From Parameters, Summer 1996, pp. 4-16.
The experience of numerous "small wars" has provided the British army with a unique insight into this demanding form of conflict. Service in Northern Ireland has given the present generation of soldiers their main firsthand source of basic experience at the tactical level, but this also tends to constrain military thinking on the subject because of the national context and political connotations. There are of course many lessons to be learned because of the similarities between the campaign in Northern Ireland, which is designated as Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) and those counterinsurgency campaigns which may be conducted elsewhere. But there are also significant differences. Tactics such as jungle patrolling and convoy anti-ambush drills--which from the perspective of Northern Ireland seem to be relics of a colonial past--may be very relevant in a different operational setting.
Despite their long experience in counterinsurgency, the British have not developed any set methods of dealing with the problem of insurgency; indeed it is probably unwise to attempt this because every situation is different. There are, however, many other approaches to this form of combat. For instance, the French in Algeria during the 1840s produced novel tactics based on highly mobile columns, and in Indochina a military-led community relations campaign predated General Sir Gerald Templer's "Hearts and Minds" policies by several decades. Not only is the threat changing, but so too is the environment in which an insurgent must be confronted. For example, in any future counterinsurgency operation, military action will be conducted under the critical scrutiny of the law, the media, human rights organizations, and other international bodies such as the European Court. Thus while military planning should draw upon the lessons of the past, doctrine for counterinsurgency must evolve if it is to remain relevant.
The Attrition Theory
A straightforward attritional approach is one option. Such strategies have been adopted and some have worked. Absolute repression was used by the Germans in response to guerrilla attacks during the Second World War. Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and his campaign against the Marsh Arabs in Southern Iraq are contemporary examples of the use of attrition. In Uruguay the Tupamaros' campaign was crushed by a vicious right-wing backlash, which not only destroyed the insurgency but in the process led to the replacement of a vibrant civil democratic government by a military dictatorship. None of the attritional "solutions" is appropriate in a liberal democracy; furthermore it is considered that a "gloves off" approach to any insurgency has a strictly limited role to play in any modern counterinsurgency campaign.
It should also be noted that the record of success for the attrition theory in counterinsurgency operations is generally a poor one. Undue emphasis on military action clouds the key political realities, which can result in a military-dominated campaign plan that misses the real focus of an insurgency. An inability to match the insurgent's concept with an appropriate government one--likened by Thompson to trying to play chess while the enemy is actually playing poker--is conceptually flawed and will not achieve success. Having deployed conventionally-trained troops and large amounts of firepower, the attritionalist commander generally feels compelled to use them. The head of the US Mission to South Vietnam, General Harkins, claimed in September 1962 that what was required to defeat the Viet Cong within three years were "Three Ms"--men, money, and materiel. The result of this approach, normally to the delight of an insurgent, is an escalating and indiscriminate use of military firepower. The wider consequences of this approach, seen both in South Vietnam and elsewhere, will often be an upward spiral of civilian alienation.
It would be wrong to deduce that any application of attrition is necessarily counterproductive: in the Malayan Campaign (