Counterinsurgency and Dictatorship

Kyle Teamey, writing in The Washington Post, laments the existence of political democracy in the United States:

While debate over a war's merits -- and whether to withdraw -- is a sign of a healthy democracy, Iraq unfortunately highlights many of the difficulties a democracy faces in a long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building campaign. Such debate can be detrimental to the battle for perceptions.

Well, maybe he doesn't lament its existence, but he does think it has some regrettable downsides. But is this really true? It seems to me that the truth of the matter is that counterinsurgency is very hard. Democracies have wages successful counterinsurgency campaigns (the British in Malaya is the classic examples) and dictatorships have lost counterinsurgency campaigns. Indeed, the story of modern losing counterinsurgency starts with Napoleonic France fighting and losing in Spain. One could also consider Portugal (then a semi-fascist dictatorship) losing control of its African colonies. Or, of course, the Soviet Union losing in Afghanistan. There is, overall, very little evidence I can see in favor of tyranny as a counterinsurgency strategy.

The main thing is that it helps to not be an alien occupier fighting a native resistance movement. You see some arguably successful counterinsurgencies in Latin America where there wasn't a difference in nationality between the parties, and you see the British succeeding in rallying the mostly Malay population of Malaya against the mostly Chinese insurgents. Now, arguably, genocide works as a counter-insurgency strategy. Even here, though, a very liberal approach to killing people didn't ultimately preserve Hutu Power in Rwanda. The big success stories of genocide-as-counterinsurgency were conducted by democracies -- the United States and Australia against the native inhabitants of those countries (needless to say, conducting genocidal warfare against the population of Iraq would be immoral and I strongly oppose such policies). Either way, the idea that tyranny is a useful counterinsurgency tool seems to be mostly pernicious myth.

This all via Ezra Klein who aptly characterizes one of Teamey's subsidiary points ("the appearance of strength or weakness is often much more important than actual strength or weakness") as arguing that hope is a plan after all.

Comments

Of course in the US and Australia it helped that there was huge tracts of (temporarily) unwanted land and the fact that those undertaking genocide were epochs ahead in technology.

Posted by Rob | August 30, 2007 11:38 AM

Of course in the US and Australia it helped that there was huge tracts of (temporarily) unwanted land and the fact that those undertaking genocide were epochs ahead in technology.

Having tons of viruses working on your behalf is also useful.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | August 30, 2007 11:45 AM

Probably the longest running insurgency of today is that of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. It's been going on for at least 200 years and it doesn't seem that any form of government has made a difference. Yes, they have had some temporary cease-fires, but in the long run, nothing has stopped the Tamils. Not that government can't make a difference. If the Sinhalese gave up and granted the Tamils their own country, the insurgency would likely end. That strategy worked pretty well in Northern Ireland.

Posted by fostert | August 30, 2007 11:46 AM

England seems to have been relatively successful subjugating Wales and Scotland under strong monarchies. Whereas, once democracy began to take hold in the 19th century, subjugating Ireland proved considerably more difficult. Likewise, the Habsburgs domination in a linguistically diverse area until the 19th century. The strength of insurgencies seems to be related to the emergence of the democratic and nationalist age, so I suppose you could argue that the Peninsular war was the first true insurgency. Tocqueville makes an argument that one of the obvious weaknesses of Democracy when compared with Monarchy is that it cannot sustain policies for any great length of time, particularly in military/imperialistic conflicts. The other side of the coin is that subjugated peoples fight much harder when they consider themselves a people or a nation -- and don't see one tyrant as just as bad as another.

Posted by Charles P | August 30, 2007 11:49 AM

The Nazis were actually pretty effective at counterinsurgency everywhere except France (and even there, the myth of the Resistance greatly exceeds its reality). Of course, it helps when the former governing power was arguably more corrupt and brutal, and when the main groups targetted by the occupier are the same groups demonized by the occupied population.

Posted by Joe | August 30, 2007 11:59 AM

It seems to me that the truth of the matter is that counterinsurgency is very hard.

See, e.g., the end of Reconstruction. At some point, the outsiders, insulated from the effects of failure, are just going to give up.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 30, 2007 12:00 PM

While debate over a war's merits -- and whether to withdraw -- is a sign of a healthy democracy, Iraq unfortunately highlights many of the difficulties a democracy faces in a long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building campaign.

I'd say rather that Iraq unfortunately highlights many of the difficulties a democracy faces when it launches an illegal, unfounded and aggressive invasion and war of occupation against a sovereign state, but that's just me.....

Posted by Stefan | August 30, 2007 12:13 PM

Indeed, the story of modern losing counterinsurgency starts with Napoleonic France fighting and losing in Spain
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This is the first time I've ever heard this asserted. Obviously there was an active insurgency and the French had lots of trouble with it. But it's also obvious that the French lost Spain because Wellington and his British - Portuguese army kicked them out.

