Applying Nagl: Military Organisational Change and American Counterinsurgency in Iraq
Abstract
In 2002, John Nagl wrote an influential book titled Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife that analysed counterinsurgency attempts in the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War. With this book in mind, this article examines some of the counterinsurgency actions taken by US General David Petraeus during his tenure in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. It provides a comparison of the elements that Nagl details as necessary for an organisation to learn or adapt to new and challenging environments.
Introduction
Most organisations are dynamic and complex social systems formed to accomplish goals. Organisational change is a field of study that focuses on the organisation as a system and how the framework of that system interfaces and influences the performance of the individual.1 As military organisations are inherently hierarchical, bureaucratic and sensitive in nature, the principles and practices governing this type of organisation generally devalue the need for change, and subsequently, little has been written concerning the necessity of change within the military context. In 2002, John Nagl published a book based upon his doctoral thesis, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, which highlighted the fundamental importance of organisational change in the military. Nagl’s focus was the success of British counterinsurgency operations in Malaya and why, in contrast, American efforts failed in Vietnam.
The connection to organisational change is most evident in the chapter ‘Hard Lessons’, in which Nagl summarises the elements that the military must embrace to ‘learn or adapt to new and challenging environments. The first is tactical innovation, in which the organisation recognises that they are currently not accomplishing their goals, and must adopt new methods in order to succeed. The second is strategic vision, which, when considered in the context of counterinsurgency, is the ability to recognise that the military component forms only one critical aspect of a counterinsurgency campaign. The bigger picture view, which is critical for the defeat of insurgents, also considers the link with economic and political components. The final element is that of The Man: a person with a vision or sufficient charisma who can persuade others to believe in his ideas.2 The inspiration for authoring this article stems from both reading Nagl’s interpretation of the ways in which organisational change elements were applied to the US presence in Iraq, and also a personal interest in change management.
Background
In his influential 1964 text, Counter-Insurgency Warfare, author David Galula wrote that ‘the ideal situation for the insurgent would be a large land-locked country shaped like a blunt-tipped star ... in a temperate zone with a large and dispersed rural population and a primitive economy’,3 a scenario which is almost perfectly demonstrated in Iraq. Possessing a hot climate, and home to 24 million people, Iraq is largely rural, with a handful of urban centres exceeding populations of one million.4 Iraq is a land-locked country, with the exception of Umm Qasr, a small port located in the south. The country is surrounded by six countries, three of which are considered hostile to US efforts— specifically Iran, Jordan and Syria.
The rise of the Iraqi insurgency is well documented. The US-led invasion occurred in March 2003, yet by May 2003 a local insurgency (initially perceived to be comprised of ‘regime dead-enders’5) had suddenly accelerated in strength and number. The impetus for this uprising was two decrees, which displaced some 500,000 Iraqis from their employment.6 The insurgency was exacerbated by the US Army’s culture of being unwilling and unable to fight a guerrilla war. According to John Nagl, the US Army ‘was focused from its inception on the idea of fighting decisive conventional conflicts’.7 Locked in a conventional-tactic mindset, the US Army commenced building large Forward Operating Bases (FOB) and garrisoning large formations.
Although then-Commander General George Casey recognised that Iraq required a new way of fighting, he failed to implement his vision during his command.8 With an organisational culture not suited to counterinsurgency, then-President George Bush, recognising the need for a fresh approach, appointed General David Petraeus as the new commander in Iraq. According to Australian Major General Jim Molan, this appointment came at a time marking the start of a fifth phase of the Iraqi war.9 As such, January 2007 represents the turning point at which the United States fundamentally changed its methodology and style of fighting within an extremely short timeframe.
Tactical Innovation
Yet, before this January 2007 milestone, successful examples of counterinsurgency had occurred. After the 2003 invasion, General Petraeus secured the town of Mosul and initiated a variety of projects, remaining unhindered by the insurgency. In 2005, Colonel H R McMaster led the notable Operation RESTORING RIGHTS in Tal Afar (from which the phrase was coined ‘Clear, Hold and Build’). When taking back the town of Ramadi in the Anbar province in 2006, Colonel Sean MacFarland championed many of the same techniques used by Colonel McMaster in helping the Anbar awakening.10 However, these examples were the exception. Most units maintained the ‘kill-capture’ approach, or focused on force-projection to contain the insurgency, in which ‘success was measured in the number of insurgents and of top-level Baathists from the deck of playing cards who were eliminated’.11 Naturally, this tactic generated inconsistent results. Preceding the first Iraq national election in 2005, Major General Molan noted, ‘every time they tried to focus on a particular city, we had to go and fight somewhere else’.12 As recognition increased that the application of conventional fighting techniques was failing, a new appreciation for the use of minimum force in dealing with the insurgency was reached.
