Campaign Planning for a Counter-Insurgency War in the Philippines
Abstract
The United States has been involved in several counterinsurgency wars around the world since the end of World War II but, in each case, has had great difficulty in marshalling all of its available forces and applying them in a coordinated fashion to achieve its national objectives. With the reduction of the Soviet conventional threat in Europe and the coincidental rise in the probability of involvement in low intensity conflicts, it is important to come to grips with how to best approach the planning of one of these complex forms of conflict. The current system of campaign planning offers the needed framework. Although the doctrinal thrust of campaign planning thus far has been that it is not appropriate for low intensity conflict, this study seeks to demonstrate that the opposite is true, that it can be used to great advantage at this end of the operational continuum. The ongoing insurgency in the Philippines is used as a model for an American-assisted counterinsurgency campaign. The format for campaign planning developed at the Strategic Studies Inst. of the USAWC is used to suggest the selection of operational objectives, the synchronization of the large collection of civilian and military assets that might be used in such a campaign, as well as workable command relationships. Using this model, a system of planning applicable to other counterinsurgency campaigns is suggested.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 30, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA223382
Entities
People
- Riley T. Griffin
Organizations
- United States Army War College