COINing a New Doctrine: Challenging a Military Culture1 EARLY DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR CIRCULATE Martin J. Bayly PhD Student, War Studies Department, King’s College London [email protected] In the autumn of 2006 an article appeared in the British Army Review entitled ‘Changing the [US] army for Counter-­‐insurgency Operations’.2 The article, written by a British army brigadier, in a constructive spirit of professional exchange between coalition partners, sought to ‘understand and rationalise the apparently paradoxical currents of strength and weakness’ displayed by the US army, an institution which the author admitted a great deal of respect for. The strengths were largely in the area of conventional war; the weaknesses were in appreciating the demands of counter-­‐insurgency (COIN)3 operations and adapting to them. Whilst the criticisms were wholly constructive and good-­‐
natured, the brigadier could claim on the part of his own institution, a certain historical record in the form of warfare to which the US army was showing signs of difficulty adapting. Less than three years later the narrative had turned around. In the words of an article in The Economist illustrating this shift, there was ‘a sense that the American student has surpassed the British master’.4 In January 2008, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stunned observers and NATO partners by announcing that he was ‘worried’ that some NATO members deployed in southern Afghanistan ‘don’t know how to do counterinsurgency operations’.5 1 This paper was submitted for a panel on ‘Ethical, Methodological, and Auto-­‐Biographical Tensions in Counter-­‐Insurgency’ at the annual British International Studies Association Conference, Manchester, 27-­‐29 April 2011. The paper is based on a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MPhil in International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford in 2009. It remains a work in progress. The title of the original thesis was ‘COINing a New Doctrine: Constructing the British Army’s History in Counter-­‐Insurgency’. The author wishes to thank the participants who agreed to be interviewed for the purposes of the research, and also the Department of War Studies, KCL who provided funding for the purposes of attending the conference. 2 Nigel Aylwin-­‐Foster, ‘Changing the [US] Army for Counter-­‐insurgency Operations’, The British Army Review, 140 (2006), 5-­‐16. 3 British convention is to use a hyphen in counter-­‐insurgency, as is used throughout this article, unless quoting American sources in which convention stipulates no hyphen. 4 ‘Britain’s armed forces: Losing their way?’, The Economist, (http://www.economist.com/world/britain/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13022177, 29 January 2009). 5 ‘Gates says NATO force unable to fight guerillas’, LA Times, (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/16/world/fg-­‐usafghan16, 23 May, 2008). 1
Whilst these comments were swiftly rebuked from individuals within the Bush administration, forcing a climb-­‐down from Gates, the fact that he even felt the situation permitted such an outburst is telling. Indeed, diplomatic cables released by wikileaks in 2010 confirmed the prevalence of such views. They revealed that as far back as 2007 General Dan McNeil, at the time in charge of all ISAF forces, was ‘particularly dismayed by the British effort’ in southern Afghanistan, singling out in his criticism a ceasefire deal struck over the town of Musa Qala.6 Such opinions were apparently shared by the government of Afghanistan, with the leaks also revealing that in 2008 the US Embassy said it agreed with President Karzai that without US support the British were ‘not up to the task of securing Helmand’. In addition Gulab Mangal, governor of Sangin District warned that the issue was not related to troops, but reflected the failure of the British to connect with the people: ‘all you have done here is built a military camp outside of the city’, he reportedly told British officials. 7 Such sentiments were not restricted to the Afghanistan campaign. As early as August 2007 reports began to emerge of US Intelligence estimates that were reporting that the British had ‘lost Basra’, echoing an earlier report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies which placed the moment of this defeat as far back as 2005.8 In short, the British army’s performance in both campaigns has shown that the army demonstrates its own ‘paradoxical currents’. Serious questions have been about its capabilities in the very operations in which it is supposed to enjoy the most experience. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have led the army to reconsider its attitude to doctrine. During 2007-­‐2010 the British army conducted a doctrinal transformation. Both joint doctrine and army doctrine were rewritten resulting in Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 3-­‐40, Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution, and Army Field Manual Volume 1, Part 10 Countering Insurgency. The impact this process will have on the military remains to be seen, yet it is the argument of this paper that the process has presented a challenge to the British army’s military culture in counter-­‐insurgency. The paper proceeds in three sections. The firsts draws out the concept of the British ‘way’ in counter-­‐insurgency. It is argued that this concept is built on an ‘idealist’ reading of British history in small wars. This reading is now being challenged by a number of ‘revisionist’ accounts that dispute the idealist school, 6 The deal amounted to a withdrawal of UK troops from the town in return for a guarantee that Taliban forces would not be allowed in. The Taliban retook the town only a few months later. See Stephen Grey, Operation Snakebite, (London: Viking Press, 2009). 7 ‘Wikileaks cables criticise UK military in Afghanistan’, BBC News, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-­‐11906147, 3 December 2010); Jon Boone, Jonathan Steele, and Richard Norton-­‐Taylor, ‘WikiLeaks cables expose Afghan contempt for British military’, Guardian.co.uk, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-­‐cables-­‐afghan-­‐british-­‐
military, 2 December 2010). 8 ‘British forces useless in Basra, say officials’, The Telegraph, (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1560713/British-­‐forces-­‐useless-­‐in-­‐Basra%2C-­‐
say-­‐officials.html, 1 December 2008); Cordesman, Antony H., ‘The British Defeat in the South and the Uncertain Bush “Strategy” in Iraq’, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, (http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/07221_british_basra.pdf, 21 February 2007). 2
and the ‘principled approach’ that this school projects. For some, this principled approach is the bedrock of the British army’s military culture, amounting to what can be seen as a ‘British way’ in COIN. The second section deals with this concept of ‘military culture’ arguing that it is a confused construct in the literature which is in part a reflection of its drifting away from its disciplinary origins. Drawing on organizational theory, anthropology and sociology, I argue for an understanding of military culture as an heuristic model comprising an army’s history, its self image or identity, and its doctrine. This leads to the third section in which I present the research findings by applying this heuristic model to interview testimony with senior British army officers who have been responsible for the enacting, or rewriting of COIN doctrine, often both. The research presents a more nuanced understanding of British military culture which is described as one which exhibited feelings of expertise built on a long history in this type of campaign. Wedded to a preference for pragmatic approaches these sentiments created an aversion to formal doctrine and a preference for more informal texts. As such, the writing of formal doctrine has challenged military culture by demanding consensus on fundamentals which were previously left open to interpretation. In addition, the demand for Joint doctrine to sever its link with the past challenges the history on which British military culture is built. British COIN History, Doctrine, and the ‘Principled Approach’ Insurgency is defined by British doctrine as ‘an organised, violent subversion used to effect or prevent political control, as a challenge to established authority’.9 Since the end of the Second World War the army has carried out seventy-­‐two military campaigns of which seventeen can be classified as countering such activity.10 Prior to Iraq and Afghanistan, British army experience in small wars was touted as a huge asset in the army’s ability to conduct effective counter-­‐insurgency.11 In the words of one practitioner and scholar: ‘It is likely that no other country in modern history has aggregated as broad an experience in counter-­‐insurgency in its client states of the less developed world as Britain did during its long devolution of empire’.12 This sentiment was not confined to scholarly research. Counter-­‐insurgency doctrine 9 MOD, Army Field Manual Volume 1, Part 10, (London: MOD, 2010), 1-­‐5. The previous COIN doctrine defines insurgency as ‘actions of a minority group within a state who are intent on forcing political change by means of a mixture of subversion, propaganda and military pressure, aiming to persuade or intimidate the broad mass of people to accept such a change. MOD, Army Field Manual Volume 1: Combined Arms Operations, Part 10 Counter Insurgency Operations (Strategic and Operational Guidelines), (London: MOD, 2001). A-­‐1-­‐1. 10 In chronological order: Greece (1945-­‐6), Palestine (1945-­‐8), Egypt (1946-­‐56), Malaya (1948-­‐
60), Eritrea (1949), Kenya (1952-­‐6), Cyprus (1954-­‐8), Aden (1955, 1956-­‐8), Togoland (1957), Brunei (1962), Borneo (1963-­‐66), Radfan (1964), Aden (1965-­‐7), Dhofar (1970-­‐76), Northern Ireland (1969-­‐2007), Afghanistan (2001 to date) and Iraq (2003 to date). I am grateful to Bill Kingdon for this information. 11 Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919-­60, (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1990); Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency in the Post-­Imperial Era, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). 12 Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War, (Westport CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), 74. 3
prevalent at the time claimed, ‘[t]he experience of numerous ‘small wars’ has provided the British Army with a unique insight into this demanding form of conflict.’13 The British army’s COIN Doctrine publications can be broken down into tactical doctrine and more generic pamphlets which would become known as ‘operational level’ doctrine by the 1990s. During the counter-­‐insurgency era from the late 1940s to the 1970s, these publications tended to be highly context-­‐
specific and generally fell under the tactical banner.14 By the 1990s following the Bagnall reforms the British army had codified its conventional doctrine and by 1996 had released Army Field Manual Volume I, Part 10: Counter-­insurgency Operations: Strategic and Operational Guidelines which was revised in 2001 and 2005. In short then, the British army wasn’t averse to writing COIN doctrine, but it was perhaps averse to following it. This was arguably a reflection of their context-­‐
