Page 198 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

700 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

The French Revolutionary War School grew out of a certain set of historical circum-
stances in the early 1960s. French Army officers like David Galula and Roger Trinquier de-
6
vised a theoretical and practical approach to dealing with communist revolutions in countries
just emerging out of colonial empires that had been broken up as a result of World War II.
These French Army officers had fought the Vietminh in Vietnam in the early 1950s and the
insurgency in Algeria in the later half of that same decade. Out of their experience came a
body of written work on the theory and practice of countering revolutionary communist in-
surgencies and rebellions. An essential principle from their experience that prescribed certain
tactical and operational methods was the need to protect and control the populations in order
to separate the insurgents who used the populations for concealment; hence the term “pop-
ulation-centric.” Other Army officers from different countries also contributed to this body
of thought (although not necessarily part of the French School) like the British officer Sir
Robert Thompson who practiced a similar approach to countering a communist insurgency
in Malaya in the 1950s. The American Army, as it began its heavy involvement in Vietnam
in the early 1960s was also influenced indirectly by the French School. Common to these
7
experiences by the French, British, and Americans was that a counterinsurgency campaign
against a communist revolutionary insurgency would be protracted over many years and
would require substantial involvement by a counterinsurgent force with a nation’s peoples.
this overall approach became known as protracted people’s war.
Since the American Army’s current Coin doctrine being applied in Iraq is population
centric, the guiding principle in this approach is that in any counterinsurgency the people
must be protected from the insurgents. In order to protect the people from insurgents, the
8
tactical method (derived from the French Revolutionary War School of the early 1960s) of
emplacing large numbers of American combat soldiers on the ground is usually necessary. It
is in this sense that I argue that the American Army’s new Coin doctrine is narrowly defined
and has become dogmatic because it demands a certain prescribed tactical and operational
method in the employment of American military combat power to deal with insurgencies. It
demands a method that relies heavily on a template devised by the French Revolutionary War
School’s approach to counterinsurgency from the early 1960s.
There are other histories and theories of counterinsurgency warfare available (although
the new American Coin doctrine chose not to rely on them). The most common alternative

6 The best analysis still to date on the French Revolutionary War School is Peter Paret, French Revolutionary
Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine (New York: Praeger
Publishers 1964); also see John Shy and Thomas W. Collier, “Revolutionary War,” in Peter Paret (ed) Ma-
kers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton University Press 1986). When I
make comparisons between the French Revolutionary War School to current American Coin doctrine and
thinkers it is mostly in regard to the tactics and operational methods toward Coin proposed by the French
School. I acknowledge the discrete political conditions surrounding the French Revolutionary War School
and do not offer comparisons to current American officers in that regard.
7 Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942-1976
(Washington, D.C., Center of Military History 2006); 149, 162, 492; Paret, Revolutionary Warfare, 5.
8 For an example of this kind of thinking and how it dominates within the American Army see Michael A.
Coss, “Operation Mountain Lion: CJTF-76 in Afghanistan, Spring 2006” Military Review (January-
February 2008), 23; and Patrick Donahue and Michael Fenzel, Combating a Modern Insurgency: Com-
bied Task Force Devil in Afghanistan, Military Review (March-April 2008), 25.