The Counterrevolution

by Bernard E. Harcourt

  17. Sharon Lafraniere, Sarah Cohen, and Richard A. Oppel Jr., “How Often Do Mass Shootings Occur? On Average, Every Day, Records Show,” New York Times, December 2, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/us/how-often-do-mass-shootings-occur-on-average-every-day-records-show.html; Sharon Lafraniere, Daniela Porat, and Agustin Armendariz, “A Drumbeat of Multiple Shootings, but America Isn’t Listening,” New York Times, May 22, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/us/americas-overlooked-gun-violence.html.

  18. Philip Rucker, “Trump Touts Recent Immigration Raids, Calls Them a ‘Military Operation,’” Washington Post, February 23, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/02/23/trump-touts-recent-immigration-raids-calls-them-a-military-operation/?utm_term=.f99a5615801e.

  PART I: THE RISE OF MODERN WARFARE

  1. See generally Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armagedon: This Is Their Untold Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983); S. M. Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Jennifer S. Light, From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); and Bruce L. R. Smith, The RAND Corporation: Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).

  2. Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, trans. Daniel Lee (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964); and Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine, vol. 6, Princeton Studies in World Politics (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), 5.

  3. See Gérard Chaliand, Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 7 (arguing that Mao was the theorist who essentially invented revolutionary war: “The point is that guerrilla warfare is a military tactic aimed at harassing an adversary, whereas revolutionary war is a military means whereby to overthrow a political regime”); and Ann Marlowe, David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context, SSI Monograph, August 2010, p. 27, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1016. “Mao is crucial for the history of COIN theory,” she writes or, more simply, “Mao begot COIN as theory.”

  4. Richard Stevenson, “President Makes It Clear: Phrase Is ‘War on Terror,’” New York Times, August 4, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/politics/president-makes-it-clear-phrase-is-war-on-terror.html.

  1. COUNTERINSURGENCY IS POLITICAL

  1. Ganesh Sitaraman The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3, 165; and Chaliand, Guerrilla Strategies, 1.

  2. Peter Paret, “The French Army and La Guerre Révolutionnaire,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, February 1, 1959, 59–69; and Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, v.

  3. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 7; Marnia Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 19; Marlowe, David Galula, 1. For an in-depth analysis of the reception of Mao among French commanders at the time, see Grey Anderson, “Revolutionary Warfare after 1945: Prospects for an Intellectual History,” paper presented at the CHESS-ISS Conference, “War and Its Consequences,” at Yale University, February 13, 2015 (working paper in author’s possession, June 19, 2015).

  4. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 7.

  5. S. M. Chiu, “Chinese Communist Revolutionary Strategy, 1945–1949: Extracts from Volume IV of Mao Tse-tung’s Selected Works,” Center of International Studies, Research Monograph 13, December 15, 1961, p. 45.

  6. Ibid., 46.

  7. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 7.

  8. Peter Paret and John W. Shy, Guerrillas in the 1960’s, vol. 1, Princeton Studies in World Politics, rev. ed. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 39.

  9. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 10 and 11.

  10. Ibid., 12.

  11. Paret and Shy, Guerrillas in the 1960’s, 6–15, 17, and 24n9, referring to T. E. Lawrence, “The Evolution of a Revolt,” The Army Quarterly 41 (October 1920); and Peter Paret, “Internal War and Pacification: The Vendée, 1789–1796,” Research Monograph 12, Center for International Studies, Princeton University, 1961.

  12. Paret and Shy, Guerrillas in the 1960’s, 40–41.

  13. Ibid., 41 and 51.

  14. Ibid., 45 and 49.

  15. See Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Lieutenant en Algérie (Paris: Julliard, 1957); Antoine Argoud, “La guerre psychologique,” Revue de defense nationale (March/April 1948); and Jean Nemo, “Réflexions sur la guerre subversive,” December 30, 1958; cf. Grégor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory, trans. Neal Durando (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), 25–27. On Argoud, see Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, 88–93.

  16. Bernard F. Fall, “A Portrait of the ‘Centurion,’” in Trinquier, Modern Warfare, xiii and vii; Anderson, “Revolutionary Warfare after 1945.”

  17. Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 6, 4, 35; (emphasis added in final quoted excerpt).

  18. For biographical details on David Galula, see Marlowe, David Galula; Mathias, Galula in Algeria; and A. A. Cohen, Galula: The Life and Writings of the French Officer Who Defined the Art of Counterinsurgency (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012).

  19. David Galula, introduction in Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), x; Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 7; and Marlowe, David Galula, 27.

  20. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 56.

  21. US Department of the Army, Counterinsurgency, Field Manual 3-24 (Washington, DC: US Department of the Army: December 2006) (hereafter “FM”), 35. As his biographer Paula Broadwell writes in All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, General Petraeus produced the field manual in 2006 while he was at Fort Leavenworth between tours of duty in Iraq. His field manual would be dubbed “King David’s Bible.” Paula Broadwell, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 54 and 59. See, generally, Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).

