American counter insurgency of the war on terror : risk management as the new paradigm for counter insurgency?

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Title

American Counter Insurgency of the War on Terror:

Risk Management as the New Paradigm for Counter Insurgency?

Student Name: John Ó Éanaigh Mc Garry

Student Number: 11126701

Supervisor: Dr. Polly Pallister-Wilkins

Second Reader: Prof. Marieke de Goede

Thesis Project: Geopolitics, Borders and Conflict

Word Count: 16,526

Programme: MSc in Political Science: International Relations

Due Date: August 31

st

2016

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Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine the influence of the risk society and risk management on contemporary counter insurgency as expressed in a chosen exemplar of counter insurgency doctrine.

I wish to investigate how counter insurgency has adapted to a new strategic paradigm. By way of background, I identify three broad strands of counter insurgency, these being “classical” counter insurgency of the eighteenth century, “modern” counter insurgency of the Cold War era as represented by David Galula, and “contemporary” counter insurgency that has characterised the War on Terror.

I also aim, through this thesis to expand risk theory literature by distinguishing risk theory as applied to insurgencies from its more frequent application to international terrorism. This is based on the observation that insurgencies differ from transnational terrorism in that they are contained within specific societies, and have a more “grounded” characteristic being deeply embedded rather than broadly based as would characterise transnational terrorism. The nature of the treat poised by such insurgencies is therefore different.

The chosen exemplar of counter insurgency doctrine, Counterinsurgency (FM3-24/ MCWP3-33.5) dates from a formative moment in world affairs and has been central to contemporary counter insurgency practice since its publication in 2004.

I argue that at a strategic level FM3-24 essentially aims to prevent failing states in the impoverished global south from becoming potential support bases for transnational terrorist networks and that contemporary counter insurgency doctrine as represented in FM3-24 has evolved to match the globalized insurgencies of the latest stage of modernity known as a “risk society”.

Be Polite, Be Professional, Be Prepared to Kill - John Nagl I don’t think you ‘win’ this War - David Petraeus

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Acknowledgements

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le mo thuistí - Michael McGarry agus Siobhán Ní Éanaigh, le mo dheirfiíúr Helen Ní Éanaigh McGarry agus le mo seanathair Kevin F. McGarry dár ngrá agus tachaíocht.

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Glossary of Terms

● AAA: American Anthropological Association ● AO: Area of Operations

● CERPS: Commander’s Emergency Response Programmes ● COIN: Counter Insurgency

● CORDS: Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support

● FM3-24: The American military’s counter insurgency Field Manual of December 2006

● GEOINT: Geospatial intelligence ● HN: Host Nation

● HTS: Human Terrain System ● HUMINT: Human Intelligence ● IO: Information Operations

● ISR: Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance ● LLOs: Logical Lines of Operations

● MOOTW: Military Operations Other Than War ● NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization ● NCW: Network Centric Warfare

● PRT: Provincial Reconstruction Team ● PSYOPS: Psychological Operations ● RMA: Revolution in Military Affairs ● SIGINT: Signals Intelligence

● SIPRNET: Secret Internet Protocol Router Network ● SOF: Special Operations Forces

● SWM: Small Wars Manual of 1940 ● UAV: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

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1

Chapter 1: Counter Insurgency, Risk and Deterrence

1.1 Introduction

According to strategic studies scholar Christopher Coker, we now occupy a “new stage of modernity” in which historical continuity in military planning seemingly matters less1. Coker in this statement is expanding on Ulrich Beck’s “new modernity of the risk society” in which “new realities arise, a new mapping of space and time, and new coordinates for the social and the political”2. This idea of a new modernity has influenced military planning since the end of the Cold War and the advent of the global War on Terror; both of these periods have provoked a broadening of the meaning of “security” beyond its traditional “state-centric” understanding. In this new “strategic context of globalization”3, cyber security, arms control, anti-piracy and counter terrorism, have assumed greater prominence and accordingly, new security practices and institutions have evolved to meet such threats.

In parallel, military affairs has been forced into a re-evaluation of its central theories and practices in respect of cognition, communication and organization, as its traditional purpose (to fight inter-state wars) has become an increasingly rare occurrence. In order to stay relevant, military establishments have transformed the manner in which they conduct operations to deal with the much more diffuse and asymmetrical threats.

In adapting to these new threats and the “new wars”4_{of the post-modern era, western} militaries have undergone a “transformation” referred to as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)5 that has allowed modern (and particularly the western militaries), greater ability to

1_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.175} 2_{Beck, The Terrorist Threat, P.53}

3_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.104}

4_{Fleming, “New or Old Wars? Debating a Clausewitzian Future”}

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2 render the battle space as a predictable and observable space through “informationalised ” innovations in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)6.

In line with this “informational revolution”, militaries have increasingly adopted more diffuse, flexible and flattened organizational doctrine referred to as “Network Centric Warfare”7 (NCW). Military forces are also being called upon to serve a variety of purposes that are beyond their traditional role. These purposes fall under the all-encompassing acronym of “MOOTW” or “Military Operations Other Than War”8, which include everything from peace-keeping operations, arms control, nation building, to disaster relief operations. This broadening of the use of the military brings into question the logic and concepts that guide the use of military force in our “post-modern”9 era, populated as it is with elusive and uncertain threats10 that radically differ from the traditional state-centric threats of the past11. Counter insurgency as a form of war fighting has a unique “genealogy” that has evolved through a series of instructive field manuals and doctrinal texts intended to inform military personnel in leadership roles on the conduct of counter insurgency (COIN) operations. Although still conforming to the basic Clausewitzian ontology of warfighting as a struggle in which “means” are applied to reach an “end”, counter insurgency has been considered an outsider practice and a lesser form of war12_{within military orthodoxy. COIN’s particular} status is generally attributed to the “irregular” or “unconventional” nature of its wars, being conducted against an enemy that is difficult or impossible to distinguishable from its local population.

The central question of this thesis is how has risk management impacted upon the creation and nature of contemporary military operational doctrines? By risk management I refer to the intention to reduce the possibilities of undesirable contingencies occurring within a population considered to be “at risk”.

