How To Fight North Korea Asymmetrically

From One Free Korea:

How to Fight North Korea Asymmetricallyfrom One Free Korea by Joshua Stanton


2 people liked thisFor the moment, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak’s show of resolve has caused Kim Jong Il to reconsider the wisdom of another attack against the South. My fears of an attack during the holidays have gone unrealized.



But this does not mean the crisis has been resolved. The regime’s internal intrigues, economic desperation, and pathologically aggressive nature mean that more provocations are inevitable. In 2010, we learned that conventional deterrence can still prevent an escalation, but can’t prevent a continuation of North Korea’s unilateral and limited war against the South. Lee must be prepared to meet the next provocation from a position of greater strength, and his American allies should want to support him with the least possible risk of involvement in a wider conflict. Yet our foreign policy establishment can seldom see beyond two policy alternatives for restraining North Korea — diplomacy, which has clearly failed to disarm North Korea or maintain a lasting peace; and conventional military force, which brings an unacceptable risk of escalation. Without a dramatic change to the character of North Korea’s ruling regime, there is little hope of resolving the crisis through negotiation. The regime is compulsively mendacious, and China continues to undermine its the allies’ financial and diplomatic leverage by financing the regime, even now that North Korea’s behavior raises the risk of a full-scale war. To avoid war, we must first restore deterrence. For diplomacy to have any chance of working, we must back it with leverage over both North Korea and China.



It is still true that we haven’t taken full advantage of the legal and economic tools that could pressure the regime by sapping its capacity to oppress and proliferate, but China seems more determined to undermine financial sanctions than we are to go after sanctions-busting Chinese companies. Unless one of these stubborn facts changes, there isn’t any non-violent way to disarm North Korea before it proliferates a (or perhaps, another?) nuclear weapon to a terrorist. We’re now looking for the least violent option — the option that does not end with Americans fighting in North Korea.



The conventional military stalemate means that neither North Korea nor South Korea can achieve its political goals through symmetric, conventional war. North Korea has resorted to subversion, and more recently to asymmetric warfare to win billions in aid, political influence within South Korea, the relaxation of sanctions, and American silence about its atrocities at home. It has achieved these successes (though it has sometimes thrown them away) because North Korea uses its conduct to leverage its diplomacy. So should we. Escalated provocations call for escalated deterrence. But the question isn’t whether United States and South Korea are obligated to absorb North Korea’s unilateral war; it’s whether they can afford to.




I have previously explained my belief that the North Korean regime’s economic weakness has destroyed its political legitimacy. This essay should be seen as a continuation of that one. Here, I will expand on how South Korea and its allies can restore deterrence, facilitate effective diplomacy, and advance its national interests by supporting the rise of a North Korean insurgency. I do not propose training unconventional forces to attack or invade North Korea. I instead propose the patient building of an initially non-violent underground that supplants the state’s purpose and legitimacy by providing food, clothing, and medicine to the people of North Korea. The underground could harness the same logistical infrastructure used by its black and “gray” markets today, and would seek to coopt the regime’s disused infrastructure whenever possible. As the resistance quietly and patiently earns the loyalty of marginalized North Koreans in neglected villages and neighborhoods, its information operations could also attack the regime’s ideology and inspire North Koreans to invest their hope in a future without a Kim Dynasty. Armed resistance should be avoided until the underground is firmly rooted among the North Korean population, and able to draw on its support for shelter, recruits, and intelligence.



But because this is North Korea we are speaking about, it is unrealistic to believe that any non-violent movement can effect lasting change, and we should begin a forthright discussion of what acts of violence resistance we are prepared to support against a state that has already killed millions of its own people, and which would not hesitate to kill millions more.



3-95. Although noticeable, violence may be only a small part of overall insurgent activity. Unseen insurgent activities include training and logistic actions. These are the support activities that sustain insurgencies. They come from an insurgency’s ability to generate popular support. Like conventional military forces, insurgencies usually require more sustainers than fighters. Insurgent support networks may be large, even when violence levels are low. For this reason, it is easy to overlook them early in the development of an insurgency. [ ]




The experiences of the Bay of Pigs and Al Qaeda in Iraq show us that violent insurgencies that lack a deeply rooted, well-organized base of popular support fail. They are quickly undone by informants among the population who notify the state and its allies where they can find the insurgency’s cadres and caches. The insurgency, deprived of its leadership and essential logistics, withers and dies.



