Reddit mentions of The Petraeus Doctrine: The Field Manual on Counterinsurgency Operations

Hearts and minds comes from the counterinsurgency manual that Mattis co-wrote with Petraeus.

"In 2006, General David Petraeus, Marine Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, and a team at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center wrote a new field manual on counterinsurgency, published in 2006 as U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24.

> Please explain the Petraeus-Mattis COIN doctrine

Specifically, it's this book, the new Counterinsurgency Manual that emerged in the wake of Iraqi security almost completely breaking down in 2006.

Now I, I mere Reddit shitposter, am hardly a defense expert, but essentially, it's the idea that American forces should, first and foremost, provide security for civilian populations. You can't rely on domestic forces to do it, and you can't expect civilian aide -- though this is, overall, crucial -- to have its affect unless there is some sort of order. As such, initially at least, American troops essentially have to police the countryside; especially in Iraq, we completely failed to do this, disengaging almost entirely outside of Baghdad in an effort to avoid making the Iraqis "dependent" on us, for the first few years of the war.

> Is it the doctrine currently being applied in Afghanistan?

It was during the 2010 surge. It had somewhat more mixed results there, but Petraeus did say from the beginning that Afghanistan -- awful terrain, ridiculously low literacy rates, perpetual civil war by tribal factions -- was a different animal than Iraq, and, much like Iraq, Obama insisted on a hard withdrawal date that basically mandated US forces turn positions over to the Taliban, with an advance warning for the enemy to occupy them.

(We can get into Afghanistan later, but personally I think we've got a reasonably solid core to begin holding down territory, we just need to give the Afghan government a somewhat bigger boost than they've got now. We've got 14K total personnel there, including support personnel, and I'd increase that to 25K combat troops with no defined withdrawal date, planning for a permanent, but much-reduced, presence once the Taliban is either defeated or a suitable peace agreement -- which can only be reached from a position of strength, as we have seen time and time again in the recent past -- is signed).

As for currently... we only have 14,000 total personnel, combat or otherwise, in Afghanistan, and they're pretty much just there to protect Kabul. The Afghans are trying to do it themselves, but they're very, very, very overstretched.

> Is it embodied in the new National Security Strategy?

Oh hell no.

If we engage in large-scale counter-insurgency, with thousands of American troops on the ground, we'll assuredly apply this doctrine, but Trump has no intention of doing this.

> Is it so deeply embedded in the DoD that they felt secure in closing the Army's Irregular Warfare Center in 2014?

Precisely the reason why I think this was a Very Stupid Decision, much like all of the Obama administration's other Defense cuts. If we submit to the Barbell Strategy and completely shift towards confrontations with great powers (which, really, are more likely these days to occur through proxies or through interventions in third parties, like Syria, that require counter-insurgencies), we'll screw ourselves over the next time we have to do this. Max boot put it better than I could (if foreign Affairs is giving you a paywall, just use incognito mode, it usually works unless you've read a lot of their articles).

You're not wrong. In 2006, Generals Petraeus and Mattis authored a field manual on counterinsurgency. In the beginning, they explain how insurgencies can succeed and become a political force. The whole rest of the field manual is about what you need to do if you want to stop them. So now you have their playbook.