specificity: for example, the 1957 version of Keeping the Peace envisaged the future of COIN as very much along the lines of the Maoist model experienced in Malaya.15 Its successor in 1963 was criticized by soldiers in Northern Ireland for lacking in practical advice. More importantly, the extent to which these publications were ever effectively disseminated remains unclear. During the 1990s, COIN doctrine was largely supplanted by peace support operations doctrine which was considered more appropriate to the campaigns being carried during this time. In the words of one of the officers interviewed for this study, at this time counter-­‐insurgency was viewed as ‘something we did in the past’.16 In light of these historical inadequacies the stronger doctrinal tradition lay rather in the informal publications of such soldier scholars as Robert Thompson,17 Julian Paget,18 and Frank Kitson.19 Each of these practitioners 13 MOD, Army Field Manual Volume 1: Combined Arms Operations, Part 10 Counter Insurgency Operations (Strategic and Operational Guidelines), (London: MOD, 2001). 14 These included such publications as The Conduct of Anti-­terrorist Operations in Malaya (1952); A Handbook of Anti Mau Mau Operations (1954); as well as a collection of pamphlets relating to Northern Ireland. The more generic pamphlets included Keeping the Peace (1957, and revised in 1963); Counter Revolutionary Operations (1969, and revised in 1977); the Land Operations Series (which included a volume on ‘Counter Revolutionary Operations’) emerged in 1969. I am grateful to Bill Kingdon for this information. See also: Ashley Jackson, ‘British Counter-­‐
insurgency in History: A Useful Precedent?’, The British Army Review, 139 (2006), 12-­‐26. 15 Ibid. 16 Col Alex Alderson. 17 Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency contained the fabled five principles of (1) having a clear political aim; (2) functioning in accordance with the law; (3) possessing an overall plan; (4) defeating the political subversion rather than the guerrillas; and (5) establishing a clear base of operations. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, (London: Chatto and Windus Ltd, 1966), 50-­‐57. 18 Paget’s study of the three emergencies in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus, was more historical in its approach but did include five ‘essentials’ of civil-­‐military understanding; a joint-­‐command and control structure; good intelligence; mobility; and training. Julian Paget, Counter-­Insurgency Campaigning, (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 157. 19 Kitson’s 1971, Low Intensity Operations went for a more generic approach yet had a clear application in the Northern Ireland campaign which Kitson had become involved in. His subsequent memoirs Bunch of Five, distilled this into a framework of four operational 4
distilled their own ‘principles’ from their experiences, some of which would later be enshrined in the formal COIN doctrine of the 1990s. As such, it was informal doctrine which guided formal doctrine rather than the other way around. Indeed AFM Part 10 (2001) contains ‘principles’ which appear strikingly similar to their informal antecedents.20 Up until the 1990s, and indeed beyond, British COIN historiography has been dominated by an idealist narrative of ‘hearts and minds’ with many works emphasising the essential benevolence and expertise of British counter-­‐
insurgency practice. Some of these works have also distilled their own principles that reflect the ‘British way’, and these tend to agree with the informal doctrines of the practitioners.21 Although their exact nature is contested, three relatively enduring principles are those of political primacy and civil military cooperation; minimum force; and a legalistic approach. More recently a ‘revisionist’ trend has emerged disrupting the narrative of this ‘British way’ uncovering a number of inconsistencies, highlighting startling omissions, and revealing a number of presentational tricks in the way in which these operations were described.22 The next section highlights some of these with particular reference to operations in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. Disputing the ‘British Way’ The Principles and their Practice Political Primacy and Civil-­Military Control The logic behind the principle of political primacy is based on the maxim famously articulated by Frank Kitson, that in COIN ‘there can be no such thing as a purely military solution, because insurgency is not primarily a military activity’.23 As a consequence, all military activity must be cognisant of this aim lest it undermine the legitimacy or credibility of a government’s authority. This in turn therefore requires close civil-­‐military cooperation. This principle is perhaps the most enduring of all both in its accepted validity, and its paramountcy.24 imperatives: (1) a good coordinating machinery; (2) creating a ‘political atmosphere’ within which government measures were more likely to lead to success; (3) coordinating intelligence activities; and (4) acting within the rule of law. Kitson, Frank, Low Intensity Conflict, (London: Faber and Faber, 1971); Kitson, Frank, Bunch of Five, (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), 285-­‐290. 20 They stress the need for: (1) political primacy and political aim; (2) coordinated government machinery; (3) intelligence and information; (4) separating the insurgent from his support; (5) neutralising the insurgent; (6) longer term post-­‐insurgency planning. MOD, Counter Insurgency Operations Part B, 3-­‐1. 21 For example, Thomas Mockaitis; Rod Thornton; Michael Dewar (see bibliography) 22 Although the label ‘revisionist’ would not be claimed by these authors, such histories include works by Huw Bennett; Karl Hack; John Newsinger; Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper; David Benest; Ashley Jackson; and David French (see bibliography). As increasing numbers of government files relating to these periods are released, the works continue to expand. 23 Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, 283. 24 ‘Political primacy’ remains the first principle in the latest Army COIN doctrine, with ‘unity of effort’ (which can be considered the modern equivalent of close civil-­‐military cooperation) coming second. MOD, Countering Insurgency. 5
Much has been made of the political primacy which lay behind the strategy in Malaya, but this requires some careful qualifications, as Townshend summarizes: What came about in Malaya was the development of a novel and fluid form of emergency power … The essence of martial law as envisaged by successive generations of soldiers, the concentration of authority and the use of force at discretion, was achieved without the pernicious political effects of openly avowed military rule. It was a skilful balancing act which blurred the lines between civil and military spheres.25 Key to the success of the ‘political primacy’ approach was coordination between the government, the security forces, and the military. In Malaya, all levers of power lay in the hands of the British. Furthermore, as the Emergency wore on, each High Commissioner saw increasing levels of political control, to the point where Sir Gerald Templer, on his ascent to the post, had an unrivalled and unprecedented degree of political and military control.26 The question remains, however, with such control over the population, were the policies enacted accurately described as those which would bolster the government’s legitimacy? One example which suggests otherwise is the policy of ‘resettlement’, or ‘villagization’ as it is also known – which sought to separate insurgent fighters from the local population by moving entire villages from vulnerable areas. The idealist literature presents this policy as in the interests of the population, ‘to protect and then isolate [them] from the insurgents’.27 Though as Newsinger points out, the means employed reflected more of ‘a competition in authority … than in popularity’.28 Squatter settlements were encircled by large numbers of troops and police before first light, then occupied at dawn without any warning. The squatters were rounded up and allowed to take with them only what they could carry. Their homes and standing crops were fired, their agricultural implements were smashed, and their livestock either killed or turned loose … They were then transported by lorry to the site of their ‘new village’ which was often little more than a prison camp, surrounded by barbed wire fence, illuminated by spotlights.29 This is not to say that such a tactic was antithetical to success in Malaya, that would be very difficult to judge. Rather the point is that the picture of benevolent ‘villagization’ does not square with the facts. This was not a political strategy designed to win over popular support, but a purely practical policy 25 Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 158. 26 As Bayly and Harper note: ‘In [Templer’s] hands – as both high commissioner and director of operations – was concentrated more power than had been possessed by any British general since Oliver Cromwell.’ Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, 524. 27 Paget, Counterinsurgency Campaigning, 77. 28 John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 49. 29 Ibid, 50. 6
decision ‘screwing down the population’.30 As such the civil-­‐military cooperation tended more towards the military than the civil. In other operations the unity of command was less clear. In Kenya, responsibility for security operations initially lay with the Attorney General. It was not until 1953 that Major-­‐General W.R.N. Hinde was appointed as Director of Operations, a position he was to relinquish only months later when Erskine took over. Erskine did not enjoy the powers of his counterpart Templer in Malaya. In his role as ‘Commander-­‐in-­‐Chief’ (and Director of Operations), he was responsible for colonial, auxiliary, police, and security forces, but not for civil administration too.31 Political primacy therefore, remained with the Governor. The mix of forces Erskine inherited was drawn from battalions of the British army and the King’s African Rifles (KAR, who fell under the British army’s chain of command). He also had responsibility for the Kenyan Police Force and the Kenyan Police Reserves (KDR). This presented significant command and control issues. Punitive measures against the population were a particular problem in the early stages of the campaign, particularly those perpetrated by the police and the King’s African Rifles. Problems were exacerbated by the behaviour of the settlers and the police force who interpreted the Emergency as ‘open season’ on the Kikuyu.32 This was something which Erskine attempted to stamp out when first taking up his post, demanding the imposition of martial law, a request denied by the Governor.33 It is difficult to see how this state of affairs reflected either political primacy or close civil-­‐military cooperation designed to further the government’s legitimacy. Political primacy was simply contradictory in other cases. Although the GOC during the Cyprus emergency, Field Marshall Sir John Harding, presented himself as ‘Templer by a different name’, in his memoirs,34 the context and methods pursued were certainly different, and less successful. Part of the reason for this was that Britain simply was not prepared to give up its strategic interests and cede control of Cyprus to Greece. This concern sprung from the fact that half of the population was Turkish-­‐Cypriot. There was a concern that the insurgency’s demands of Enosis – union with Greece -­‐ without Turkish consent (which was unlikely) would damage NATO. Moreover, at the time Britain still had strategic interests in the Suez Canal and was using Cyprus as a strategic base.35 Therefore the political primacy approach lacked a political goal. Britain could not give Cypriots what they wanted so the best was to hope for accommodation. However, this was not a strategy that the campaign reflected. Harding’s first 30 Karl Hack, ‘‘Iron Claws on Malaya’: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 30/1 (1999), 99-­‐125. 31 Paget, Counterinsurgency Campaigning, 94. 32 Jackson, ‘British Counter-­‐insurgency in History’, 16. 33 Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), 200. 34 Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army, (Oxford: OUP, 1997). 35 As the bungling Junior Minister with the Colonial Office, Henry Hopkinson, put it on 28 July 1954, ‘there are certain territories in the Commonwealth which, owing to their particular circumstances, can never expect to be fully independent.’ Newsinger, British Counter-­Insurgency, 88-­‐9. 7