Resistance Movements Need Political Foundations



Instead, successful insurgencies grow out of clandestine, initially non-violent political organizations that have the solid allegiance of some significant segment of the population. A clandestine political organization must have the capacity to deliver its message to people who are ready to receive it, to gather and transmit intelligence about the state’s security forces, to move and store food and supplies (which requires money), and ultimately, to supplant the authority of the state by providing the essential services that the state does not provide (initially, largely through smuggling and bribery). Only then can a resistance organization begin to openly challenge the state by attacking its infrastructure, or through counter-terror attacks against the hated and security forces — the National Security Agency (Bowibu), and the Peoples’ Security Agency (Anjeonbu).



North Korea is a particular challenge because of the pervasiveness of the state’s controls over the population, such as its system of travel passes, checkpoints, informants, and domestic security forces. But North Korea is also uniquely vulnerable to insurgency for a number of reasons. Above all, its failure to provide essential services, such as food and medical care, makes it highly vulnerable once an insurgency takes root.



3-68. Essential services provide those things needed to sustain life. Examples of these essential needs are food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment. Stabilizing a population requires meeting these needs. People pursue essential needs until they are met, at any cost and from any source. People support the source that meets their needs. If it is an insurgent source, the population is likely to support the insurgency. If the HN government provides reliable essential services, the population is more likely to support it. Commanders therefore identify who provides essential services to each group within the population.




Indeed, U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine assesses the risk of social instability as a function of a state’s legitimacy — that is, the consent of the governed, which in turn derives from a government’s success at providing for the essential needs and security of its people.



1-116. Six possible indicators of legitimacy that can be used to analyze threats to stability include the following:

􀁺 The ability to provide security for the populace (including protection from internal and external threats).

􀁺 Selection of leaders at a frequency and in a manner considered just and fair by a substantial majority of the populace.

􀁺 A high level of popular participation in or support for political processes.

􀁺 A culturally acceptable level of corruption.

􀁺 A culturally acceptable level and rate of political, economic, and social development.

􀁺 A high level of regime acceptance by major social institutions.



1-117. Governments scoring high in these categories probably have the support of a sufficient majority of the population. [….]



If these were the only measures of social stability, of course, North Korea would have erupted in rebellion more than a decade ago.



Instead, the regime’s hold on power still appears to be secure because it keeps the population in a state of exhaustion, isolation, and terror. Exhaustion is maintained through hunger, the high demands of day-to-day survival, labor mobilizations, and ideological harangues, and criticism sessions early in the morning and late at night. Isolation is maintained through a pervasive network of informants, and by denying North Koreans the means to communicate from village to village, province to province, and country to country. Maintaining terror, of course, is the work of the security services — chiefly, the Anjeonbu and the Bowibu
 
 

 
 
Disobedient citizens and their families may also face the horrors of North Korea’s prison camp system, the largest of which I have located and delineated in satellite photographs. Recently, the regime has built numerous smaller, local camps. These often serve as little more than a means for corrupt Anjeonbu and Bowibu officers to supplement their pay by extorting citizens.




North Korea’s infamous penal system, which for decades has silenced political dissent with slave labor camps, has evolved into a mechanism for extorting money from citizens trading in private markets, according to surveys of more than 1,600 North Korean refugees.



Reacting to an explosive rise in market activity, North Korea has criminalized everyday market behavior and created a new kind of gulag for those it deems economic criminals, according to a report on the refugee surveys. [….]



The report says security forces in North Korea have broad discretion to detain without trial nearly anyone who buys or sells in the local markets, which have become a key source of food for a poor population that suffers from chronic malnutrition. Yet if traders can pay bribes, security officials will often leave them alone, the report says.



“This is a system for shaking people down,” said Marcus Noland, co-author of the report and deputy director of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It really looks like the work of a gang, a kind of ‘Soprano’ state. But it succeeds in keeping people repressed.” [Washington Post, Blaine Harden]



Perversely, it is the totality of the North Korean regime’s control that poses the greatest threat to the security of the population. It isn’t just food for which the North Korean people hunger. They hunger for security, too.



