GUILLEM ROCA I SEGUÍ: L’ESCRIPTOR

By comparison, the contemporary literature on counterinsurgency war outcomes can be broadly conceptualized along three idealized classes of explanation. In brief, these are a strong actor’s interest in successfully prosecuting a conflict, constraints on their ability to do so, and finally the suitability of their capabilities, both military and political, for the nature of COIN wars. This thematic categorization is not meant to impose a rigid distinction between the authors associated with each camp, but simply to highlight the similarities of their primary emphases, as well as the common objections which have been raised against them and the present balance of evidence.

Interest-Asymmetric Motivation & Illegitimacy in Wars of Foreign Occupation:

Mack’s (1975) study of asymmetric conflict offers one of the earliest attempts at providing a systematic account of strong actor defeat. Being materially weaker, he argues that insurgents pursue victory through the attrition of a stronger actor’s domestic political will rather than face their superior military forces directly. The asymmetry in power between the parties is theorized to necessarily generate a proportional asymmetry in their respective political

priorities. While the conflict is a total war of necessity for the weaker actor, it is simply a limited war of choice for the strong. Accordingly, as the costs of war begin to mount, the collective political will of the stronger will fragment and erode. “[A] war with no visible payoff against an opponent who poses no direct threat will come under increasing criticism as battle casualties rise and economic costs escalate” (Mack 1975, 185).

Increasing costs of maintaining ownership coupled with an according diminishment in benefits is a theme echoed by MacDonald (2013), who argues that the prevalence of strong

actor defeat in the 20th _{century can be attributed to the erosion of former great powers’ colonial}

possessions. “[T]he decline in incumbent victory can be explained by a broader shift in the normative and material structure of the international system from one that favored colonial governance to one that opposed it” (MacDonald 2013, 255). As colonialism ceased to be

accepted within the international community as a legitimate means of governance the economic and security benefits of maintaining colonial possessions declined precipitously. Local

collaborators became increasingly difficult to come by as alternative sources of personal advancement become available, including superpower patronage during the Cold War. Finally, established colonial empires of the 20th _{century were compelled by a domino logic to respond}

aggressively to any affront by a possession, a constraint that was not applicable to emerging colonial empires of the 19th _{century, and this shift in turn motivated the undertaking of untimely}

interventions. According to Macdonald, these four mechanisms can account for the substantial increase, post 1918, in colonial incumbent losses, from 16% to 57%, and these losses

significantly contribute to the general reversal in fortune which incumbents have encountered in the modern era.

Differing levels of resolve within conflicts fought over foreign occupation is also Robert Pape’s central explanatory factor for the increasing prevalence of suicide terrorist attacks (Pape 2005; Pape 2003). “[E]very suicide campaign from 1980 to 2001 has had as a major objective-or as its central objective-coercing a foreign government that has military forces in what they see as their homeland to take those military forces out” (Pape 2003, 348). Pape argues that suicide attack methods have been particularly effective in compelling more powerful democratic adversaries to withdraw from foreign occupations owing in large part to the extreme costliness of undertaking such a tactical approach. And empirically, foreign occupation has indeed proven

to be one of the most statistically, as well as substantively, consistent predictors of strong actor defeat (Lyall 2010; Lyall and Wilson III 2009).

Capability-Competing Capital Requirements of Conflict Effectiveness:

Arreguin-Toft’s theory of asymmetric conflict is summarized by the figure depicted below.

Weak-Actor Strategic Approach

Strong-Actor Strategic Approach

Direct

Indirect (Guerilla) Direct Strong actor Weak actor Indirect

(Barbarism) Weak actor Strong actor

Expected Effects of Strategic Interaction on Conflict Outcomes (expected winners in cells) (Arreguín-Toft 2001)

His argument centers on strategic interaction as a predictor of asymmetric conflict outcomes, with same-approach interactions favoring the strong by allowing them to bring their full strength to bear, and opposite-approach interactions favoring the weak by allowing them to deflect the brunt of their more powerful adversary’s attacks. Strong actor strategies include direct attacks against an adversary’s armed forces and barbarism, which encompasses a range of repressive measures aimed against noncombatants; while weak actor strategies include direct defenses against military incursions and guerilla warfare, a crucial component of which is the avoidance of direct confrontation. The post-World War II trend toward strong actor defeat is accounted for by a divergence in military force planning in different regions of the world.

The primary existential threat which strong states face, comes from other strong states in the international system. Conversely, the primary source of threat for the weak comes also from the great powers. Accordingly, the established militaries of great powers are designed primarily to deal with like foes, while the militaries of the weak are calibrated precisely to deal with asymmetrically powerful opponents. “The blitzkrieg model emphasizes direct strategic approaches; the guerilla warfare model, indirect strategic approaches. When the two interact systematically, strong actors should lose more often” (Arreguín-Toft 2001, 106). This sentiment, that the mechanization of great powers’ militaries are to blame for their poor performance in guerilla wars, has been further echoed by Lyall & Wilson. “...modern militaries possess force structures that inhibit information collection among local populations. This not only complicates the process of sifting insurgents from noncombatants but increases the difficulty of selectively applying rewards and punishment among the fence-sitting population” (Lyall and Wilson III 2009, 67).

Prior to the shift towards mechanization after World War I, 19th _{century militaries were}

based around the principle of foraging. Pre-modern foraging militaries were compelled to interact extensively with local populations as a byproduct of needing to resupply themselves with local materiel. Such militaries also maintained a much higher percentage of infantry personnel than modern forces. Arguably, both of these features made them more appropriately suited for combatting insurgents. The alleged validity of this mechanism has sparked a

considerable debate on the appropriate direction of modern force planning (Gentile 2009, 2013; Gentile et al. 2009; Nagl 2009). And in an often quoted exchange between members of the National Guard deploying to Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary Rumsfeld infamously

remarked that “you go to war with the Army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time” (The New York Times: December 8, 2004).

