As Gian Gentile has argued, and Jeremy Kotkin in his great strategy paper argues now for a ruthless application or no application. European and American Forces have succeeded using the strategy that Jeremy Kotkin advocated in his paper https://medium/the-bridge/war-is-cruelty-and-you-cannot-refine-it-2f97785aac94. The counter arguments have been for the need of specialized COIN type forces, or massed forces using COIN. This does not work, but Jeremy offers the best solution to how we should deal with these areas of disorder in the Middle East and elsewhere. A review of our history supports what Jeremy advocates in his paper. The victorious forces were general purpose forces augmented by small numbers of specialized police and intelligence units. In addition to crushing the confederacy we ruthlessly crushed the Filipino Insurrection and several rebellions in Cuba. What we could not do was turn these people into Anglo-Saxon Democrats despite writing several constitutions and supervising several elections. Look at how successful the Germans were in controlling the continent with remarkably few forces. Control lasted until opposing armies in the East and the West drove them put. The soviets took longer and needed more forces to do the same, but in all cases success depended on the ruthless application of force, something we contemporary Americans are loathe to permit. In the first volume of Montgomery: Making of a General by Nigel Hamilton there is a reproduction of Montgomerys observations on the Irish Rebellion and the Arab Uprising in Palestine where Montgomery makes the same points. Ultimately, Montgomery argued that since the British public and its government would not allow the implementation of Cromwellian measures the intelligent solution was to withdraw from Ireland. Today, American forces are equally constrained whereas their insurgent opponent is not. This is not news. The hearts and minds COIN crowd declined to listen. There is no nice, clean or humane way to crush a serious rebellion whether it is inside your own country or you are fighting to support someone elses government. You cannot tip toe through the tulips. Even when you succeed in advising a client state and its armed forces as we did in El Salvador, the insurgent if truly supported by the population wins at the ballot box. Bottom Line of Jeremys proposed strategy is interventions by US forces to install puppet regimes at gunpoint under the guise of spreading liberal democracy are losing propositions. Dont go!!!
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 13:53:56 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015