by the Land Force, must be inherently adaptive.
Since its endorsement in December 2006, Adaptive Campaigning has had a significant impact not only within Army force development circles but also across the wider Defence organisation. The concept has been well received by other Australian government agencies, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), as well as ABCA and NATO defence forces. Most recently, Adaptive Campaigning has been used to support the requirements for a modular Engineer Force; the ongoing development of Land 400 Protected Survivability of Ground Forces; the design and development of the Army After Next; the Army Gap Analysis process; an AFP-ADF Interoperability Review; and Army’s input into the 2008 Defence White Paper. Importantly, the key themes of Adaptive Campaigning are incorporated into doctrine, specifically LWD 1 Fundamentals of Land Warfare. These themes are also informing the development of other ‘fundamental’ level doctrine, such as an updated LWD 3–0 Operations and a revised LWD 3–1 Counterinsurgency Operations.
Before examining the Adaptive Campaigning framework for conflict resolution and its relevance for defeating an insurgency, it is necessary to frame the problem correctly and define the context.
The Insurgent Problem
The [insurgent] never forgets that its fight is first and foremost ‘political’ rather than ‘military’. It has not forgotten the basic reason for fighting a war, which is to bring the enemy to a point where one can impose one’s will upon him—whether by brute force or psychological persuasion.8
The attractiveness of organised armed conflict to non-state actors for the purpose of creating political change within a state has not diminished in the twenty-first century. Regardless of how you define insurgency, the symbiotic relationship between politics and violence remains a constant theme, despite the changing character of insurgencies. All wars are ultimately about the distribution of power.9 However, in the case of an insurgency the ‘interpenetration of war and politics’ is much more pervasive compared with high intensity, state versus state conventional conflict. There is now the growing realisation that military operations must be completely integrated with political, diplomatic, economic and cultural actions. The challenge then, more than ever, is to conceive military operations within a political framework.10
At first glance, this is not a new concept. In some way, political considerations have always conditioned military operations. Clausewitz makes this a central theme of his theory of war, repeatedly stressing the subordination of war to politics, asserting that ‘war should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy’.11 The difference between an insurgency and a state versus state conflict, however, is that in the latter, politics is mainly a factor at the strategic level, where statecraft is required to guide the application of military power.12 In a conventional war, individuals at the tactical level can afford to devote themselves to purely tactical issues. A competent conventional campaign design will ensure the link between tactical actions, operational or campaign goals and strategic goals.
In an insurgency, however, politics will pervade all levels of war: all politics is local. Today, the issue of local politics is as much of an issue for the section commander as it is for the operational level commander or the statesman. Every use of force, or threat of force, sends a message to the people we are aiming to influence. Each time force is used, even if it is discriminating and apparently justified, it can undermine popular support, change perceptions and alienate the local population. The use of force at the smallest tactical level has direct political consequence. The result is a compression or blurring of the levels of war so that tactical actions by the both the insurgent and the counterinsurgent have much greater potential to have a direct strategic impact. This is compounded further by the pervasive presence of the media on the battlefield, fully capable of instantaneously relaying battlefield actions to a global audience. This is especially so when the application of purely military measures may not, by itself, secure victory because the solution to winning the conflict is likely to lie in the socio-political realm. If tactical actions of the counterinsurgent are negative, the political credibility of the counterinsurgent mission will be eroded.
The aim of the counterinsurgent is simple, even though achieving the aim is complex. The counterinsurgent must convince the population that the political proposition they are offering better meets the needs of the people than does any alternative. In competition, the insurgent will pose alternative propositions that may range from a comprehensive ‘parallel political hierarchy’ to the more modest desire of maintaining ungoverned spaces to allow for freedom of movement for the insurgent, criminal activity and general armed lawlessness. But winning the competition for allegiance and influence is difficult, especially when one considers the complexity of the contemporary operating environment together with the requirement to balance our own strategic goals with the goals of the indigenous government and people. This is complicated by the need to balance effective governance with traditional tribal structures.
