arts and Minds operation.
Success does not necessarily go to the side which possesses the best weapons or even uses them most effectively. Seeking to destroy the enemy by physical attrition will also expose members of the government force to greater risk of casualties, and as the Tet offensive in Vietnam during 1968 demonstrated, counterinsurgency campaigns can be lost despite military success. In that instance the American strategic center of gravity, public opinion in the United States, became vulnerable once the perceived costs of involvement escalated. This does not mean that risk should be avoided or the tactical initiative handed to the insurgents, merely that the wider implications of any course of action should be carefully weighed.
Attacking the insurgent's will, the strength from which he draws his cohesion, is likely to be more productive, particularly in the early stages of a counterinsurgency campaign before an insurgency can be consolidated. A sophisticated attack on the insurgent's will strikes at the center of his philosophy. This should be undertaken as part of a deliberate Hearts and Minds campaign. Although this is a somewhat dated term, it still encapsulates what is needed. It should incorporate Civil Affairs activity, psychological operations, effective use of the media, and troop information. These are separate functions, but they have a common theme and are best utilized in a complementary manner. In practice the scope for such action will depend upon the way in which a particular campaign is carried out at the highest level and the freedom of action which is delegated to military commanders. Given the political authority, an approach that attacks the insurgent's will demands imagination and a responsive decisionmaking organization which has the ability to seize fleeting opportunities.
Maneuver warfare theory would indicate that it is preferable to shatter the enemy's moral and physical cohesion rather than seek his wholesale destruction. The means of attacking cohesion in counterinsurgency are readily adapted from warfighting. Firepower, which in the warfighting context is severely constrained, in counterinsurgency can be broadened to include evidence gathering, arrest, and legal action; surprise can be achieved, for example, through developing information-gathering technology which is exploited by either covert action or rapid concentration of overt force into a given area.
Tempo and Simultaneity
It has been said that low tempo appears to be a characteristic of many counterinsurgency campaigns. This is to misunderstand the term tempo, which is judged not by the "pace" of operations, but the speed of action and reaction relative to the insurgent. It is true that slow pace is a direct result of the protracted nature of some, though not all, forms of insurgent strategy (the "foco" theory utilized by Che Guevara, Regis Debray, and others being an exception). However, even in a Maoist-style campaign, where the insurgent may not be able to move beyond low-level guerrilla activity for a considerable time, the situation can still change radically. Diplomatic agreement to curtail external support, for example, could test the ability of insurgents to achieve a high tempo of operations. Commanders should be ready and able to adapt quickly to sudden developments, some of which may be outside their control. Certainly the accomplished insurgent commander will rely on an ability to exploit tempo, moving the classic revolutionary phases of an insurgency up where possible, and down when necessary, at such a speed as to make the security force's responses inappropriate and counterproductive.
At the tactical level, tempo is just as applicable. Here a commander can seek to establish his own tempo to seize the initiative in the local area of operations and force an insurgent group into a reactive role. An incident which in conventional war would pass almost unremarked could well attract considerable media attention in a counterinsurgency campaign and thus indirectly raise the tempo of operations. Troops and commander