The Spanish insurgent forces might have eventually forced the French out, but we don't know that as the issue was decided by conventional forces.

Posted by Campesino | August 30, 2007 12:26 PM

Interestingly, one of the most common reasons advanced on behalf of the crusade to democratize the world is the "democratic peace theory", according to which democratic countries are somewhat war averse, because the people who actually have to bear the costs of war have some influence on the decisions about whether to have them or not. For some, it appears this theory is only attractive when it serves as a spurious warrant for war, and becomes decidedly less attractive to the extent it is actually shown to contain elements of truth.

Personally, I am delighted that Americans continue to turn against misguided adventures in places like Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia and Iraq when the going gets tough. Maybe at some point, the clear historical pattern of weak and fickle public support for overseas military adventures will convince the policy mavens who plan and advocate them to stop having them, and they will learn that American political culture makes this country distinctly ill-equipped to play the role of Holy Roman Liberal Empire.

I think the rest of the world has pretty well gotten the message now that, except when Americans face a Nazi-like existential threat, the US cannot be counted on to stick. To the extent this message gets out, we will also see less external pressure for the US to play the ill-suited hegemonic role desired by so much of Washington's power elite.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 30, 2007 12:26 PM

What is odder about the particular article is that it correctly notes that the self-destructive behavior in Iraq was a natural result of our being unable to establish order in Iraq. For his article to make sense it would have to be the case that if we stopped talking about our inability to establish order in Iraq, the Iraqis wouldn't notice it.

After all, if as he admits the problems result from the Iraqis noticing on their own that the US is likely to leave the country a shambles, then the reason why we should not be debating the issue seems to fall apart.

Posted by Lon | August 30, 2007 12:30 PM

Democracies have wages successful counterinsurgency campaigns (the British in Malaya is the classic examples) and dictatorships have lost counterinsurgency campaigns.
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"have wages" ?

Posted by Campesino | August 30, 2007 12:31 PM

Yeah, Kervick's right -- why is it so intrinsically necessary for the U.S. to be good at counterinsurgency? (This is the "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy" argument.)

Posted by Delicious Pundit | August 30, 2007 12:36 PM

One reason the Nazis were effective in counterinsurgency is that they had tyranny at home. A few casualties here and there simply didn't matter in their political system, so they could maintain a counterinsurgency campaign forever.

Posted by AlanC9 | August 30, 2007 1:20 PM

The big success stories of genocide-as-counterinsurgency were conducted by democracies -- the United States and Australia against the native inhabitants of those countries.

Matt is in the Ward Churchill School of playing fast and loose with genocide charges against settlers of Oceana and the New World.

Viruses?

When the Chinese spread the Black Death and Spanish Flu, were they guilty of genocide?

If "invaders" fought indigenous cultures brutally, does that make the Mongols, the Muslim conquest "genocidal"? Were the Romans - from forced assimilation to Carthaginian solutions - "genocidal".
Are the Japanese genocidal people for wiping out the Ainu?
The Han Chinese with them pushing 30 other ethnicities off their home lands?
Were the Aryans genocidal?
Are radical blacks and some of their Lefty Jewish-Gentile champions right that racist Amerikkka has waged 300 years of unrelenting genocide against blacks while blacks somehow have managed to reproduce and grow population more successfully than any other group in the Americas?

For genocide to have any meaning, it must be better defined and not simply used as a throwaway rhetorical "scream" of sloppy ideologues.

There was never a deliberate program to wipe out the Ainu, the Seminoles, the Mandans, Mayans, Canadian Crows. Nor the Muslims as they exterminated other cultures in advancing the Ummah. Genocide was not the intent. The Mongols DID deliberately do genocide on some smaller cultures they encountered on their invasion paths. The Hebrews did claim genocide on the Canaanites, though genetic studies on Palestinians show those biblical claims false. The Nazis did move to genocide in the middle of war, as an escalating strategy...But started out with cleansing as the goal - as did others, like Israel in 1948, Vietnam fighting China in 1979..Unlike them, the Nazis did not stick with cleansing.

If we are to be objective, history shows that insurgencies can be normally defeated by methods we today are reluctant to use today:

1. Genocide or cleansing. No insurgency is possible if there are no people left to be insurgents.

2. Ending insurgency by monstrous intimidation. Inhabitants in Indochina that tried bushwhacking Japanese occupation troops or those of a surrendered Muslim city doing that to Mongols learned how fast the urge to be insurgents can be extinguished. The Japs and Mongols simply killed every last man women and child in the vicinity and sent a few survivors off to warn others not to try it.

