Sunday, March 29, 2015

Paper - Russia, COIN, and Lessons (Not) Learned

A paper recently published (Dec 2014) entitled "Russian Organizational Learning in the Context of Afghanistan and Chechnya Counterinsurgencies" provides us with an examination of the Soviet Unions approach to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (violently offensive mindset that alienated the populace they needed to succeed). The paper compares this approach in Afghanistan to the Russian counterinsurgency approach in Chechnya (essentially the same). The 47 page long paper seeks to understand why the lessons learned (or perhaps not learned) in the Afghan COIN environment were not implemented in the later counterinsurgency situation found in Chechnya. In addition, the author notes that the United States did not learn its counterinsurgency lessons in Vietnam and when presented with the counterinsurgent struggle in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. had to relearn those lessons. The author of this paper, MAJ Anthony M. Roh, wrote the paper as a student in the School of Advanced Military Studies at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The paper can be read online or downloaded at the link below on the Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL).

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=763327

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