6_{Lindsay, Reinventing the Revolution}

7_{Reid, Foucault on Clausewitz, P.21, MacGregor, Resurrecting transformation for the post-industrial era, P.58}

Garstka & Cebrowski, Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future

8_{Kaplan, The Insurgents, P.45} 9_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.86} 10_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.28}

11_{Hoffman, Complex Irregular Warfare: The Next Revolution in Military Affairs} 12_{Porch, Counterinsurgency, P.19}

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3 The US military’s counter insurgency field manual Counterinsurgency (FM3-24/ MCWP3-33.5)13defines an insurgency as “an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority, while increasing insurgent control”14. To counter such an asymmetrical threat, professional armies engage in counter insurgency operations (COIN) defined in the FM3-24 as the “military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency”15. In order to conduct successful counter insurgent operations, COIN forces must target the source of the insurgency’s strength (the civilian population) or what Clausewitz defined as the “centre of gravity” of a military campaign16.

In the next three subsections of this chapter I shall articulate the historical basis of counter insurgency in both classical and modern traditions, as a form of warfare where deterrence was the underlying rationality. Once this is articulated, the following subsection (chapter 1.3) will establish the theoretical framework for my analysis of FM3-24 (chapters 2,3, and 4) to examine how a risk management paradigm is evidenced in a codified military operational doctrine. The empirical analysis of FM3-24 will be structured into three chapters (chapters 2, 3, and 4) that correspond to what I call the main thematic areas of COIN, these being, firstly the use of force as a deterrent (chapter 2), secondly the perceptions and the centrality of the civilian population (chapter 3), and thirdly how governance is conducted (chapter 4). Chapter 5 summarises my findings in respect of the relationship of contemporary counter insurgency doctrine and risk management.

1.2 The Historical Influence of Deterrence in Counter Insurgency

Deterrence is understood to be the prevention or the control of actions and behaviour through fear of punishment or retribution. Classical counter insurgency doctrines during the nineteenth century relied heavily on the rationality of deterrence where the main objective

13_{References to Counterinsurgency (FM3-24/ MCWP3-33.5) are abbreviated to FM3-24} 14_{FM3-24, P.1 (1-1)}

(Please note that American military manuals use page numbers that correspond to chapters and pages so “(3-4)” is third chapter, fourth page.)

15_{FM3-24, P.1 (1-1)}

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4 was to prevent populations from supporting insurgencies by a variety of threats. In strategic studies, Lawrence Freedman defined deterrence as the “potential or actual application of force to influence the action of a voluntary agent”17. I use this particular definition of deterrence due to its clarity and given that Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen uses Freedman’s definition in his book, The Risk Society at War (a contribution which I shall reference in the next subsection). Deterrence under this definition is a rational guide for taking action in which “means”, in the form of the application of force or the threat of it, are applied in order to reach a strategic “end” in which an agent has been deterred from taking an action. The threat implicit in the use of force ranges from one of dislocation to the existential threat to an indigenous population.

This common basis in which actions were aimed at deterring a population from siding with an insurgency is a characteristic found in COIN’s roots in the European “small wars” tradition of the nineteenth century. According to military historian, Douglas Porch, the origins of classical counter insurgency’s doctrines and practices are attributed primarily to a number of French and British officers who engaged in a series of colonial expeditions that took place far from their respective metropoles of Paris and London18. For example, French Marshall Thomas Bugeaud, the military governor of Algeria in the 1830s led a colonial military force in suppressing an initially successful revolt of the native peoples of Algeria. In doing so Bugeaud’s doctrine and practices were frequently based on the use of brutal and totalizing tactics aimed at disrupting the living spaces of the civilian population19_{, such as the} use of cavalry raids on villages and hamlets20. The effectiveness of the deterrent and the credibility of the threat were sustained by the actual frequency and severity of the use of force, with colonisers aware of the exemplary value of individual forays in which the colonized people’s way of life was (at the very least) disrupted.

Despite the French having fought one of the earliest examples of colonial warfare in North Africa, it would be the British that would see the need to further understand the greater phenomenon of irregular warfare by codifying population-centric warfighting doctrines into a theoretical text. This came in the form of British Officer Sir Charles Callwell and his 1896

17_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.95} 18_{Porch, Counterinsurgency, P.4}

19_{Quoted in, Whittingham, Savage Warfare P.594} 20_{Porch, Counter Insurgency, P.20}

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5 publication, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice in which he defined “small wars” in their most fundamental form as “operations of regular armies against irregular”21” (emphasis added).

The purpose of counter insurgency according to Callwell was to teach “barbaric” and unruly peoples “a lesson which they will not forget”22. Fundamental to such declarations were the concepts of punishment and retribution, with disobedient or wayward actions resulting in example-setting reactions that would act to deter further offences. Following the publication of Callwell’s Small Wars, the British would come to be engaged in a series of military expeditions to suppress native revolts at the far corners of the British empire. In doing so the British evolved a number of innovations in tactics and methods that were often totalizing in doctrine and extreme in execution – the logic again being that the credibility of the threat of force had to be maintained by its regular application.

What is to be gathered from this series of small wars underpinned by the doctrinal work of Callwell along with the extreme tactics employed by Bugeaud, was that counter insurgency was initially conceptualised as a form of warfare in which counter insurgents would physically attack a native population’s living space and livelihood in order to deter them from supporting the insurgency. This deterrence basis of COIN was primarily exhibited by using violent force to coerce a collective population to the point that supporting the insurgency would incur harassment or indeed ruin, through methods such as massive forced resettlement, starvation, aerial bombardment, or the destruction of a population’s infrastructure.

Attaining and holding the political loyalties of the indigenous population came much later in the “pertinent historical model”23 of modern counter insurgency, that being the British campaign in Malaya of 1948-1960. However, many of the tactics used by the British in the Malayan Campaign were also based on the use of collective coercion, punishment, and brutality24. The “hearts and minds” of the people were a secondary target in Malaya with the primary focus being on the physical existence and living conditions of the indigenous population25. This existential threat to the population underpinned the colonial understanding

21_{Ibid, P.4}

22_{Whittingham, Savage Warfare, P.594} 23_{Kaplan, The Insurgents, P.217}

24_{Gentile, Wrong Turn, P.46, Hack, Everyone lived in fear, P.679} 25_{Porch, Counter Insurgency, P.71}

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6 of counter insurgency. In this respect, the Malayan Campaign sits at a juncture in counter insurgency’s genealogy, poised between a traditional use of force as deterrent (actions focused on the “body”), and the later emphasis on winning the perceptual “hearts and minds” battle.