3. The Muslims created a stable system for conquered people called Dhimmitude. It enshrined a 2nd class citizenship that not only kept conquered infidels permitted to live out of power - but had/has elaborate restrictions intended to keep Dhimmi men in a state where they lack skills to fight, and the Muslim breeding laws, still in force today, that say that Muslims can consider infidel women fair game - but Muslim women and infidel men are forbidden to have relationships on pain of death. Dhimmi men were prohibited from learning to rise horses so they would not learn the critical Islamic calvary skills, they were barred from any weapons use other than knives with short blades, and may be slain or made an instant slave if they strike a Muslim man, even if struck 1st.
They also made all non-Muslims live in well-defined areas and use clearly defined clothing, sometimes barred from having a moustache or beard - so they could not "blend in" and strike Muslims in their areas.

Dhimmitude worked so well on their conquered peoples not having insurgent capacity that the Spaniards, Brits, and Americans emulated some aspects of it in the new world.

4. Forced assimilation. Without the 2nd class Muslim treatment of conquered people being a lesser form of mankind. The people endure, but are forced out of their language, their customs, their law, their religion for the conquerer's life and eventually included as equals in the conquerer's civilization. This worked very well for the Chinese, the Romans, the early Americans. (Not religion, but America once pretty much demanded immigrants become Americans in language, culture, values -or go back where they came from)

5. By laws that protect a majority from a more aggressive, successful minority, which ended the "peaceful insurgency" of the minority to take over and dominate a country. Thailand and Malaysia did so with the Chinese, the Fiji Islanders barred the successful Indian immigrants from taking control of the economy and military by laws. It works in oopposite as a minority uses laws sometimes religion (the bedouins, allewites, Indian Aryans, etc.) to block a majority by expending their energies fighting law and religion to obtain minor privileges rather than focus on a killing insurgency....

Posted by Chris Ford | August 30, 2007 1:21 PM

If we're doing counterinsurgency, we're somewhere we shouldn't be.

http://alovelypromise.blogspot.com/2006/04/lessons-learned.html

Posted by Nell | August 30, 2007 1:38 PM

There's a heck of a lot of anti-democratic sentiment on the right these days. The whole Vietnam meme is a great example. The Vietnam War wasn't ended by Democrats. It was ended by the American public, through street demonstrations and demands of elected officials, which resulted in promises by Republicans (even Nixon) as well as Democrats to end it. And if the Iraq War ever does end, it will end because of similar demands by the American people.

In a democracy, the people have the right and the power to stop a war. And maybe, sometimes, they will stop it too early (although actually, the historical evidence suggests that the greater danger is that they will stop it too late). But there certainly seems to be a lot of wistful "if only we didn't have to heed the wishes of the American people" meme going around.

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 30, 2007 1:47 PM

"If we're doing counterinsurgency, we're somewhere we shouldn't be."

You nailed it, Nell. Well said.

"The Japs and Mongols simply killed every last man women and child in the vicinity and sent a few survivors off to warn others not to try it."

I really have no idea whether that statement is true. But if it is, it didn't work in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh maintained an effective insurgency throughout the Japanese occupation. And he eventually won when the US started supporting him. Of course, Vietnam could be an exception. The Vietnamese are the toughest insurgents in the world with a perfect track record of victories (although it admittedly took a long time against the Chinese). We would learn that all too brutally after we stopped supporting Ho Chi Minh and started fighting him.

Posted by fostert | August 30, 2007 1:57 PM

From announcing what later became known as The Weinberger Doctrine:

"Our freedom presents both a challenge and an opportunity. It is true that until democratic nations have the support of the people, they are inevitably at a disadvantage in a conflict. But when they do have that support they cannot be defeated. For democracies have the power to send a compelling message to friend and foe alike by the vote of their citizens."

"We should only engage our troops if we must do so as a matter of our own vital national interest. We cannot assume for other sovereign nations the responsibility to defend their territory -- without their strong invitation -- when our freedom is not threatened."

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If we've learned anything over the last four years, it's that our citizens want to, and will, support their President, and our military, even when things are going poorly. But in return they expect honesty and reasoned judgment.

Attack politics can effectively weaken support for one's opponent. However, attack politics cannot restore trust to a President who has lost the trust of the people and of the Congress.

Posted by JustMe | August 30, 2007 2:13 PM

Haste makes waste...

In my post above, "From announcing..." should read "From Casper Weinberger's speech announcing"

Posted by JustMe | August 30, 2007 2:21 PM

"Such debate can be detrimental to the battle for perceptions"

That may be true, but such debate is not detrimental to us winning the actual war.

