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REVIEWS
05/01/2007
COUNTERINSURGENCY TECHNIQUES REVISITED
Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War. Robert M. Cassidy. Praeger Security International. 213 pages; notes; index; $49.95.
Reviewed by Lt. Col. Mike Burke, U.S. Army retired
In the summer of 1973, the Army was undergoing one of its periodic self-examinations and reorganizations, this time in response to the end of the Vietnam War. It hadn’t quite happened—no helicopters had left the rooftops yet—but the Army seemed to have decided that Vietnam was over. It was time to return to what it knew best: maneuvering war against a large, conventional adversary. The Soviet threat was still a concern, so the Army created Forces Command and Training and Doctrine Command to build the units and devise doctrine necessary to win such a war. Though that threat is no longer, these institutions are still with us, a surprisingly long run (34 years) for the Army. Counterinsurgency has not been in vogue since—until now.
Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror takes the Army to task for forsaking the lessons of its own history; not just those of the Vietnam War, but those gained through fighting Plains Indians in the 19th century, the Philippine Insurrection at the beginning of the 20th and the Marine Corps’ experience in the so-called “Banana Wars” of the 1920s and ’30s. Robert Cassidy argues that the Army’s historic preference for large-scale conventional war is so ingrained into its culture that it has not allowed itself to prepare for the most frequently fought (and most likely future) wars, the kind we are in now.
Cassidy’s insight is that the West now faces a global insurgency, one characterized by multiple threats in multiple places, conducted by widely dispersed bands of loosely linked irregular troops who turn the technology and structure of conventional forces against their Western enemy. Cassidy makes a compelling case that the best way to counter this threat from the various al Qaeda-linked groups is to fight a large-scale, worldwide counterinsurgency. His numerous historical illustrations show that this is not something new.
These examples, such as the Spanish fighting against Napoleon’s armies (with British help) in the 19th century, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the American Revolution and the successful British campaign in Malaya, show that countries do fight insurgencies beyond their borders. He devotes a fair amount of space to successful U.S. Army campaigns and practices during the Indian Wars, regarding (as do many other historians) Maj. Gen. George Crook as a model counterinsurgency commander. Gen. Crook used Indians against their own tribes with great success, was careful not to target women and children and negotiated in good faith—as best he could—with the tribes he fought.
Unlike several contemporary Army writers, Cassidy does not worship at the altar of T.E. Lawrence, which I, for one, regard as a strength (no army can institutionalize charisma or a sense of destiny). He does, however, contrast the American with the British approach to this type of war, arguing that the British regimental structure, apparent lack of written doctrine and long colonial experience make the British army much better suited to counterinsurgency than our own.
If Cassidy has a fixed idea about fighting this kind of war, it is Gen. Crook’s: turning insurgents and their supporters against themselves. An approach like this worked well for the French and the British. It requires, of course, highly trained officers steeped in the culture of their adversaries, as well as time to develop and sustain an infrastructure that can replicate itself. Americans, on the other hand, are not very good at these things—we like quick results, lots of technology and people who think as we do.
Cassidy cites various techniques by the British in Malaya and Rhodesia, in which they turned insurgents into irregular counterinsurgents, as worthy of emulation. He spends some time dissecting the French experience in Algeria, pointing out that their efforts at rural development paid off, but were limited by the heavy-handed actions of conventional French military units. He also discusses at some length the various attempts the United States made in Vietnam to do the same—Chieu Hoi, roadrunners and others—arguing that several of these practices were successful and are the unacknowledged predecessors of similar entities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Alas, the history Cassidy cites betrays his argument; insurgents almost always win. While he attributes this inability to win to defective military cultures—those that emphasize big wars over small—others might attribute it to defective governments. Cassidy understands that insurgencies grow because a country’s political system does not meet its people’s needs. But his emphasis on how best to fight an insurgency does not address this most important dimension. In fact, one could argue that getting the politics—in the broadest sense of the word—right in the first place might well avert a military problem completely.
Like all good reformers, Cassidy has to break some idols. He rounds up the usual suspects—Antoine-Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, whom he argues have had a disproportionate effect on American military thinking—and takes them to task for not fully understanding the nature of contemporary war. I would argue that the principles Clausewitz offers are, properly applied, useful guides for almost any conflict. His famous dictum about war being a continuation of politics by other means is exactly the case Cassidy inadvertently makes.