Constraint-Political Constraints Hindering Effective War Conduct:

Finally, one of the most pervasive lines of argumentation in the counterinsurgency literature has been the purported impact of political regime type. “Democratic polyarchies are apparently most susceptible to internal opposition to external wars, while totalitarian ‘centrist’ states are less susceptible to such opposition” (Mack 1975, 192). One of the great puzzles with democratic states is thought to be their proclivity to select themselves into asymmetric wars of choice which they then proceed to prosecute in a severely ineffective manner. Caverley (2010) has argued that this apparent contradiction can indeed be reconciled within a rational actor framework. The median voter in democratic states prefers a capital over labor intensive military, one which relies more on weapons than personnel. They prefer such a configuration as they themselves are the ones most likely to bear the greater risk in a more labor intensive military, and by contrast the cost of capital is largely borne by the wealthier members of the state. “A capitalized military not only results in many voters doing less of the fighting themselves, but also allows someone else’s resources to fund the costs of war” (Caverley 2010, 129). Accordingly, the median voter will support fighting insurgents with a capital intensive approach, resulting in an onset of wars in which the military is ill suited to prevail.

In addition to promoting the production of suboptimal military structures, democratic political institutions have been further theorized to inefficiently constrain the latitude of their militaries in conducting combat operations deemed as overly repressive. “…democracies fail in small wars because they find it extremely difficult to escalate the level of violence and brutality to that which can secure victory. They are restricted by their domestic structure, and in

particular by the creed of some of their most articulate citizens and the opportunities their institutional makeup presents” (Merom 2003, 15). Merom argues that societal preferences of a vocal minority undermine those of state leaders when the tradeoff between balancing higher casualties on one’s own military forces with those of foreign noncombatants leads the military to resort towards employing increasingly brutal methods of conducting war. While this strategic shift is borne from a desire to reduce one’s own losses and maintain domestic support, it also necessarily threatens the democratic character of the incumbent state, which then provides the foundation that domestic opposition groups require to mobilize a counter coalition against continuing the conflict (Merom 2003, 23).

The Balance of Theory & Evidence:

At a theoretical level, to provide a satisfying argument each school of thought needs to be able to account for both the puzzle of strong actor defeat and the temporal trend of its increasing prevalence in the modern era. For the asymmetric interest school of thought, the temporal dimension has been the primary basis of critique. Arreguin-Toft (2001) has argued that if power asymmetry is operationalized in constant terms then it becomes impossible to rely upon this lack of variation as a sound basis in accounting for the emerging trend toward weak actor victory. This criticism is however partially unfair. One of the primary components of Mack’s thesis is the contradiction between power and interest asymmetry, and indeed this cannot account for the time varying trend in the rate of strong actor defeat. However, Mack also argues that this vulnerability in the domestic politics of strong actors is exacerbated in more open political systems. This second aspect is indeed time varying and in fact has occurred in a manner correlated with a rise in the declining prospects of strong actors, as well as the broader shift in international norms towards colonial illegitimacy. More prevalent democratic regimes

are also those exclusively targeted by suicide campaigns according to Pape’s argument. Though empirically, support for several of the arguments within this camp have been somewhat underwhelming (Ashworth et al. 2008; Lyall 2010).

The capabilities view however has been most opposed from the opposite direction. MacDonald argues that 19th _{century militaries were similarly ill suited towards addressing}

insurgents as their 20th _{century counterparts, and that European military bureaucracies were}

highly conservative institutions also constructed primarily to engage with other ‘comparable’ nation’s militaries. Furthermore, heavy cavalry and artillery were as inappropriate for

conducting counterinsurgencies then, as armored personnel carriers and helicopters are today. Finally, foraging was not the logistical panacea that Lyall & Wilson claim. Supplies often had to be maneuvered by wagon through heavy vegetation in locales within minimal road coverage and the susceptibility to local diseases was far greater (MacDonald 2013, 258). And from the reverse perspective it isn’t entirely clear that capital intensive militaries are always inherently at a disadvantage when pitted against asymmetric opponents. The ‘Afghan’ model of war has been advocated for as one possible basis by which capital intensive militaries might maximize the impact of their fourth generation assets, while diminishing the risk of exposure to protracted insurgency (Andres, Wills, and Griffith Jr. 2005; Biddle 2005).

Finally, the validity of the constraint school of thought demands both that repressive counterinsurgency methods are more effective and that democratic states have less latitude in opting to employ them. The regime type component of this view would seem on solid grounds at first glance. Both the number and proportion of democratic states in the international system substantially expanded after the Second World War, which indeed coincides with the sharp decline in strong actor success. However, several multivariate econometric models of insurgency

war outcomes have not found political regime type to be a significant predictor. Neither MacDonald (2013), Lyall (2010), nor Getmansky (2012) find any significant evidence that

democratic states systematically fair differently than their autocratic counterparts. Furthermore, some studies have found that democratic states are indeed less likely to engage in mass killing of civilians (Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004), where others have found the opposite (Downes 2008; Downes 2006). While a considerable theoretical discourse has developed concerning the possible effects of democratic regimes, the recent evidence is inconclusive. And the reverse is the case with respect to the repressive component of the argument, where the ubiquitous assertion of repressions’ negative impact, in direct contradiction of the theorized effect advocated by the constraint school of thought, (Kalyvas and Kocher 2007; Kuperman 2008) has been recently brought under scrutiny (Lyall 2009).