New wine, new bottles, or both? Social science contributions to thinking about and reorganizing for irregular warfare

Abstract

The U.S. military is designed to take on a similarly constructed foreign military located across some line of demarcation. The goal of such conventional warfare is to incapacitate or annihilate the enemy military, whereupon victory is achieved – a task for which the U.S. military has no peer on the current world scene or the foreseeable future. However, the U.S.'s adversaries since the end of the Cold War have not been conventional forces, as evidenced most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps recently have become volcanoes of change in order to adapt their operational styles to this reality. In the past, departures from the conventional mode in similar circumstances have been temporary. Currently, there is considerable discussion in the U.S. defense establishment about how persistent these types of nonconventional threats are likely to be in the future and whether it is necessary to change the configuration of the U.S. military accordingly. A centerpiece of this discussion is a new Counterinsurgency (COIN) Field Manual 3-24 addressing issues related to the postures the military and support establishments may take. This paper discusses some events prior to the writing of the new COIN Manual, comments on issues raised by the Manual and its doctrine, and offers some social science implications for thinking about and implementing the doctrine.

Citation

Scott, W.J., Mastroianni, G.R. and McCone, D.R. (2009), "New wine, new bottles, or both? Social science contributions to thinking about and reorganizing for irregular warfare", Caforio, G. (Ed.) Advances in Military Sociology: Essays in Honor of Charles C. Moskos (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 12 Part 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 305-327. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1572-8323(2009)000012A023