© RUSI JOURNAL DECEMBER 2009 VOL. 154 NO. 6 pp. 8–13 DOI: 10.1080/03071840903532833

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Since 2003, the UK has been heavily involved in two taxing and stressful stabilisation operations that have

involved large elements of counter-insurgency (COIN). Writing in previous issues of this journal, observers have differed over the extent to which the British Army has learned and adapted, especially in Helmand.� This article stands back from the debate over institutional change within the armed forces to explore the wider question of reform and adaptation for COIN by government as a whole.

In theory, the UK government should not have found it hard to adapt to the needs of the Iraq and Afghanistan COIN and stabilisation operations. In the 1990s, the UK was engaged in long-running stability operations in the Balkans and a widely

praised state-building operation in Sierra Leone. The UK, of course, has a long history of colonial and post-colonial COIN and ‘pacification’ operations. Yet, the slowness of the British system to adapt is now the stuff of frontline electoral politics. Conservative frontbenchers, for instance, have called for changes to the structure of government, for example the formation of a War Cabinet or National Security Council; the transfer of Department for International Development (DfID) funds to the military; or for a major increase in the army’s capabilities to train and mentor Afghan security forces.

The debate over reforming government to deliver more effectively in stabilisation and COIN will form an important part of any future national security or defence review. The aim of this article is to provide context for the debate. The current government has sought to tackle the UK’s unreadiness for these operations through ad hoc, incremental organisational changes. Some of these innovations have been valuable and the UK’s ability to deliver stabilisation in, for instance, Helmand in 2009, is better than at any time since our entry into Basra in 2003. However, the real question for all political parties is whether they wish to take stabilisation and COIN seriously enough to make the tough organisational and cultural changes across

government that would be required for success. The US government, under Bush and now Obama, has committed itself to making many of the required changes. Its dynamism stands in stark contrast to a UK system that has, largely, sought to muddle through in an incremental manner.

Framing the ProblemThis article makes the following argument. COIN,2 especially its modern, globalised manifestations, is a highly complex public policy challenge. The UK’s recent attempts to adapt government systems to achieve results, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, have faltered in ways familiar from many other experiences, including that of the US in Vietnam. While a great deal of debate has been expended on COIN strategy, given Britain’s role as a junior partner in a coalition, the most challenging issues for the UK are around delivery. Unfortunately, the literature on policy delivery reminds us just how difficult the public sector finds it to deliver policy outcomes in complex environments that cut across domains. If we look at the performance of the British government across a wide range of policy areas, we can see that what defence and security experts often perceive as sui generis failings in the ‘comprehensive approach’ are in fact common pathologies afflicting the public sector. Hence, if we are seeking

ADApTINg gOvERNmENT FOR STAbILISATION AND COUNTER-INSURgENCy OpERATIONSAndrew Rathmell

The demands of counter-insurgency have sparked much discussion about the need for army reform. But it is also the case that government, as a whole, must adapt to the present campaign. Britain has lagged behind the US in this regard, and it is not clear that sufficient political will exists in the UK for real change. However, British capacity is only ever the first step: ultimately, what matters for successful stabilisation is the capability and legitimacy of the host government.

COIN is exceedingly complex and untidy ... the riskiness, murkiness and nastiness of COIN help explain why, empirically, failure is as likely as success.

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Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, in Musa Qala, Helmand, July 2009, assessing the impact of UK development funding. Photo courtesy of DfID.

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to improve government performance in stabilisation, we need to look to the wider lessons from public sector reform. These lessons indicate that there are no quick fixes, but they do point to some approaches that we should consider. The bottom line is that adapting government to deal more effectively with COIN would require some quite significant cultural and organisational changes. Some of these changes mimic those being demanded of the public sector more generally but it is not clear whether we shall generate the required political will.3 In any case, the article concludes, building our own capacity is only a first step towards the ultimate goal in most COIN environments – effectively influencing the host government.

This topic is at once very easy and very difficult to address. It is easy to address because the problems and pathologies are readily identifiable. To highlight this point, this article has been structured around observations from a range of literature – COIN history, business management and public sector management analysis. These perspectives highlight the difficulties that we face in designing and managing delivery of effects in a complex, cross-cutting policy area like COIN. The good news is that few of the issues are new or unique to this policy area. The bad news is that our public sector faces inherent difficulties that may yet defeat our best intentions.