Many of the tactics of the Malayan Campaign would then be transplanted into American counter insurgency practices during the Vietnam War. In this era, “softer” approaches gradually permeated COIN doctrines with more constructive tactics aimed at inducing an indigenous population away from supporting an insurgency. However, despite the expanded role of such tactics, coercion or the threat of coercion as a deterrent persisted in COIN theory and practice. In fact, the traditional concept of deterrence expanded to include “hearts and minds”, while still retaining its ultimate goal as a struggle to physically defeat a threat. The less lethal and more constructive tactics of the American “Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support” (CORDS) programme26_{in Vietnam and the earlier} civil outreach programmes used in Malaya, were aimed to “sell” the population a better life27_. This “selling” to the population however, was always underlined with the threat of force remaining as the ultimate deterrent.

This transition from “classical” counter insurgency of the colonial era into “modern” counter insurgency of the Cold War is best represented in David Galula’s seminal tome, Counterinsurgency: Theory and Practice in which he stated that counter insurgency warfare ought to be “80% political and only 20% military actions”28 (emphasis added). However, Galula (a French veteran of the Franco-Algerian war) never positioned his conceptualization of counter insurgency outside a traditional “means and ends”29 framework of military strategy and doctrine, as the end goal remained the defeat of an insurgency through force of arms. Galula did not get the opportunity to test his theory against practice, given the gap in western COIN campaigns after the Vietnam War. However, with the ground wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Galula has attained a reputation as the “Clausewitz”30 of counter insurgency and his Counterinsurgency Theory and Practice was highly influential in the creation of FM3-24.

26_{Gentlie, Wrong Turn, P.76}

27_{Porch, Counter Insurgency, P.207, Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, P.75} 28_{Galula, Counter Insurgency, P.89}

29_{Rasmussen, Risk Society at War, P.2}

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1.3 Theoretical Framework: Rasmussen, Beck, Risk and COIN

In the past the relationship of deterrent and a desired outcome was arguably more stable and predictable - cause and effect were linear and evident in military planning and strategy. However, according to Christopher Coker, the new increasingly “networked” characteristic of our globalised world involves complex non-linear connections with less predictable policy outcomes under a new “reflexive security dilemma”31_{in which risks have replaced threats.} Risks are defined as potential future contingencies and risk management is the avoidance or minimisation of foreseeable undesirable outcomes. According to Rasmussen and Coker, “risk management” is now the guiding logic of modern warfighting practices and strategy32, and can be defined as “the field of activity seeking to monitor, eliminate, reduce and generally control pure risks”33. In this paradigm, military strategies and doctrines no longer aim to apply simplistic military or political “means” to achieve a known “end”. Now warfighting reflects a more elusive focus to control or contain “risks”. This ontological shift in military and security operational thinking is reflected in the previously noted “revolution in military affairs” and “network-centric warfare” in which deductive reasoning as to what the future operational environment will be has replaced the traditional inductive model of how militaries prepare for war34.

The source of this according to Ulrich Beck is that we have entered a new phase of modernity, known as “reflexive modernity”35, in which the linear relationship between cause and effect has broken down and instead the relationship and effects are now contingent and are increasingly reflexive. This transformation means that the management of the possible consequences of dangerous “risks”36 has become the defining feature of our globalised modernity. These risks are for Beck ever imminent, incalculable, catastrophic and take the form of terrorist attacks, environmental disasters and financial collapses37. Of these globalized and catastrophic risks that Beck identified, those of particular interest were those

31_{Rasmussen, A Parallel Globalization of Terror, P.327} 32_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.33}

33_{Heng, Unravelling the ‘war’ on Terrorism, P.231} 34_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.8}

35_{Ibid, P.60}

36_{Beck, The Terrorist Threat, P.41} 37_Ibid

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8 associated with transnational terrorism. Unlike financial collapses or environmental disasters, terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 are predicated on a “principle of intention”38 as they require human agency. The risks associated with such possible attacks are “de-bounded” from traditional conceptions of spatial configurations such as the nation state.

The increasingly “de-bounded”39 nature of the terrorist threat means that a successful terrorist attack is inevitable, while the location, and time of an attack is uncertain. This inevitability and the potential severity of possible attacks has provoked a “paradigm shift”40 in modern security practices; these now operate and formulate doctrine based on a “precautionary principle”41 in the context of which doing nothing carries risks that could be disastrous. In this stage of modernity, security practitioners are compelled to take action pre-emptively with incomplete information on the nature of threat.

The direct application of Beck’s risk society thesis on counter insurgency doctrine differs from its application to counter-terrorist security practices. This is explained by the traditionally location-focused characteristics of insurgencies as they seek to become mass movements that aim to gain political control over a given geographical space and its people42_. This is in contrast to the “de-territorialized” and “incalculable” characteristic of the “new terrorism”43_{that Beck addresses in his thesis. Hence insurgencies are meant to hold a higher} degree of predictability as they are tied to specific populations “at risk” who hold grievances that insurgents orchestrate to gain support for their cause. Or as Bell and Evans succinctly noted that the shift in focus of terrorism to counter insurgency “reorients the perception of danger from wholly incalculable to calculable”44. Rather than directly using Beck’s risk society thesis, I outline it here as a broad framing device to locate the theoretical framework that I shall use to examine an exemplar of contemporary military operational doctrine.

Other theorists have expanded on Beck’s thesis in the area of military affairs. For example, Yee Kuang Heng has observed how western leaders use “the military option” to pre-empt the

38_{Ibid, P.44}

39_{Ibid, P.52}

40_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.133} 41_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.124} 42_{Bell & Evans, Terrorism to Insurgency, P.376}

43_{Mythen & Walklate, Terrorism, Risk and international Security, P.222} 44_{Bell & Evans, Terrorism to Insurgency, P.372}

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9 possibility of a disastrous attack, or to contain the risks of greater regional instability45. Other examples include Christopher Coker, who has argued that military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), now act as collective “risk communities”46. Kessler and Werner have used Beck’s thesis to examine the legality behind the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)47 to pre-emptively kill suspected terrorists before they strike.

Another noteworthy text on risk society and modern war is Christopher Coker’s War in an Age of Risk in which he argues that modern warfighting doctrine and strategies have lost their original utility in our “post-modern” times, i.e. to “fight and win wars”48. Instead the application of military force in a risk society is transitioning to a point where it can adapt and react to threats with increasing speed and immediacy49. This preoccupation with the immediate, coupled to the risk averse nature of western decision makers, is at odds with the long term strategic thinking required to defeat a threat50. Yet Coker’s contribution remains concerned with questions as to why military force is used, and is less concerned with how military operational doctrines have been transformed by “risk thinking”.

