Author: Sarah Grant

Summer Essay Campaign #18: “Room to Breathe – How the Military Supports Civilian-led Counterinsurgency”

To Answer Question 2: “Beyond stale slogans (i.e. “hearts and minds” or “money is a weapon”), what practical tasks does counterinsurgency entail at the tactical and operational level?”

By First Lieutenant Sarah Grant, USMC

The updated FM 3-24, issued in May 2014 and now called “Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies,” locates insurgency within the category of irregular warfare and describes it as “a struggle for control and influence, generally from a position of relative weakness, outside existing state institutions.” It further defines it as “the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.”[i] Let’s take particular note of that last bit, about insurgency being about political control. Insurgents aim to upset the status quo and assert an alternative vision for the proper distribution of power and resources in society (what politics is all about).

                  Although devoted Clausewitzians would point out that all wars are waged for political objectives, insurgency and its antithesis counterinsurgency are political not just in aim but also in conduct. The effectiveness of the methods used by both insurgents and counterinsurgents is ultimately decided in the social and political, not the military, realms. Insurgencies cannot be defeated in a military sense unless every single participant is identified, located, and captured or killed.[ii] And even then, the grievances that drove those individuals to subvert the current order will likely remain, to be repossessed by others in the future.