Behavioural Pathologies in COIN

COIN is exceedingly complex and untidy … The riskiness, murkiness and nastiness of COIN help explain why, empirically, failure is as likely as success … Whether better [government] COIN capabilities can fundamentally improve this picture is unclear. After all, insurgencies … are not only complex but also dynamic. … [I]nsurgencies enabled by globalization behave as ‘complex-dynamic systems.4

It is now commonly accepted by strategists that contemporary COIN is, in sociological jargon, a ‘wicked problem’.5 To deal with it requires an integrated, comprehensive approach across government, with multinational partners, and a host of other entities. It

can be dangerous nowadays to drop the phrase ‘comprehensive approach’ into polite company amongst military and civilian officials who have toiled in the trenches of Helmand, Basra or Whitehall. Reactions range from weary cynicism to bitter inter-departmental sniping. The optimists point to improvements, whether in civil-military co-ordination in Helmand, the congruent concepts in recent Ministry of Defence doctrine on stabilisation and DfID’s White Paper, the growing impact of joint capability building initiatives like Exercise Joint Venture, or more integrated strategic planning mechanisms in Whitehall. They are right to do so. A great deal of effort, energy and dedication has gone into ensuring that the UK delivers stabilisation and COIN more effectively.

However, most objective observers would agree that the whole remains far less than the sum of its parts and has not been adequate to the tasks set. While there have been many UK success stories from Iraq and Afghanistan, we have largely failed to deliver our stated objectives. This is worrying not only because we still have major commitments in Afghanistan, but also because we are likely to face a wide range of stabilisation challenges in the years ahead – anywhere from Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and a range of African states, to other North African or Middle Eastern countries.

The symptoms of our failures to adapt are the stuff of headlines. Each government department has its own dirty laundry. The armed forces have taken an age to adapt training and doctrine, let alone resolve inter-service rows over investment and equipment priorities. The Foreign Office has been unable to forward deploy sufficient numbers of linguistically competent and experienced personnel. DfID has been reluctant to adapt its programming or its personnel policies to meet the needs of ‘hot stabilisation’. The Stabilisation Unit spent too much energy in its early days justifying its very existence. As problematic has been the cross-government policy-making and management system. From Iraq in 2002-03 to Afghanistan in 2005-06, the policy-making process has often failed to fully consider all options, examine contingencies and effectively link grand

strategic ends, through reformed ways, to adequate means.

A cursory reading of history highlights how ‘normal’ such failures are. Ambassador Bob Komer, one-time head of America’s (relatively successful) experiment with an integrated COIN delivery vehicle, CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), asked with regard to the Vietnam War: 6

Why did the U.S. and [Vietnamese government] settle for such conventional, diffuse and fragmented management structures? … Institutional constraints … [included] bureaucratic inertia, agencies reluctant to violate the conventional dividing lines between their responsibilities, and hesitation to change the traditional relationship of civilian to military leadership.

Komer’s despairing question on why the US failed to improve over time also sounds familiar in the UK in 2009: 7

[I]f it is understandable why our initial Vietnam responses were ill-suited to the atypical problems we confronted, why have they changed so little over years of bitter experience? … Especially significant has been institutional inertia – the built-in reluctance of organizations to change preferred ways of functioning except slowly and incrementally. Another … factor has been the shocking lack of institutional memory, largely because of short tours for … personnel. Skewed incentive patterns also increased the pressures for conformity and tended to penalize adaptive response. And there was a notable dearth of systematic analysis of performance, again mainly because of the inherent reluctance of organizations to indulge in self-examination.

Applying Komer’s observations to recent UK experience is salutary.

Management StructuresWhitehall has experimented with various forms of central management, inter-departmental co-ordination and in-country management. On Afghanistan, we now have the National Security, International Relations and Development

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(NSID) cabinet committee process, supported by cross-Whitehall planning mechanisms and co-ordination mechanisms in Kabul and Helmand. While these processes have improved in recent years, they often have the feel of being ad hoc mechanisms dependent on personal relationships and goodwill.