move once Emergency legislation was passed was to round up the Cypriot communist movement AKEL, thereby removing one of the major groups opposed to Enosis. Harding’s approach failed to appreciate the political element to the insurgency, a point Paget admits: ‘when the “carrots” failed to produce results, the government tried a touch of the “stick”, and resorted to limited punitive measures, in an attempt to convince the population of the folly of supporting the insurgents.’36 These measures further alienated the population. The independence settlement that was finally reached was less of a victory of political primacy and more of a political compromise, allowing continued British military presence without granting Enosis. From the outset of the Northern Ireland campaign the British Government were adamant that they would retain control over British troops as well as the security forces, planning to hand back control once order had been restored. The behaviour of the RUC and USC, under the command of the British army soon discredited the army which was already seen by the Catholic community as the tool of an illegitimate and repressive Stormont Government. The General Officer Commanding (GOC), Lieutenant General Sir Ian Freeland, faced further difficulties in command. The political status of Northern Ireland meant he was in effect answerable to three political masters, the Stormont Government, the MOD, and the Home Office.37 With little unity in command, and little coherence in their role, the concept of a ‘hearts and minds’ mission was simply wishful thinking.38 As Christopher Tuck put it, the British army, lacking a clear purpose, lost the ‘competition in government’, allowing PIRA to grow in strength.39 Minimum Force Although minimum force does not always achieve the status of an explicit principle of good counter-­‐insurgency practice, it has frequently emerged as a distinguishing feature of the British approach and is often referred to in more idealist accounts of the British way in COIN. As a proponent of this view, Rod Thornton locates the principle of ‘minimum force’ – the tendency for the British army to use firepower only as a last resort -­‐ in the ‘Victorian values’ of British society. These values, he argues, evolved into a culture of chivalry and gentlemanly fair play, with humanitarianism and ‘service to the Empire’ as the altruistic purpose.40 This concept retains a powerful grip on current doctrine too. As current land COIN doctrine puts it: ‘The use of minimum necessary force has been the British Government’s long-­‐standing policy for the armed forces when acting in support of a civil power. The message is simple: no more force 36 Paget, Counter-­‐Insurgency Campaigning, 145. 37 Caroline Kennedy-­‐Pipe and Colin McInnes, ‘The British Army in Northern Ireland 1969-­‐1972: From Policing to Counter-­‐Terror, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 20/2 (1997), 9. 38 David Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’ in Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century, (London: Routledge, 2006), 130. 39 Christopher Tuck, ‘Northern Ireland and the British Approach to Counter-­‐insurgency’, Defense and Security Analysis, 23/2, 170. 40 Rod Thornton, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 15/1, (2004), 88. 8
must be used than is absolutely necessary and reasonable to achieve the immediate military aim.’41 Assessing the validity of this claim in practice is difficult, mainly because judging the correct level of force is an inherently subjective process. Nonetheless, some objectivity is possible, and revisionist accounts have revealed numerous examples of how the principle was violated, at times, systematically. Often these violations were carried out by elements of the security forces.42 The common response within the idealist literature for such accusations is that they were the activities of the undisciplined few who had not profited from proper British army training,43 yet this misses the fact that very often these forces were under British command.44 More direct violations also abound. In Malaya the approach to flushing out insurgents was less akin to ‘minimum force’ than it was to ‘jungle bashing’,45 or in the words of one commentator, ‘pursuing insurgents as if it was engaged on a large scale partridge drive’.46 Perhaps this was not surprising given the context of conventional warfare from which many of these troops had arrived. As Lieutenant General Walter Walker -­‐ who became responsible for the establishment of a jungle warfare school -­‐ reflected: The fundamental trouble was that within two years of defeating the Japanese in Burma, all our military training and thinking had become focused on nuclear and conventional tactics for a European theatre … so when the Malayan Emergency broke out, we had forgotten most of the jungle warfare techniques and expertise, learned the hard way at such cost in the Burma Campaign.47 The continued use of airpower throughout the Malayan operation further contradicts the minimum force narrative.48 41 MOD, Counter Insurgency Operations, 1, 3-­‐11. 42 Richard Stubbs, ‘From Search and Destroy to Hearts and Minds: The Evolution of British Strategy in Malaya 1948-­‐60’, in Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian (eds.), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, (New York: Osprey Publishing, 2008), 116. 43 Paget, Counter-­‐Insurgency Campaigning; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919-­‐60; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency in the Post-­‐Imperial Era. 44 Such was the case during the forced evictions in Malaya of Sungei Siput on 29 October 1948, where 456 squatters were evicted and their houses burned down; Tromoh, with 700 evicted houses destroyed; Pulai in Kelanton, which was razed to the ground; and finally Batang Arang from which 5000 squatters were evicted. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, 448. 45 Daniel Marston, ‘Lost and Found in the Jungle’ in Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century, (London: Routledge, 2006), 99. (Quoting Lt Col Walter Walker). 46 John Kiszely, ‘Learning about Counter-­‐Insurgency’, RUSI, December (2006), 17. 47 Quoted in, Marston, ‘Lost and Found in the Jungle’, 97. See also Tom Pocock, Fighting General: The Public and Private Campaigns of General Sir Walter Walker, (London: Collins, 1973). 48 One of the Lincoln heavy bomber squadrons stationed in Malaya dropped 17,500 tons of bombs alone between 1950 and 1958. The result of these raids was a ‘derisory’ sixteen insurgent deaths. Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 55. 9
For Bennett, the conduct of the British Armed forces in Kenya, and their subordinates in the security forces was tantamount to ‘exemplary force’ rather than minimum force. As he argues, ‘fear was deployed as a strategic lever, emerging in three connected forms: beatings and torture, murder, and mass evictions’. The ‘special areas’ set up by Erskine are a further example of this. An individual who failed to halt when asked in these areas could be legally fired upon by troops. This was perhaps still preferable to the ‘prohibited areas’ wherein an individual could be legally fired upon just by being there. As Bennett points out, ‘just because a policy avoids advocating genocide does not automatically make it a minimum force policy’.49 In Cyprus, the non-­‐use of minimum force resulted again from poorly trained security forces, drawn largely from the Turkish population who acted out their reprisals on a population which saw the hand of British imperialism in their actions. As the British discovered, lacking a clear or realistic political goal led to increased non-­‐compliance from the population and therefore increased EOKA attacks regardless of the use of force. This came to a head in Famagusta on 3 October 1958 when the fatal shooting of an officer’s wife led to a huge crackdown. One thousand Greek Cypriot men were rounded up, of which 250 were left requiring medical treatment, sixteen were seriously injured, and two were killed (one with fractured skull, the other with seven broken ribs).50 Faced with what amounted to an internal security operation in Northern Ireland, confusion reigned over the appropriate use of force. As the GOC put it, the army ‘must be prepared to fight with one hand tied behind the back – using minimum force – against fellow citizens.’51 This suggests a policy of minimum force was more strictly adhered to, yet as the levels of violence increased, so did pressure on the rules of engagement, as one Commanding Officer reflected in his post tour report of 1972: ‘A situation of virtually open warfare now exists in Northern Ireland. Under these circumstances the current rules for opening fire are considered too restrictive. Furthermore, the rules are in certain respects being broken almost daily’.52 Demonstrating the permissive approach of the Conservative government at the time, Home Secretary, Reginald Maulding in fact suggested an approach he described as ‘maximum force’.53 Adding to this, David Benest argues that the violence of the early 1970s precipitated what he calls, the ‘Colonial Strategy’ period of 1971-­‐76, during which time one quarter of a million houses were searched, 5,000 vehicles were checked every day, and there was the adoption of an ‘aggressive attitude…towards the population generally.54 In such an environment, the 49 Huw Bennett, ‘The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Army’s Post-­‐War Counter-­‐
Insurgency Experience’, Defense and Security Analysis, 23/2 (2007), 150. 50 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 160. 51 Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 128. 52 Ibid, 134. 53 This policy was aptly demonstrated on 3 July 1970 with the Falls Road curfew, in which 3000 troops sealed off a Catholic area covering fifty streets and conducted house to house searches. The curfew lasted 34 hours and ended with four Catholics shot dead by troops and one crushed by an armoured vehicle. Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 161. 54 Ibid, 137. 10