Posted by Julene | August 30, 2007 2:36 PM

Dan Kervick is right. I'd add that the powers that be have, in a way, tried to take account of what from their point of view is the "problem" of fickle public support for pointless military adventures. Rumsfeld's obsesssion with using small numbers of troops; the use of so-called contractors; the enormous amount of effort that has gone into news management, these all reflect intense efforts to come up with a way fighting wars without seriously engaging the public's attention. Hence the bizarre mismatch between the Churchillian rhetoric of WW III (IV, V ??) and the conspicuous absence of any sacrifice or even belt-tightening by the nation. The message we've been sold is that it's unbelievably, vitally important to fight this war, which is the great challenge of our generation, but you needn't give any thought to it at all as it won't affect your life in any way. Having to pay the cost of war concentrates the mind tremendously, and we can't have that. For some people the lesson of Vietnam was not that only wars which can win, because they deserve to win, public support should be undertaken, but rather that 'we', our uniquely gifted ruling class, need to come up with a way of fighting wars o which public support is largely irrelevant.

Posted by J | August 30, 2007 2:39 PM

"Were the Romans - from forced assimilation to Carthaginian solutions - "genocidal"."

Simple Answer to Stupid Question:
Yes

Slightly Longer Answer to Stupid Question:
Ask Caesar about the Helvetii

The Romans were well organized savages. They used their military strength to dominate superior cultures.

Anyone who admires the Roman Empire is either ignorant or evil.

Posted by rbl | August 30, 2007 3:03 PM

Ironically, all the problems we're currently facing stem from the time when Bush had nearly undisputed power and authority, and even when the criticism started to grow stronger, he still got every last thing he asked for. So the claim in the article is utter nonsense.

Posted by novakant | August 30, 2007 3:52 PM

rbl -- first, why on earth are you bothering to reply to Chris Ford? We're talking about a guy who couldn't write a comment about iPhones or tofu without detouring into a complaint about the "radical blacks and their Lefty Jewish-Gentile champions". Do you really want to encourage that?

Second, isn't "savages" a term that's a little frowned on these days by people who think seriously about other cultures and/or the past?

Third, didn't the Romans pick up the idea of crucifixion from the Carthaginians? Not that I'd call them "savages", either ...

Posted by Claude Mulvahill | August 30, 2007 3:55 PM

What is the obsession of righty-tighties with the notion of a Dhimmi? Is it how foreign sounding the word is?

Up until very recently in many places in Christian Europe, if you were Jewish, or even the wrong kind of Christian, you were subject to far more persecution than were Dhimmis in the Moslem world. Dhimmitude was a far better deal than being only allowed to work as a money lender and then having everyone persecute you for being a money lender.

Posted by DAS | August 30, 2007 4:25 PM

D'oh, hit send a second too soon ... I realized the answer. It's because they hear the word "Dhimmi" and think the Moslems are calling them "dim" and it just hits a wee bit too close to home ...

:)

Posted by DAS | August 30, 2007 4:26 PM

"radical blacks and their Lefty Jewish-Gentile champions"

My god, have we astral-projected back to 1969? I haven't noticed a Weatherman/Panther resurgence lately.

Who is this Chris Ford and when did this loon start tolling Matt's blog?

Posted by Sharon | August 30, 2007 4:36 PM

NIce try Sharon, but the only people claiming "Amerikkka" engaged in "black genocide" from antebellum days to Katrina are radical blacks and their "Lefty Jewish-Gentile Champions".

Deal with it, Sharon.

PC, postmod, multiculti are ending. Stalinist speech codes have mostly ended..People now dare criticize groups that thought they could just scream "racism!" "Bias!" and people would back off. Groups that demand a lack of scrutiny of their actions or state punishment of criticism of those actions - on Victimhood grounds? That's pretty much over.

Claude MulvahillSecond, isn't "savages" a term that's a little frowned on these days by people who think seriously about other cultures and/or the past?

Ooooo! Rather elitist of Claudie! It is wrong to call a savage culture a savage culture because it might offend them? Even if they have ceased to exist like Carthage and Rome?

"The Neanderthals appear to have never advanced Moustarian tool-making past a certain point. Indices are that they lived brutal lives...."

Claudie interrupts:

"Hate speech! Hate speech! Fire that person. Make him apologize to the memory of all innocent, good Neanderthals!!"

Posted by Chris Ford | August 30, 2007 5:26 PM

You know what? I have a feeling that trying to engage Chris Ford in a discussion of post-Byzantine policies towards Christians in the Middle East would be pointless.

Anyway, if the US were fighting an insurgency whose fighting and potential success had consequences for the daily lives of civilians, the prospects for a military/political victory would be much better. As it is, fighting an insurgency on foreign soil and especially without a full-scale occupation isn't really possible. Democracy works as it should, here-- understanding consequences and the national interest and placing those on higher ground than the aesthetic desires of pundits and warlovers.

Posted by Tyro | August 30, 2007 6:33 PM