THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 230, September 14, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
MUST COUNTERINSURGENCY WARS FAIL?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
COUNTERINSURGENCY & CONVENTIONAL WARFARE: CAN A SOVEREIGN STATE & ITS AGENCIES PREVAIL IN A
COUNTERINSURGENCY WAR WAGED AGAINST A NONSTATE ENEMY? CAN A SOVEREIGN STATE SUCCESSFULLY
DEFEND ITSELF & ITS VITAL INTERESTS AGAINST INSURGENCY & TERRORISM?
FULL STORY:
When it comes to a state fighting a nonstate enemy, there is a widespread impression the state is doomed to fail.
In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy concluded that victory in Vietnam was "probably beyond our grasp," and called for a peaceful
settlement. In 1983, the analyst Shahram Chubin wrote that the Soviets in Afghanistan were embroiled in an "unwinnable
war." In 1992, U.S. officials shied away from involvement in Bosnia, fearing entanglement in a centuries-old conflict. In
2002, retired U.S. general Wesley Clark portrayed the American effort in Afghanistan as unwinnable. In 2004, President
George W. Bush said of the war on terror, "I don't think you can win it." In 2007, the Winograd Commission deemed
Israel's war against Hizbullah unwinnable.
More than any other recent war, the allied forces' effort in Iraq was seen as a certain defeat, especially in the 2004-2006
period. Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former British Cabinet Minister Tony Benn, and former U.S. Special
Envoy James Dobbins all called it unwinnable. The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report echoed this view. Military
analyst David Hackworth, among others, explicitly compared Iraq to Vietnam: "As with Vietnam, the Iraqi tar pit was
oh-so-easy to sink into, but appears to be just as tough to exit."
The list of "unwinnable wars" goes on and includes, for example, the counterinsurgencies in Sri Lanka and Nepal.
"Underlying all these analyses," notes Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli major general, is the assumption "that
counterinsurgency campaigns necessarily turn into protracted conflicts that will inevitably lose political support."
Amidror, however, disagrees with this assessment. In a recent study published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Winning Counterinsurgency War: The Israeli Experience, he convincingly argues that states can beat non-state
actors.
This debate has the greatest significance, for, if the pessimists are right, Western powers are doomed to lose every current
and future conflict not involving conventional forces (meaning planes, ships, and tanks). The future would look bleak, with
the prospect of successful insurgencies around the world and even within the West itself. One can only shudder at the
prospect of an Israeli-style intifada in, say, the United States of America. Coincidentally, news came from Australia last week
of an Islamist group calling for a "forest jihad" of massive fires in that country.
Victory over insurgencies is possible, Amidror argues, but it does not come easily. Unlike the emphasis on size of forces and
arsenals in traditional wars, he postulates four conditions of a mostly political nature required to defeat insurgencies. Two of
them concern the state, where the national leadership must:
Understand and accept the political and public relations
challenge involved in battling insurgents.
Appreciate the vital role of intelligence, invest in it, and
require the military to use it effectively.
Another two conditions concern counterterrorist operations, which must:
If these guidelines are successfully followed, the result will not be a signing ceremony and a victory parade, but something
more subtle – what Amidror calls "sufficient victory." but what I would call "sufficient control." By this, he means a result
"that does not produce many years of tranquility, but rather achieves only a ‘repressed quiet,' requiring the investment of
continuous effort to preserve it." As examples, Amidror offers the British achievement in Northern Ireland and the Spanish
one vis-ŕ-vis the Basques.
After these conditions have been met, Amidror argues, begins "the difficult, complex, crushing, dull war, without flags and
trumpets." That war entails "fitting together bits of intelligence information, drawing conclusions, putting into operation
small forces under difficult conditions within a mixed populace of terrorists and innocent civilians in a densely-populated
urban center or isolated village, and small tactical victories."
Following these basic precepts does lead to success, and Western states over the past century have in fact enjoyed an
impressive run of victories over insurgents. Twice, U.S. forces defeated insurgents in the Philippines (1899-1902 and
1946-1954), as did the British in Palestine (1936-1939), Malaya (1952-1957), and Oman (1964-1975), the Israelis in the West
Bank (Operation Defensive Shield, 2002), and most recently the U.S. surge in Iraq.
Counterinsurgency wars are winnable, but they have their own imperatives, ones very distinct from those of conventional
warfare.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Washington Times, September 14, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, September 14, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5893
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Israel & the Arabs -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
National Strategy for Victory in Iraq
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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