If the grip of exhaustion, isolation, and terror can be weakened, the conditions now exist for a well-organized, well-funded opposition movement to take root in North Korea. A resistance organization can help meet the needs of the people by smuggling in food and medicine, and its information operations can highlight the regime’s ideological contradictions and material failures. Who cannot be disillusioned that a state that calls itself egalitarian and socialist fails to feed most of its population or pay its workers, even as it lapses into hereditary monarchy?




The regime’s geography is another vulnerability. It has a long, mountainous border with China; two long, rugged coastlines; and a vast, nearly roadless interior that lies adjacent to the regime’s logical lifelines to China.



The way to destroy the North Korean regime from within is not to encourage sporadic or undisciplined violence, but to help a clandestine opposition movement take root, provide essential services to the alienated constituencies of the North Korean people, and propagate a cohesive ideology that appeals to the young and provides them hope for a better future than a live lived under the heel of Kim Jong Eun. The strategic objective of the insurgency should not be to defeat the security forces militarily or march on Pyongyang, but (1) to break down the state’s terror and isolation of the population, thus allowing dissent to spread openly, organize, and overburden the state’s capacity to repress; (2) to project allied influence into North Korea population, thus laying the political and psychological foundation for peaceful reunification, and deterring Chinese intervention; (3) to distract, dissipate, and erode the power of the North Korean security forces by forcing them to undertake costly stability operations far from the DMZ and far from their armor and artillery; (4) to be so economically costly to the state that it is will lose its capacity to sustain even its essential security forces; and ultimately (5) to force a negotiated reunification of Korea under a representative and independent government.



What can foreign governments — and mostly, I mean South Korea — do to catalyze this? Allied governments can give South Korea the financial, diplomatic, and military support to pursue this strategy aggressively and to resist the strong Chinese pressure that would follow.



* First, they can remove roadblocks to effective broadcasting from North to South Korea, such as providing access to medium-wave frequencies.



* Second, we tighten the enforcement of financial sanctions, the objective of which is to retard North Korea’s capacity to oppress.




* Second, they can host portable base stations that would transmit a cell phone signal to most of North Korea, and then “dump” cheap cell phones onto the markets in Chinese border towns where North Korean smugglers already buy DVD’s, MP4’s, and South Korean consumer goods to sell back inside North Korea.



* Third, they should support and propagate a cohesive ideology that appeals to the North Korean people and which can win international acceptance, even a degree of support. The North Korean people will decide what ideology appeals to them, of course. With the growing proliferation of NGO’s that broadcast into North Korea, the marketplace of ideas will reveal what ideology that is in due course, but my own bet is that evangelical Christianity will be that ideology. Christianity’s emphasis on united action, self-sacrifice, charity, and martyrdom originates in Christianity’s own clandestine beginnings. Its historical persistence proves its capacity to spread under the heel of oppressive regimes, including the Japanese colonial regime that ruled North Korea before Kim Il Sung (before 1945, Christianity was widespread in North Korea). Clearly, it should not be the role of the state to write religious canon, but the state can support any number of private organizations that propagate appealing and dynamic ideas.



* Fourth, South Korea can recruit and train suitable defectors to return to their home villages to serve as the nucleii of an underground political and humanitarian (but not initially armed) movement. Training would consist of clandestine communications, escape, evasion, logistics, and counterespionage. Eventually, these cadres would help identify and address local humanitarian needs, and recruit more cadres for the movement. The initial objective of each resistance cell should be to act as a shadow government that provides for the needs of the local population — needs that the North Korean regime lost interest in providing roughly two million dead North Koreans ago.



* Fifth, South Korean and its allies must pay for the food, medicine, and clothing to meet those essential humanitarian needs. It is the regime’s failure to meet them that makes it vulnerable to the rise of an insurgency. As the insurgency rises to meet those needs, it will gain more active and passive supporters among the population, including supporters from within the regime itself. A well-funded resistance movement could, for example, coopt clinics, hospitals, and transport systems by resupplying them and paying their staff, initially without them knowing where the money comes from.




* Sixth, they can host the movement’s senior political leadership, which will coordinate the activities of otherwise isolated resistance cells through the South Korean-based cell phone network. They can also provide key advice on the transition of the movement toward political action and armed resistance. An essential part of this leadership will be restraint and accountability — ensuring that resistance elements that target noncombatants or recklessly cause civilian casualties are denied financial, material, and political support.