Vedby Mikkel Rasmussen’s tome, The Risk Society at War is one attempt to address the relationship between operational doctrine and the “risk society”. Rasmussen defines military operational doctrine as the “principles by which military forces guide their action in support of objectives”51 and consequently he theorizes that due to the “new” nature of the threats that confront modern societies, deterrence (and by extension traditional theoretical conceptions of warfighting and military strategy), has lost much of its utility as a guide for the formulation of military operational doctrine52.

Rasmussen identifies the reorientation of military planning with the broader erosion of traditional governmental planning as a whole53. Rasmussen states “modern planning provided society with an “ontological security”54 in the form of a “coherent narrative of what happened now, what one could expect from the future, and the idea that you, or your nation, could

45_{Heng, Unravelling the ‘war’ on Terrorism} 46_{Rasmussen, ‘It Sounds like a Riddle’, P.390}

47_{Kessler & Werner, Extrajudicial Killing as Risk Management} 48_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.140}

49_{Ibid, P.54} 50_{Ibid, P.171}

51_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.93} 52_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.119} 53_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.35} 54_Ibid

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10 choose what developmental path to follow”55. However, this was in the past according to Rasmussen and now the defining narrative of late modernity is not about plans for perfection, but about “choosing the lesser evil”56 as governments “no longer master ends, only means”57. Rasmussen argues that the major difference between the application of military force in the risk society and in the past is one of ontology. In this, Rasmussen makes a distinction between threats in the past and risks in the future. “Threats” are traditional dangers emanating from forces and objects that can be observed in the present, such as other armies, missile silos and rival intelligence agencies58. On the other hand, “risks” are the possible, dangerous, and undesirable contingencies that exist primarily in the minds and imaginations of commanders, strategists, political leaders and individual soldiers.

It has only been recently that western military establishments are beginning to recognize that the security logics that guided strategy and doctrine from Clausewitz to the Cold War have now lost much of their purpose. For Rasmussen, the “new paradigm”59 of risk management serves as the basis of strategy and military operational doctrine in the post-Cold War World. As a result, rather than directly using Beck’s risk society thesis, I will use Rasmussen’s principles to construct my theoretical framework to examine how a risk management paradigm is evident in an exemplar of contemporary military doctrine, given deterrence and the ambition to establish a state of enduring security appears to be no longer the basis for the application of military force in counter insurgency operations.

1.3.1 The Precautionary Principle

Rasmussen’s first principle of military doctrine under the risk society is the “precautionary principle”60 in which risks are recognised as being either emergent or imminent. In this context, the inability to identify possible threat is not a rationale for inaction. Therefore

55_Ibid 56_Ibid 57_{Ibid, P.37} 58_{Ibid, P.11}

59_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.132 Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.202} 60_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.95}

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11 emptive actions are taken and aimed at shaping the future to a much more secure disposition. This is meant to decrease the perceived probability of crime, the frequency of violent terrorist attacks, the spread of radical ideologies or in the case of military affairs, the ability of the enemy to engage and to inflict damage upon one’s forces. In contrast to Beck’s characterization of the unpredictable and totally unknowable risks of his thesis, Rasmussen notes that risks need to be at least thinkable so that security practitioners and military commanders can assess the likelihood of certain contingencies occurring in the future.

Rasmussen’s theory of the precautionary principle follows a similar logic identified by Aradau and Van Munster, in which constantly emergent and continuous risks in societies, “become risks” through the way they are made knowledgeable and thinkable as well as through the governmental technologies and tactics that are mobilised to “manage them”. This does not mean that uncertainty around risks is eradicated by the use of security techniques, tactics or technologies. Instead, security practitioners can merely “tame the limit and govern what appears to be ungovernable”61 through conceptualizing possible future contingencies.

1.3.2 Management of the Operational Environment

For Rasmussen a “risk management” paradigm means that contemporary military operations follow a managerial approach to strategy and the conduct of operations, rather than a traditional “means-ends” logic that has been the basis of military strategy since Clausewitz62. Management is seen as a set of processes that aim to influence people and possible events in the future. These processes are continuous, evolving, responsive, and often lack a clear set of metrics for gauging success.

Therefore military operations and security practices in general seek to bring the possibility of risks to a containable level. This acceptable level of risk is seen to be the politically acceptable level in which certain contingencies are allowed to happen and others are prevented; acceptability being determined by the “risk culture”63 of a given military

61_{Aradau & Van Munster, Governing Terrorism Through Risk, P.107} 62_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.29}

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12 establishment (in this case the United States). The main result of this new managerial approach to military operations is that the application of military force does not carry a defined “end state” in which a threat is defeated and an enduring security is to be established. For Rasmussen this is simply either not possible (given the impossibility of defeating asymmetrical threats such as terrorism or crime), or that the outright defeat of an enemy through massive troop deployment carries intolerable political risks for the increasingly “risk averse”64_{political leaders and military commanders of the west and their home audience.}

1.3.3 The Boomerang Effect

Rasmussen’s third principle is the “boomerang effect” in which taking pre-emptive action to prevent an undesirable contingency from occurring may also produce increased risks – in other words making an already difficult situation worse. In contrast to the “precautionary principle”, Rasmussen notes that often in “managing” risks, it may be best to do nothing, as taking action also carries risks. For Rasmussen the “precautionary principle” and this “boomerang effect” are not mutually exclusive, but often exist in tandem. The direct result of this for commanders, tacticians, and strategists, is that they must consider carefully whether or not the possible benefits outweigh the risks in taking a specific action as the future may be rendered predictable to a degree at best, but without certainty. The practical implications of this principle is that military operations are not based on a linear path in which military “means” are calculated in order to meet the objective of defeating a threat. Instead military operations are implemented based upon a series of careful balancing acts constructed through a series of “non-linear decision trees”65 in which decisions are made with considerable care, as making any decision may be disastrous and counterproductive.

