 measures against which to judge the effectiveness of the military tactics employed; ground "captured" has even less significance in counterinsurgency than it does in warfighting.
In an insurgency, the strategic center of gravity will be the support of the mass of the people. Clearly, this is not open to "attack" in the conventional sense, although insurgent strategies often incorporate the use of coercive force. An insurgency is an attempt to force political change, and thus it follows logically that the center of gravity can be reached only by political action. The government response to an insurgency should take as its fundamental assumption that the true nature of the threat lies in the insurgent's political potential rather than his military power, although the latter may appear the more worrying in the short term. Again, in Malaya, the center of gravity was targeted not by jungle patrolling, but by the political decision to grant independence; the military contribution was invaluable, but not of itself decisive. The military campaign should focus upon the insurgents, but it is only one part of a wider solution.
The military plan should form one strand in a coordinated "attack" upon the overall aims of the insurgents. This should be established by a strategic estimate conducted by a government taking military and other advice. From this will flow further operational and tactical estimates and plans. While military forces may have a critical role to play at certain stages in the campaign, overall their contribution will be secondary and should be kept in perspective. Depending upon the level of insurgent activity, for most soldiers it is likely to be an unglamorous, rather unsatisfactory environment in which to serve. At times there may be opportunities for flair and for instigating decisive action against insurgent groups, but on most occasions troops will be confined to acting in a stabilizing, holding role with the bulk of their effort going into strategically "fixing" the insurgency. This does not imply a passive or reactive posture. An understanding at all levels of these realities and the reasons for them should help to prepare the soldier for policy decisions which at first sight may defy military logic, and give units involved in counterinsurgency a realistic expectation of "success."
The aim should never be a spectacular but possibly isolated success for one arm of the government. Rather it should be a sequence of successes that combine to work in complementary ways toward a single strategic goal. There will be multiple lines of operation (economic, legal, and military), working through a series of decisive points, but they should all complement the campaign's main effort--the primary line of operation--which must be political. The military commander will identify his decisive military points, which are then arranged onto lines of operation to achieve the desired military aim. The military plan should be based upon a number of operational objectives, understood and refined at each level, which help to destroy the insurgency by marginalization and focused selective strikes, and also provide assistance to the work of other agencies. Decisive points might include restoring public order, controlling routes, or clearing "no go" areas. Resources (the means to achieve the specified ends) should be allocated accordingly.
The strategic campaign plan should be directed in such a way as to sequence and coordinate the various agencies' individual lines of operation according to the overall strategic requirements at the time. The intent is to overlap each operational plan with all the others. These concepts translate directly to counterinsurgency, but contrary to the military aim in warfighting, the overall campaign director has a far more complex range of events and options to weave into a coherent plan: a "campaign" in the broadest sense.
To illustrate the concept, assume that during a counterinsurgency campaign an inter-governmental initiative has succeeded in improving cross-border security cooperation (a decisive po