events of 30 January 1972, ‘Bloody Sunday’, seem less unprecedented. The march in Derry, in protest against internment, ended with 1 Parachute Regiment shooting dead fourteen protestors, provoking widespread violence and international condemnation. A Legalistic Approach Minimum force and the legalistic approach are in many ways two sides of the same coin in the British principled approach to counter-­‐insurgency. Illustrating this Townshend articulates a ‘British way’ in responding to public security challenges: ‘a pragmatic, limited application of traditional legal doctrines … whether common or statute law … marked by an aim of containing rather than extirpating resistance to law, through the use of minimal rather than exemplary force.’55 This has led to the assumption, often within the idealist literature, that the threat of legal redress prevents contravention of the principle of minimum force by troops, since ‘[s]oldiers, though armed with lethal weapons and controlled by military law, are merely a collection of private individuals in the eyes of the common law.’56 The colonial context, however, presents a more complex case. Under emergency law, which was almost always deployed in Britain’s small wars, the British authorities imposed a legal system which as Townshend admits, ‘could only be described as the ‘ordinary law’ by a considerable stretch of the imagination’.57 These measures further allowed the pursuit of authoritarian practices. Under emergency legislation in Malaya, the government had powers to detain suspects for up to two years without trial, to control movement, to impose curfews, and to search without a warrant. There were ‘severe penalties’ for aiding insurgents, and a mandatory death penalty for carrying firearms and ammunition.58 There was also compulsory registration of the entire population. Between the years 1948-­‐57, 34,000 had been detained without trial, not including those held for less than 28 days. Tens of thousands, overwhelmingly Chinese, were deported, and 226 were hanged. A figure only surpassed by the Mau Mau Emergency.59 In short, the exercise of legal authority gave the impression of political control under the law, and was therefore suited to the exigencies of the emergency as a battle for legitimacy in the eyes of the population. Yet should the situation deteriorate, as indeed it did, the full force of the government could be rolled out minus the interference of standard domestic law. The Emergency powers granted during the Mau Mau rebellion and the environment of impunity they arguably generated is perhaps the most contentious issue that the revisionist approach to the Mau Mau Emergency has 55 Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 19. 56 Ibid, 19. 57 Ibid, 164. 58 Paget, Counterinsurgency Campaigning, 53. 59 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 46. 11
raised.60 The generally permissive environment created by the emergency powers allowed the police and the army to shoot dead 430 civilians within the first six months of the emergency.61 This was before the imposition of the ‘special’ and ‘prohibited’ zones. The brutality of the security forces was matched by the efficiency of the courts system. Three thousand Kikuyu stood trial under capital charges during the emergency, 1090 would hang. As David Anderson adds, ‘[i]n no other place, and at no other time in the history of British imperialism, was state execution used on such a scale as this.’62 The figure was double those executed as terrorists by the French in Algeria, and many more than the emergencies of Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus, and Aden combined. The use of torture by the British in Kenya has recently hit the headlines,63 yet this was far from unique in the history of Britain’s small wars. Faced with a non-­‐
compliant population and an ineffective intelligence infrastructure in Cyprus, for example, Harding introduced interrogation teams, or ‘HMTs’, ‘Her Majesty’s Torturers’, as the press began to refer to them. The techniques employed included beatings across the stomach; twisting of the testicles; and suffocation.64 In an effort to quell the rising disturbances of the 1970s in Northern Ireland the British government had reintroduced internment without trial, a move which led to the protests of Bloody Sunday, suspending as it did, the writ of habaeas corpus. What was arguably more damaging however were the methods of ‘deep interrogation’ which emerged at this time. Techniques were borrowed from operations in Aden and included ‘isolation, fatigue, white sound, and deprivation of a sense of place and time’.65 Some detainees reported violence to force compliance with methods. These reports led to the indictment of the British Government by the ECHR for the use of torture. Whilst these systems were clearly permissive, making the argument that they were deliberately so is a different prospect. Either way it is clear that such systems provided the opportunity for the use of decisive force. Indeed these legal systems were sometimes so vague as to be irrelevant. Bennett argues that during the early stages in Malaya this allowed the authorities to pursue a policy of demonstrative force designed to cower the population into submission.66 More generally, in the absence of international law,67 these legal regimes often 60 David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, (London: W. W. Norton, 2005). ; Bennett, ‘The Other Side of the COIN’; Bennett, ‘The Mau Mau Emergency’. 61 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 68. 62 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 7. 63 Dominic Casciani, ‘British Mau Mau abuse papers revealed’, BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-­‐13044974, 12 April 2011). 64 Newsinger, British Counter-­‐insurgency, 101. 65 Huw Bennett, ‘Detention and Interrogation in Northern Ireland, 1969-­‐1975’ in Sibylle Scheipers (ed.) Prisoners in War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 187-­‐204. 66 Bennett argues that these conditions provide an explanation for the Batang Kali massacre in which 24 farm labourers were summarily executed. As he adds, new evidence suggests that such incidents were far from isolated. Huw Bennett, ''A very salutary effect': The Counter-­‐Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949', Journal of Strategic Studies, 32/3 (2009), 415-­‐44. See also, Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, 449-­‐56. 67 Despite the ratification of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, Common Article 3, which initially extended protection to non-­‐combatants, was only accepted on the proviso that the sovereign power decided when it was applicable. With ongoing insurgencies in the backs of their minds, 12
assumed the position of legitimacy despite their permissive nature. In such a state of legal ambiguity, soldiers acted with a degree of impunity whilst the population bore the brunt of ‘legal’ measures of control. The point of this section is not to reject the idealist literature, nor claim that the British army has perpetrated a hidden campaign of violence and terror in its history in small wars. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a need to settle on a position somewhere between ‘policy directed killing’ and the rosy picture of strategies crafted on the back of over-­‐arching and enduring principles.68 No self-­‐
respecting historian would advocate either of these extremes, yet the revisionist account has revealed the shaky foundations of the so-­‐called principled approach, which remains enshrined in doctrine. Two conclusions result: Firstly, whilst these principles may make logical sense, we can never truly know their relative importance since they were never truly applied in practice. Secondly, and more importantly for our purposes here, the doctrine which is built on these principles, and the sense of expertise which these accounts feed, is therefore just as partial as the idealist account. As Hew Strachan has pointed out the principle servant of doctrine is military history.69 This further begs the question, whose history?70 The revisionist history shows that in large part, the doctrine and the idea of a ‘British way’ is a reflection of the lessons that the army would like to have learned, though has never actually adhered to. As such, this is history and doctrine as organizational property. It is a constructed view. Some have conflated this principled approach with British military culture.71 The revisionist accounts reveals numerous flaws in that reading. The next section offers a more nuanced framework for understanding military culture in light of these findings and in light of conceptual confusion surrounding military culture itself. Military Culture as a Confused Concept In the past 15 years, the concept of military culture has contributed to the wider scholarly interest in the role of ideas in security studies.72 More recently, the larger powers, including British diplomats, were instrumental in this outcome. See Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance, and the Law, (Oxford: OUP, 1999) , 13-­‐17. Also, Huw Bennett, ‘The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 18/4 (2007), 638-­‐64. 68 Bennett, ‘A Very Salutary Effect’. 69 Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century, (London: Routledge, 2006), 4. 70 Colin McInnes makes a similar point: ‘[o]ne does not have to be a card-­‐carrying post-­‐positivist to worry about this: whose history is being narrated? Whose common sense is doing the interpreting?’ Colin McInnes, ‘The British Army’s New Way in Warfare: A Doctrinal Misstep?’, Defense and Security Analysis, 23/2 (2007), 134. 71 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919-­‐60; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency in the Post-­‐Imperial Era; Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror. 72 Peter J. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, (New York: Cornell University Press, 2005).; Farrell, Theo and Terry Terriff (eds.), The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology, (London: 13
attention has focussed on the role of military culture in explaining success and failure in counter-­‐insurgency operations.73 Whilst this has broadened the horizons of the analytical project, the application of the concept to varying cases has introduced a degree of conceptual confusion. The concept often sits uneasily between strategic culture and organisational culture, at times encompassing all elements of national identity, at others exhibiting a remarkable degree of specificity. Three types of approach tend to result. Firstly, there is what could be described as a subjectivist reading of military culture which largely focuses on superficial observations, contributing to a first-­‐cut of cultural analysis but not penetrating deeply or developing critical discussion on the possible causal effects of observations. Often this account is offered by individuals from within the military itself, in an attempt to define their own view of its culture. Such approaches therefore suffer from the tendency to confuse the espoused values of the military with its organizational culture. Cultural traits become tied up with organizational narratives which have become internalised by the members of that community. Second, is the functionalist outlook74 which sees military culture, as ‘an apparatus by which a person is put in a better position to cope with the concrete specific problems faced in the course of need satisfaction.’75 Thus, culture is viewed as an automatic tool for adaptation in response to a certain challenge or environment. As a result, the functionalist approach mixes rationalist understandings of behaviour with culturalist language and ontology.76 In principle, claiming the ‘causal effect’ of military culture is not necessarily a problem. However, if the culture is not adequately problematised in the first instance this can lead to a misunderstanding what that culture is and therefore how it could possibly condition behaviour. Finally, there is the universalist approach, in which national culture permeates military culture and the two are almost synonymous. This is a different form of subjectivity which sees military culture as the repository of a national identity. Once again, this view also ignores the identity of the military and therefore doesn’t adequately address the nature of the military as an institution. The approach adopted here relies more heavily on organizational theory rather than strategic culture. In particular I emphasise is the concept of ‘organizational Lynne Rienner, 2002); Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). Dina Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Gal Luft, Beer, Bacon, and Bullets, (Booksurge Publishing, 2010). 73 Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War; Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 74 According to Allaire and Firtsirotu this perspective views culture as ‘a system of knowledge, of learned standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating, and acting.’ Yvan Allaire and Mihaela Firsirotu, ‘Theories of Organizational Culture’, Organization Studies, 5/3 (1984), 198. 75 Ibid. 197. 76 John Nagl, a proponent of this outlook, explicitly attributes the success of the British army in Malaya to its organizational culture, which enabled it to perform as a ‘learning institution’. The small-­‐unit structure of the British army, combined with its emphasis on decentralized decision-­‐
