Good post from Michael Cohen about people’s increased understandings of the limitations of counterinsurgency, keying off a talk from Dave Kilcullen. Apparently, Kilcullen gave a talk in New York about COIN and Afghanistan, and where he once might have said, “COIN is the least bad choice in Afghanistan so we have to find some modified version of it to implement,” now he’s come to think a stability-operations approach is necessary (though I’d be interested to see where the substantive areas of difference are — Mike says fewer resources for the south & east).

The only thing I’d add is that these calibrations from counterinsurgents about the wisdom of expanding COIN missions are differences of degree. I remember when people were giving Andrew Exum hell for saying that counterinsurgency experts don’t want to expand COIN fights. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was how that would look during an advancing move into COIN in Afghanistan. But it’s still basically true. It’s one thing to advocate COIN to mitigate a deteriorating war, after the commanding general in 2008 begins to move it into a COIN direction. That may or may not be wise and appropriate. But it’s quite another to find other wars that the U.S. isn’t already involved in and say, “Ah, time for a counterinsurgency.” I suppose I’ve been too focused on the second example during this debate and insufficiently focused on the first.

For more on what to keep and what to jettison in counterinsurgency and its place in defense debates, David Ucko has a must-read.