Foreign Internal Defense - Definition

Definition

Formally, FID is defined as "participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency." It is the main area for United States counter-insurgency doctrine, although other nations, such as France and the United Kingdom have carried out FID missions. The FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, defines counterinsurgency as:

Insurgency and its tactics are as old as warfare itself. Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict. Stated another way, an insurgency is an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control. Counterinsurgency is military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency. These definitions are a good starting point, but they do not properly highlight a key paradox: though insurgency and COIN are two sides of a phenomenon that has been called revolutionary war or internal war, they are distinctly different types of operations. In addition, insurgency and COIN are included within a broad category of conflict known as irregular warfare.

In many respects, it is the mirror image of the US doctrine for guerrilla warfare, which in US Special Operations is called unconventional warfare:

Military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes guerrilla warfare and other direct offensive, low visibility, covert, or clandestine operations, as well as the indirect activities of subversion, sabotage, intelligence gathering, and escape and evasion" When American advisors were sent to Laos and South Vietnam in the early sixties, the major problem was not to create guerrilla units, but to fight existing Laotian and Vietnamese guerrilla forces. It seemed logical that soldiers trained to be guerrillas would have a deep understanding of how to fight guerrillas, so Special Forces was given that mission. The White Star mission in Laos was initially covert, and used Special Forces and other personnel under Central Intelligence Agency control. Whether the mission is called counterguerilla, counterinsurgency, or foreign internal defense, it involves assisting a friendly government -- the "foreign" in FID -- to defend against guerrillas acting inside its borders. FID can also involve training a foreign government to deal with a future internal guerrilla threat. Note well the use of "external source" above. Foreign internal defense may also involve defense against infiltrators, or even conventional military forces, crossing national borders. FID, however, is focused primarily on situations when the major conflicts will take place inside the national borders. Unconventional warfare has historically been used in one of two ways:

• To support or shape the environment for the larger conventional campaign, such as WWII Resistance operations conducted before the Normandy invasion
• unilateral effort, generally conducted covertly, includes Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, and again in Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001.