Institutional ConstraintsThe power of individual departments has waxed and waned over the past decade, in part as a result of cabinet-level politics and personalities. However, the common behaviour is for the main national security departments to operate as sovereign powers and to co-ordinate only where necessary.

Institutional MemoryWith a small number of exceptions, the British system has done little to build institutional memory and to translate lessons back into education and training above tactical level. Short tours and limited investment in building a cross-departmental cadre of regional or subject-matter experts have been the norm.

Adaptive ResponsesThere have been plenty of these at the tactical level in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have often been of limited duration – not shared and not institutionalised.

Systematic Analysis of PerformanceThe mechanisms are theoretically in place for this. The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit assesses cross-government performance against Public Service Agreements; the National Audit Office (NAO), and Commons committees are meant to scrutinise performance. DfID and the Ministry of Defence have elaborate mechanisms in place for conducting evaluations and lesson-learning. However, neither the executive nor the legislature has been able to institutionalise a reliable, comprehensive and transparent mechanism for analysing performance.

Risks of Strategy and Challenges of DeliveryMuch of the discussion over the UK’s involvement in COIN and stabilisation

operations has centred on strategy. Was the light footprint approach at the outset of Iraq and Afghanistan correct? Did the post-war political settlements in both countries inevitably fuel insurgency amongst excluded groups? Were our approaches to elections, security sector reform or the structure of the international engagement correct?

Getting the strategy right is important. The UK is getting better at evidence-based strategy formulation and its instincts are often about right. However, there is a lot to improve in the strategy-making process. Whether on Iraq, Afghanistan or lesser conflicts, it is rare to see government producing truly integrated strategies that represent best practice in strategy-making – if we define this as being based on deep analysis of the conflict dynamics, supported by enduring local knowledge, translated into realistic plans, informed by well-founded theories of change, and enabled by integrated delivery plans that are effectively measured.

Furthermore, we need to keep in mind the warning of private sector strategy consultant Henry Mintzberg: 8

Strategies are to organizations what blinders are to horses: they keep them going in a straight line, but impede the use of peripheral vision … Setting oneself on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail straight into an iceberg. Sometimes it is better to move slowly, a little bit at a time, looking not too far ahead but very carefully, so that behaviour can be shifted on a moment’s notice.

Whilst the UK government acknowledges the importance of adaptive strategies and strategy processes, there is limited evidence that it has been truly adaptive. For instance, there are few cases where the UK does true contingency planning at the strategic level and the system often lacks realistic reporting that could inform changes of course.

In any case, even if we produce decent strategies and have adaptive strategy processes, we should be more concerned about delivery. This is in part since, in major coalition operations like Afghanistan, the UK will have a

limited role in setting overall strategy. As importantly, experience tells us that delivery is the hardest part of the public policy process. In their classic work on policy implementation, Wildavsky and Pressman noted that:9

Many policies based on apparently sound ideas have encountered difficulties in practical application. A policy’s value … must be measured not only in terms of its appeal but also in light of its implementability … The evils that afflicted [programme X] were of a prosaic and everyday character. Agreements had to be maintained after they were reached. Numerous approvals and clearances had to be obtained from a variety of participants.

In other words, even in domestic policy in which the government has much more control over the environment, delivering social change is very hard. And COIN is all about the immensely more testing task of bringing about social and political change in complex environments within fractured societies.

The Wider Government ContextTurning now to a wider examination of the capabilities of the UK’s central government, we can see that some of the problems faced in relation to COIN are symptomatic of common failings.

In its 2009 comparative review of Whitehall, the Institute for Government concluded that ‘the UK is among the world’s highest performing governments … Whitehall is best at leading strategy development … but the civil service is weaker at the delivery and management skills it needs for the future.’10 The review elaborated in terms familiar to observers of the UK’s performance on stabilisation:��

Many of the 2005-08 round of Public Service Agreement targets were not met. PSAs that were shared between departments were less frequently achieved ... This may reflect difficulties in working across departmental boundaries or the complexity of the issues being addressed … The new shared PSAs will require the civil service to develop its ability to collaborate across barriers

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… this approach to delivery remains counter-cultural.