Until 2007, issues with the ‘kill-capture’ approach were augmented by the preference to house troops in large FOBs. This tactic gave the insurgency the freedom to manoeuvre at will, and also allowed them to choose the field of battle, set ambushes and deploy Improvised Explosive Device (IEDs). In short, remote living via FOBs gave the insurgency the advantage. Most military command courses teach the importance of OODA (Orient, Observe, Decide, Act), and the necessity to get inside the decision-making cycle of the enemy. The FOB strategy meant that US forces were reactive instead of proactive, and could never seriously have an impact on the decision-making cycle of the enemy. This was generated by the incorrect assumption that US forces were the problem.
Under General Petraeus, and acting upon the advice of advisors like David Kilcullen, the FOB strategy was slowly abandoned and US troops began to ‘get out and walk.13 Outposts were planned across Baghdad, similar to those devised under Colonel McMasters’ post-attack plan of Tal Afar in November 2005. To help stem the violence, these outposts were traditionally located in abandoned buildings, at selected positions in which the majority of hostilities were occurring.14 As the ‘surge’ units arrived in theatre and were deployed, they were positioned in these outposts around Baghdad, in concentrations ranging from thirty-five to one hundred personnel (platoon to company sized).15 This affirmed Galula’s belief that the ‘crux of problems for the counterinsurgent is to keep an area clean’.16 Practical counterinsurgency Key Performance Indicators were introduced to company commanders (for example, what percentage of your force is continually operating outside the FOB?). This is best illustrated in an example cited by Ricks, in which the 1st Cavalry unit were told that having two-thirds of their strength working amongst the population was not enough; a goal of 75 per cent was to be achieved.17
The intention of these Key Performance Indicators was also to achieve more than just the security of the population. The medium-term goal focused on population control. To prevent sectarian attacks, gated communities were established, and thousands of cement barriers erected (the barriers separating Adhamiyah from a Shiite area were twelve feet high and three miles long).18 As previously conducted in Tal Afar, a census was taken of residents around the outposts in Baghdad, recognising the criticality of comprehending where citizens were located. As Iraq entered Spring (March–May 2008), over 15,000 concerned Baghdad citizens had volunteered to be registered in a US tracking system.19 These results were not immediate, and required two or three months of constant patrolling by the same static units to build a basic level of awareness (that is, knowledge of who was in your area and who belonged there). Following the invasion of Iraq, this was the first time that all units were operating to the same policy as detailed in the new counterinsurgency manual (issued in December 2006), specifically the population protection policy. It was not until June 2007 that all the necessary troops and vital population protection mechanisms were established, against a background of insurgency attacks, and al-Qaeda began to lose ground, their lines of communication and the freedom to manoeuvre. From February 2007 through to July 2007, there was a steady increase in American fatalities, but a decrease in Iraqi civilian deaths.20 General Petraeus remained firm even as 2007 became the deadliest year for US forces. Paradoxically, the final quarter of 2007 represented the lowest three-month death toll of the war. Yet under General Petraeus, US forces had more than just policy, they also had doctrine and from that, tactics to fight with. They had started to regain the strategic initiative.
Strategic Vision
Ricks wrote that good tactics can’t fix a bad strategy, but a good strategy tends to fix bad tactics.21 In a 2007 interview, Nagl stated that ‘the establishment of a legitimate, functioning government is the surest means to fostering a lasting peace’.22 From 2003 until 2006, a strategy of transition was the only way to achieve this goal, with very little time or money spent on protecting the population or providing security. Key metrics from 2005 and 2006 were focused on the speed with which the Americans were handing control of Iraqi provinces to national security. A notable statistic included in Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster’s article ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’ highlights that:
[in] an analysis of 127 US pacification operations in Iraq between May 2003 to May 2005, most ops were reactive to insurgent activity—seeking to hunt down insurgents. It is important to note that only 6% of ops were specifically directed to create a secure environment for the population.23
At first there was a refusal to admit that an insurgency existed. George Packer’s anecdote in The Assassins’ Gate discusses a meeting between a retired American counterinsurgency expert and a Special Forces colonel, in which the colonel declares that there was no insurgency in Iraq, just a high level of domestic violence.24 Possibly the best summation of the reluctance of senior American officials is from an anonymous officer in Iraq, who said:
They did not want to say the ‘insurgency’ word, because the next word you say is ‘quagmire.’ The next thing you say is ‘the only war America has lost.’ And the next thing you conclude is that certain people’s vision of war is wrong.25
How then, did the United States recognise that the strategic vision was wrong, that the policy of transition was a failure, and that initiative and focus were required to provide security for the general population?
