Peacemaking is the Graduate Level of Strategic Discussion

I really enjoy reading Fabous Maximus. He has a way of looking at a topic and seeing something unique in it, and while insuring the original topic is disseminated, he can change the topic a new direction and make it his own. That is really a great blog.

The other day he brought up a discussion about Dave Maxwell's discussion at the Small Wars Jounral which asks the question, Is Counterinsurgency the Graduate Level of War? Almost completely we agree with Dave Maxwell, but it should be noted we are not experts on COIN and can be easily influenced as students of the doctrine. Between Dave and Fabious Maximus, it got us thinking about the graduate level of war, because war in and of itself is sometimes at the graduate level, and sometimes it isn't very complicated.

When thinking about whether COIN is the graduate level of war, we ultimately decided that whether COIN is the graduate level of war or not is semantics, but what is relevant is that COIN represents the graduate level of strategic military discussions today.

The value of the COIN discussion is that its emphasis has required military thinkers to take a broader view of military strategy in a context outside of the Clausewitz, Jomini, Mahan, Fuller, etc.. wartime centric military strategy approaches. The COIN debate is part of a larger, and growing, military strategy debate towards peacemaking, or war prevention, and that is what makes it graduate level.

Why is this important? Because it has the effects of broadening the debates in other aspects of military strategy. An example would be the evolution of military strategy involving nuclear weapons from a broad position of MAD into a peace time strategy of escalation control and a wartime strategy of escalation dominance. I’m being general for the example, much intellectual rigor is still required in this and other schools of military strategy that connects the peacetime posture and wartime posture towards winning conclusions in military strategy.

Military strategy has too long been focused on extending influence of military power in wartime, and the threat of that extension of military power being the preserver of peacetime, but that is clearly no longer good enough. COIN is the most visible debate in the growing discussion that bridges the gaps between a peacemaking military strategy and a war winning military strategy, and the influence of counterinsurgency doctrine into other sphere’s of military strategy can have broad effects on the prevention of war itself.

Clausewitz described the Principles of War as objective, offense, concentration, economy, mobility and surprise. Mahan described the Principles of War as objective, concentration, offense, mobility, and command. These principles of war apply to COIN, because COIN is a form of war, but COIN is also a form of peacemaking. What the modern COIN debate and discussion has done is set in motion the development of Principles of Peacemaking, and reinvigorated a peacemaking military strategy school that is required both before major conflict and after the major wartime military actions conclusion, or put another way, the periods when civil authority is losing control or the periods when civil authorities are attempting to regain control. When put in that context, it is easy to see why peacemaking military strategy involves a lot more than just a military approach. This is also why this blog, as a way to keep things simple and below the graduate level of discussion, uses the yin yang to discuss maritime strategy.

Expanding military strategy for both war winning and peacemaking is what we see as the real power of the COIN discussion taking place today. We think the perception of graduate level comes into play because the COIN doctrine discussions are part of strategic school of thought that emphasizes the role of military power in times absent major war, and intellectual study to those periods of time does not get the same attention relative to the intellectual study of conducting war with military power. However it is also for these reasons why we believe the COIN debate and discussions taking place is very relevant to every branch of military service.

For example, take Mahan's principles of objective, concentration, offense, mobility, and command, which we believe is a brilliant strategic basis for war by sea. However, we believe one can plainly recognize these principles of war will never allow naval power to achieve "Command of the Sea" against challenges posed by distributed and/or disconnected networks of irregular enemy maritime threats, also known as the threat matrix during times absent state on state war. In today's strategic maritime environment against irregular threats that attempt to disrupt peacetime activity, different metrics apply in periods absent war than would apply during war. How valuable is concentration when facing piracy off Somalia, or terrorism off Nigeria? Not very, those threats operate on the margins and concentration increases the margins for the enemy to operate in. Instead of principles like concentration and mobility, we would suggest distribution, saturation, and positioning would describe three principles of peacemaking within maritime strategy.

Distribution, saturation, and positioning by our definitions would not have much in common with Mahan's principles as they apply to winning wars, nor should they, the metrics are completely different in war and peace. In peacetime visibility of force is a desired metric for peacetime, but in wartime no one tells the enemy where you are. However, principles like distribution, saturation, and positioning do have a lot in common with the principles discussed in the debate taking place in COIN, and as a very visible peacemaking strategy debate, COIN represents the graduate level of strategic discussion taking place today.