Moreover, Cassidy misjudges their influence. Most officers read Jomini too quickly, because his book is short; and they do not read Clausewitz carefully because his book is long—these theorists are far more quoted than read. If anything, an officer’s assignments—heavy or light, Europe or Korea, Pentagon or “field”—more likely determine his or her intellectual development. That is the pattern the author should really examine.
Cassidy’s slim book, some of which has appeared in Parameters and Military Review, risks glibness when he summarizes too much, and ignores those things that do not lend themselves to the solution he offers, such as the truly complex, global politics that surround our “long war.” It is, however, an impressive exploration of why we were years into the war in Iraq before we published a field manual on counterinsurgency and are only now attempting to find a coherent approach to a complex world war. His idea of turning insurgents against themselves offers an insightful solution to what appears to be an intractable problem.
Getting it right is frankly less important than keeping the debate alive. FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, is not the end of this issue; it is only the beginning. Cassidy and his fellow military intellectuals need to conduct their debate from the inside, in public, so that the mistakes and successes of the past receive the kind of thoughtful examination they are due.
LT. COL. MIKE BURKE, USA Ret., taught English at the U.S. Military Academy for eight years. He served with the 1st Armored Division during the Persian Gulf War.
3,000 YEARS OF 'SPECIAL OPS’—A WORLDWIDE HISTORY
To Dare & To Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations, from Achilles to Al Qaeda. Derek Leebaert. Little, Brown and Co. 675 pages; maps; notes; index; black and white photographs; $29.95.
Reviewed by Maj. Gen. Edward B. Atkeson, U.S. Army retired
To Dare & To Conquer is a comprehensive collection of accounts of remarkable men who have achieved almost unbelievable victories on battlefields of the past. The time span stretches back some 3,000 years, with small, highly specialized organizations operating in the face of overwhelming odds. In the author’s words, the volume examines “the colors, sounds and movements of the surroundings, the better to give life and vitality to the deadly beings who most concern our story.” The text certainly provides vitality. The reader may find himself wondering whether he is reading about a breed of supermen.
Derek Leebaert begins with a brief discussion of modern American Special Forces and the sorts of activities in which they have been most successful—not necessarily where they have achieved either mass or firepower superiority, but where they have attained greatest military leverage, which he finds analogous to a seesaw. Leverage may be gained either by adding weight at one end or by shifting the fulcrum, affording advantage to one side or the other. While a robust participant may enjoy a natural benefit, his opponent, if capable of shifting the fulcrum, may project the heavyweight high into the air with sudden application of a relatively small impulse. Thus, Leebaert argues, the side gaining the greatest leverage can prevail, whatever the weight of the opponent.
So it was with the legend of Troy and the great horse of the 13th century B.C.E. Leebaert continues his story with the Greeks in the fourth century B.C.E., describing their environment as that of a “marketplace of [military] ideas,” including assassination, ambush and subversion, as societies emerged with competing citadels and governments. Armed struggle was virtually continuous among closely packed ministates. The differences between public security under their circumstances and our own, Leebaert suggests, are more of sort than of scale. In their day, one prince might decide to murder his cousin in the afternoon and rearrange the governing authority by sundown. Nowadays, modern societies are much more complex and more deeply rooted, sometimes necessitating years of campaigning to overturn a Kaiser or an Adolf Hitler.
On the other hand, the author points out, there are instances today in which our complex societies, because of their very complexity, have the most to fear “from small, stealthy strikes aiming for [their hearts].” (Read 9/11-type surprise attacks.) Hence the intricacy of this book.
Alexander the Great, circa 356 B.C.E., is one of the leaders of Leebaert’s parade of heroes who, through the ages, grasped the principles of speed, leverage and stealth. Hannibal is Leebaert’s next model, followed by Julius Caesar. The author notes the Roman army’s adaptability to “low-level warfare,” in which disciplined regular soldiers could be trained to employ tactics of “concealment, rapid movement and ambush” to defeat its enemies.
Next, Leebaert touches on the fall of Rome and the rise and fall of the feudal order. Charlemagne, the Vikings and the Crusaders dominate the scene. But the author, whose views about the current American campaign in Iraq occasionally seep into view, reminds us of certain similarities of mind between the leaders of the ancients and some of those in senior positions in the Pentagon today.