* Seventh, they can use their considerable military power to open new supply lines into North Korea. Naval forces can drop supplies along North Korea’s long coastlines, where local resistance organizations can collect those supplies using the many small boats that operate from hundreds of fishing villages. South Korean land forces can alter the configuration of their defenses along the DMZ, to ease the entry of military and civilian defectors. It is even conceivable that they could use small GPS-guided UAV’s to deliver small cargoesd (money, cell phones, flash drives, MP4 players) to resistance leaders inside North Korea, or even to stage dramatically disruptive leaflet drops, say, over military parades in Pyongyang.



* Eventually, of course, foreign governments must decide when resistance forces have sufficient discipline and popular support to transition to armed resistance, but we are several years away from this decision point. At that point, resistance forces must begin to stockpile weapons. Some of those weapons can be purchased from corrupt military sources in North Korea or China, but others will have to be smuggled in across North Korea’s borders. For a variety of reasons, those weapons ought to be indistinguishable from weapons already issued to the North Korean security forces.



the North Korean security forces.




* Finally, they can remain steadfast in their diplomatic support of the resistance’s political goals, which are essential to the realization of our own goals. The combined strategy of international sanctions and domestic subversion must be to exert sufficient pressure on China and North Korea that both are forced to accept a fundamental transition of North Korea from a closed society to a reasonably transparent one. North Korea’s acquisition of a uranium enrichment program means that only a broad opening of North Korean society — which would also mean a fundamental relaxation of its oppressive character — is a sine qua non to effective monitoring and verification of any disarmament agreement. Absent this, only the destruction of the regime itself will allow it to be disarmed. But if China and North Korea’s senior military class become convinced that the continuation of the regime endangers their own future security, they have the power to remove the Kim Dynasty from power and negotiate a timetable for full reunification of the Korean nation-state under a legitimate representative system of government.



6-8. Governments must properly balance national resources to meet the people’s expectations. Funding for services, education, and health care can limit resources available for security forces. The result [host nation] spending priorities may be a security force capable of protecting only the capital and key government facilities, leaving the rest of the country unsecured. Undeveloped countries often lack resources to maintain logistic units. This situation results in chronic sustainment problems. Conducting effective COIN operations requires allocating resources to ensure integration of efforts to develop all aspects of the security force. Recognizing the interrelationship of security and governance, the HN government must devote adequate resources to meeting basic needs like health care, clean water, and electricity. [U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual]



1-3. Political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies; each side aims to get the people to accept its governance or authority as legitimate. Insurgents use all available tools—political (including diplomatic), informational (including appeals to religious, ethnic, or ideological beliefs), military, and economic—to overthrow the existing authority. This authority may be an established government or an interim governing body. Counterinsurgents, in turn, use all instruments of national power to sustain the established or emerging government and reduce the likelihood of another crisis emerging.



1-5. Governments can be overthrown in a number of ways. An unplanned, spontaneous explosion of popular will, for example, might result in a revolution like that in France in 1789. At another extreme is the coup d’etat, where a small group of plotters replace state leaders with little support from the people at large. Insurgencies generally fall between these two extremes. They normally seek to achieve one of two goals: to overthrow the existing social order and reallocate power within a single state, or to break away from state control and form an autonomous entity or ungoverned space that they can control. Insurgency is typically a form of internal war, one that occurs primarily within a state, not between states, and one that contains at least some elements of civil war.




1-6. The exception to this pattern of internal war involves resistance movements, where indigenous elements seek to expel or overthrow what they perceive to be a foreign or occupation government. Such a resistance movement could be mounted by a legitimate government in exile as well as by factions competing for that role.



1-7. Even in internal war, the involvement of outside actors is expected. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States participated in many such conflicts. Today, outside actors are often transnational organizations motivated by ideologies based on extremist religious or ethnic beliefs. These organizations exploit the unstable internal conditions plaguing failed and failing states. Such outside involvement, however, does not change one fact: the long-term objective for all sides remains acceptance of the legitimacy of one side’s claim to political power by the people of the state or region.



