The Canadian Army Journal

Canadian draft placed a significant emphasis on attacking the insurgents’ will through
pre-emption, dislocation and disruption. 26 The manual refers to seizing opportunities in
a COIN environment through such means as pro-active intelligence and surveillance
which could cue quick reaction forces or special operating forces. Pre-emption would
have the effect of surprising and destabilizing insurgents while also denying them the
opportunity to act effectively. 27 Dislocation is aimed at removing popular support for the
insurgents and preventing them from bringing their strength to bear. The manual
suggests this can be accomplished through deterrence, vital point security, and
information operations efforts that sway locals’ support towards the host-nation
government. 28 Attacking the insurgents’ critical assets and impeding their mobility and
re-supply are the main suggested methods for achieving disruption in a COIN
campaign. 29 The use of pre-emption, dislocation, and disruption to attack an enemy’s
physical and moral cohesion are hardly new concepts and would seem familiar to
soldiers in modern western armies.
In other words, the Canadian approach draws from previous manoeuvrist doctrine
and makes use of many of the same principles and methods. Much within the Canadian
COIN doctrine is very similar to that in previous Army manuals such as Land Force
Tactical Doctrine that states “…the defeat of an enemy need not always mean physical
destruction.” 30 This statement is echoed closely in the draft of Counter-insurgency:
Even at the tactical level a manoeuvrist approach to a COIN operation will
seek to shatter enemy moral and physical cohesion, rather than pursue his
wholesale destruction. 31
Evidently, the Canadian Army decided to evolve and adapt its standing doctrine to
meet the needs of COIN operations rather than going back to the drawing board and
drafting an entirely new and unrelated set of principles and fundamentals. This again
raises the fundamental question of this essay: is manoeuvre warfare applicable to COIN
operations or is the Canadian Army merely trying to shoehorn old ideas into a new
paradigm? Alternately, is the US approach, with its doctrinal and terminological distance
from extant theories, more realistic?
To answer this question it is necessary to analyze COIN through a manoeuvrist lens
and see if the basic tenets of the latter are valid in the context of the former. As stated
above, the central theme of manoeuvre warfare is the attack on the enemy’s critical
vulnerability, his centre of gravity, rather than on his mass or strength. For this key
aspect of manoeuvre warfare to be applicable in COIN operations it would be necessary
for the insurgents to possess an identifiable and assailable centre of gravity. Common
sense tells us that all opponents have critical vulnerabilities, and history show us that
they can be attacked. For instance, an insurgency’s leadership, supply base or lines of
communication may represent its centre of gravity and past successful COIN operations
have attempted to attack these rather than destroy the main insurgent fighting forces.
The aforementioned example of the Morice Line in Algeria is but one case of a COIN
force attacking an opponent’s critical vulnerability (his lines of communication) vice
confronting his strength.
Equally, contemporary manoeuvre warfare theory espouses pre-emption,
dislocation and disruption as the methods by which an enemy can be defeated without
reliance solely on destruction. As discussed earlier, the first of those methods (preemption),
deals with seizing fleeting opportunities, upsetting the enemy’s timetables, and
thereby inducing panic or even paralysis. As we have seen above, there are examples
of pre-emption in past and even current COIN campaigns. Kilcullen’s 28th Article
(“Whatever else you do, keep the initiative”) is an exhortation to seize opportunities and
force the enemy to become more reactive and his plans less relevant. While easily said,
Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008
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