An organisations strategy is susceptible to external factors, and the US presence in Iraq was no exception. Several incidents occurred that fostered the desire to change the strategic focus of Iraq. These included the failure of Operations TOGETHER FORWARD I and II in late 2006, the ‘thumping’ of the Republicans in the 2006 mid-term election, and importantly, the transition of the role of Defense Secretary from Donald Rumsfeld to Robert Gates. These events began to generate a strong desire, at the least, among the political leadership of the United States to listen to advocates for change and respond in kind. Consequently, President Bush and his advisors were now more willing to listen to alternative ideas about Iraq, namely for a ‘surge’ of troops.
Yet this wouldn’t be the first time US forces had surged in Iraq; in fact, this was actually the third surge. The first surge, between June 2004 and February 2005, increased personnel in theatre from 138,000 to 155,000.26 Major General Molan acknowledged that they could not have successfully conducted the first Iraqi election in January 2005 without those extra troops’.27 By June 2005, the first surge had ended and service personnel numbers in Iraq fell to 135,000.28 By December 2005, a second surge saw in-theatre personnel increase to 160,000 before falling away to 126,900 by June 2006. In contrast, the third surge in 2007 was underpinned by a greater appreciation of how to deploy, maintain, and use these members.
Much of the debate and decision-making concerning an increase in the number of deployed personnel appears to have occurred well before General Petraeus assumed command in Iraq, and was driven largely behind the scenes by retired General Jack Keane. As the notion of a surge found favour, Keane was also responsible for recommending and supporting Petraeus as the sole candidate to lead the revised US approach.29 This new approach focused on putting counterinsurgency within the economic and political context. Against this, there was still opposition to the surge proposal, as the senior leadership believed that the motivation for the insurgency was the presence of American soldiers. The proposed ‘surge’ increase was firmly opposed by General Casey and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and numerous compromises sought and suggested.
With this in mind, General Petraeus wanted to ensure that the ‘surge’ personnel would be deployed in the most beneficial way and appointed the Joint Strategic Assessment Team (JSAT) to create a new campaign plan with a ‘detailed political strategy for achieving reconciliation from the bottom up, based on confidence-building measures and improved security in 2007’.30 Strategically, it was also recognised that the United States faced a Long War,31 and that the conflict could be a protracted and generational fight. The issue had narrowed to the consideration of what the United States wanted as the result in Iraq. The focus on democracy and transformation in the Middle East was replaced with one of stability, and the desire to keep Iraq as one nation with many cultures.
The Man
To quote David Lloyd Owen, in an insurgency, ‘you need a man with a lot of imagination to run this kind of war, and one with an understanding of the political nature of the war’.32 As discussed earlier, Petraeus’ actions in Mosul in 2003 was one of a handful of successful examples of counterinsurgency. Then, General Petraeus arrived in theatre with a clear understanding of how to fight with a new direction. Once there, General Petraeus immediately adopted a ‘population-orientated approach’,33 which highlighted the differences between him and other commanders, a notable distinction at the time. While other American units conducted operations in which they applied overwhelming force to kill the enemy, General Petraeus conducted counterinsurgency aimed at reducing support for the enemy, and fostering relations among the community.34 This point is crucial; Petraeus endeavoured to create as many Iraqis as possible who feel they have a stake in the new Iraq’.35 General Petraeus ensured that he controlled36 all intelligence and operations and strove to ‘restore economic activity and generate a functioning Iraqi administration’.37
A second assignment for General Petraeus was rebuilding the Iraqi Security Forces, a task to which he was appointed in 2004 after his actions in Mosul. General Petraeus quickly recognised that the Iraqi units were being trained to be a mechanised force, and were unsuitable for fighting an insurgency. By April 2005, he had raised, trained and overseen the equipping of nearly one hundred Iraqi battalions (albeit of mixed quality due to the lack of ‘seasoned’ leaders). In October 2005, one month after completing his second tour in Iraq, General Petraeus took up a new post at Leavenworth, and was responsible for the first update in nearly twenty years of the counterinsurgency manual used by the US Army and Marine Corps.38 In his role, overseeing publication, General Petraeus included lessons learned from Afghanistan and Iraq, and stressed ‘cultural awareness, personal contacts, reconstruction strategies and close cooperation with non-military agencies’.39 All too aware of the significance of the manual, General Petraeus stated: ‘This is about institutional change, and the whole Army is included. It is a kind of a generational change’.40