making, which was partly a function of the high degree of regimental autonomy, allowed an adaptive fighting force which ‘learnt on the job’. John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. 14
culture,’ the notion that organizations can be conceived as ‘societies writ small’, and as a consequence, possessing ‘distinct cultural traits’.77 The reason for this is the need to highlight the ‘distinctiveness of the particular’.78 In this case, the distinctiveness of the military as an organization, and more specifically, the disctinctiveness of the British army as an individual case. The problem with the universalist approach is that although it offers a general picture of how a country’s military may behave, it overemphasizes structure, thereby potentially overlooking more agent-­‐level phenomena of a particular national style.79 The functionalist approach exhibits a slightly different problem, yet with the same outcome. Rather than overemphasising structure it presents culture as overly deterministic. This reduces the opportunity for alternative explanations of how culture may impact on behaviour, including how it may change. As such, it also lacks an adequate problematisation of agency by stipulating an effect of culture from the outset, rather than asking what that culture might be as a first step. Similarly, the subjectivist approach is too accepting of outward expressions of identity, thereby neglecting the deep structure of cultural identity. Locating Organizational Culture According to Edgar Schein, culture operates on three levels. First there are the ‘artefacts’, ‘the visible behaviour manifestations of underlying concepts’. Second are overt beliefs or professed values, the level of justification for actions. Finally there are learned basic assumptions, which motivate action.80 Whilst Schein notes that the basic assumptions constitute the ‘power’ of organizational culture, he also accepts that these are the least accessible barring long-­‐term immersion within the organization. As Hull also notes, ‘much of culture operates implicitly; it is unexamined and unverbalized.’81 Culture manifests itself in the behaviour of individuals, but its structure and configuration can only be analysed by exploring repeated manifestations. This challenge can be addressed by looking at a variety of cultural phenomena. ‘Structure’ in this sense does not refer to the observable hierarchical qualities of the military, but rather structures of meaning which amount to ‘culture’. For example, what the military sees as important; how events, objects, or ideas are conceptualised or explained; and how experiences are recorded. Therefore the approach adopted focuses on Schein’s second level of overt beliefs or professed ‘values’: ‘norms, ideologies, charters, and philosophies’.82 This is based on the rationale that it provides a ‘way in’ to 77 Yvan Allaire and Mihaela Firsirotu, ‘Theories of Organizational Culture’, Organization Studies, 5/3 (1984), 193. Author’s emphasis. 78 John Gerard Ruggie, ‘What makes the World Hang Together? Neo-­‐utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge’, International Organization, 52/4, (1998), 859. 79 Jeffrey Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, World Politics, 50/2 (1998), 324-­‐48. 80 Edgar H. Schein, ‘How Culture Forms, Develops, and Changes’, in Ralph H. Kilmann, Mary J. Saxton, and Roy Serpa (eds.) Gaining Control of the Corporate Culture, (San Francisco: Jossey-­‐
Bass, 1985). 81 Hull, Absolute Destruction, 94. 82 Edgar H.Schein, ‘Organizational Culture’, American Psychologist, 45/2 (1990), 112. 15
uncovering underlying assumptions.83 Following Weber: man ‘is an animal suspended in a web of significance he himself has spun; I take culture to be those webs.’84 The question is where to locate them. History, identity, doctrine: An Heuristic Model In order to operationalise this culturalist approach it is necessary to identify the vehicles for military culture. Three aspects of the army’s character as an institution are suggested: its history, its identity (understood as its self image), and its doctrine. I start with the first of these. As outlined in the first section, for some, the British army’s history in small wars has bestowed upon it a certain degree of understanding in counter-­‐insurgency. In some accounts this takes form in the peculiarly ‘British way’ of a principled approach. This narrative has been disputed more recently by the revisionist movement. That this should be the case is perhaps not surprising. As Michael Howard has noted, military history has preserved ‘a distinctive didactic purpose to which few other branches of historical studies would lay claim and one which they regard with understandable suspicion’.85 Given the military’s emphasis on success, certain types of history may be more acceptable within the organization than others. Indeed this is a tendency also noted by Howard: ‘[a characteristic] of much – indeed I would say most – military history is its parochialism. It has too often been written to create and embellish a national myth, and to promote the deeds of derring-­‐do among the young’86. As such, understandings of history, and what it means form a key aspect of the army’s view of itself. In this sense, as previously argued, military history within the military is history as institutional property, creating a ‘tradition’. Anthony Giddens helps to develop this idea: ‘[t]radition is the very medium of the “reality” of the past. In societies which have a recorded history, of course, “continuity with a suitable past” can be established – and can be dissected by the historian with a critical eye. Yet how far such continuity is ever “genuine” … is problematic and … has nothing to do with a tradition authenticity’.87 The tradition authenticity in the case of the British way in war has been questioned more recently by the revisionist counter-­‐insurgency movement and experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan; this allows a handle on the degree to which constructed views of history have taken hold within the military, and therefore form part of a military 83 According to Schein, detecting values ‘is comparable to the ethnographer's asking special "informants" why certain observed phenomena happen the way they do. Open-­‐ended interviews can be very useful in getting at this level of how people feel and think’. Schein, ‘Organizational Culture’, 112. 84 Quoted in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 5. 85 Michael Howard, ‘Military History and the History of War’ in Wiliamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (eds.) The Past as Prologue (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), 13. See also, Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983). 86 Michael Howard, ‘Military History and the History of War’, 13. 87 Anthony Giddens, ‘Living in a Post-­‐Traditional Society’ in Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 94. 16
culture for as the facts begin to disturb the narrative, organizational assumptions are brought to the surface through their questioning. The second aspect of the heuristic model is identity, understood as a self-­‐image, and intrinsically tied up in feelings of success. In the case of the military, success has a particularly powerful meaning since it is the lifeblood of the organization. Success promotes a sense of mission and of purpose and in doing so bestows upon an organization a sense of identity, a sense of ‘this is what we do’. As such, ‘success’ might be less of an observable and verifiable scientific truth, but rather a social ‘truth’, more accepted within certain societies than others. Indeed counter-­‐insurgency could be said to provide greater potential for this constructed idea of success, since judging the success of a COIN campaign is arguably less clear cut than a conventional campaign. The ability to contest a truth claim means that narratives can emerge from shared understandings within an organization. Such a conception of how the military has behaved, essentially how it views itself, once disseminated within a group, can conceivably alter its organizational identity. The third aspect is doctrine, which is seen here as a holding space for ideas conditioned by an organization and officially sanctioned by a formal procedure. As well as providing a practical function, doctrine is the repository of the army’s preferred military culture. It is a codification of how the army wishes to be portrayed, but not necessarily a reflection of how it actually behaves. Doctrine presents a common language for the military, and therefore reflects ‘insider knowledge’. Doctrine also contains ‘symbols’: ‘objects, acts, relationships, or linguistic formations that stand ambiguously for a multiplicity of meanings, evoke emotions, and impel men to action.’88 These symbols can take on a multiplicity of forms and the ambiguity here serves a purpose for the community. As Anthony Cohen argues:’ [s]ymbols are effective because they are imprecise. Though obviously not contentless, part of their meaning is ‘subjective’. They are, therefore, ideal media through which people can speak a ‘common’ language, behave in apparently similar ways … without subordinating themselves to the tyranny of orthodoxy. Individuality and commonality are thus reconcilable.’89 Doctrine also codifies ‘values’, ‘symbolic interpretations of reality which provide meanings for social actions and standards for social behaviour.’90 As symbolic interpretations, these too can be vague in their prescriptions for accepted behaviour. They may take the form of principles such as the use of ‘minimum force’. They can also be deployed post-­‐hoc to legitimate actions undertaken. In attempting to enshrine its language, symbols, and values the British army is codifying its own military culture. Feeding into this consciousness is the narrativised view of history outlined above. Cumulatively, doctrine constitutes a cultural web of signification: a discourse of practical consciousness,91 informed 88, Andrew M. Pettigrew, ‘On Studying Organizational Cultures’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24/4 (1979), 574. 89 Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, (London: Routledge, 1985), 21. 90 Allaire and Firsirotu, ‘Theories of Organizational Culture’, 213. 91 Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984). 17