1.3.4 Complex Emergence

It is here that I add an additional principle to my framework that relates to the scale and environment in which “risk-based” security practices are implemented; this principle, I shall refer to as “complex emergence”. This principle is one that I have borrowed from a number

64_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.102, Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.132} 65_{de Goede, Simon & Hoijtink, Performing pre-emption, P.415}

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13 of scholars in their critique and expansion of Beck’s risk society thesis; a principle alluded to by Rasmussen as military operations and planning are predominately occupied with managing the “imperfections”66 of “rogue”67 actors (such as criminals) and conditions (such as internally fragile nations), through an open-ended set of continuous processes. I conceptualize this principle of complex emergence in a similar fashion to Melina Cooper who, (using pandemics as an example) defines the emergence of risks, which by their inherent complexity cannot be “predicted in linear terms from singular sources”68. In addition to this complexity there is “no equilibrium”69 in respect of risks that can reproduce themselves indefinitely. Notwithstanding that these risks can only be traced to a broad range of conditions that are either the sources of a threat or add to their possible severity, the key point is that emergent risks have ultimately no set of singular sources. Following this logic, Ben Anderson notes that “pre-emptive acts become immersed in the conditions of emergence of a threat”70 in order to manage them. Therefore, the challenge of security practitioners is to attempt to influence the conditions that lead to the possibility of risks in order to manage those risks as effectively as possible. Such “risk-inducing” conditions may be social, political71 or even biological72.

Treating risks as emergent means that they become “catastrophic” once an aggregate number of individuals engage in “risky” behaviour. For example, infectious diseases become catastrophic pandemics once an aggregate number of people become infected with a pathogen73_{. To provide an example of this principle in action, public health and sanitation} regimes have been established to pre-empt the emergence of catastrophic pandemics, even if such a pandemics may never actually emerge and if they do, they can merely be contained to a manageable level. Following this logic, emergent risks are treated as longer-term possibilities that can be traced back to points where a cumulative “critical mass” of events or situations arises, subsequently leading to disastrous consequences. In this sense, and unlike

66_{Rasmussen The Risk Society at War, P.96} 67_{Ibid, P.111}

68_{Cooper, Pre-empting Emergence, P.116} 69_Ibid

70_{Anderson, Pre-emption, precaution, preparedness, P.790}

71_{Bell & Evans, From Terrorism to Insurgency, Dillon & Lobo-Guerrero, Bio politics of Security in the 21}st

century

72_{Cooper, Pre-empting Emergence} 73_{Beck, The Terrorist Threat, P.43}

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14 Beck’s imminent characterization of risks, emergent risks have a chronology, and a potentially predictable pattern when taken together.

1.4 Case Selection and Methodology: Why FM3-24?

I decided to select the U.S. military’s counter insurgency field manual FM24 (MCWP 3-33.5) Counterinsurgency as a topical statement of counter insurgency practice to be assessed in terms of my chosen theoretical framework. FM3-24 is noted for the controversy surrounding its creation in 200674_{and the scholarly attention that the manual has since} received from journalists75_{, anthropologists}76_{, military practitioners}77_{political geographers}78 and critical war theorists79_{. Perhaps more importantly, the manual reflects the moment in time} (late 2006 at the start of the most violent period of the Iraq war), when American institutions recognised their failure to effectively plan for post-invasion Iraq80 and hence the solider-scholars behind the manual’s creation sought to better understand the dynamics of those wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The recognition of the need for new thinking was at a time when pre-emption and “risk management” came to characterise the Bush administration’s foreign policy81. The intellectual underpinning of pre-emption is rooted in risk management and is codified within the manual – the manual being a balance of rationalisations of established practice (i.e. pre-emption) and the application of techniques from other disciplines (notably business and the social sciences). In addition, FM3-24’s influential team of writers did avail of many of the lessons learned from previous counter insurgency practitioners and campaigns primarily from the Cold War era with its emphasis on the concept of deterrence.

74_{González, Towards a Mercenary Anthropology, Feldman, Radical or Reactionary}

The American Association of Anthropologists urged their members not to participate in the Human Terrain Teams proposed in the FM3-24 due to ethical concerns.

75_{Kaplan, The Insurgents}

76_{González, Towards a Mercenary Anthropology, Price, Faking Scholarship} 77_{Gentile, Wrong Turn}

78_{Gregory, The Rush to the Intimate} 79_{Roennfeldt, Productive War}

80_{Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East, P.283}

81_{Dalby, The Revolution in Military Affairs and the Bush doctrine, P.239, Ek, Revolution in Military} Geopolitics,

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15 Field manuals are designed to be the vehicle for the communication of how problems are to be addressed; military manuals according to Ansorge are meant to communicate both theory and practice82 to their respective ground forces in planning operations and taking actions. Few documents occupy such a position – theory and intended practice in one, and ranging from the strategic, the operational, through to the tactical. An American military manual in respect of counter insurgency (in addition to offering soldiers in the field guidance and direction) will logically reflect how US military strategic leadership conceptualize the problem of insurgencies.

FM3-24 is a large policy document of 282 pages and given that my central research question is directly tied to a theory, a qualitative methodology based on a critical analysis of the document is my chosen methodology. To structure the analysis, I have avoided the document’s rather mechanical format but have rather chosen to approach the document under the three significant thematic areas or foci of counter insurgency, these being firstly the application of lethal force, secondly the civilian population and thirdly the governance of that population. There is a useful overlap between these three headings and the tripartite summary statement on COIN operational stages contained within FM3-24 i.e. “clear”, “hold”, and “build”; this statement reflects the dominance of force in the early stage and the gradual shift to constructive actions and progressive withdrawal in the two later stages. Each of three thematic headings will be assessed using the theoretical framework developed in the chapters 2, 3, and 4 specifically in the context of the identified theoretical framework involving managing risks, the precautionary principle, boomerang effect and complex emergence. The analysis will start firstly with an assessment of how assets and actions are to be utilized during the “clear” phase and the role that force has in COIN operations during this phase. Secondly, I will analyse how the civilian population is conceptualized and how COIN forces will gain and maintain their “hold” on the population during the intermediate phase of operations. Lastly, I will assess how the COIN effort uses governance and economic development as a longer-term risk management technique to be imposed upon “risky peoples” in the final “build” phase of COIN operations.

