Small Wars Journal:
Octavian Manea
“We no longer wage the same sort of war as you, colonel. Nowadays, it’s a mixture of everything, a regular witches’ brew…of politics and sentiment, the human soul and a man’s ass, religion and the best way of cultivating rice, yes, everything, including even the breeding of black pigs”.
-Jean Lartéguy, The Centurions (1960)
SWJ: In his recent op-ed published in the New York Times, “The Pipe Dream of Easy War”, General H.R. McMaster warned against the fantasy of “a new era of war”, and especially about the dangers in the blind faith in the transformative effects that technology promises to have on war. He argued that over the past counterinsurgency (COIN) decade we relearned a few lessons that we really should keep in mind as we head into the future: “American forces must cope with the political and human dynamics of war in complex, uncertain environments”. His warning reminds me of an article you wrote in 1986 with General John Galvin about “uncomfortable wars”. You warned to take into consideration “the societal dimension of warfare”. To what extent do you see that prophecy still holding true post Iraq and post Afghanistan?
General Petraeus: I think the essence of the article back in 1986 with General Galvin was frankly the importance of the human terrain in each particular situation, and the importance of understanding the terrain, having a very nuanced, detailed feel for the context of each situation, not just nationally, but sub-nationally and literally all the way down to each valley and each village. That kind of knowledge was achieved in Iraq and helped us enormously during the Surge. We had a greater understanding there, earlier than we did in Afghanistan, just because we had so many more forces on the ground, 165,000 American military alone at the height of the surge. In Afghanistan at the height of our deployment, we had 100,000 US troopers and about 50,000 coalitional forces, and we maintained that level for a relatively brief period of time. As I noted on a number of occasions, we never really got the inputs close to right in Afghanistan until late 2010.
So, noting the importance of human terrain, I believe, is a fundamental aspect of crafting a counterinsurgency campaign. In fact, it was the biggest of the big ideas when we launched the Surge in Iraq, and we knew that since the human terrain was the decisive terrain, we would had to secure it as our principal focus – and to do so by living with the people, locating forward operating bases/joint security stations in the neighborhoods and villages, and specifically right on the sectarian fault-lines across which the heaviest fighting was ongoing in the capital. We ultimately established 77 additional locations just in the Baghdad area of operations alone, and many dozens more elsewhere throughout the country. There were other big ideas to be sure: e.g., that you can’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency, such as we faced, therefore you need to reconcile with as many of the insurgents as was possible, seeking to maximize the number of the reconcilables; correspondingly, we also needed to intensify our campaign of targeted operations against the irreconcilables. But I think, fundamentally, it comes back to this issue, that it is all about people, counterinsurgency operations are wars in, among, and, in essence, for the people. And the first task of any counterinsurgency campaign has to be to secure those people.
SWJ: In your recent Chesney Gold Medal acceptance speech at RUSI, you used the landmark formula of people’s war. This infers a connection between this past decade of counterinsurgency, and the people’s wars of previous eras. To what extent do you see classical principles of counterinsurgency still applicable today?
General Petraeus: I think many of the concepts of the past counterinsurgency campaigns remain valid. But by not means all as, clearly, every situation is unique. What was valid against a Maoist form of insurgency is not necessarily as applicable to other insurgencies that have taken place. What a counterinsurgent tries to do is to understand past cases, along with the principles, if you will, that have evolved from their study, and then to apply those concepts intelligently to new, particular situations.
No two situations are alike; even within a particular country or in a particular campaign, what works in Fallujah may not work in Baghdad; or what did work in Mosul at the beginning did not continue to work after a certain point in time when, e.g., a very important initiative of reconciliation was not supported by the Iraqi authorities in Baghdad and our efforts failed. This is about understanding all aspects of the context in which you are operating, and then understanding the principles from the past, but applying them in a thoughtful manner to the specific situation one confronts in a specific place. We should also keep in mind that at any given time you might be conducting very serious offensive operations in one area, defensive operations in another, and stability operations in yet another. In many cases you are going to be conducting some mix of all three of them simultaneously.
SWJ: Is it reasonable to expect military commanders to acquire enough local knowledge and insight to influence the political and societal dynamics? To be culturally savvy?
General Petraeus: Developing that knowledge is very important because it helps the commander to understand the context in which the military campaign is carried out. And I do believe such understanding is possible. In the end, counterinsurgency operations depend on a keen understanding of the political, historical, cultural, economic, and military situation in each area. But, let’s note that in a counterinsurgency what you carry out is a civil-military campaign. This was again another one of the big ideas of the Surge, that the campaign should become even more integrated. To be fair, my predecessor General George Casey and his partner, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, had developed a comprehensive civil-military campaign plan but it was clear that we had to push the integration further. So theProvincial Reconstruction Teams were established at the brigade level and not just at the division level. There was even greater integration of some of the fusion cells that we established between Multinational Forces Iraq HQ and the US and British Embassies. Even the campaign plan reviews became a civil-military affair with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and me together at the head at the table for such activities with our respective senior staff members and leaders.