Randomly-selected COIN-themed pic

This image was drawn from a plug for Japanese Counterinsurgency, WW2 – from the text, the author has some issues with the contemporary approach to COIN and I’m not altogether convinced that he is 100% in the wrong:

Few students of history realize that the brutally effective Japanese Army of World War 2, also fought many campaigns that may be described as Japanese Counterinsurgency, WW2. The methods of Japanese Counterinsurgency in WW2 were unhindered by any of the guilt, lack of confidence, and/or confused thinking so apparent in the American-Marxist approach to counterinsurgency. In its own way, the Japanese Army was pure, and its distilled ferocity was unburdened by the treasonous misgivings of melting pot citizens harboring heterogeneous values and treasonous notions. Japanese Counterinsurgency, WW2 was carried out to obtain victory. The clear-minded Japanese Army did not bother to invent false rules of war or self-defeating rules of engagement crafted by non-warriors trying to work off their own poisoned karmic debt. Neither did they subscribe to such insanely defeatist rules as those of the Geneva Conference. The Japanese Army knew that if they were defeated, Japanese survivors would be murdered by the same fair-play hypocrites who advocated “rules of war”. The Japanese Army was not hypocritical and the methods described in the e-book, Japanese Counterinsurgency, WW2, provide important lessons for those uncorrupted by treasonous war rules, which favor enemy victory. Expose yourself to a different type of anti-partisan warfare, one which was always victorious and was feared as Japanese Counterinsurgency, WW2.

 Excerpt from Japanese Counterinsurgency, WW2

“The Japanese commander in the Philippines called for a minimum of 24 infantry battalions to secure his rear areas against guerrilla action and seven divisions to break up the regular invasion effort.”‘ This would mean a ratio of approximately three front-line troops for every one soldier tied down in rear-area security. In China, where guerrilla action was more fully developed, the requirements for rear-area security were greater and the number of troops so engaged at times actually exceeded those forces engaged in front-line action.
Strong Points
The Japanese made extensive use of strong points to ensure greater security in the occupied areas. Most of these were located in commanding positions, along railroad lines, near bridges, and adjacent to key industrial installations.In China alone an estimated 30,000 strong points were constructed. Of this number approximately 10,000, or one-third, were destroyed in the course of the struggle against the guerrillas.”

3.  Are the current definitions of insurgency and counterinsurgency in FM 3-24, and updated by JP 3-24 (2009) adequate? If not, how would you change them and why?

See comment on IP1 – Definitions.

PART 1:  History, Theory, Principles, and Fundamentals

4.  Current US policy and attitudes, along with the contemporary media environment, make difficult the adoption of techniques such as massive resettlement of the population and the application of overwhelming firepower. Considering those limitations, what historical counterinsurgency case studies do you believe have the greatest benefit to determining the most successful counterinsurgent principles? 

These limitations are false in terms of the study of counterinsurgency and the determination of enduring principles; while they may affect specific campaign planning, they should not be allowed to affect determination of the principles of counterinsurgency/irregular warfare. It would be assumed that any competent commander and staff would be able to determine during planning what courses of action may be untenable due to cultural issues nationally, globally and/or within the host nation.

The following case studies are recommended for study:

The American War of Independence from the perspectives of the American insurgents, British counterinsurgents, Hessian ‘contractors’ and French intervention forces.

The New Zealand Wars 1840-85 and the campaigns against the Native Americans in the US. It could be argued that both these insurgencies actually sought to maintain as opposed to overthrow the status quo which while possibly placing them outside the recommended definition of insurgency, does not detract from the fact that the principles of counterinsurgency still applied – possibly another indicator that Irregular Warfare might be a more suitable title for this publication. If one opts for the legitimacy path to COIN, it should be noted that the underlying causes of both these series of campaigns can be found in a series of legitimate treaties that were breached by those who became the counterinsurgents.

The French and Yugoslav resistance movements during WW2, both of which are also examples of majority insurgent movements.

The Malayan Emergency must be included if for no other reason than to ‘myth-bust’ the counterinsurgency truisms that have arisen from this campaign.

Both the French and US experiences in Vietnam must be included. The French campaign is an example of a militarily-focussed approach coupled with a failure to realise that the ways and means of the 19^th Century no longer applied in the mid-20^th Century. The US campaign in Vietnam illustrates the true nature of counterinsurgency without the artificial constraints of the Malayan scenario and the potential ‘three block war’ nature of irregular warfare/counterinsurgency. The Vietnam study can include the diplomatic and domestic fronts as part of the ‘comprehensive’ approach to the conflict by both sides, the high-end air war fought over North Vietnam, the high intensity infantry conflict fought within South Vietnam, the special operations campaigns fought not in South Vietnam but Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam as well, and finally the OGA/NGO aspects of the conflict. Vietnam is one of the few conflicts that draws all these threads into a single narrative.

Mention must be made of Soviet approaches (see note 1) to counterinsurgency in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Chechnya; and Chinese approaches in places like Tibet, with mention of what worked for them and what did not.

A modern study of counterinsurgency must include Iraq post-2003 as this would ‘prove’ or validate the principles derived from the previous case studies in a contemporary context. Until the Afghan campaign is actually concluded, it will remain unclear whether it will stand as an example of how-to or how not to conduct a campaign.

Some thought may also be given to the 2011 campaign in Libya as means of countering an insurgency, in this case the one that was developing against the Gadhafi regime with scope to further destabilise the region if not addressed one way or another. The point derived from this, possibly as an adjunct to discussion on ‘colonial counterinsurgency’, is that the effects of an insurgency may be mitigated by actually supporting it. In terms of counterinsurgency/irregular warfare principles, this would support the principle of each and every potential campaign being examined against its own merits i.e. to avoid the cookie-cutter approach.

I considered the 2010 Rand study, Victory Has a Thousand Fathers, for  this list but I have concerns about its veracity noting the limited period selected to review and the limited campaigns examined. It’s really a shame because the idea was sound – just let down by a flawed execution, ironically, just like many COIN campaigns…