82_{Ansorge, Spirits of War, P.362}

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16

Chapter 2 Analysis: The Application of Lethal Force

2.1 Background of FM3-24’s Creation

As previously noted, the US military’s counter insurgency field manual FM3-24 was written at a specific point of critical self-reflection on the part of the United States military establishment. Post the invasion of Iraq, the United States military was forced to recognize that modern wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan were more complex “wars amongst the people”83, rather than the more conventional wars that they had anticipated and had planned to fight. FM3-24 was presented as a “new way forward”84 for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where victory might be either delivered eventually or the risks of possible withdrawal could be contained.

According to Fred Kaplan’s behind the scenes account, the cohort of “soldier-scholars” known as the “COINdinistas”85 who authored FM3-24, had been influenced by counter insurgency practitioners of the past (such as David Galula), and yet understood that a modern counter insurgency manual had to be updated to match the de-territorialized nature of the war on terror. The “COINdinistas” reconceptualised the strategic rationale of the global war on terror as a campaign to prevent the creation of terrorist sanctuaries for “globalized insurgencies”86_{(such as Al-Qaeda), by establishing or maintaining the authority of “host} nation governments”.

2.2 Precautionary Principle: The Imperative to Kill

First and foremost, FM3-24 was intended as a practical guide for soldiers in the field. The manual is an articulation of how its authors anticipated how COIN operations would play out

83_{Smith, The Utility of Force,} 84_{Kaplan, The Insurgents, P.133} 85_{Ibid, P.3 Ricks, The COINdinistas}

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17 based on their assumptions as to how local populations would react under military occupation. The need to anticipate and prepare for the future means that the manual recognises that all actions carry risks and in particular that negative local and international perceptions could undermine support for any counter insurgency campaign. According to Rasmussen’s framework of risk, uncertainty as to what could happen in future does not justify inaction in dealing with a possible threat87 prompting commanders to act pre-emptively.

Of the manual’s three-phase “clear”, “hold”, “build”88 framework for counter insurgency operations, the use of lethal force takes centre position only in what is referred to as the “clear” phase of counter insurgency operations. COIN forces have an imperative to “protect the population” from the insurgency, using force to establish basic security. In doing so, a minimum level of killing is mandated by the manual as in it states that “killing or capturing insurgents will be necessary”89_{and that “true extremists are unlikely to be reconciled to any} other outcome than the one they seek; therefore, they must be killed or captured.”90_{. The} manual warns that in the application of lethal force “avoiding all risk may embolden insurgents”91. Noting a “bio-strategic calculus of necessary killing”92 as there is a stated need to “destroy insurgent military capabilities”93, and “neutralize the insurgent infrastructure”94 so that the insurgency’s freedom of movement is contained and is therefore kept at a “manageable” level.

The manual notes that not using lethal force in a timely and continuous fashion may allow insurgents to rise again, launching attacks on the host-nation government and the civilian population. Despite combat accounting for the minority of the overall campaign95, the manual states that its absence is still inherently “risky” as it may inadvertently give space and time for the insurgents to carry out attacks and spread propaganda amongst the population96. Every action and inaction in COIN carries with it a perceptual reaction; an appearance of a lack of

87_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.95-6} 88_{FM3-24, P.107, (5-18)}

89_{Ibid, P.23, (1-23)} 90_{Ibid, P.9, (1-9)} 91_{Ibid, P.225, (E-2)}

92_{Reid & Dillon, The Liberal Way of War, P.88} 93_{FM3-24, P.34, (2-5)}

94_{Ibid, P.93 (5-4)} 95_{Ibid, P.1 (1-1)} 96_{Ibid, P.19 (1-19)}

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18 resolve risks allowing the insurgency to gather support from outside of the area of operations, replace their losses, and gain a greater hold on the population. In such situations the host national government (the counter insurgent’s primary ally) is at most risk.

Rasmussen notes that thinking in terms of risk makes future dangers the objects of immediate action. This “colonisation of the future”97 uses risk profiling to assess dangers and this in turn leads to the identification of appropriate pre-emptive actions even if counter insurgents don’t have all the facts. Coker identifies the speed of change as a hallmark of our time and the manual anticipates moments when initiative and adaptive military planning is required to respond to complex and rapidly evolving situations98 in which insurgencies can quickly attack and then disappear into the anonymity of the population.

Following on from Coker’s observation, the “risk profiling”99 of a populace requires intelligence and the third chapter of the manual “Intelligence in Counterinsurgency”100 is devoted to the sources and type of intelligence that are to be collected particularly in respect of the need for force (location of enemy assets, logistics, their relative strength, and the likely outcomes of taking action). In our globalised age with the increased accessibility of information, FM3-24 emphasises the importance of perception, often indeed to the detriment of the facts. Accepting that reality, risk management around the use of force in FM3-24 is therefore twofold. Firstly it is concerned with the sequence and prediction of actual events and secondly with the external perception of those same events. Of all the assets at the disposal of the counter insurgent, the application of lethal force carries the greatest humanitarian risk (i.e. death and injury). The use of force carries not just practical, but perceptual risks amongst the population, as killing innocents may drive the population from the counter insurgent campaign and severely damage the credibility of the counter insurgency campaign in international opinion.

However the manual acknowledges that in the “clear” phase, decisions on the use of force are critical to the likely success of subsequent counter insurgency operations (in terms of both perception and actuality on the ground). Yet, rather strangely the manual, does not recognise

97_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.38} 98_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.151} 99_{Ibid, P.138}

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19 that early decision-making especially in the “clear” phase, often coincides with times when the level and quality of intelligence on the ground is most likely to be poor.

The “hold” phase of COIN operations offers greater opportunities for intelligence gathering and there is an assumption of greater confidence as to the known consequences of pre-emptive actions. In this the application of force moves from its actual application to the threat of its application i.e. deterrence. Military operations take on a policing roll101, relying on intelligence and developing trust among the local population. This is in effect not entirely new to counterinsurgency doctrine (echoing Galula as it does) and under the “paradoxes of counter insurgency” subsection the manual notes “sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be”102 followed by stating “the more successful the counter insurgency is, the less force can be used and the more risk must be accepted”103 and that “military force can compel obedience to secure areas”104. Further evidence of modern COIN’s influence can also be found in the tactic of “deterrent patrolling”105_{where the enemy} are kept off balance and the local population reassured by what is effectively the deliberate exposure of counterinsurgents to the population while patrolling contested areas.