1-10. For the reasons just mentioned, maintaining security in an unstable environment requires vast resources, whether host nation, U.S., or multinational. In contrast, a small number of highly motivated insurgents with simple weapons, good operations security, and even limited mobility can undermine security over a large area. Thus, successful COIN operations often require a high ratio of security forces to the protected population. (See paragraph1-67.) For that reason, protracted COIN operations are hard to sustain. The effort requires a firm political will and substantial patience by the government, its people, and the countries providing support.



1-11. Revolutionary situations may result from regime changes, external interventions, or grievances carefully nurtured and manipulated by unscrupulous leaders. Sometimes societies are most prone to unrest not when conditions are the worst, but when the situation begins to improve and people’s expectations arise. For example, when major combat operations conclude, people may have unrealistic expectations of the United States’ capability to improve their lives. The resulting discontent can fuel unrest and insurgency. At such times, the influences of globalization and the international media may create a sense of relative deprivation, contributing to increased discontent as well.




Mao Zedong’s Theory of Protracted War



1-31. Mao’s Theory of Protracted War outlines a three-phased, politico-military approach:

􀁺 Strategic defensive, when the government has a stronger correlation of forces and insurgents must concentrate on survival and building support.

􀁺 Strategic stalemate, when force correlations approach equilibrium and guerrilla warfare becomes the most important activity.

􀁺 Strategic counteroffensive, when insurgents have superior strength and military forces move to conventional operations to destroy the government’s military capability.



1-32. Phase I, strategic defensive, is a period of latent insurgency that allows time to wear down superior enemy strength while the insurgency gains support and establishes bases. During this phase, insurgent leaders develop the movement into an effective clandestine organization. Insurgents use a variety of subversive techniques to psychologically prepare the populace to resist the government or occupying power. These techniques may include propaganda, demonstrations, boycotts, and sabotage. In addition, movement leaders organize or develop cooperative relationships with legitimate political action groups, youth groups, trade unions, and other front organizations. Doing this develops popular support for later political and military activities. Throughout this phase, the movement leadership—



􀁺 Recruits, organizes, and trains cadre members.


􀁺 Infiltrates key government organizations and civilian groups.

􀁺 Establishes cellular intelligence, operations, and support networks.

􀁺 Solicits and obtains funds.

􀁺 Develops sources for external support.



Subversive activities are frequently executed in an organized pattern, but major combat is avoided. The primary military activity is terrorist strikes. These are executed to gain popular support, influence recalcitrant individuals, and sap enemy strength. In the advanced stages of this phase, the insurgent organization may establish a counterstate that parallels the established authority. (A counterstate [or shadow government] is a competing structure that a movement sets up to replace the government. It includes the administrative and bureaucratic trappings of political power and performs the normal functions of a government.)



1-33. Phase II, strategic stalemate, begins with overt guerrilla warfare as the correlation of forces approaches equilibrium. In a rural-based insurgency, guerrillas normally operate from a relatively secure base area in insurgent-controlled territory. In an urban-based insurgency, guerrillas operate clandestinely, using a cellular organization. In the political arena, the movement concentrates on undermining the people’s support of the government and further expanding areas of control. Subversive activities can take the form of clandestine radio broadcasts, newspapers, and pamphlets that openly challenge the control and legitimacy of the established authority. As the populace loses faith in the established authority the people may decide to actively resist it. During this phase, a counterstate may begin to emerge to fill gaps in governance that the host-nation (HN) government is unwilling or unable to address. Two recent examples are Moqtada al Sadr’s organization in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Sadr’s Mahdi Army provides security and some services in parts of southern Iraq and Baghdad under Sadr’s control. (In fact, the Mahdi Army created gaps by undermining security and services; then it moved to solve the problem it created.) Hezbollah provides essential services and reconstruction assistance for its constituents as well as security. Each is an expression of Shiite identity against governments that are pluralist and relatively weak.



1-34. Phase III, strategic counteroffensive, occurs as the insurgent organization becomes stronger than the established authority. Insurgent forces transition from guerrilla warfare to conventional warfare. Military forces aim to destroy the enemy’s military capability. Political actions aim to completely displace all government authorities. If successful, this phase causes the government’s collapse or the occupying power’s withdrawal. Without direct foreign intervention, a strategic offensive takes on the characteristics of a full-scale civil war. As it gains control of portions of the country, the insurgent movement becomes responsible for the population, resources, and territory under its control. To consolidate and preserve its gains, an effective insurgent movement continues the phase I activities listed in paragraph 1-32. In addition it—


􀁺 Establishes an effective civil administration.