by a narrative of historical behaviour. Through embodying these meaning structures across time, military doctrine has become synonymous with an officially-­‐sanctioned cultural canon. In drawing on doctrine, military personnel may simultaneously draw on their identity, their history, and their values. Doctrine is the repository of the army’s conscious military culture. Therefore, three elements make up the heuristic model: history; identity; and doctrine. The discussion now turns to the application of this model. In Erving Goffman’s phrase, the military can be seen as a ‘total institution’.92 As with the (unfortunate) examples that Goffman uses -­‐ prisons and mental health asylums -­‐ the military consists of individuals, whose identity is equated with that of the organization and its traditions from the first day of their recruitment. This means that to a greater degree than in normal societies, we can expect to discover the culture of the organization in the individuals who are part of it. In identifying interviewees I was seeking to fulfill two criteria: those with operational experience likely to involve the use of doctrine at the operational level, and at the level of campaign-­‐planning. And also those who are responsible for the writing and updating of doctrine. The aim was to speak to individuals with particular insight into how practice was translated into theory. In certain cases both criteria were filled and all interviewees were invited to draw on their operational experience. History and Identity: The ‘British Way’ explained The first interpretation from the interview testimony is to note that the notions of British army history and identity were tied up in one another. This manifested itself most clearly in the articulation of a ‘British way’ in warfare. This identity was seen as important to the way the army behaved, yet it was often seen as uncodified, informally passed on, and even tied in with regimental culture: ‘Yes of course there is [a British way] because we do it our way, in our funny little county regiments, with our funny little bands of brothers … who always serve together, [and] who don’t move from unit to unit. With the long inherited experience of empire and post-­‐colonial soldiering that we have, inevitably we behave differently from a large continental power … I would think that current experience has quite an impact on what we’re doing. But I also think that tradition, and history, the “this is how we do it”, particularly in counter-­‐insurgency with the empire and post-­‐
empire history … [is] quite deeply engrained in our thinking.’93 Traditionally this concept has been applied only to conventional conflict but the British army’s experience in small wars was seen as an important aspect of this identity: ‘the DNA of what the British army thinks is important in counter-­‐
insurgency can be traced back through history and [it] hasn’t changed much’. In 92 Erving Goffman, Asylums, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968). 93 Author interview with Brigadier Andrew Sharpe, 25 November 2008. 18
this respect, the way of warfare was described as one of ‘pragmatism and adaptability’, consisting of the principles of minimum force; close civil-­‐military cooperation; an important role for intelligence with a network and an approach suited to the context; and finally learning and adaptation through Malaya, Kenya, Oman and Northern Ireland.94 As such, the principles of the British way were embedded in descriptions of its nature. But more evident was a sense that the history had bestowed upon the British army, a sense of expertise in this type of operation ‘Expertise comes about through the collective experience which is largely unwritten but it is there, undoubtedly there … It’s especially located within the special forces, the way they developed a counter-­‐revolutionary warfare wing … which changed gradually over time. There was enough experience coming out of Malaya and Dhofar … out of that comes therefore their very strong sense of “how to do it” … and its handed on … and [it works] because you’ve got a bunch of very open minded people.’95 In addition this experience appeared to mean more to the British army than to ‘outsiders’. As one officer put it ‘[our history] works with us’.96 Another noted ‘we are not allowed to use the two words “Northern” and “Ireland” in an American headquarters, which tells you what they think of us … in fact there is plenty from Northern Ireland that is of value … it was a thirty year war’. In short, the British army ‘understands’ its own history, and from where its way of doing things derives. It is history as organizational property, and demonstrates the importance of history to identity. ‘In the UK we were very comfortable with ourselves in that we felt that we just did [counter-­‐insurgency] … we were better … because we had a bunch of experience to draw from, and not just from Northern Ireland and Malaya, but from the whole of the British Empire … I think for a long time we’d relied on the fact that we were doing our own business … in Northern Ireland we were operating entirely on our own, and our various other interventions were by and large under our own steam and were small-­‐scale. Provided we read Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, a bit of Templer etc etc, and had an all-­‐round military education, and been at Staff College, we [felt we] could work it out for ourselves and that was our doctrine pretty much.’97 This statement is noteworthy too for its mention of the informal doctrine which sprung from these campaigns. The attitude of expertise was noted as early as the approach adopted in the Balkans where it was claimed, ‘a certain arrogance crept in … we felt that we’d got that sorted out, we understood what was required and it was one of those things we were naturally good at.’98 These ideas 94 Author interview with Colonel Alexander Alderson, 19 November 2008. 95 Unnamed military officer. 96 Brig Sharpe 97 Unnamed military officer. 98 Col Alderson 19
had even permeated doctrinal thinking: ‘Looking at our doctrine, I think you can find, certainly for wider peacekeeping and support operations … that it doesn’t really explain things very well, and I would hazard a guess that that’s because no one actually bothered to really look at the nature of the problem in any depth they just said, “yes, we’ve got that, we don’t need to do any more”’.99 History therefore apparently imbued within the army a strong sense of expertise borne out of experience. This sets the military on a path away from doctrine. Multiple interpretations of the Principled Approach: Minimum Force
As the above suggests, the British army has a sense of its identity based on its principles but these are not universally agreed upon. As one officer described these principles: ‘We understand that we’re going to be there for a long time, we understand that there’s got to be empathy, we understand that there’s got to be restraint ... and I think … because we’ve been doing it a long time, the sort of rugby field mentality where you can apply extreme violence to somebody and then shake him by the hand and have a pint of beer afterwards, the sort of sportsmanship and fair play actually is also part of us Brits … and that does affect the way we do our stuff, and it has made us quite good at that.’100 However this statement shows how the principles of ‘restraint’, ‘fair play’, or ‘sportsmanship’ can be tied to the use of ‘extreme force’. Principles such as these can be, to a certain extent, user-­‐defined. They are sufficiently vague that they may be interpreted as the commander wishes. Equally vague was the concept of ownership and political primacy. Whilst it was accepted by some that COIN today had changed radically in terms of the political control of the country, what this meant in practice was unclear: ‘My personal view is that only the nation who owns the problem actually fights the counter-­‐insurgency campaign. If you’re an external party going in to assist that nation, you are doing something subtly different, using many similar techniques. But a foreign nation can never impose a counter-­‐insurgency solution on someone else’s nation.’101 Apparently contradicting this was the view on the ‘Charge of the Knights’ operation in Basra. The operation ‘Charge of the Knights’ was an Iraqi-­‐led operation that began on 25 March 2008. Its aim was to take back the streets of Basra from the Madhi Army – a militia group led by Muqtada al Sadr. As one commander/officer noted: ‘It was in the British zone therefore it was British 99 Col Alderson 100 Brig Sharpe. 101 Unnamed military officer. 20
opinion that was taken as what we needed to be doing’.102 Such a fundamental issue of who is in command can be relegated to an issue of context if necessary. Certain campaigns may require differing degrees of ownership, but the lack of clarity on the ‘principle’ of political control and primacy allows this latitude in interpretation. Individualism
Indeed the ‘individualism’ of the British army was also identified as part of their identity and approach: ‘We have a way of doing things in the army, it’s probably more individualistic than perhaps many armies’.103 This individualism was evident elsewhere in comments such as, ‘[commanders should have] primacy in the creation of doctrine for each theatre at each level -­‐ I think this is what defines command as opposed to staff application of others decisions.’104 For many this was cited as a benefit, yet for others it was at the root of chaos. This could even apply to the fundamentals of defining what an insurgency was: ‘When I was trying to explain the counter-­‐insurgency campaign plan to my new GOC in Basra, I never was able to do it because each time he disagreed with me that we were facing an insurgency because there wasn’t that common understanding of what it was that we were talking about.’105 In Iraq there was, apparently, ‘no evidence of any underpinning philosophy and no unifying purpose – it changed every six months with troop rotations’106. Indeed, this criticism in the way in which the Iraq campaign was carried out appeared repeatedly: ‘[In Iraq] we never came to a decision together on where best to influence activity and shape the British response.’107 The ‘principles’ making up the identity were numerous, and derived from more than simply the ‘principles’ of counter-­‐insurgency, although many of these had been internalised. It was the contested nature of the British army’s sense of identity which shone through. More importantly however, the values which made up this identity were sufficiently vague to allow a wide interpretation of their meaning, and their benefits. Not only were values interpreted differently, but their very utility was disputed. This allows the accommodation of the strong sense of individualism and pragmatism that runs through the army. If the principles and values that make up the identity were more prescriptive they would not have held. Because of the army’s military culture therefore, vague principles are suited. This helps to explain the attitude towards formal doctrine which exhibited a strong preference for individualism. 102 Unnamed military officer. 103 Lt Col Balgarnie. 104 Unnamed military officer. 105 Unnamed military officer. 106 Unnamed military officer. 107 Unnamed military officer 21
Views on Doctrine Best Practice?