2.3 Managing Insurgencies Through Lethal Force

To reiterate, Rasmussen characterises risk management as a set of practices that are continuous and aimed at allowing certain contingencies to occur and others not. Following this principle. in FM3-24 military operations are “designed” in an “iterative”106 fashion in which operations are aimed to manage possible threats rather than aiming for the definitive defeat of an enemy. Indeed, the first page of FM3-24 begins by framing counter insurgency warfare as a “clash of interests”, rather than a traditional “clash of wills”107. This phrasing is noteworthy as the omission of “will” stands in contrast to Clausewitz’s conception of warfighting as a struggle (rather than a process) with a politically defined “end” in which a

101_{Coker, War in an Age of Risk, P.160} 102_{FM3-24, P.27 (1-27)} 103_Ibid 104_{Ibid, P.90 (5-1)} 105_{Ibid, P178 (A-5)} 106_{Ibid, P.82 (4-3)} 107_{Clausewitz, On War, P.78}

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20 threat is defeated and a finality is anticipated. “Will” in war for Clausewitz was the measure of political commitment to defeat a threat, yet the phrase a “clash of interests” on the other hand implies both relativity and contingency as “interests” wane and evolve over time. In this sense counter insurgency is similar to law enforcement or domestic counter terrorism measures in which the state’s interest is to manage such risks, rather than anticipate ultimate victory through the application of political will.

Given this understanding of counter insurgency warfare as a “clash of interests”108 the manual goes on to detail contemporary counter insurgency as sets of continuous and managed processes. Indeed, the meaning of “victory” is only once defined in the manual; “victory is achieved when the populace consents to the government’s legitimacy and stops actively and passively supporting the insurgency”109. In this counter insurgency doctrine in the manual does not ultimately aim to defeat an insurgency through force of arms, but to render it “irrelevant”110_{in the eyes of the civilian population so that it no longer “openly”}111_(emphasis added) challenges the authority of the host nation government. COIN forces merely aim to gain “success”112 rather than victory in managing and out manoeuvring an insurgency to contain its influence on the population as much as is practically possible.

This relatively non-conclusive conceptualization of victory relates to the historical difficulty in defeating insurgencies given their ability to outlast a counter insurgency campaign by their inherent asymmetrical advantage. That advantage stems from their origin within the civilian population and as a result, insurgents can act quickly and then disappear back into the population, thereby avoiding the counterinsurgents should they wish.

A significant difference between COIN doctrine in FM3-24 and previous iterations is that the manual notes that insurgencies now have a much greater opportunity to gain support from transnational channels that were unavailable to the earlier insurgencies of the colonial era or the Cold War. Hence contemporary insurgencies as identified in the manual are significantly more difficult to defeat as potential support bases and channels are more “de-bounded”113 than in the past. This is further evident as manual states that “interconnectedness and 108_{FM3-24, P.1 (1-1)} 109_{Ibid, P.3 (1-3)} 110_{Ibid, P.30 (2-1)} 111_{Ibid, P.7 (1-7)} 112_{Ibid, P.30 (2-1)}

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21 information technology are new aspects of this contemporary wave of insurgencies”114 and that contemporary insurgencies are increasingly more diffuse and inherently difficult to bring to defeat than in the past as they are based around “loose organizations with common objectives but different motivations and no central controlling body"115(emphasis added). Following from the accepted complexity of contemporary insurgencies, a “managerial” basis of counter insurgency operations is further evident in its discussion of the importance of intelligence in FM3-24. The manual states that “intelligence drives operations”116 and operations once committed must continuously add to that intelligence - in other words intelligence collection is conceptually a process rather than a fixed data set. In this the manual notes the clear importance of “timely, specific and reliable intelligence”117, that “intelligence collection must remain synchronised”118 so as to be “as accurate as possible119” and that intelligence on the ground must be made accessible in real-time through the US military’s networked intelligence sharing system known as the “Secret Internet Protocol Router

Network”120 (SPIRNET).

Contemporary counter insurgency following a “managerial basis” of operations is further evident in the discussion of metrics to gauge the number of individual troops required for COIN operations. In this the manual relies on a mathematical ratio for force commitments, stating “most density recommendations fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents in an AO (Area of Operations)”121. This metric implies military assets and forces are to be in effect “invested” with their commanders, being the equivalent of regional managers of capitalist firms with their unit as merely a “node”122 or outlet in a network that is the COIN force. In order to manage as many risks as possible”, the force structure for counter insurgency operations are designed so as to cover the whole of a population and to be as responsive to the changing operational environment as possible.

114_{FM3-24, P.4 (1-4)} 115_Ibid 116_{Ibid, P.23 (1-23)} 117_Ibid 118_{Ibid, P.68 (3-25)} 119_{Ibid, P.74 (3-31)} 120_{Ibid, P.45 (3-2)} 121_{Ibid, P.13 (1-13)}

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22

2.4 The Boomerang Effect And The Use Of Force

The “boomerang effect” might be thought of as the effect of unintended consequences that can ultimately render a given situation. This danger applies to all aspects of counterinsurgency doctrine in FM3-24, but in respect of the use of force the possible consequences of the boomerang effect are severe and critical. Considering the need to kill so as to manage the possible threat, the boomerang effect becomes most significant in respect of lethal force carrying the greatest humanitarian risk to the civilian population (so called collateral damage). Counter insurgents in FM3-24 are to be expressively concerned with risks in the conduct of lethal operations, warning, “without good intelligence, counterinsurgents are like blind boxers wasting energy flailing at unseen opponents and perhaps causing unintended harm”123 (emphasis added).

The manual accepts that it is “normally impossible”124 (emphasis added) to kill every member of the insurgency, and that indeed attempting to is not recommended by the manual, as it will increase the risk of collateral civilian deaths. The risk of collateral damage to non-combatants always exists in situations where “extremist insurgent non-combatants”125 are targeted who live amongst a population. In lethal operations, the application of force will inevitably alienate elements of the population and manual prescribes that commanders in counter insurgency operations “calculate carefully the type and amount of force to be applied”126. The calculation on the application of force leads to a critical and difficult risk management exercise in which commanders must select carefully who is to be killed and by what means, as the consequences of such decisions are seen to be potentially severe and profound, amongst the populace and the “global audience”127_.