Moving along, we read of the mounted Mongols of the Golden Horde threatening Europe in the 13th century, employing a novel form of warfare, “Blitzkrieg by horsepower.” “Hungary was shredded in just a year,” Leebaert tells us, but Western Europe escaped a similar fate when the death of the Great Khan compelled the Horde to return home.
Leebaert next takes us through the rough years preceding the Renaissance. Firepower grew from “an occasional intensifier of siege or set-piece battle to … the organizing principle of violence over all.” Joan of Arc lent her special appeal to the spirit of her countrymen in the defense of Orleans; she reportedly brought along some artillery and employed it effectively.
The author asserts that the term “art of war” contains the very ethos of the Renaissance, coming to mean creativity and the embrace of precision and efficiency. The most intensely complex form of such art, he argues, is the special operation: the more extreme mission of surprise and the exploitation of the biggest opportunities. He underscores the importance of elite units with the spirit of “all for one and one for all.” In 1571, during the Scottish wars on a foggy night, for instance, a group of 150 men scaled the lightly guarded, “unscalable” north side of the Mount of Britons (Dumbarton). At midpoint one man suffered an epileptic seizure, which could have foiled the entire effort, but his quick-thinking companions gagged him, tied him up and left him suspended under one of the ladders. They went on to capture the castle, turning the enemy’s cannon upon the garrison. Notably, they returned to release their trussed companion.
Now we visit the New World for the collision of the conquistadors with Aztecs and Incas. In the 16th and 17th centuries, bold Spaniards struck “tiny, flexible, focused—and absurdly confident” blows against indigenous hordes with great wealth and hundreds of thousands of very capable warriors. Bags of ill-gotten gold were shipped back to the Old World to make sure the mighty deeds were appropriately recognized and appreciated.
The existence of such wealth aboard ships at sea spurred international (read British) competition and gave rise to pirates, buccaneers and imperialists along both coasts of the New World. Leebaert notes that seafaring crimes shared “many qualities with modern military special operations: the ability to handle boats and crew in the back of beyond, as well as frequent mastery of the diplomatic gifts found in the best of special operators.” Big names came into the business: Sir Francis Drake, Henry Morgan, Black Beard and Captain Kidd.
It was the growing need for soldiers who could fight at sea against such “gentlemen” as these, as well as the need for armed troops that could be put ashore at strategic points, that gave rise to the concept of marines. Leebaert comments that it was really action against pirates in the Mediterranean, along the North African coast, that gave birth to the U.S. Marine Corps, along with its hymn referring to “the shores of Tripoli.”
The French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, with his superb organizational and warfighting skills, drove many of his opponents underground to emerge as guerrillas. In Spain some 50,000 native irregulars accounted for the deaths of three times that many French soldiers in a single year. The French offered amnesties, bribed turncoats to track other guerrillas and conducted countless bloody sweeps of guerrilla-ridden country, all to no avail.
From the Old World, the author turns again to the New. The Alamo, Texas Rangers and John Frémont with his Regiment of Mounted Volunteer Riflemen became newsworthy early in the 19th century. Kit Carson, with just two scouts, would creep barefoot through a cordon of Mexican lancers to meet up with U.S. sailors and marines on the California coast. It was the type of devil-may-care frontiersmanship that would typify so much of the history of the era.
From there Leebaert takes us on a wild ride across Georgia, aboard a locomotive—running in reverse—stolen by Confederate troopers and being pursued by Yankees aboard another engine also running in reverse. Then we creep through the lines of the Army of the Potomac to watch Mosby’s cavalrymen sneak into a camp, pass some 2,500 Union troops, to capture a brigadier general, 32 of his men, a telegraph operator and 54 horses.
A fast switch to South Africa allows us to witness the hard-riding Boers holding off the British for almost three years. Then it’s back to Cuba to follow the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill.
Leebaert does not spend a lot of time with the land battles of World War I. He grants that the different sides had plenty of elite units (with the French, perhaps too many), but they were heavier on their dash and endurance than they were on versatility and creativity.
In comparison, World War II would prove to be a struggle fraught with many more surprises, tricks, deception and plentiful actions of few-against-many with high rates of success. It is Leebaert’s favorite conflict, with all sorts of military chicanery, and he includes many of the most breathtaking special operations by both sides. The players were dragoons, marines, grenadiers, jagers and commandos. As Leebaert tells it, they “adapt[ed] themselves to mountains, sea, jungle [and] desert,” their weapons tailored to their missions.
