Ditching Career Centric COIN: Exhuming Robert Komer with the Drawdown in Afghanistan
Abstract
Ever since President Obama announced that the United States would begin drawing down its forces in Afghanistan, the news and commentary on our counterinsurgency efforts have reenergized the discourse on COIN, strategy, and the future of that now painful cliche called "population-centric COIN." For the last several years we have heard arguments and observed the practical scholarship of the so-called "COINdanistas" such as John Nagl and David Kilcullen. We have witnessed various spins on how best to operationalize the COIN objectives of defeating an insurgency and creating stability. Some, such as Mark Moyar, have taken a different approach than specific focus on the population and examined the importance of identifying and empowering the best leadership as the key to a COIN campaign. More recently, we have witnessed the rise of an anti-COIN movement led in spirit and voice by Army Colonel Gian Gentile. The "COINtras" disparage the very idea of counterinsurgency because the most recent policies pursued in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to nest with their conception of good strategy and the fundamental purpose of our armed forces. Yet despite the energy and proliferation of the COIN discourse by all of these very intelligent and credible scholars, there remains a void, virtually ignored by scholars and pundits alike. That void is filled by the questions surrounding the actual organization of COIN campaigns. In other words, once strategic leaders have determined that the defeat of an insurgency (foreign or domestic) and the establishment of internal stability represent our desired end-state, how should one organize the campaign to best operationalize the critical tasks that bring victory?
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 10, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA549050
Entities
People
- Jan K. Gleiman
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College