It seems that the risks associated with the boomerang effect greatly influence decisions as to the application of lethal force. The application of force is to be based on one of the manual’s “imperatives”, an “appropriate level of force”128. Given this concern, the manual offers, “an operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if collateral damage leads to the 123_{FM3-24, P.23 (1-23)} 124_Ibid 125_{Ibid, P.25 (1-25)} 126_Ibid 127_{Ibid, P.178 (A-5)} 128_{Ibid, P.25 (1-25)}

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23 recruitment of fifty more insurgents”129. The boomerang effect also plays a considerable role in relation to “precision air attacks”130 as it notes that “effective leaders will weigh the benefits of every air strike against risks”131 given the ever present risk of civilian deaths. Airpower is one of the few totally asymmetrical assets that the America COIN forces have at its disposal - one that insurgencies are unlikely to have. In its lethal role, airpower shapes the operational environment by removing insurgent infrastructure and killing off targets while also serving a perceptual function. For the insurgents, airpower instils a sense of hopelessness as they can do little to counter attacks coming from tens of thousands of feet132.

Another point to be noted, is the distinction in the manual between the terms “information” and “intelligence”. In FM3-24, information has a quite specific meaning and refers to the control of the flow and nature of communication in order to manage local and external perceptions. Yet both intelligence collection and how information is to be dispensed and controlled are subject to risk management logic. In turn, both impact on decision-making in respect of the use of force, intelligence first informing speedy “lethal” engagements to kill with information operations (IO) anticipating and influencing the reactions of the local populace and the “global audience”133.

Following from this, COIN operations is subject to the manual’s “bodyguard of information”134_{conceptual tool, which is intended to shield the counter insurgency campaign} from negative perceptions; further evidence of the importance the manual attaches to how the COIN campaign will be perceived. The manual describes the media as an “ever present and influence on perceptions of the COIN environment”135.

In managing the informational environment, the manual states, “successful leaders engage the media, create positive relationships, and help the media tell the story”136. Following this logic, the manual notes “media representatives should be embedded for as long as

129_Ibid

130_{Ibid, P.224 (E-1)} 131_Ibid

132_{Anderson, Morale and the affective geographies of the ‘war on terror’,} 133_{FM3-24, P.178 (A-5)}

134_{Ibid, P.27 (1-27)} 135_{Ibid, P.100 (5-11)} 136_Ibid

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24 practicable”137; as the longer journalists and other media representatives are embedded within the counter insurgent force, the greater the commanders’ ability to manage the media narrative. This is essentially a technique of risk management designed to pre-emptively lessen the possible perceptual damage done to the counter insurgency campaign.

“Figure 5-3. The strengthening effect of interrelated logical lines of operations”138

2.5 Lethal Force As A Tool Of “Condition Shaping”

During the “clear” phase of operations, counter insurgent forces break the insurgency’s initial hold on the population while the insurgency’s “infrastructure”139 is to be destroyed in order to clear, create, and to maintain an environment which the host nation (HN) government can eventually occupy and expand. The second purpose of the “clear” stage according to the manual is “to remove all enemy forces and eliminate organized resistance in an assigned area”140 and that COIN forces conduct this through “destroying, capturing, or forcing the withdrawal of insurgent combatants”141.

In this role, military force serves a constitutive purpose, clearing the area and removing the risk-ridden and unproductive life of the insurgency so that the “essential services” of the population can be provided in the “right way” ie. through a “host nation government”. After this has been established, the application of lethal force is limited to the protection of American forces, and to the disruption of the insurgency by maintaining its physical isolation. This is done by killing middle and high-ranking cadres of the insurgency through Special 137_{Ibid P.99 (5-10)} 138_{Ibid, P.95 (5-6)} 139_{Ibid, P.108 (5-19)} 140_Ibid 141_Ibid

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25 Forces raids (SOF)142 on individual targets or through “precise” airpower assets that have come to be synonymous with modern warfare143.

Traditionally military resources are applied so that combat power is not wasted and the military assets at a commander’s disposal are maximized in order to destroy as much of the enemy as possible. However, in counter insurgency, the purpose of deploying military assets is framed as providing an adequate level of security so that the “right kind of life can be lived”144 by a population, rather than the maximization of combat power aimed at destroying the threat of the insurgency. Security envisaged in the manual is not based on an exclusionary spatial demarcation in which the entire population’s movement are controlled by coercion (as would have the traditional COIN attitude). Instead the manual provides security not through exclusion, but by allowing for certain contingencies to occur and others not145 within a given area.

142_{Niva, Disappearing violence}

143_{Gregory, The Rush to the Intimate, P.19} 144_{Reid & Dillon, The Liberal Way of War, P.43} 145_{Evans, The Liberal War Thesis, P.753}

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26

Chapter 3 Analysis: The Civilian Population

3.1 Precautionary Principle: Pre-Insurgents and Information Operations

Once an insurgency’s initial hold on a population has been removed, COIN forces themselves then seek to gain a continuous “hold” over the population within the Area of Operations (AO). A major component of this is the shaping of the population’s perception of both insurgency and the counter insurgency forces. In counter insurgency operations, the civilian population is conceptualized in FM3-24 as a “pool of risk”146, i.e. a collection of “individualized risks”147 that must be acted upon. A major risk for counter insurgents taking action is that any person in the civilian population can be a member, an informer for, or a supporter of the insurgency. With the exception of extremists and the insurgency’s political cadre (who “have to be killed or captured”148), FM3-24 treats the population not as an entity to be totally exorcised of an insurgency, but also as a source of possible assets and allies to the counter insurgency campaign.

Insurgents (in a fashion similar to common criminals149) have the asymmetrical advantage as being only identifiable in the time frame of their actions. Their actions are characterised by a sudden and immediate time span, in which once an attack is complete (such as a roadside bombing or an ambush), the insurgency disappears back into the anonymity of the host population. Therefore, from the perspective of counter insurgent forces, all of the civilian population is simultaneously a possible friend or a foe150; every individual within the population is what Ben Anderson called “pre-insurgent”151, or insurgents that may or may not exist in the future.

In order to manage these “pre-insurgents” during the “hold” phase, COIN forces in FM3-24 try to attain a credible influence over the perceptions of the civilian population and shape

146_{Dillon & Lobo-Guerrero, Bio politics of Security in the 21}st_{century, P.280}

147_{Beck, The Terrorist Threat, P.44} 148_{FM3-24, P.13 (1-13)}

149_{Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, P.106} 150_{Anderson, Facing the Future Enemy, P.223} 151_{Ibid, P.224}

American counter insurgency of the war on terror : risk management as the new paradigm for counter insurgency?

Title