The definition of doctrine as ‘best practice’ may be applicable at the tactical level, but at the operational level this definition seems to stray dangerously into the domain of becoming prescriptive. It was accepted with the proviso that doctrine was not the ‘what to think’ but the ‘how to think’.108 The dominant definition was therefore as a ‘handrail’, but only ‘if done properly … because it’s not dogma, or it shouldn’t be’.109 What is Taught
As if to confirm its separation from the realities of war, doctrine was repeatedly referred to as ‘what is taught’. As one officer put it: ‘Its purpose is to educate future commanders in how to think about a problem. He then takes this abstract education and applies it to a given scenario’.110 Yet crucially, ‘the main opportunity for inserting doctrinal frameworks into people is when they’re on courses, or preparing for an operation.’111 Doctrine is seen as something which is internalised but not repeatedly referred to: ‘The reality is, people tend to read doctrine when they’re being taught. When you’re in an operation you don’t tend to think “I’ve got to pull the doctrine pamphlet off and have a quick look before I do the next thing”’.112 What is Believed
This leads to the slightly zen-­‐like notion that doctrine is ‘what is believed’113, or ‘a précis of the endorsed collective wisdom’.114 The key word here is ‘endorsed’. It is a key feature of British doctrine in that it must fulfil the requirement of acceptability: ‘You can write whatever you like in a book, but if people don’t believe it they won’t use it, so the credibility of what you write in doctrine has to be accepted.’115 108 Lt Col Balgarnie. See also: Alex Alderson, ‘Revising the British Army’s Counter-­‐Insurgency Doctrine’ RUSI, 152/4 (2007), 6-­‐11. 109 Brig Sharpe. 110 Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw,. 111 Lt Col Balgarnie. 112 Lt Col Balgarnie. 113 Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Tim Law, 25 November 2008. 114 Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Stuart, 25 November 2008. 115 Lt Col Balgarnie. 22
Common language or approach
Linked to this, the final common definition was doctrine as a common language or approach creating ‘a common body of understanding so that we don’t have to work from first principles every time … [so that] when considering a campaign we would all have an understanding of and an agreement on, the basic things that contribute to success.’116 As a ‘common language’ doctrine also allowed discussion of a topic using the same language, for this reason doctrine was army-­‐
specific, and therefore carries the linguistic and behavioural identity of an army. However, there was still resistance to the idea of doctrine as prescriptive: ‘[a common approach is] not to say that you’re going to do things the same way because your common approach may be to do whatever you feel like doing, but it means that everyone’s on the same songsheet.’117 This again demonstrates the wide scope for interpretation of doctrinal works. Pragmatic Doctrinalism The picture that emerged was one in which the relationship with doctrine was distant. The contestations over the principles and the emphasis on individualism show that a more pragmatic doctrine was seen as more appropriate. Doctrine provided a boundary to what might be seen as acceptable, but where that boundary lay was unclear: ‘Rather than a Stalinist centralist view, we tell people what we want them to do, give them some constraints and resources, and tell them to get on with it. If you’ve got the correct doctrinal framework, they’ll work within that framework and use their initiative. If you give people the space, you tend to have a much more agile and much higher tempo result rather than just saying, “do this, do this”; I think that’s very much the way we like to do things.’118 Therefore the idea of pragmatism included a pragmatic doctrinal approach. As a result, doctrine emerges as a check on the way things might be done, as one officer pointed out ‘we do teach it, we do refer to doctrine, but we also try and teach people not to be hidebound by it. Innovation and originality is important provided it is set within the appropriate context … These boundaries are dictated by doctrine.’119 All of this amounts to what could be seen as resisting the regulative aspects of what appears to be an impediment to how the army would like to conduct its business. Somewhat paradoxically, at the tactical level, and in relation to conventional war, part of this reluctance stems from the sheer amount of doctrine that is produced. As one officer noted: ‘Potentially we have too much doctrine. DCDC [The Doctrine Concepts Development Centre] are making big 116 Author interview with Colonel Richard Iron, 5 December 2008. 117 Brig Sharpe. 118 Lt Col Balgarnie. 119 Lt Col Law. 23
strides to making it more coherent but there’s a danger in having too much to read with these things … the collective knowledge is just vast … You still need to retain you intellectual faculties to come up with your own personal view.’120 As this suggests, the role of the individual officer continues to be paramount and there is an urge to contextualise every element of doctrine: ‘COIN doctrine should be extremely abstract. Its purpose is to educate future commanders in how to think about a problem. He then takes this abstract education and applies it to a given scenario. Out of the clash between the doctrine and the reality comes the specific doctrine for that theatre. This is a fundamentally Hegelian approach, a doctrinal dialectic that places the responsibility (and the freedom) on the commander to apply the doctrine to the given situation as he sees fit.’121 Intellectualizing Doctrine There was also evidence that doctrine is seen as an intellectualized form of guidance. The academic credentials of the process of writing were frequently noted, with doctrine itself being described as a ‘thesis’.122 This was explicitly stated with doctrine in the nineties, which was criticized for being ‘over intellectualized’ and for the fact that it ‘didn’t connect with the way people think’.123 Here the martial spirit shone through with the feeling that doctrine was the intellectual element of a non-­‐intellectual activity. ‘[Counter-­‐insurgency] is a bloody great mess of warfare and we try, and the doctrine people try and compartmentalize it. The moment you start doing that, you’re missing the point. Insurgency and counter-­‐insurgency is the most messy, difficult, unpleasant, unregulated type of warfare you can fight.’124 This was felt to be particularly the case in ‘modern’ war: ‘Traditionally doctrine has partitioned everything neatly into little bundles: this is COIN; this is stabilization; this is peace-­‐support. I think what you start to see now … because the context drives everything … this neat partitioning of things becomes less and less relevant in the modern world.’125 As if to confirm this, the entire Defence Academy was described by one officer as a ‘business school’ of war-­‐fighting, generating the illusion that such a practice could be formalized.126 The idea of an intellectualized, scientific approach to doctrine was in many ways the opposite to the pragmatic doctrinalism detected before. Pragmatism created the conditions for avoiding doctrine, the intellectualized view provided reassurance of this view. 120 Col Iron. 121 Unnamed military officer. 122 Brig Sharpe. 123 Col Alderson. 124 Col Benest. 125 Lt Col Balgarnie. 126 Unnamed military officer. 24
The Non-­use of Formal Doctrine In light of this aversion to doctrine, it is perhaps not surprising that almost everyone interviewed reported that they hadn’t referred to it during operations. Some of the responses include: ‘Surprisingly I probably read less than I should have. I think when you get involved in it … there’s a cultural snobbery, I suppose, an anti-­‐
intellectualism.’127 ‘I don’t think anyone has read the current British counter-­‐insurgency doctrine.’128 ‘I think if you’re asking how much I was influenced by doctrine, frankly I made a lot of it up on the hoof.’129 ‘In Basra, I never read any doctrine.’130 The Use of Informal Doctrine In preference to formal COIN doctrine the informal tradition still has a hold on approaches to COIN. ‘Acceptable’ doctrine derived from less formalized, more organic sources such as personal experience. As one officer put it: ‘The ultimate sin of ‘bookishness’ would be to read army pamphlets, except on a course. But it’s perfectly acceptable for you to read other stuff, like Kitson’.131 The oral tradition was central to this: ‘Regimental histories, military histories and so forth have always been an absolutely fundamental part of what we do. And also, because we tend to be families … there is within messes a sort of word by mouth family tradition of how you do things.’ The Special Forces were seen as particularly important in this respect: In Iraq and Afghanistan, it appears that it was informal doctrine and the traditions and principles carried within it which was more acceptable and more often used. Officers reported using such works as Kitson, Thompson, Callwell, and T. E. Lawrence, but no one mentioned using Army Field Manual Part 10, except to comment on how it was outdated. This approach is also shared by General Sir David Richards, who at the time was Commander in Chief Land Forces and former Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (COMISAF) in Afghanistan. Richards describes himself as ‘a bit of a doctrine agnostic’, claiming ‘[f]rom an early stage in my career I read books like Bunch of Fives [sic] by General Kitson, numerous autobiographies, and so forth. What 127 Unnamed military officer. 128 Col Iron 129 Brig Sharpe 130 Unnamed military officer. 131 Brig Sharpe 25