􀁺 Establishes an effective military organization.

􀁺 Provides balanced social and economic development.

􀁺 Mobilizes the populace to support the insurgent organization.

􀁺 Protects the populace from hostile actions.



1-35. Effectively applying Maoist strategy does not require a sequential or complete application of all three stages. The aim is seizing political power; if the government’s will and capability collapse early in the process, so much the better. If unsuccessful in a later phase, the insurgency might revert to an earlier one. Later insurgents added new twists to this strategy, to include rejecting the need to eventually switch to large-scale conventional operations. For example, the Algerian insurgents did not achieve much military success of any kind; instead they garnered decisive popular support through superior organizational skills and astute propaganda that exploited French mistakes. These and other factors, including the loss of will in France, compelled the French to withdraw.



1-45. Though firmness by security forces is often necessary to establish a secure environment, a government that exceeds accepted local norms and abuses its people or is tyrannical generates resistance to its rule. People who have been maltreated or have had close friends or relatives killed by the government, particularly by its security forces, may strike back at their attackers. Security force abuses and the social upheaval caused by collateral damage from combat can be major escalating factors for insurgencies.



1-46. Foreign governments can provide the expertise, international legitimacy, and money needed to start or intensify a conflict. For example, although there was little popular support for the renewal of fighting in Chechnya in 1999, the conflict resumed anyway because foreign supporters and warlords had enough money to hire a guerrilla army. Also of note, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), even those whose stated aims are impartial and humanitarian, may wittingly or unwittingly support insurgents. For example, funds raised overseas for professed charitable purposes can be redirected to insurgent groups.




1-48. A cause is a principle or movement militantly defended or supported. Insurgent leaders often seek to adopt attractive and persuasive causes to mobilize support. These causes often stem from the unresolved contradictions existing within any society or culture. Frequently, contradictions are based on real problems. However, insurgents may create artificial contradictions using propaganda and misinformation. Insurgents can gain more support by not limiting themselves to a single cause. By selecting an assortment of causes and tailoring them for various groups within the society, insurgents increase their base of sympathetic and complicit support.



1-49. Insurgents employ deep-seated, strategic causes as well as temporary, local ones, adding or deleting them as circumstances demand. Leaders often use a bait-and-switch approach. They attract supporters by appealing to local grievances; then they lure followers into the broader movement. Without an attractive cause, an insurgency might not be able to sustain itself. But a carefully chosen cause is a formidable asset; it can provide a fledgling movement with a long-term, concrete base of support. The ideal cause attracts the most people while alienating the fewest and is one that counterinsurgents cannot co-opt.



1-50. Potential insurgents can capitalize on a number of potential causes. Any country ruled by a small group without broad, popular participation provides a political cause for insurgents. Exploited or repressed social groups—be they entire classes, ethnic or religious groups, or small elites—may support larger causes in reaction to their own narrower grievances. Economic inequities can nurture revolutionary unrest. So can real or perceived racial or ethnic persecution. For example, Islamic extremists use perceived threats to their religion by outsiders to mobilize support for their insurgency and justify terrorist tactics. As previously noted, effective insurgent propaganda can also turn an artificial problem into a real one.



1-64. The cadre assesses grievances in local areas and carries out activities to satisfy them. They then attribute the solutions they have provided to the insurgency. As the insurgency matures, deeds become more important to make insurgent slogans meaningful to the population. Larger societal issues, such as foreign presence, facilitate such political activism because insurgents can blame these issues for life’s smaller problems. Destroying the state bureaucracy and preventing national reconstruction after a conflict (to sow disorder and sever legitimate links with the people) are also common insurgent tactics. In time, the cadre may seek to replace that bureaucracy and assume its functions in a counterstate.




1-65. Auxiliaries are active sympathizers who provide important support services. They do not participate in combat operations. Auxiliaries may do the following:

􀁺 Run safe houses.

􀁺 Store weapons and supplies.

􀁺 Act as couriers.

􀁺 Provide passive intelligence collection.

􀁺 Give early warning of counterinsurgent movements.

􀁺 Provide funding from lawful and unlawful sources.

􀁺 Provide forged or stolen documents and access or introductions to potential supporters.