Two particular problems were highlighted across central government:12

Civil service culture appears to be relatively conservative, which may limit the potential for innovation. Within Whitehall, the UK operates a relatively decentralised model of government, with departments enjoying high levels of autonomy … This may contribute to silo working within central government, making collaboration and cross-departmental innovation more difficult.

A conservative culture that inhibits innovation, difficulty working across departmental silos and failures to deliver on complex, cross-cutting policy areas; COIN and stabilisation are by no means unique in posing challenges with which our public sector seems to be struggling.

Reforming GovernmentCOIN is difficult. Governments, including the British, are bad at the required strategising and worse at delivery. This is symptomatic of wider failings across the public sector when trying to deliver on cross-cutting, complex issues. Two alternative responses spring to mind. Perhaps we accept dysfunction and friction and muddle through. We incrementally adapt just enough to demonstrate progress, but do not take radical steps. Alternatively, we reach for the option beloved of politicians and bureaucrats and redraw Whitehall structures – perhaps create an NSC, put the Foreign Office in charge, rebrigade parts of DfID under the MoD, or expand and empower the Stabilisation Unit.

Some or all of these organisational solutions may have a place, but we need to first understand how change happens in complex systems like the UK public sector and how to guide the overall system in the right direction, rather than seek to bypass inefficiencies or to add additional layers of command and control. As well as the rich literature on how organisational change does or does not happen in advanced nation bureaucracies and militaries, we can usefully look at ourselves from the outside. For many

decades, we have sought to reform government systems, including the security sector, in developing countries. We can apply some of the findings from this field back on ourselves. Evans makes the point in general:13

Our theories of how fundamental institutional change occurs are underdeveloped. The interaction of ideas, presumed behavioural repertoires, cultural assumptions, and organizational forms are complicated enough, but a theory of institutional change must also address political power and conflict. Hence, it is not surprising that an institutional approach may produce perverse results when processed through a policy paradigm committed to perceiving development as a ‘technical’ problem.

Piotukh and Wilson apply this reasoning to the security sector in particular:14

Many current approaches to SSR adopt, implicitly, a rationalist approach which assumes that projects can be designed and implemented with a reasonable degree of certainty based on a high-level of advance knowledge. We believe this significantly under-estimates the complexity of SSR and over-estimates the degree to which reform can be planned in advance. Fortunately, alternative perspectives on institutional change are emerging which are better placed to deal with the complexity inherent in SSR. These perspectives include the evolutionary approach and the organisational learning approach … [T]he evolutionary approach … is focused on how behaviour becomes dominant through a process of variation, selection, retention and struggle; can be applied at different levels of analysis.

In short, we are learning that improving the security sectors of developing nations is not a simple question of applying technical fixes, training staff or creating new offices. We need to apply this knowledge to ourselves if we are to build government institutions that are accountable and responsive learning organisations able to operate effectively in an era of globalised insurgency.

This article will not lay out in detail what such a change programme would entail but some of the elements would include the following. First: acceptance that this is not fundamentally about changing wiring diagrams, creating new units, or employing more staff (though some of these steps are needed). It is about changing the behaviour patterns and cultures of the organisations we are using to do COIN. These organisations need to have the joint organisational structures, funding, personnel policies, risk appetites and multidisciplinary skills and experience that enable them to succeed in COIN. This will be a long-term change programme. A vital tool in fostering this change process will be a significant, ongoing investment in cross-government education, joint training and the building of a culture of joint service through cross-postings and the creation of cross-departmental career tracks.

Second: political agreement on how much effort to expend on this topic, and how much political capital to expend on overcoming departmental and service vested interests. Obvious steps that would help build the improved capabilities that the UK requires include: robust and effective incentive systems tied to budgets and personal performance; a stronger strategic centre – whether housed in the Cabinet Office or Foreign Office; building a culture of true jointery across departments and institutions through cross-postings and education; and empowered external scrutiny, including more robust Parliamentary committees and a braver National Audit Office.

Third: recognition that twenty-first century COIN is only partly about government. COIN can nowadays only be delivered through a complex chain that includes NGOs, the private sector, media organisations and a wide range of international entities. COIN practitioners need to be informed by the parallel domestic policy debate on how to restructure public-private partnerships so as to improve service delivery.