To muddy the waters further, the causes of insurgency are often many and varied, as they are in Iraq today. Related to this, the goals and therefore the tactics of each insurgency will vary from circumstance to circumstance. In fact, the causes of insurgency are rarely static. The insurgent movement can manipulate and even create causes as the insurgency progresses.13 Initial causes often decline in importance as the struggle escalates, and new causes rise to prominence. Consequently, there tends to be no dogmatic interpretation of methodology on the part of insurgents, and their tactics evolve to suit their particular circumstance.
To be decisive in the highly complex, fluid, politicised and interconnected future battlefield, the aim must be to ensure that the application of force ‘can be modulated and shaped by professional militaries to accommodate rapidly shifting politics and flexible operational and strategic objectives’.14 Defaulting to the use of lethal force to solve problems—normally the expected course of action in conventional warfare—is likely to be counterproductive in an insurgency, with negative second and third order effects potentially eroding the political legitimacy of the operation.
Paradoxically, it is precisely the use of force, or the threat to use force, that enables both the counterinsurgent and insurgent forces to gain personal contact with the local population. In a war for the people, the ability to influence people and their perceptions and allegiances is the central and decisive activity of warfare and depends on personal contact, proximity and enduring presence. For the counterinsurgent, presence is achieved through the ability to conduct sustained close combat in close proximity to the enemy and the population, while discriminating between the two. This capability to conduct sustained close combat, unique to the Army, enables the Land Force to be persistent, pervasive and proportionate.
The criticality to campaign success of an effective close combat capability that is proportionate and discriminate has historically not been well understood by potential counterinsurgents. The ‘classicists’ of insurgency and counterinsurgency studies, such as Galula, Thompson, Kitson, Paget and more recently authors such as Bard O’Neil, John Nagl and N R F Aylwin-Foster, go to great pains to reinforce the requirement for rectitude and the discriminate use of force on the part of the counterinsurgent.15 And they are fundamentally correct. However, warnings on the use of force and over-emphasis on the other ‘lines of operation’ such as restoring essential services and providing economic incentives to the local population, can conceal the critical requirement for the counterinsurgent to be able to kill or capture insurgents when and where required. As one US Army battalion commander, recently returned from a tour with his battalion in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, reinforces ‘nothing we did in Iraq had a more significant impact on reducing the level of violence than killing or capturing those who were committing the violent acts’.16 The trick, for the counterinsurgent at least, is to ensure that whenever lethal force is used, those dreaded ‘second and third order effects’ do not come back to haunt you.
There are and will continue to be insurgents prepared to undertake armed violence to effect political change. The specific causes of the insurgents may wax and wane over time and therefore may be difficult to identify, especially in the early years of an insurgency. The distinction between the levels of war will grow ever more blurred and there will be a continuing politicisation of insurgent conflict down to the lowest tactical level. Wars for the people will continue to be complex in character, not the least simply because of the sheer multitude and diversity of actors of influence within the battlespace. Given all of this, how do we prepare for and be successful in a ‘shifting “mosaic war” that is difficult for counterinsurgents to envision as a coherent whole?’17
An Australian Approach to Defeating Insurgencies
[In February 1967] ... a dispirited LTCOL John Warr, CO 5 RAR, wondered what the hell they were doing in Vietnam, and asked his intelligence officer, Bob O’Neill, to propose an answer: was it to kill Viet Cong, bring the enemy to battle, separate the people from the enemy, offer civic aid, restore Saigon’s control, or cut the Viet Cong supply lines.18
Everybody intuitively understands that defeating an insurgency is a difficult and lengthy business. At times, it is difficult to determine exactly what the Land Force’s purpose is, let alone which operational and tactical methods will best ensure success. As we are witnessing today, the dynamic nature of the threat, the multitude and diversity of actors, including well armed and organised criminals, as well as the austerity and complexity of the environment itself, all add to the complicated nature of defeating an insurgency. Adaptive Campaigning aims to overcome this complexity through a framework for conflict resolution that advocates a holistic operational level campaign emphasising a whole-of-government approach, that aims to defeat the insurgency along multiple lines of operation, and that is inherently adaptive.