1-67. The movement leaders provide the organizational and managerial skills needed to transform mobilized individuals and communities into an effective force for armed political action. The result is a contest of resource mobilization and force deployment. No force level guarantees victory for either side. During previous conflicts, planners assumed that combatants required a 10 or 15 to 1 advantage over insurgents to win. However, no predetermined, fixed ratio of friendly troops to enemy combatants ensures success in COIN. The conditions of the operational environment and the approaches insurgents use vary too widely.



A better force requirement gauge is troop density, the ratio of security forces (including the host nation’s military and police forces as well as foreign counterinsurgents) to inhabitants. Most density recommendations fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents in an AO. Twenty counterinsurgents per 1000 residents is often considered the minimum troop density required for effective COIN operations; however as with any fixed ratio, such calculations remain very dependent upon the situation.



1-94. A network is a series of direct and indirect ties from one actor to a collection of others. Insurgents use technological, economic, and social means to recruit partners into their networks. Networking is a tool available to territorially rooted insurgencies, such as the FARC in Colombia. It extends the range and variety of both their military and political actions. Other groups have little physical presence in their target countries and exist almost entirely as networks. Networked organizations are difficult to destroy. In addition, they tend to heal, adapt, and learn rapidly. However, such organizations have a limited ability to attain strategic success because they cannot easily muster and focus power. The best outcome they can expect is to create a security vacuum leading to a collapse of the targeted regime’s will and then to gain in the competition for the spoils. However, their enhanced abilities to sow disorder and survive present particularly difficult problems for counterinsurgents.




1-108. In almost every case, counterinsurgents face a populace containing an active minority supporting the government and an equally small militant faction opposing it. Success requires the government to be accepted as legitimate by most of that uncommitted middle, which also includes passive supporters of both sides. (See figure 1-2.) Because of the ease of sowing disorder, it is usually not enough for counterinsurgents to get 51 percent of popular support; a solid majority is often essential. However, a passive populace may be all that is necessary for a well-supported insurgency to seize political power.



1-113. The primary objective of any COIN operation is to foster development of effective governance by a legitimate government. Counterinsurgents achieve this objective by the balanced application of both military and nonmilitary means. All governments rule through a combination of consent and coercion. Governments described as “legitimate” rule primarily with the consent of the governed; those described as “illegitimate” tend to rely mainly or entirely on coercion. Citizens of the latter obey the state for fear of the consequences of doing otherwise, rather than because they voluntarily accept its rule. A government that derives its powers from the governed tends to be accepted by its citizens as legitimate. It still uses coercion—for example, against criminals—but most of its citizens voluntarily accept its governance.



1-115. Legitimacy makes it easier for a state to carry out its key functions. These include the authority to regulate social relationships, extract resources, and take actions in the public’s name. Legitimate governments can develop these capabilities more easily; this situation usually allows them to competently manage, coordinate, and sustain collective security as well as political, economic, and social development. Conversely, illegitimate states (sometimes called “police states”) typically cannot regulate society or can do so only by applying overwhelming coercion. Legitimate governance is inherently stable; the societal support it engenders allows it to adequately manage the internal problems, change, and conflict that affect individual and collective well-being. Conversely, governance that is not legitimate is inherently unstable; as soon as the state’s coercive power is disrupted, the populace ceases to obey it. Thus legitimate governments tend to be resilient and exercise better governance; illegitimate ones tend to be fragile and poorly administered.




1-123. General Chang Ting-chen of Mao Zedong’s central committee once stated that revolutionary war was 80 percent political action and only 20 percent military. Such an assertion is arguable and certainly depends on the insurgency’s stage of development; it does, however, capture the fact that political factors have primacy in COIN. At the beginning of a COIN operation, military actions may appear predominant as security forces conduct operations to secure the populace and kill or capture insurgents; however, political objectives must guide the military’s approach. Commanders must, for example, consider how operations contribute to strengthening the HN government’s legitimacy and achieving U.S. political goals. This means that political and diplomatic leaders must actively participate throughout the conduct (planning, preparation, execution, and assessment) of COIN operations. The political and military aspects of insurgencies are so bound together as to be inseparable. Most insurgent approaches recognize that fact. Military actions executed without properly assessing their political effects at best result in reduced effectiveness and at worst are counterproductive. Resolving most insurgencies requires a political solution; it is thus imperative that counterinsurgent actions do not hinder achieving that political solution.