  22. FM, 36.

  23. For General Petraeus’s twenty-four-point memorandum, which provided guidance to his field manual, see Broadwell, All In, 59; and David Galula, Pacification in Algeria 1956–1958 (1963; repr. Santa Monica: RAND, 2006), 246. See also Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 58.

  24. Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 69; FM, 51; see also FM, 35 (“It is usually not enough for counterinsurgents to get 51 percent of popular support; a solid majority is often essential. However, a passive populace may be all that is necessary for a well-supported insurgency to seize political power”); and David C. Gompert and John Gordon., War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency (Santa Monica: RAND, 2008), 76 (“The people will decide whether the state or the insurgents offer a better future, and to a large extent which of the two will be given the chance”).

  25. Quoted in Broadwell, All In, 59.

  26. FM, 41.

  27. FM, 39–40, citing Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 89 (emphasis added).

  28. FM, 53 (quoting Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 89) and 68; and FM, 150 (quoting from Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 171). In the University of Chicago Press edition from 2006, the acknowledgements come after the signature and short preface; in the online version, there is the table of contents between them.

  29. John A. Nagl, foreword to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), xix; and Sarah Sewell, introduction to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, xxiv. Petraeus’s field manual “incorporates insight from French counterinsurgency guru David Galula” (Mathias, Galula in Algeria, xiii).

  30. Petraeus’s development of this evaluati
on is contained in the foreword to the 2008 French translation of Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare. David Petraeus and John Nagl, foreword to Contre-insurrection: théorie et pratique, trans. Philippe de Montenon (Paris: Economica, 2008). For further analysis, see Mathias, Galula in Algeria, xiii; and A. A. Cohen, Galula, xviii–xviii. Many counterinsurgency practitioners and theorists today agree with General Petraeus’s assessment of the importance and influence of Galula, including General Stanley A. McChrystal, who commanded all US and NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010; the French general Ollivier, head of the strategic nerve-center of the French army (Centre de doctrine d’emploi des forces or CDEF); and the American counterinsurgency expert David H. Ucko. See Mathias, Galula in Algeria, xiii and 111n2; Bertrand Valeyre and Alexandre Guérin, “De Galula à Petraeus, l’héritage français dans la pensée américaine de la contre-insurrection,” Cahier de la recherché doctrinale (June 2009); and David H. Ucko, foreword to Galula in Algeria by Grégor Mathias, xi.

  31. One would think one was reading the intellectual historian Richard Wolin’s book The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s, tracing the influence of Mao’s thought on French intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. Perhaps we should add to that list General David Petraeus.

  32. FM, 7, 11–13, 13, 14, 11, 159, and 258.

  33. Mao Zedong letter, August 26, 1945, in Mao Tse Tung Hsuan Chi vol. 4 (Peking: Jen Min Chu Pan She, 1960), 1151–154, reproduced in S. M. Chiu, “Chinese Communist Revolutionary Strategy, 1945–1949: Extracts from Volume IV of Mao Tse-tung’s Selected Works,” Center for International Studies, Research Monograph 13, December 15, 1961, p. 10–11. See also Mao Zedong, “Questions of Tactics in the Present Anti-Japanese United Front,” Selected Works, vol. 3 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, Ltd, 1954), 193–203.

  34. Chiu, “Chinese Communist Revolutionary Strategy, 1945–1949,” 29 and 31.

  2. A JANUS-FACED PARADIGM

  1. Roger Trinquier, La guerre moderne (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1961); Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare; Fall, “A Portrait of the ‘Centurion,’” ix; and Machiavelli, The Prince, eds. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 59 (modified translation).

  2. Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 8–9.

  3. Ibid., 113 and 115.

  4. Ibid., 43, 2–22, and 23.

  5. Fall, “A Portrait of the ‘Centurion,’” xv.

  6. Général Paul Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux. Algérie 1955–1957 (Paris: Perrin, 2001); General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria 1955–1957 (New York: Enigma Books, 2004); and see also Chaliand, Guerrilla Strategies, 29 (emphasis added).

  7. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 13; and Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 26.

  8. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 128; and Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 155.

  9. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 19–20; and Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 34. The following block quote is at 128 (155–156 in original).

  10. Benjamin Stora, Algeria 1830–2000: A Short History, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 50. Marnia Lazreg, in her meticulously researched book Torture and the Twilight of Empire, offers perhaps the most detailed and haunting account of the full ethnography of torture in Algeria. See Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, 111–169. General Jacques Massu, The Real Battle of Algiers, quoted in Michael T. Kaufman, “The World: Film Studies; What Does the Pentagon See in ‘Battle of Algiers’?,” New York Times, September 7, 2003.

  11. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 128; and Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 155.

  12. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 124 and 126; and Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 151 and 153.

  13. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 126; and Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 153.

  14. Benjamin Stora, Algeria 1830–2000, 50; and see also George Armstrong Kelly, Lost Soldiers: The French Army and Empire in Crisis, 1947–1962 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 196–205. For further discussion of torture and summary executions, see Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, 53–55; and Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East.

  15. Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 129 and 130; Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux.