The counterinsurgent response to an insurgency should have as a fundamental assumption that the true nature of the threat ‘lies in the insurgent’s political potential rather than his military power’.19 Adaptive Campaigning recognises that an essential component for defeating an insurgency is creating the conditions for the indigenous government to meet the needs of its people and dislocating the political potential of the insurgents. The solution lies in a whole-of-government approach to the conflict. The Land Force cannot be relied upon to alone provide the vast array of essential services required to restore or support legitimate governance. Restoring, reforming or reconstructing local, regional and national governments, economies, legal, banking and justice institutions is a task well beyond the capacity of even a coalition Land Force. Other government agencies, by default, are going to be required.
In recent years, Australia has refined its inter-agency coordination at the strategic level. At the operational and tactical level the synergies have not been as effective, although some small steps have been taken in places like Solomon Islands and Timor Leste. However, most would agree this falls well short of true whole-of-government cooperation. To generate the effects we want at the tactical level, sections, platoons and combat teams must be prepared to become inter-agency combined arms teams as the norm, not just on an extraordinary basis.
A counterinsurgency joint inter-agency task force must take a comprehensive approach to the conduct of land operations in order to influence and shape the overall environment. Noting that combat is but a means to an end, it is imperative that we consider tactical actions beyond just those designed to deliver lethal effects. In particular, the task force will need access to an appropriate array of lethal and non-lethal weapons and be protected, equipped and structured to operate in a potentially highly lethal and complex environment. It must be fully capable of simultaneously performing diverse concurrent combat, humanitarian, indigenous and peace support tasks. Adaptive Campaigning recommends the Land Force consider tactical actions within an operational framework of five interdependent and mutually reinforcing lines of operation. It is important that these lines of operation are not considered as a doctrinal template to be applied in every situation. Rather, they are a filter through which to holistically identify and analyse the total array of tactical tasks the Land Force will be required to undertake to successfully resolve conflict.
The five lines of operation are:
- Joint Land Combat. Joint Land Combat includes those actions taken by the Land Force to secure the environment, remove organised resistance and create the conditions for the other lines of operation.
- Population Protection. Population protection includes those actions taken to provide protection and security to threatened populations in order to set the conditions for the re-establishment of law and order. Clearly, close cooperation with indigenous police and the AFP International Deployment Group is essential.
- Population Support. Population support encompasses those actions taken to establish, restore or temporarily replace the necessary essential services in affected communities. Close cooperation with other government departments, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, AusAID and the Department of Immigration, will be vital to achieve the desired effects in the operating environment.
- Indigenous Capacity Building. Indigenous capacity building represents our ticket home. It includes actions which nurture the establishment of civilian governance, security, police, legal, financial and administrative systems. Again, close cooperation and unified action with other government departments will be essential.
- Public Information. Public information includes those actions taken to inform and shape perceptions, attitudes, behaviour and understanding of target population groups. All participants in a counterinsurgency campaign will have an essential role to play in ensuring a consistent narrative is delivered to the intended audience.
Executing actions along the five lines of operation simultaneously within the overall intent of the campaign will provide adversary forces with multiple dilemmas they will not be able to overcome through violence alone. Adaptive Campaigning aims to leverage these multiple dilemmas presented to adversaries by physically and psychologically dislocating the adversary from the population. Operationally, a key to success will lie in the Land Force’s ability to effectively orchestrate effort across all lines of operation, as well as effectively transitioning responsibility for taking the lead to other government agencies or indigenous agencies.