Having taken Poland with his conventional forces, Hitler turned to deception in the west. Danish-speaking special troopers (“Brandenburgers”) seized a bridge over the Grosse Belt allowing the panzers virtually open roads into the heart of their neighbor. Then Hitler resorted to silent gliders to capture the immense Belgian fortress at Eben Emael, which held the key to the planned sweep by armored columns around the north end of the Maginot Line. With a single officer on the ground, followed by 69 men, the breach was opened for the Wehrmacht assault through Belgium and across northern France. Similar attacks by paratroops—and others on hydroplanes—wearing Dutch uniforms cleared the way in Holland.
Particularly striking is the coverage of the most thrilling episodes in the career of “the most dangerous man in Europe” (according to Winston Churchill), Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, beginning with his spine-chilling rescue of Benito Mussolini from an Italian hotel-fortress under the guard of 250 carabinieri.
In 1944, Hitler would order Skorzeny to round up a group of English-speaking German soldiers to sneak behind the lines in captured American vehicles and create all the problems they could during the great winter counterattack. They cut telephone lines, removed road signs and blew up ammunition dumps, all with much greater impact than was anticipated. U.S. military police were reported to be cross-examining other soldiers as to their knowledge of American sports and the second verse of the national anthem.
In his final chapters, Leebaert reviews the great struggles undertaken by U.S. policymakers in the half-century following World War II as the armed services were unified under a Secretary of Defense and intelligence agencies were created and placed under the oversight of a director of Central Intelligence. The process was rough and clumsy, but it was a start.
During this time, unprepared troops were thrown into Korea. They managed to keep a toehold on the peninsula until a force could be assembled for a dramatic counteroffensive, but that provoked Chinese intervention and exceeded U.S capabilities and interests in the region. It ended in a draw at about the point at which it had begun.
America was more concerned about Soviet developments in Europe and the spread of communism to Cuba. The CIA attempted to reverse the course of events in Cuba, but failed at the Bay of Pigs. The author remarks that the only thing “special” about the latter operation was its ineptness.
Then came Vietnam. When Lyndon Johnson became President, he inherited advisers who assured him that Hanoi would “fast knuckle under to steadily increasing U.S. pressure.” Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, a participant in the 1962 Geneva negotiations, would make sure that no U.S. troops would be used to seal off the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail. “So, too, in Cambodia,” writes Leebaert, “as Hanoi intensified its use of a trail turned multiexited highway.” True enough, some light Special Forces transgressed the Laotian border, but little was allowed to be done to halt the flood of troops and equipment pouring down the trail.
Leebaert brings his running tale of special operations (both military and secret civilian) to a close with the creation of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command. The new organization pulled together the separate elements of land, sea (including the Marines) and air contingents. The CIA began a parallel program of reorganization of its clandestine activities with a target date for completion by 2010.
Leebaert offers the reader a hefty serving of conclusions and findings in his final chapters which, in themselves, are worth the price of the book. His closing arguments are fascinating commentary on current American policy abroad and key observations regarding special operations.
Leebaert has written a comprehensive survey of military history, with a thorough discussion of how special operations contributed to warfare through time. It is a compelling volume for those interested in extreme operations, as well as those who enjoy general military history.
MAJ. GEN. EDWARD B. ATKESON, USA Ret., Ph.D., is a senior fellow at AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare. He has written four books and more than 150 articles on military affairs.
BATTLE OF THE BULGE: A CORPS LEVEL ANALYSIS
Corps Commanders of the Bulge: Six American Generals and Victory in the Ardennes. Harold R. Winton. University Press of Kansas. 504 pages; maps; black & white photographs; index; $39.95.
Reviewed by Col. Cole C. Kingseed, U.S. Army retired
The Battle of the Bulge was the largest single battle fought by the U.S. Army in World War II. In six weeks of intense combat, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force initially tallied American casualties at 75,572: 8,407 killed; 46,260 wounded; and 20,905 missing. Taking a fresh perspective on a familiar story in Corps Commanders of the Bulge, Harold Winton examines this epic struggle from the perspective of the largely neglected level of corps command.
Winton brings impressive credentials to his analysis of the Battle of the Bulge. A professor of military history and theory at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, he is the author of To Change an Army: General Sir John Burnett-Stuart and British Armored Doctrine, 1927-1938 and co-editor of The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918-1941. Winton posits that the lack of serious study on corps level commanders in World War II is because corps, being flexible groupings of combat units, have no dedicated constituency.
