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Bad News For The Establishment: Counterinsurgenices Are Unwinnable

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By Wendy Milling

Counterinsurgency wars over the past century of modern warfare have been extensively inventoried, studied, analyzed, evaluated, and judged. The data are in. Counterinsurgencies are virtually unwinnable. Regardless of the identity of the faction, nation, weaponry, asymmetricality, resources, or moral validity involved, the laws of nature consistently and overwhelmingly favor insurgencies.

The exceptions are barely worth mentioning. In one case, the insurgents lacked a worldview and a coherent strategic vision with which to recruit new members. It lost when it abandoned guerilla tactics and forced a conventional showdown. Another insurgency consisted of illegitimate imported Communist trash. Another used terror tactics in a part of the world (the Anglosphere) where the population rejects them. In two of three, the counterinsurgents used some combination of concentration camps, brutal martial crackdowns, and scorched-earth policies. Even then, the wars dragged on for years.

Cheerleaders for counterinsurgency theory are only able to build a case by confusing tactical victories with strategic victories. Usually, counterinsurgents win every battle they fight. They are by definition militarily unmatched. They go on to lose the war. Victory is defined by the accomplishment of strategic objectives, not tactical ones, and only one side’s strategic objectives are accomplished at the conclusion of the war. The other side is the loser, even if that loser is a military superpower.

(We might wish it were otherwise because our military frequently finds itself in counterinsurgency wars, but let that be a lesson to our military and civilian leaders that they never should have gotten involved in such situations in the first place. They should be dumping counterinsurgency doctrine, returning to conventional warfare doctrine, and developing realistic new paradigms to address genuine threats to Americans. The days of limitless international do-gooding at the American taxpayer’s expense and at the cost of servicemembers’ lives are over.)

The implications of this conclusion for the political realm in the United States today are obvious. The GOP establishment is trying to rid itself of a growing Tea Party faction in Congress, and the establishment has the numerical majority. Its members control the party platform, the meetings, the delegations, the committee assignments, and the official funding apparatus. They have established ties to various wealthy groups, both public and private, and can raise monumental sums of money for themselves.

They control the message in most of the right-wing media. Their pro-establishment advisors own or dominate most of the top outlets. Their propaganda frequently emanates from the pages and airwaves of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and top publications and political blogs. They can easily deny the big microphones to opposing voices. And what they broadcast is the message that they are the practical, reasonable ones, and the insurgents are an irrational, radical menace destined to lose the war.

Like all counterinsurgents, they win almost every battle they fight. They have managed to get one unconditional continuing resolution passed after another. They routinely rout more conservative budgets with superior legislative force and assert their own status quo budgets complete with New Deal-preserving line items. They have purged members from committees and elevated the apparatchiks and collaborators.

They have even overridden the insurgency on the important battleground of taxation. They are presently gearing up a massive war machine designed to defeat insurgent challengers in the next primary season.

By all the obvious measures, they appear to be entrenched, and if being entrenched means winning, then they are winning.

And yet, as in all counterinsurgencies, the qualitative observations of this long war tell a different story.

As any casual reader of Machiavelli’s The Prince could point out, having to count on an alliance with the Democrats to secure enough votes for their legislative victories is an early indication of the breakdown of their power. Absolute dependence on an ally is a sign of vulnerability. That same reader would also note that a prince who launches a moderate, nonruinous attack on an opponent has just endangered his regime.

The number of legislators who openly rebel at any given measure seems to be steadily increasing over time. And it has not gone unnoticed that while the establishment lost seats in November, Tea Party conservatism actually gained seats on net – a fact that remains true whether the right-wing media establishment chooses to report on it or not. It is worth recalling the concept of critical mass. Once a movement gains enough adherents within a population, it is only a matter of time before its growth becomes self-sustaining. In military terminology, the insurgents appear to have irreversible momentum.

Some might defensively object that an ideological war is different from physical warfare, so the laws that affect the one do not carry over into the other. The opposite is true. A physical counterinsurgency relies on the outcome of a parallel ideological war, because the fundamental law of that kind of warfare is that the winner cannot be the side which does not have the support of the population. And judging from objective evidence, the population supports the insurgents. The GOP lacks legitimacy, and it lacks legitimacy because of its leaders’ decision to act against the principles they were sent to Washington by the population to live by.

Who is advising the establishment leaders? The same people who advised them to get involved in the literal counterinsurgency wars. This is not a cultural accident. A philosophy that leads one to accept that foreigners can be compelled to accept an alien ideology if only the right conditions are put in place, in violation of the laws of reality, will also lead one to accept that Americans can be compelled to tolerate an alien ideology if only they are outmaneuvered and outlasted, in violation of the laws of power.

What, then, should Republican leaders do? They are faced with a fundamental alternative, one from which they cannot eventually escape making a choice. They can double down on their position, in which case they will have to dramatically escalate their tactics. They would have to implement the political equivalent of concentration camps, scorched earth, and martial law against the very base that elected them to Congress. In an age of absurdly restrictive rules of engagement motivated by concern for the welfare of the enemy, it is doubtful that anyone believes that the man who is prone to crying in public and his fellow occupiers have the stomach for such measures.

And if they do…

Their other choice is to recognize that the philosophy which animates the Tea Party is inseparable from the American people, and that fighting it is pointless. They should accept the reality that the future will eventually go to the factions that agree on free markets and limited government.

They should ditch their big government advisors. They should stop allying with Democrats. They should stop pressuring resistant Republicans to act against their commitment to fiscal restraint and their self-interest. They should reject Democrat ideas as any sort of point for discussion; those ideas are all irredeemably rotten, malicious, and toxic. House Republican leaders should reconcile and work with the burgeoning Tea Party caucus to develop a good strategy, better ideas, and better bills.

They should then pass their own bills in support of that strategy. That includes rationing funds to the government in accordance with reasonable goals and limits on government spending. Let the Senate and the President take it or leave it. If they choose the latter, let them explain to the world why they refuse to take the money and allow the government to be “shut down” just because they cannot get more even more money. Let the moral argument hold sway.

As they say in the military, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the real easy way. If Republican leaders do not take this advice and continue to let Democrats have their way in expanding the wealth redistribution and regulatory state, they may tell themselves they are just being realistic.

What they will actually be doing is painting targets on themselves for the voters in their home districts to identify and eliminate them. By going on record in support of Democrat bills, they will be acting to remove themselves from the political gene pool while their more staunch colleagues remain in it. They can change the timing, but not the nature, of the ultimate outcome. Nature will run its course.

Wendy Milling is a contributor toRealClearMarkets.com.