Fourth: running throughout the process of reform must be the mantra of evolutionary change. Lessons need to be learnt and internalised rapidly, junior personnel need the freedom to experiment and we need to allow

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experimentation with a variety of approaches so as to select the best ones.

Organising for InfluenceThis article has pointed to the challenges we face in seeking to adapt and reform our own, fairly effective, systems of government. If the UK wishes to raise its game in Afghanistan and prepare for future operations against globalised insurgencies, whether far afield or closer to home, it will have to embrace an ambitious and long-term programme of institutional change and reform.

However, even if we summon the will to make the effort required, we need to end on a further note of realism. The fundamental success factor in the expeditionary stabilisation operations in which we will be engaged concerns building the effectiveness and legitimacy of the host government. We will always be a limited and often indirect influence on the population and the insurgents, even where we are the dominant

military player. Yet, we will fail if the host government is ineffective, incompetent or thoroughly discredited.

The history of development teaches us just how difficult it is to build effective states and how limited the role that international assistance can play is. In the best case, progress takes a very long time. Yet, our COIN missions expend vast efforts trying to accelerate these processes – for example, supporting elections, economic development, governance and security sector reform. The measure of our success in transforming ourselves will be our ability to influence indigenous government structures. This goes beyond normal diplomatic engagement, normal programmes of public administration reform or security force training. It requires a well-thought out, integrated and adaptive influence campaign designed to shape the host government’s behaviour and incentive structures at multiple levels. If we can construct such an influence campaign within Whitehall to help fix our own governance systems,

perhaps we shall have a better chance of doing so abroad. If not, we may come to echo Komer’s comments on the US experience in Vietnam: ‘perhaps the most important single reason why the U.S. achieved so little for so long … was that it could not sufficiently revamp, or adequately substitute for, a [local]… leadership, administration, and armed forces inadequate to the task’. 15 There is no need to labour the parallels with Iraq in 2006-07 or Afghanistan in 2009. ■

Dr Andrew Rathmell is a director of Libra Advisory Group, leading work on stabilisation operations and security sector reform. In previous roles, he directed strategy projects for the UK Foreign Office, led an advisory team to the Iraqi security forces, and served as a director of plans for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Prior to this, he ran RAND Europe’s Defence and Security programme, lectured at King’s College London and was a research fellow at Exeter University.

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NOTES

1 Theo Farrell and Stuart Gordon, ‘COIN Machine: The British Military in Afghanistan’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 154, No. 3, June 2009); David Betz and Anthony Cormack, ‘Hot War, Cold Comfort: A Less Optimistic Take on the British Military in Afghanistan’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 154, No. 4, August 2009).

2 In this paper, COIN and stabilisation are used interchangeably, but the paper accepts the Ministry of Defence doctrinal position that COIN is a subset of stabilisation. The observations here apply almost as much to stabilisation operations in which COIN is a smaller element as to those where it is front and centre, as in Helmand today.

3 Symbolised by talk of a ‘post-bureaucratic age’.

4 David Gompert and John Gordon IV et al, War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), pp. 17-19.

5 A ‘wicked’ problem was defined by Horst W J Rittel and Melvin M Webber, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences (Vol. 4, 1973), pp. 155-69, to describe problems which for example are unique and have no definite answer, only good or bad outcomes, and to which there is no immediate solution and no ultimate test of a solution.

6 Robert W Komer, Bureaucracy Does its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.–GVN Performance in Vietnam, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1972), p. x.

7 Ibid., p. viii.

8 Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel, Strategy Bites Back (London: Prentice Hall, 2005), p. 30.

9 Jeffery L Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation, third edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), pp. xv-xx.

10 Simon Parker, Akash Paun and Jonathan McClory, The State of the Service: A Review of Whitehall’s Performance and Prospects for Improvement (London: Institute for Government, July 2009).

�� Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Peter Evans, ‘Development as Institutional Change: The Pitfalls of Monocropping and the Potentials of Deliberation’, Studies in Comparative International Development (Vol. 38, No. 4, Winter 2004), pp. 30-52.

14 Volha Piotukh and Peter Wilson, Security Sector Evolution: Understanding and Influencing How Security Institutions Change (London: Libra Advisory Group, July 2009), p. 4.

15 Komer, op. cit., p. vi.

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