Follow Up to Counter Insurgency Warfare Redux/ This incorporates the recent shuffle between the military and the CIA and possible issues with this arrangement.
COIN Critique, Part 1 establishes that COIN has always been understaffed in Iraq and in Afghanistan and that in the absence of a local host government to support, COIN becomes a blueprint for establishing a police state, again without enough troops to really achieve this end.
So let's look at what is currently going in with respect to civilian control of the military. We have had a President of the USA who had been head of the CIA. Now, I have always felt squeamish that a former head of the KGB became the head of Russia, Vladimar Putin. I never used to feel the same about George Herbert Bush who was President of the USA after heading up the CIA. But seeing Robert Gates go from head of the CIA to SecDef, and then in rapid succession seeing Leon Panetta also go from being head of the CIA to being the SecDef and at the same time General Petraeus goes from being ISAF Theater Commander to heading the CIA, is enough to make me wonder what is going on here. Has a General ever before lost two wars and been so viewed as a hero and genius (if Iraq is a victory, I hope I never live to see a defeat).
In the attached AFJ article by Bernard Finel (Armed Forces Journal, Sept 2011, p25) there is mention of use of Information Operations (IO) by US military here in the USA. Now we have the master of the COIN doctrine, Gen. David Petraeus, which is heavily rooted in IO, heading up the CIA. Today's NYTimes details how the US influenced Al Jazerrah to edit stories to be favorable to the USA Iraqi war effort. The fourth estate, the news industry, is supposed to be a support for democracy, providing an informed public. As news is replaced by IO, aka propaganda, this weakens the fabric of our democracy. Further, Gil Meron in his book "How Democracies Lose Small Wars" details how information about covert operations eventually filters back to the USA and can result in loss of support for increasingly violent and brutal covert operation in foreign lands which ultimately results in modern powerful countries losing their small wars (France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, US in Vietnam). Propagandizing the news could prevent or delay the response to just what Mr. Meron is describing.
The continuous shuffle between CIA, Defense, the Presidency and military theater commanders, weakens the concept of civilian control of the military. Adding to this is the large number of military officers with degrees in communications and journalism versus the paucity of journalists with prior military experience; turns out that it is one more asymmetric battle with the military holding all the cards in dealing with the media.
Finally, the smudging of the boundaries between the military and the CIA, the use of former special forces to become CIA assassins working with SOF teams and the expansion of CIA capabilities to include the drone warfare UAVs, detracts from the CIA primary mission which is the gathering and analysis of data and information and turning this into a knowledge product which should include wisdom. The failure of anyone to see what was coming in the Arab nations this spring and summer may be the result of this distraction. The failure to incorporate Israeli wisdom in dealing with suicide bombers is further evidence of widespread CIA failings. The list could go on and on and on.