  16. “Colonel Roger Trinquier : la bataille d’Alger,” INA, June 12, 1970, http://www.ina.fr/video/CAF86015674, and on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLy_MjvaYhw. Special thanks to Raphaëlle Jean Burns for bringing this to my attention.

  17. The leading source to consult here would be Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace—Algeria 1954–62 (New York: New York Review books Classics, 2006). See also Kelly, Lost Soldiers, p. 196 and following.

  18. Henri Alleg, The Question, trans. John Calder (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 84.

  19. Jean-Paul Sartre, preface to The Question, by Henri Alleg, xliv.

  20. Ibid., xxviii.

  21. Geoff Demarest, “Let’s Take the French Experience in Algeria Out of US Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” Military Review (July/August 2010), 24n7, quoting Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 183.

  22. Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 118–119. On p. 118 of the text, it is noted that “Bakouch locked Amar in one of the ovens in the bakery and told him that if he did not talk, he would light a fire under the oven. Within ten minutes Amar was screaming to be let out, and he says he’s ready to talk now.” On p. 119, Galula writes that, after inspecting the oven, he finds the system “miraculous” and intends to use it; he requests that any persons using the oven should check with him first (not because he had an ethical concern—he explains that he required it so that he could remain in control).

  23. Galula, quoted in Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 62.

  24. Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 77 and 103.

  25. Demarest, “Let’s Take the French Experience,” 21, quoting Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 262 and 268; and Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 258–261. This includes an appendix in Galula’s text that contains a meditation on why Galula’s efforts had not been as successful as he had predicted, where he discusses his control over the population’s movements and his system for rewarding proof of complete loyalty and punishing evidence of disloyalty. Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 113.

  26. See Gompert and Gordon, War by Other Means, 90n8.

  27. Fall, “A Portrait of the ‘Centurion,’” xiii; Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 164; Aussaresses, Services Spéciaux, 196; and Marlowe, David Galula, 41 and 42. See also Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 99. Aussaresses, Galula, and the academic Bernard Fall lectured at Fort Bragg.

  28. Kaufman, “The World: Film Studies.”

  29. Marlowe, David Galula, 7–9 and 14–15; and Stephen T. Hosmer and Sibylle O. Crane, Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16–20, 1962 (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, November 1962), xx.

  30. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare. Galula wrote that book while a research associate at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University between 1962 and 1964. It was published by Frederick A. Praeger, which published over a dozen other monographs on counterinsurgency theory in the early 1960s. Praeger published the Princeton Studies in World Politics series for the Center of International Studies at Princeton University. Peter Paret was a research associate at the Princeton Center for International Studies starting in 1960, and published both Guerrillas in the 1960’s (with John W. Shy) and French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria in the series.Galula’s relationship with RAND continues to the present. In 2006, the RAND Corporation finally openly published Galula’s 1963 book, Pacification in Algeria, as well as a new edition of the 1962 symposium. See Hosmer and Crane, Counterinsurgency: A Symposium. RAND continues to highlight the work of Galula in its own continuing research on counterinsurgency, such as David Gompert and John Gordon’s 2008 comprehensive 519-
page RAND report, War by Other Means.

  31. See Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 103, discussing Galula’s influence in Vietnam, including on Operation PHOENIX. Marlowe reports that “Tennenbaum notes that one of the architects of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, Nelson Brickham, was ‘very taken’ by Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare and carted it all over Vietnam with him” (Marlowe, David Galula, 15). However, Marlowe sees less of an influence overall. See Marlowe, David Galula, 14.

  32. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 66–76.

  33. Paret and Shy, Guerrillas in the 1960’s, 47.

  34. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 73 and 74.

  35. FM, 252.

  36. Broadwell, All In, 204 and 205.

  37. Demarest, “Let’s Take the French Experience,” 19.

  38. US Department of the Army, Insurgencies and Countering Insurgency, Field Manual 3-24, MCWP 3-33.5 (Washington, DC: US Department of the Army: May 2014); and Anderson, “Revolutionary Warfare after 1945,” 22.

  PART II : A TRIUMPH IN FOREIGN POLICY

  1. Andy Müller-Maguhn et al., “Treasure Map: The NSA Breach of Telekom and Other German Firms,” Der Spiegel, September 14, 2014, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/snowden-documents-indicate-nsa-has-breached-deutsche-telekom-a-991503.html.

  2. FM, 41.

  3. As many commentators note, counterinsurgency theory is often divided into “enemy-centric” and “population-centric” approaches. See, for example, Sitaraman, The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution, 5. I argue that both are dimensions of counterinsurgency theory.

  4. FM, 41; and Sitaraman, The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution, 5 and 149.

  5. FM, 49.

  6. As the historian Edgar O’Ballance writes of the war in Algeria, “one can say briefly that from a military point of view the war in Algeria was lost by the insurgents, but that they won it by political and diplomatic means,” Edgar O’Ballance, The Algerian Insurrection, 1954–62 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1967), 220.

  7. FM, 37 and 39.

  8. Michael Hayden, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (New York: Penguin Books, 2016).