As General Petraeus took command, he endorsed the call for a third surge of troops. This included an additional 36,000 soldiers over time,41 and increased personnel numbers in Iraq from 135,000 in February 2007 to 171,000 by October 2007.42 General Casey, along with other detractors,43 maintained their stand against the surge of numbers; the ‘boots on the ground’ strategy, it was claimed, would ‘simply force the militias into temporary hiding ... wasting thousands more Americans lives in the process’.44 The pressure on General Petraeus was immense, with impatience towards Iraq from all sides—even the Iraqi Government, it was said, was ‘lukewarm on the idea’.45 One US Senator stated that ‘this is the last chance for the Iraqis’.46 Such was the pessimism, that the chances of success for the ‘surge’ strategy were put at one in three.47 Both supporters and opponents of the surge thought that it would create a significant increase in US casualties. General Petraeus understood this, and took to his role with ‘a sense of urgency and an understanding that it was “now or never” in Iraq’.48 General Petraeus explained his perspective by saying:
If we fail here nobody will ever care what we did next. If we succeed it won’t matter. So we need to act like this is the last job we will ever do.49
Conclusion
To survive, an organisation must recognise when it is not meeting its objectives, and learn from its mistakes, a task made extraordinarily complex in an authoritative and hierarchical organisation like the United States Army. In his classic work, On War, Clausewitz wrote of coup d’oeil, or flexibility of thought. Yet, flexibility of thought is irrelevant if it does not drive the institution to achieve its objectives. In reviewing the tactical decisions, shift in strategy, and ‘championing’ by General Petraeus, there is little that is revolutionary. Many of the tactics implemented by the surge simply demonstrate that General Petraeus did learn from the past. However, when placed in context, the three facets as suggested by Nagl (Tactical Innovation, Strategic Vision and The Man) are clearly evident.
As written in FM 3-24, ‘the primary objective of any [counterinsurgency] operation is to foster development of effective governance by a legitimate government’.50 This doctrine has now been adopted via a ‘strategy of protecting the population, co-opting and winning over the reconcilables, expanding the “center” of Iraqi politics, marginalizing the extremes, and eliminating the irreconcilables’.51 President Barrack Obama’s recent call to revert back to a discredited policy of ‘transition after only two years of remarkable success, will be tested by whether the Malaki Government can successfully remain legitimate, and can govern a cohesive society following the pending departure of the Americans.
Endnotes
1 J W Gilley, P J Dean and L L Bierema, Philosophy and Practice of Organizational Learning, Performance, and Change, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, 2001, Chapter 7.
2 Nagl covers these points in greater detail using British and American experiences in Malaya and Vietnam respectively. See J Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002, pp. 192–204.
3 D Galula, Counter-Insurgency Warfare, Pall Mall Press, London, 1964, p. 38. This is one of four prerequisites Galula states is necessary for a successful insurgency.
4 These facts are based upon a summary from ‘Iraq Military Guide’, GlobalSecurity. org, 23 January 2008, <http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/images/map-pop.jpg>, accessed 2 January 2009. Although Baghdad has a population of over 5 million, only seven cities have a population over 500,000. Much of the country is either uninhabited, or has a population density between 0–50 per square kilometre.
5 A Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, Hurst & Company, London, 2006, p. 59.
6 The de-Baathification of Iraq Society order was issued on 16 May 2003 and not only removed 85,000 people from their positions, but banned them from future employment in the public sector. A second order, the Dissolution of Iraqi Entities order (issued on 23 May 2003), did away with the Iraqi armed forces (some 385,000) people, the staff of the Ministry of the Interior (some 285,000), and the presidential security units (some 50,000).
7 Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, p. 218. Nagl goes on to state that ‘The “Weinberger doctrine” of 1983 made such involvement less likely by creating a series of tests that in practice precluded American participation in any ways that did not allow full exploitation of American advantages in technology and firepower’, p. 207.
8 This is not to say that Casey did nothing; he created a counterinsurgency school, and improved the degree to which American and Iraqi forces worked together (most notably during Operations TOGETHER FORWARD I and II). To overcome Iraqi inexperience, each Iraqi battalion was assigned a team of US personnel to help train and fight with them.
