The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Introduction
Learning Counterinsurgency
America’s search for a counterinsurgency formula that will defeat insurgent
foes and produce political stability will continue to stumble if not
guided by sound understanding of the role its own strategic culture plays
in the “lessons learned” process. The merits of a particular counterinsurgency
practice and its historically successful track record are insufficient to
inspire effective implementation. To be adopted and consistently applied,
best practices must gain traction within the constructs of national- and
service- level cultures. If the best of counterinsurgency lessons learned pose
too great a challenge to cherished aspects of national- and service- level
cultures, they will be resisted in implementation and may disappear altogether.
Nations and the service institutions within their strategic communities
are not dispassionate and unencumbered actors. Rather, the humans
within these enterprises are wedded to modes of belief and behavior that
shape the lessons they are willing to consider and determine which are
adopted into accepted practice. Investigating the phenomenon of “strategic
culture” forces us to reexamine our assumptions about rational learning
and come to terms with the identities, norms, values, and perceptions
that shape our preparation for future warfare.
This is not a comfortable notion. Far more comfortable are traditional
assumptions that imply clear cause and effect for military learning. Typical
of this school of thought is Chris Twomey’s assertion that disadvantageous
tactics and strategies “will have great and direct costs in blood and treasure”
and that therefore any operational approach or policy that has been
“selected for predominantly cultural reasons” will be condemned by the
clear- cut outcome of the conflict. 1 As attractive as this cost- benefit paradigm
may be, its formula presumes a clarity in battle that is often inconsistent
with reality. Given the complexity of warfare strategy and the friction it
encounters on the ground, the feedback loop on any particular maneuver
is far from “clear- cut.” 2 Strategists have a wide repertoire of battlespace
contingencies from which to choose when assigning blame for setbacks or
defeats. When cultural predispositions are deeply embedded, institutions
that generate or execute policy are perfectly capable of ignoring evidence
that contradicts their preset beliefs about best practices or seems to indict