1-132. Illegitimate actions are those involving the use of power without authority—whether committed by government officials, security forces, or counterinsurgents. Such actions include unjustified or excessive use of force, unlawful detention, torture, and punishment without trial. Efforts to build a legitimate government though illegitimate actions are self-defeating, even against insurgents who conceal themselves amid noncombatants and flout the law. Moreover, participation in COIN operations by U.S. forces must follow United States law, including domestic laws, treaties to which the United States is party, and certain HN laws. (See appendix D.) Any human rights abuses or legal violations committed by U.S. forces quickly become known throughout the local populace and eventually around the world. Illegitimate actions undermine both long- and short-term COIN efforts.




1-152. Often insurgents carry out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing counterinsurgents to overreact, or at least to react in a way that insurgents can exploit—for example, opening fire on a crowd or executing a clearing operation that creates more enemies than it takes off the streets. If an assessment of the effects of a course of action determines that more negative than positive effects may result, an alternative should be considered—potentially including not acting.



1-161. Popular support allows counterinsurgents to develop the intelligence necessary to identify and defeat insurgents. Designing and executing a comprehensive campaign to secure the populace and then gain its support requires carefully coordinating actions along several LLOs over time to produce success. One of these LLOs is developing HN security forces that can assume primary responsibility for combating the insurgency. COIN operations also place distinct burdens on leaders and logisticians. All of these aspects of COIN are described and analyzed in the chapters that follow.



2-2. The integration of civilian and military efforts is crucial to successful COIN operations. All efforts focus on supporting the local populace and HN government. Political, social, and economic programs are usually more valuable than conventional military operations in addressing the root causes of conflict and undermining an insurgency. COIN participants come from many backgrounds. They may include military personnel, diplomats, police, politicians, humanitarian aid workers, contractors, and local leaders. All must make decisions and solve problems in a complex and extremely challenging environment.



2-6. COIN is fought among the populace. Counterinsurgents take upon themselves responsibility for the people’s well-being in all its manifestations. These include the following:


􀁺 Security from insurgent intimidation and coercion, as well as from nonpolitical violence and

crime.

􀁺 Provision for basic economic needs.

􀁺 Provision of essential services, such as water, electricity, sanitation, and medical care.

􀁺 Sustainment of key social and cultural institutions.

􀁺 Other aspects that contribute to a society’s basic quality of life.

Effective COIN programs address all aspects of the local populace’s concerns in a unified fashion. Insurgents succeed by maintaining turbulence and highlighting local grievances the COIN effort fails to address. COIN forces succeed by eliminating turbulence and helping the host nation meet the populace’s basic needs.



3-67. During any period of instability, people’s primary interest is physical security for themselves and their families. When HN forces fail to provide security or threaten the security of civilians, the population is likely to seek security guarantees from insurgents, militias, or other armed groups. This situation can feed support for an insurgency. However, when HN forces provide physical security, people are more likely to support the government. Commanders therefore identify the following:

􀁺 Whether the population is safe from harm.

􀁺 Whether there is a functioning police and judiciary system.

􀁺 Whether the police and courts are fair and nondiscriminatory.

􀁺 Who provides security for each group when no effective, fair government security apparatus exists. The provision of security by the HN government must occur in conjunction with political and economic reform.



In 1847, Irish insurgents were advised to engage the British Army in the following

way:

“The force of England is entrenched and fortified. You must draw it out of position;

break up its mass; break its trained line of march and manoeuvre, its equal step and

serried array… nullify its tactic and strategy, as well as its discipline; decompose the

science and system of war, and resolve them into their first elements.”



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In anger, I’ve occasionally called for seeding North Korea with weapons, but in my rational mind I’ve always known that this would do no good to offset its obvious harms. Morally, I could justify violence against the North Korean and Chinese regimes when, for example, they are literally stringing together North Korean men, women, and children and hauling them off to Kim Jong Il’s gulag. If violent resistance could prevent any of these unlawful and immoral repatriations, I would support it, whether against the North Korean or Chinese security forces, but that is unrealistic in the foreseeable future. In any event, successful insurgencies don’t grow out of sporadic violence.