Foreign Internal Defense - Effective FID and Partnership

Effective FID and Partnership

FID exists only within a context of host nation (HN) internal defense and development (IDAD), where it can be a force multiplier for regional commanders concerned with counterinsurgency. Insurgencies today are more likely to be transnational than in the past.

Political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies; each side aims to get the people to accept its governance or authority as legitimate. Insurgents use all available tools—political (including diplomatic), informational (including appeals to religious, ethnic, or ideological beliefs), military, and economic—to overthrow the existing authority. This authority may be an established government or an interim governing body. Counterinsurgents, in turn, use all instruments of national power to sustain the established or emerging government and reduce the likelihood of another crisis emerging.

It has been a basic axiom that successful FID programs are real partnerships. According to Cordesman, a set of rules for establishing such partnerships include:

1. Real security dialogue at the bilateral and regional level means listening and last personal relationships.
2. Security cooperation should focus on security and stability, not political or social reform. Such efforts should recognize the legitimacy of different values and be the subject of a separate dialogue.
3. Build trust by clearly seeking friend or ally’s security.
4. Focus on building local self-defense and deterrence capabilities, not presence or dependence.
5. Help friends and allies build forces in their own way; do not “mirror image.”
6. Recognize the reality that other nations define threats and allies differently from the US.
7. Arms sales must clearly benefit the buyer, not just the seller.
8. Ensure sustainability, capability to operate own forces in own way.
9. Responsive, time sensitive aid, deployment, sales, and transfers.

Especially when the HN government, the insurgency, and the FID force come from different cultures, careful thought needs to be given both to the way the parties perceive the rules, and the ways the communicate their agreement to one another. Steven Metz, of the US Army Strategic Studies Institute, observed:

After the Second World War, the United States initially framed insurgency in Cold War terms, the most successful insurgencies were ones which became more and more "state like," controlling ever larger swaths of territory and expanding their military capability to the point that they could undertake larger operations. They developed organizational specialization and complexity with separate leaders, combatants, political cadre, auxiliaries, and a mass base. U.S. thinking tended to gravitate to the Maoist insurgent strategy of "people's war" which held that the rebels sought the internal formality and differentiation of a state. Insurgency, in other words, began as an asymmetric conflict but became less so as it progressed. The American notion of counterinsurgency rejected the brutal "mailed fist" approach (e.g., Trinquier's Modern War) used throughout history in favor of methods more amenable to a democracy.Derived from British, French, and American experience in "small wars," this stressed simultaneous actions to neutralize or destroy insurgent armed formations, separate the insurgents from "the people," and undertake political-economic reform. The American approach was to support a partner government, strengthening it and encouraging it to reform: foreign internal defense......U.S. involvement began at a low level, escalated until the partner state could stand on its own and had institutionalized political and economic reform, then receded once the insurgents were defeated and the government controlled its territory.

Metz warns that the paradigm may have changed. "Insurgency matters today because it is linked to the phenomenon of transnational terrorism. Insurgents have long used terrorism in the operational sense, deterring those who supported the government and creating an environment of violence and insecurity to erode public trust in the regime. But now terrorism plays a strategic role as well. Insurgents can use terrorism as a form of long-range power projection against outsiders who support the government they are fighting. This could deter or even end outside assistance. It is easy to imagine, for instance, that the already fragile backing for American involvement in Iraq would erode even further if the Iraqi insurgents launched attacks in the United States. Even more important, an insurgent movement able to seize control of a state could support transnational terrorists. The idea is that insurgents have demonstrated an affinity for violence and extremism which would flavor their policies if they came to power."

He rejects the idea that transnational terrorism is uniquely Islamic. "It is less the chance of an insurgent victory which creates a friendly environment for transnational terrorism than persistent internal conflict shattering control and restraint in a state. During an insurgency, both the insurgents and the government focus on each other, necessarily leaving parts of the country with minimal security and control. Transnational terrorists exploit this. And protracted insurgency creates a general disregard for law and order. Organized crime and corruption blossom. Much of the population loses its natural aversion to violence. Thus a society brutalized and wounded by a protracted insurgency is more likely to spawn a variety of evils, spewing violent individuals into the world long after the conflict ends."