The interplay between multiple diverse actors, all competing to influence the allegiances and behaviours of societies, creates a complex adaptive system comprised of many other complex adaptive systems, each in their own way constantly evolving.20 The appropriate use of force, or threat of force, in such a context depends on our ability to understand the environment, our own relationships with the multitude of actors in the environment, and their various responses to our actions. The reality of conflict today and in the future is such that competitors within the conflict zone will attempt to continually adapt their tactics, techniques and procedures faster than their opponent in order to exploit weakness and maintain their competitive edge. In order to gain and retain the initiative, our forces must be constantly and rapidly adapting to the emerging situation. This makes warfare both a continuous meeting engagement and a competitive learning environment.
The best method of command in such a context is one of decentralised execution where the impact of operational uncertainty is mitigated by reducing the amount of certainty needed to act, and allowing subordinates the freedom to exercise initiative and take action. At the end of the day, success or failure will lie increasingly with junior leaders and their ability to make the right decision at the point of contact. The key prerequisite for an appropriate command climate is mutual trust and understanding between superiors and subordinates that encourages initiative and adaption at every level of command.
But, to ensure adaption becomes natural—an attitude or cultural characteristic—rather than some process-driven checklist, the Land Force must inculcate an iterative process that combines discovery and learning. We act, we learn from our actions and the responses they have generated, and we change our behaviour accordingly. All levels of the Land Force must understand what constitutes success at their level, how to measure success, and how that success correlates to success at the operational and strategic level. Land Force action will therefore be characterised by the Adaption Cycle: Act – the Land Force acts to stimulate a response; Sense – reactions to the Land Force actions need to be observed and interpreted; Decide – the Land Force must understand what the response means and understand what should therefore be done; and, Adapt – the adversary will inevitably adapt, and so should we. These Act, Sense, Decide and Adapt cycles need to occur at every level, and by every force element with an understanding of the overall intent of the campaign. This will ensure we adapt appropriately to a constantly changing environment so that we can be best postured for success.
Conclusion
The contemporary insurgencies faced today in Iraq and Afghanistan are different in character when compared with the post-colonial insurgencies of the 1950s and 1960s that classicists such as Galula, Fall, Thompson and Kitson wrote about. This change is due in part to the influences of globalisation, a globalised information network, and a pervasive media presence. As David Kilcullen notes in ‘Counterinsurgency Redux’, Internet-based financial transfers, training and recruitment, clandestine communication, planning, and intelligence capabilities allow insurgents to exploit virtual sanctuary for more than just propaganda.21 Classical counterinsurgency theory has little to say about such electronic sanctuary. The insurgencies of tomorrow are likely to be even more complex than those of today. They will be increasingly transnational in character, and most likely will involve many diffuse competing insurgent movements pursuing their own conflicting agendas, which may or may not be readily identifiable by the counterinsurgent. And, insurgencies will not necessarily occur in splendid isolation. We are unlikely to have the luxury of neatly boxing a conflict, labelling it as an insurgency, and treating it as a purely discrete entity.
Designing a successful counterinsurgency strategy in such a context is challenging and complex. Adaptive Campaigning provides a solid foundation on which to build a successful counterinsurgency campaign. Adaptive Campaigning recognises that war, and by default insurgency, is a form of armed politics with the aim of influencing the behaviour of populations through their perceptions.
Adaptive Campaigning acknowledges the increasing politicisation of conflict, the challenges it poses for the application of military force and the consequent requirement for a holistic, comprehensive whole-of-government approach to conflict resolution and the establishment of an enduring secure and stable future. The implementation of Adaptive Campaigning will ensure that Army remains postured to meet the demands of the complex operating environment and to defeat or contribute to the defeat of contemporary and future insurgencies.
Endnotes
1 Ian Beckett, ‘Forward to the Past: Insurgency in our Mist’, Harvard International Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer 2001, pp. 59–63.
2 Steven Metz, Counterinsurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American Capability, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, PA, 1995, p. 16.
3 Steven Metz, ‘Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq’, The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2003–04, p. 25.
