Introduction
There is an almost injudicious love of science by the military academic community. Within the deep reaches of the Pentagon and the service schools and academies there is an intellectual reach and lust for the trapping of academia. I think it is quite wonderful. 
Do not think that I am simply talking about using the terms and lexicon of academia. No, I personally believe that the military has a desire to extend the flexible thinking strategies of academia into their environ where flexibility and mental calculation is much more than academic. It is simply survival. The question is will the military keep with the rigor, or slip into pseudo scientific morass where the intellectually challenged and failing epistemologist sink into oblivion? As I read the literature exiting as articles from the different journals and think tanks ran by the military I have been struck by an epiphany. Like a blinding flash of on target artillery I realized there is no formal language or research agenda for counter insurgency.
Wonderful reading where is the commonality?
The different authors who write, and the different organization who support research, and more importantly the thought leaders of the military have never set forward a research agenda. Most everything published within the community is ad hoc and without focus.
There could be a “hypothesis” based set of standards that I am unaware of, but the fact is that there is no substantive document by the practitioners stating these are the questions and key concepts that need to be researched. Think about the ramifications of a missing research agenda for asymmetric warfare and especially counter insurgency. The Army at Carlisle barracks publishes an interesting questions book every year for the entire scope of the Army, but as to counter insurgency and asymmetric warfare especially, failing a few conferences a cohesive body or research agenda is missing.
Counter insurgency is asymmetric warfare and there is a body of literature that stands as testament to the continuing refinement of the practices. In many of the articles that are published there is a common theme of a failure for want of a shared lexicon. Most definitions are imposed as part of doctrine or policy and do not reflect scholarship and important work in ontological semantics. Thomas Kuhn told us that definitions that are generalized are the sign of a maturing science. I am not sure that COIN or asymmetric warfare is going to be considered science when the rules, concepts, language, and methods of measurement are not shared across the entire field. Some of this criticism would be nullified by simply stating that the military is art and not science. I am not sure that would solve many of the resultant confusion or lessen the problems. Nor the secondary effects of not having a research agenda that the community agrees upon.
Some of the issue may be that he military writers are putting forth scholarship that is part of their course work. Some may say that military writers are simply engaged in research that is convenient or of interest to them at a specific time. I am both guilty and a proponent of that kind of research. It is where we can find passion and worthy scholarship. Unfortunately it does not feed the voracious appetite of a science. And, if counter insurgency and asymmetric warfare are to be based in science there are some questions that lead to other questions.
We don’t need a research agenda we got a war to win
A research agenda proposes the “big” questions of a scientific discipline. A variety of scientific disciplines have struggled with their big questions. From physics determining light as a particle or wave (answer strangely yes), to computer science arguing whether they are math, engineering, or other (answer strangely yes also).
If COIN and asymmetric warfare are not science then the rigor and examination of the literature do not let up. The question becomes if it is not a science then it is likely a discipline and a sibling or child of some other entity like “military” or something similar. If COIN is a science and can have general rules applied to it, and studied with enough rigor. Well now you have some opportunities. Grand questions in COIN become part of the big picture and we can possibly suggest a few simple ideas.
Counter insurgency imposes the will of a nation state on an adversary entity whether foreign or domestic and the primary purpose is to …. What?
In an environment where a nation state has no near peer or is by some method absolutely secure all wars will look asymmetric from a distance, but will they always be fought through conventional means?
What is counter insurgency? How does it start, what is the operational level, what is the beginning of the end, and how does it end?
I know that the FM-3-24 discusses these in detail, but where is the agreed upon breadth of research to back up the assertions of the discipline. The military likes to embody concepts and ideas into people. So, and so, was the father of this or that. Great, and big thinkers are important. Einstein though was writing in response to a problem the physics world had at the time. He was trying to answer his disciplines big questions.
I am not here to solve all the problems that the advancement of COIN and Asymmetric warfare practices would necessitate for the rigor of science. In one part I am simply the observer, but in the other part I am deeply interested in the results. In my research the complex issues of national treaties and boundaries overlay the issues of a world wide telecommunications infrastructure. This begets the problem that all computer network attacks are going to be asymmetric in nature and many of the principles of counter insurgency are going to be required.
The fourth and fifth generation warfare communities could claim that they have accomplished at least some of the tasks of starting a science. Some soldiers will say that military science covers the needed terrain of thought well enough. I think though that counter insurgency is at odds with the hammer of science and axe of the arts. Somewhere in between the differing worlds consensus can be found. I think of the military activity as an applied science or closer to my skill set as a technologist. Likely indigestion or my own ego inflating my specialty as a technologists.
If you find my comments ignorant then fix it
To answer these questions I would set up a conference and a continuing tableau of research into the big questions. Not everybody agrees that COIN or asymmetric warfare is a worthy tactical method or even exists as a true method of war. There are those who think maneuver and air power alone can win wars and everything else is window dressing.
If I were setting up a conference I would ask how Kuhn, Popper, and other thinkers of science could be applied to the discipline of counter insurgency and asymmetric warfare. What are the grand problems beyond budget constraints and military leadership not owning the issues. What are the really big issues that need to be solved to increase effectiveness (keep your eye on the mission), and more importantly understanding of the effects and results of insurgencies. Small Wars Journal is an academic entity that publishes this kind of research, but what is needed will be the practitioners determining what of the big questions and needs of the community are. What can be done to professionalize the counter insurgent and make them more effective?
All of the stakeholder involved in COIN and asymmetric warfare need to be held accountable to a research agenda. We need to find the big questions. We need to enable the patterns of discovery in a manner that enables further discovery. The tools of intellectual and scientific learning are well known. The military has started down this path it would be nice to see them continue in a more directed manner. There are those who will look at the body of research and the substantive body of literature and provide that as evidence of maturing in the discipline worthy of the name science. There are those who will point to a variety of conferences and use that as evidence that COIN and asymmetric warfare are worthy of the title science. This would be misguided if even true.
The literature is filled with Popper and others arguing over whether the social disciplines of sociology and anthropology were actually science. The rigor and statistical mayhem that the practitioners apply within those academic disciplines is there ladder to status as a science. If there is anything so blatantly missing from the literature of military science it is the numeracy found in almost all the other disciplines. What does the rigor, the peer review, the level of accountability in military academia look like today? What is the defining principles in COIN and asymmetric warfare that can be held up as the foundation of the science?
I truly believe that these are attainable goals. The tools are there.
Nice post!
I think one of the greatest roadblocks to making warfare theory into science is that there are too many variables that, as yet, cannot be accurately and reliably accounted for. Much like weather science, it wasn’t until the arrival of computers that models were able to forecast with any sort of reliability. With warfare it is even more difficult. At least in meteorology there are standard measurements for temp, barometric pressure, and wind speed causing conditions that are generally understood to have certain affects in their interactions. How do you quantify a soldier, a tank a civilian, a neigborhood? How do you quantify morale and opinion or bravery and fear? That all has to be done in some way before you can even consider the interactions between those forces.
Thinking more about this, Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan came to mind. The reason we can’t have a science of warfare is, using his terminology, because war is a denizen of extremistan. There are no effects that can be recreated exactly the same way, every single time. Averages don’t apply. There is no bell curve for conflict. The best we can do is to attempt to create frameworks for understanding the dynamics of conflict and the interactions of the forces at work in them.