At the center of Winton’s current study are six of the Army’s best commanders: Major Generals Leonard Gerow, Troy Middleton, Matthew Ridgway, John Millikin, Manton Eddy and J. Lawton Collins. These were the men to whom American Army commanders Courtney Hodges, George S. Patton Jr. and William Simpson turned to direct the battles that Army headquarters planned. How effectively these corps commanders performed in the Battle of the Bulge is the heart of Winton’s narrative.
Corps Commanders of the Bulge begins with a brief summary of the curriculum at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School, which all six future corps commanders attended, and at the U.S. Army War College, which all but Eddy attended. Winton then examines the development of the six officers as military professionals, tracing their careers from their precommissioning studies to the eve of the Bulge. Winton next divides the actual combat into three distinct phases: the period of German initiative, December 16–21, 1944; the period of contested initiative, December 22, 1944–January 4, 1945; and the period of American initiative, January 5–31, 1945. A brief synopsis of the post–Bulge careers of the six commanders concludes Winton’s story.
Winton does a credible job in outlining the operations preceding the German attack through the Ardennes on December 16, 1944. Skillfully examining the misinterpretation of Allied intelligence, Winton asserts that only Gen. Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, correctly divined that the massive enemy thrust was “no spoiling attack.” Although Eisenhower did not grasp the full magnitude of the attack, he was sufficiently concerned to instruct Gen. Omar Bradley, the Twelfth Army Group commander, to send Middleton, the VIII Corps commander, sufficient reinforcements to counter the initial enemy assault.
Winton credits the flexible structure and role of the corps for making “important and constructive contributions to the ultimate American victory in the Battle of the Bulge.” When the Germans initiated the attack, Gerow “held firm on the axis of main effort; Middleton took the steam out of the strong secondary attack; and Ridgway began to fill the yawning gap between the two.” In the transitional phase, while Gerow and Eddy held on to the northern and southern shoulders respectively, Millikin competently directed the assault against the southern flank of the penetration. Finally, Middleton and Millikin patiently and persistently attacked the enemy around Bastogne, while Ridgway, Collins and Eddy relentlessly eliminated the pocket of German resistance.
For the most part, Winton remains positive on the performance of the American corps commanders. One notable exception, however, is Middleton’s unwillingness to withdraw two forward American regiments in the immediate path of the initial German attack; American commanders took full responsibility for the performance of their respective corps and demonstrated their strength of will in the ensuing campaign. Middleton’s decision to hold Bastogne, Ridgway’s implacable determination to hold ground and Gerow’s unyielding defense of Elsenborn Ridge were indicative of the mental acuity and celerity of action of the American commanders.
Though Winton focuses most of his analysis on corps level commanders, he calls the Allied high command’s performance “spotty” at best. Winton credits Eisenhower with recognizing the nature of the German offensive far earlier than Hitler and the German generals anticipated and then arraying his forces to contain the attack and eliminate it. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery also receives high marks for “bringing a necessary tonic of moral vigor to First Army when Army commander Courtney Hodges needed it.”
Winton is less kind to Bradley and First Army commander Hodges, neither of whose headquarters “was functioning effectively.” Patton, in Winton’s opinion, was a “mixed blessing.” Patton was brilliant in his execution of the assault against the southern flank of the penetration, but in the transitional phase of the campaign, Winton believes Patton’s impetuosity got the better of him until he arrived at the conclusion that premature attacks were excessively costly in American lives.
In any campaign—and the Battle of the Bulge was hardly an exception—there was no single ingredient for success or failure. Mistakes were made on both sides and Winton assigns blame where blame is due. Armed with 20-20 hindsight, some of the mistakes seem glaring, but none so glaring that the outcome of the battle was seriously affected. There were many anxious moments, but in the end, the odds were in the Allies’ favor and the odds prevailed. The professional skill and determination of the American corps commanders helped “ensure that the sacrifices made by the men at the bottom were meaningfully linked to the strategic and operational designs crafted by the men at the top.”
Winton concludes his analysis of command with an important truth: Although personal connections and the accidents of timing can indeed affect an officer’s career, the underlying ingredient of successful command is a harmonious blend of intelligence, character and energy. It is in this assessment and its relevance to today’s fighting force that Winton makes his greatest contribution.
COL. COLE C. KINGSEED, USA Ret., Ph.D., a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, is a writer and consultant.
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