4 For an excellent argument on the nature and character of future war, and in particular the highly likely possibility for inter-state warfare in this century, see Colin Gray, Another Bloody Century, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 2005.
5 Adaptive Campaigning – The Land Force Response to Complex Warfighting, correct as at 24 November 2006, was endorsed by the Chief of Army’s Senior Advisory Committee (CASAC) and agreed by the Chiefs of Service Committee (COSC) in December 2006 as Army’s response to the 2006 Future Land Operating Concept, Complex Warfighting. The method for operationalising Adaptive Campaigning to meet the Chief of Army’s development intent, and the full range of associated and complementary initiatives supporting Adaptive Campaigning, are detailed in a Chief of Army Directive (26/07 – Implementing Adaptive Campaigning).
6 Adaptive Campaigning, p. 1.
7 Force modernisation direction for the design and development of Army’s future force is given in the Chief of Army’s Development Intent (CADI). The CADI is ‘to develop an Army that is, if necessary, able to operate simultaneously across all lines of operation, in particular through the conduct of sustained close combat in order to win the land battle’. This principal CADI is supported by fourteen additional design rules which can be found in Adaptive Campaigning, p. 25.
8 Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy, Stackpole, Harrisburg, PA, 1961.
9 I am indebted to Brigadier (Ret) Justin Kelly for reinforcing this essentially Clausewitzian point in ‘Future War – Future Wars’, unpublished paper, 2008.
10 Michael Evans, ‘Clausewitz’s Chameleon: Military Theory and the Future of War’, Quadrant, Vol. XLVI, No. 11, November 2002, p. 8, <http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/phpprint.php>.
11 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984, p. 88.
12 Evans, ‘Clausewitz’s Chameleon’, p. 8.
13 Robert R Tomes, ‘Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare’, Parameters, Spring 2004, p. 27.
14 Michael Evans, ‘From Kadesh to Kandahar: Military Theory and the Nature of War’, Naval War College Review, Vol. LVI, No. 3, Summer 2003, p. 143.
15 For a sampling of the ‘classicists’ see, amongst others, David Galula, Counterinsurgency Theory and Practice, New Edition, Praeger Publishing, New York, 2006; David Galula, Pacification in Algeria: 1956–1958, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, 2006; Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1962; Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, Faber and Faber, London, 1977; Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Operations: Techniques of Guerilla Warfare, Walker and Co, New York, 1967. More recent published works on the (mis)application of force include: Bard E O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, Brassey’s (US) Inc, Washington DC, 1990; John A Nagle, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002; and Brigadier N R F Aylwin-Foster, Operation Iraqi Freedom Phase 4: The Watershed the US Army Still Needs to Recognise?, Royal College of Defence Studies, Course 2005, <http://www.da.mod.uk/publications/Alywn-Foster%20SHP%202005.pdf/view>.
16 Lieutenant Colonel Craig A Collier, ‘Observations from a Year in the Sunni Triangle’, Small Wars Journal, <http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/48-collier.pdf >.
17 US Department of Defense, Field Manual 3–24, Counterinsurgency, GPO, Washington DC, 15 December 2006, pp. 1–8.
18 Paul Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War, HarperCollins, Australia, 2007.
19 Gavin Bulloch, ‘Military Doctrine and Counterinsurgency: A British Perspective’, Parameters, Summer, 1996, p. 7.
20 Much of the work on adaption in Adaptive Campaigning is founded on Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory and the ongoing work of Dr Anne Marie Grisogono and her team at DSTO. For an introduction to CAS theory see <http://www.trojanmice.com/index.htm>. Dr Alan Ryan’s article, ‘About the Bears and the Bees: Adaptive Responses to Asymmetric Warfare’, <http://necsi.org/events/iccs6/papers/d8e20597d9f231241c78e593dd7b.pdf> is also recommended.
21 David Kilcullen, ‘Counterinsurgency Redux’, Survival, Spring 2007, <http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen1.pdf>.
