Creeping Death: Clausewitz and Comprehensive Counterinsurgency
2014; The MIT Press; Volume: 94; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Military and Defense Studies
Resumo[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN 1840, PRUSSIAN Maj. Gen. Carl von Drecker traveled to French Algeria as a military observer. In the French counterinsurgency campaign against Abd-el-Kadr's insurgency he found a vastly different war than what he was used to studying in Europe. Drecker saw use for Carl von Clausewitz' On War, written just eight years prior, in defeating a guerrilla insurrection. Contrary to Clausewitz's work, Drecker remarked that there was no center of to be found in irregular warfare. He continued, finest gimmicks of our newest theoreticians of war lose their magic power ... indeed, the most sublime 'Theory of Great War' will be obsolete and one has ... to come up with a new one. (1) There would indeed be a new theory, one focused on the dificulties inherent in countering insurgencies. The lessons learned by the French in places like Vietnam, Morocco, Madagascar, and Algeria would become the intellectual underpinnings of the school of counterinsurgency. French practitioners such as Joseph Gallieni and Gallieni's understudy, the French Marshall Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey, put population-centric methods to good use, and David Galula captured them in his widely read book, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. The core of population-centric counterinsurgency is the belief that the civilian population is the center of gravity and, if the counterinsurgents win the loyalty of the population, the insurgency will be defeated. The most recent expression of this school is the current U.S. Army and Marine Corps doctrine for counterinsurgency, designated Field Manual (FM) 3-24 Counterinsurgency. However, another theory maintains that a focus on the population is folly, and counterinsurgents must focus solely on the pursuit and destruction of insurgent fighters. Theorists like U.S. Army Col. Gian Gentile, a West Point professor; retired U.S. Army Col. Ralph Peters; Israeli theorist (and Clausewitz critic) Professor Martin Van Crevald; and British military theorist William F. Owen vociferously deny the utility of population-centric methods and argue that seeking out and destroying the enemy is the counterinsurgent's path to success. The problem is that both of these theories are wrong. They are built on an inaccurate idea of the center of gravity concept and a misunderstanding of Clausewitz's theory as a whole. Both ideas assume a predictable, static relationship between the enemy, the civilian population, and the insurgency itself. Despite Drecker's protestations, it is Clausewitz who offers the most insight into insurgencies, and his ideas reveal that a more comprehensive method is required for successful counterinsurgency. Unfortunately, the dichotomous argument between fallacious enemy-centric and population-centric ideas so dominates the debate that reality is obscured. In On War, Clausewitz's most important recommendation is that statesmen and commanders must understand the kind of war in which they are engaged. However, they must also first understand war itself. The Trinity This essay points out that the analytical reductionism inherent in both ideas has clouded the theories as well as the practice of counterinsurgency. It does so with a focus on third party support to host nations that are fighting an insurgency, also referred to as Foreign Internal Defense. The central theory in On War is Clausewitz's wondrous trinity describing the forces that affect war and warfare. He believed that war could be thought of as being suspended between three magnets: primordial violence, hatred, and enmity; chance and probability; and war's subordination to rational policy. He further connected each of these aspects with a physical manifestation as an example. The population is usually paired with primordial hatred and violence and the armed forces with chance and probability. The government is responsible for the policy. …
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