9 Major General J Molan, Running the War in Iraq, Harper Collins, Sydney, 2008, p. 345. The first four phases were: March–April 2003 (the invasion), April 2003–August 2004 (the emergence of the insurgency), August 2004–January 2006 (the creation of institutions), and February 2006–January 2007 (the shift to sectarian violence).
10 In July 2006, a confidential report for the US Marines declared that the Anbar province, about one-third of Iraq, was lost to al-Qaeda. Colonel MacFarland’s efforts in re-taking Anbar are well documented in T Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008, Penguin Press, New York, 2009, pp. 59–72.
11 T Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Penguin Books, Camberwell, 2006, p. 305. Krepinvich (in Ricks, The Gamble, p. 17) makes a similar point that, when asking of a campaign plan, he was given a book of metrics detailing ‘...how the effort was being measured such as the amount of money being spent, or electricity produced’.
12 Molan, Running the War in Iraq, p. 141.
13 Ricks, The Gamble, p. 140.
14 By March 2007, over thirty-two outposts had been created across Baghdad. D Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p. 135.
15 Ricks, The Gamble, p. 165. Ricks states that by the summer of 2007, there would be seventy-five outposts across the city, p. 200.
16 As stated in Colonel D Caraccilo and Lieutenant Colonel A Thompson, Achieving Victory in Iraq: Countering an Insurgency, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, 2008, p. 53.
17 Ricks, The Gamble, p. 169.
18 Ibid., p. 173. Civilian deaths fell by two-thirds after the wall went up.
19 Caraccilo and Thompson, Achieving Victory in Iraq, p. 145.
20 ‘Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq’, Brookings, 26 February 2009, <http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex> accessed
28 February 2009, p. 4.
21 Ricks, The Gamble, p. 160.
22 Operational Leadership Experiences Project, Interview with LTC John A Nagl, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, <http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/p4013coll13&CISOPTR=331> accessed 17 June 2009, p. 4.
23 Brigadier N Aylwin-Foster, ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, Military Review, November–December 2005.
24 G Packer, The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 2005, p. 305.
25 Packer,’The Lesson of Tal Afar’.
26 ‘Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq’, p. 26.
27 Molan, Running the War in Iraq, p. 346.
28 ‘Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq’, p. 26. The numbers would rise again to 160,000 as at December 2005, but would again fall away to 126,900 by June 2006.
29 Ricks, The Gamble, p. 100.
30 Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, p. 133.
31 In late 2005, Casey commented that ‘the average counterinsurgency in the twentieth century has lasted nine years. Fighting insurgencies is a long-term proposition, and there’s no reason that we should believe that the insurgency in Iraq will take any less time to deal with’ in Ricks, Fiasco, p. 148.
32 As quoted in Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, p. 196.
33 Ricks, Fiasco, p. 232.
34 Ibid., p. 229.
35 Ibid., p. 231.
36 According to Ricks, Petraeus ensured that all intelligence and operations were brought under his control: Ricks, Fiasco, p. 232.
37 S Metz, ‘Learning from Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy’, Strategic Studies Institute, January 2007, p. 28.
38 Prior to the writing of the new counterinsurgency manual, the most relevant source of counterinsurgency was FM 3-07: Stability Operations and Support Operations. However, its focus had originally been based upon American efforts in the Balkan campaigns.
39 V Crawley, ‘Military Counterinsurgency Manual Stresses Cultural Awareness: Army, Marine Corps team up to distil lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan’, America.gov, 9 January 2007, <http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/January/20070109144558MVyelwarC0.1186334.html> accessed 2 January 2009.
40 General Petraeus as quoted in Ricks, Fiasco, p. 419.
41 B Bender, ‘General seeks another brigade in Iraq’, Boston Globe, 16 March 2007, <http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/03/16/general_seeks_another_brigade_in_iraq> accessed 2 January 2009.
42 ‘Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq’, p. 26.
43 This included retired General Colin Powell. See Ricks, The Gamble, p. 93.
44 ‘General Petraeus: Man with a Message of Hope’, The Sunday Telegraph, 31 December 2007, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574021/General-Petraeus-man-with-a-message-of-hope.html>
45 Ricks, The Gamble, p. 93.
46 C Hurt, ‘Patience for Iraq War waning on all sides’, The Examiner, 20 March 2007, <http://www.examiner.com/a-628513~Patience_for_Iraq_war_waning_on_all_sides.html> accessed 2 January 2009.
47 ‘General Petraeus: Man with a Message of Hope’.
48 Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, p. 134.
49 Ibid.
50 Department of the US Army, FM 3-24 – Counterinsurgency, <http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf> accessed 15 June 2009, pp. 1–113.
51 Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, p. 184.
