Career-Centric COIN: A Retrospective

This essay is the first in a new series at Small Wars Journal called RETROSPECTIVES. In this series, we are asking authors from our community to submit

This essay is the first in a new series at Small Wars Journal called RETROSPECTIVES. In this series, we are asking authors from our community to submit articles that reflect on their own works from 10+ years ago. Ideally, these are essays that you published with us or articles that were frequently cited by SWJ as part of the discourse on small wars and irregular warfare. We ask that you reflect on your thesis with the power of hind-sight on a personal and professional level. For our inaugural article, our Editor-in-Chief, Ken Gleiman, is reflecting on the first article he ever published back in September of 2011.

I published an essay in Small Wars Journal in 2011 that coined the phrase, “Career-centric COIN.” I was a Special Forces Major at the time and had just entered my second year at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth. The essay was a sort of a Jerry Maguire moment in my career, or at least it felt that way for me. If you’re not familiar with the movie, there is one scene where the title character, played by Tom Cruise, is speaking to an audience of executives at a large sports management firm. He becomes visibly flustered and pours his heart out into a monograph that highlights everything that’s wrong with their industry, the firm he works for, and how to fix it. He then prints multiple copies and leaves one for every person in his company. Initially greeted with praise, McGuire is soon fired for his vision that goes against the grain.

I did not get fired for my essay. I did receive some praise and attention, though not nearly as much as another Special Forces Major, Jim Gant, whose essay One Tribe at a Time made an undeniable impression across the national security community. While I admired (and still do!) Jim Gant, I didn’t think much of his piece which I called “Gant’s Rant.” Perhaps with a touch of jealousy, but I believed Gant put too much focus on tribal engagement. In retrospect, I think a bit more of it. It was personal, passionate, and very persuasive. My monograph and article were historical, analytical, and empirical. Despite the moderate praise I received for my very academic article, there was a patronizing dismissiveness from more than a few senior Army leaders who agreed with my arguments but cynically suggested that’s just the way it is. They would pat me on the head. Somehow, I was smart, yet stupid, for pointing out the scandal of the haphazard organization of the COIN campaign in Afghanistan that wasn’t optimized with centralized authority and decentralized execution. Gant got sent back to Afghanistan to do what he loved best—engage with tribes and raise Afghan Local Police. He then tragically spiraled. I was sent to Afghanistan to do plans for the special operations command and try to figure out how to sustain the Afghan Local Police program politically, logistically, and operationally.

The Argument

The central thesis of my essay was two-fold. First, the United States designed its counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan against all evidence of what might be considered best practice from both history and theory. Second, the United States justified its counterinsurgency design on secret and sometimes overt military service and bureaucratic interests, as well as on the interests of their leaders, and those of other civilian agencies. The evidence backing my thesis was everywhere—from the decisions made about doctrine, to staffing, tour length, talent management, and especially in chain of command and command-and-control relationships. The military had replaced unity of command with a thin veneer called “unity of effort” top to bottom.

The Journey

The essay was based on my master’s thesis (more of a book really) that I had written while attending Command and General Staff College (CGSC). The Organizational Imperative: Theory and History on Unity of Effort in Counterinsurgency Campaigns was no ordinary CGSC paper. I came to CGSC unwillingly. I already had a master’s degree. I had graduated from Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute (now the McCourt School of Public Policy) several years before. I had two combat tours and numerous operational deployments, but it wasn’t enough. I was young and arrogant enough to believe that I didn’t need any additional directed education. I studied and read widely enough on my own and I had heard that CGSC was not very rigorous. But I was compelled to go to clear a hurdle for promotion; and so, I went.

I found the intellectual experience at CGSC wanting, despite some very committed professors. There was no challenge. It was easy to pass, hard to fail, and annoying to others if you excelled. At that time, academic excellence had no real impact on one’s career, assignments etc. Senior leaders who occasionally stopped by to address the student body openly belittled the curriculum routinely playing to audience of students by saying