Templer did in Malaya was a big factor in my own thinking’.132 The high esteem in which informal publications are held reflects their resonance with the less obvious attributes of British military culture. This includes an appreciation for individual original thinking, pragmatic approaches, and ‘muddling through’ rather than formally approaching a campaign. Such works are located more firmly within the cultural canon, they represent the ‘way of knowing’.133 As one officer put it, such works instill an ‘implicit doctrine’, ‘something we don’t think we need to write down because we already all know it and know how to do it’.134 Much of this is through education, these are the core works on officer training courses, yet they are penned by fellow soldiers rather than the dry, dispassionate bureaucracy of the doctrine centre. Informal doctrine is thus more suited to the identity of the British army officer. For the British army, formal doctrine is ill defined, lacking an agreed-­‐upon purpose, and conflated with intellectualizing a practice which is seen as entirely sui generis. These factors, along with others, have contributed to the non-­‐use of formal doctrine. Informal doctrine is preferred. Yet formal doctrine is still needed. It serves a functional purpose in justifying equipment purchases, but it also creates a professional identity for the armed forces. As Rupert Smith puts it: ‘every single force, anywhere in the world, is constructed in accordance with a purpose: a defence and security policy and a military doctrine.’135 To be an army is in part to have a doctrine, in this sense it is an important element of the army’s identity. In the words of one officer too, ‘I think the reason for having doctrine is that we are probably more disciplined in thinking about what we do. It’s a way of professionalizing the business’.136 In light of Iraq and Afghanistan, this question became even more important. So far we have seen how the identity of the British army suits the nature of informal doctrine providing a vessel for multiple interpretations and leaving room for a certain degree of disagreement. The army’s relationship with formal doctrine, meanwhile, has been a difficult one leading to the continued use of informal doctrine. Recent campaigns have demanded a rethink. With this in mind however, the question remains as to why there is still such resistance to formalizing counter-­‐insurgency doctrine. Why is the transition so difficult to make? COINing a New Doctrine: The Challenge to Military Culture The Conceptual Challenge: Narrowing Room for Interpretation The first reason for the difficulty in making a transition from informal to formal doctrine derives from the process of writing doctrine itself. In contrast to 132 ‘RUSI Interview with General David Richards’, RUSI, 152/2 (2007), 26. 133 Nigel Rapport, Transcendent Individual: Towards a Literary and Liberal Anthropology, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 45. 134 Col Iron. 135 Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force, (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 19. 136 Lt Col Balgarnie. 26
informal doctrine, formal doctrine requires a greater degree of consensus. Each draft of doctrine will be sent to the Higher Command Staff College from the Doctrine Concepts Development Centre (DCDC), for a discussion between the two organizations. It will then be sent to desk-­‐level at the equivalent level of Lieutenant Colonel within each service arm. It will then return to DCDC before being sent out to Colonel-­‐level officers, then 1 star (Brigadier-­‐level) and above, before a final circulation with amendments. Formal service-­‐level doctrine demands a consensus within the army, whilst joint-­‐level doctrine demands consensus throughout the military. In doing so, formal doctrine hammers down the inter-­‐regimental rivalries and inter-­‐service rivalries that the adoctrinal, and pragmatic approach allowed prior to 1990, as well as accommodating the sense of individualism within the different services and regiments. In this situation doctrine becomes pursuit of the ‘best argument’,137 yet this is not necessarily based on the most conceptually valid, as another officer explained. ‘There’s a whole political organizational game [too] … the voices that are heard are generally those with the most rank on their shoulders … [the doctrine-­‐writing team have] got to learn to play that game as well.’138 As such, the doctrine must hammer down individual views, and placate dissenters for the good of the organization as a whole. This is difficult when it comes to a topic as contested as COIN, and one which means so much to the British army. The need for commandeering this complex organizational game leaves doctrine-­‐
writers in the position of gate-­‐keepers, marshalling discussion and at times influencing opinions on ‘how it is’. As was explained: ‘you’ll send it out and X will say “I think there needs to be more purple”, Y will say “I think there needs to be more pink”, and Z will say “no no, orange is the answer”, and you’ve got to balance those off against each other and decide whether you want to incorporate any of them and if you don’t, how you’re going to satisfy them for the next circulation.’139 Or as another put it: ‘It’s not a science, there’s no procedure to follow, but you have to judge the mood of the organization and what it can live with.’140 At the root of all of this is the simple fact that consensus demands narrowing the room for interpretation. This is fundamentally opposed to the previous informal approach which drew on not only a variety of sources, but sources which contained a number of principles widely open to interpretation. The inclusiveness and vagueness of the informal tradition therefore better suits the identity of the British army than the formal tradition. Informal doctrine bypasses the demands for conceptual unity which can expose the fissures within the organization. Formal doctrine, paradoxically, undermines the collective identity, which accommodates a multitude of views, by attempting to generate a collective outlook. 137 Author interview with Rear Admiral Chris Parry, 5 March 2009. 138 Unnamed military officer. 139 Unnamed military officer. 140 Unnamed military officer. 27
The Historical Challenge: Challenging Identity The second challenge posed by the transition to formal doctrine is the need for a reappraisal of history. The difficulties encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan have questioned the relevance of history in current doctrine. This presents an explicit challenge to the army’s identity because it requires a playing down of the history on which ideas of expertise are based. The new doctrine now being published questions the role of history in the contemporary operating environment. It was motivated by the realisation as one officer put it, ‘that we needed to address this as a whole piece and not say if you read Templer and Briggs, then you can produce a counter-­‐insurgency plan’.141 This realisation has also led to questions over the relevance of previous experience: ‘We have been fatherly in our attitude, which at times, certainly in Victorian times, may well have been appropriate … certainly it worked and was accepted, but that positive patronage, as in being a patron or a father, is now pejoratively patronising in the eyes of an awful lot of people.’142 These comments were perhaps leveled more at the coalition partners who have lost their belief in the validity of the British way. However, others demonstrated that they believed this problem lay not with the inconsistencies of the narrative, but with the changed context: ‘I wonder whether the regions of the world, and the places where we are now, are as willing to accept the British way … We need to work out why some of these countries might have accepted us 50 or 60 years ago, and are adamant that it will not be the British way now … It’s quite an important fact that the British army has got an ethos, a culture, a way of doing things … well if those characteristics do not carry stall around the world anymore, because they smack of whatever, empire, imperialism -­‐ even if that’s not the policy or the intent -­‐ then you must think about where you use British force.’143 In challenging the relevance and role of history, the transition to a formal military doctrine therefore challenges the identity of the British army, which is located in that very history. Conclusion This paper has made three arguments. First, it has argued that the revisionist movement is redressing the history of British counter-­‐insurgency. Secondly, it has argued that military culture is a confused concept and has offered an 141 Unnamed military officer. 142 Unnamed military officer (emphasis added by the interviewer). 143 Lt Col Mitchell. 28
alternative in the form of an heuristic model comprising history, identity and doctrine. Thirdly, in applying that model it has argued that the British army has challenged its own military culture in rewriting its counter-­‐insurgency doctrine. To conclude, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the principles of COIN do not match the revisionist history since doctrine is not necessarily what happened, but what is most likely to work best. There is a learning experience within each campaign. The point here however is that the history and the doctrine have become tied up in each other, to the point where the assumption of past experience and indeed success in COIN encouraged a culture of expertise in these kinds of operations. This is detected in the self-­‐image or identity that members of the British army had. As such the concept of military culture became intrinsically connected to the history and doctrine of the military in question. This is fundamentally an intersubjective understanding of shared meanings with significance attached to certain readings, in this case, a positive reading of past COIN operations. Seen as facets of a particular British military culture in COIN, certain operations, especially Malaya, and Northern Ireland can therefore be seen as miniature creation myths, their power waning as the British campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan came under scrutiny. The COIN doctrine which followed these historical campaigns often presented a rosy picture of how the campaign was fought. This belies the popular aphorism that armies are forever ‘fighting the last war’, rather they are fighting the last war they wish they’d fought. There is an element of this in the new doctrines too. Colin McInnes has argued that following the Bagnall reforms in the late 80s and early 90s there was a shift in the army’s approach to doctrine; a view subsequently support by General Sir Richard Dannatt.144 Whilst this may have been the case with respect to conventional doctrine, this research suggests that in the area of COIN doctrine this revolution was less seismic. Whilst McInnes expressed concern that formal COIN doctrine would create unthinking commanders on the battlefield, especially in COIN – which he describes as inherently sui generis – this research suggests that rather than relying on slavish adherence to doctrine in the event of a conceptual black hole, the British army fell back on its perceived natural ability in COIN operations. In short, the Bagnall reforms were not enough to change this engrained culture; it took perceived failures in the field of battle to decisively shift attitudes to COIN doctrine in the British army. This process challenges that engrained culture which had previously been accepted. Whilst there has been much talk about the realization that the British didn’t have an intrinsic ability in COIN, and that this had even been mythologized this has received little serious study.145 Rather than arguing that there was a failure to 144 McInnes, ‘The British Army’s New Way in Warfare’; General Sir Richard Dannatt, address to the IISS, 21 September, 2007, (available online: http://www.iiss.org/conferences/military-­‐
leaders-­‐forum/general-­‐sir-­‐richard-­‐dannatt/). 145 Stuart Griffin, ‘Iraq, Afghanistan and the future of British military doctrine: From counter-­‐
insurgency to stabilization’, International Affairs, 87/2 (2007), 317-­‐33. 29
apply the principles in Iraq and Afghanistan, this research queries the principles themselves, and especially how they were understood by the officers responsible for enacting them. Doing so reveals their generally permissive nature. This is a feature of good doctrine, but the assumption that their enactment would naturally follow was erroneous. Doctrine had become dogma not because it was read and slavishly adhered to, but because it was assumed that it was an innate part of British military culture. It takes a challenge to bring this to the surface. 30
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