Technology, Risk Adversion, and Counterinsurgency

In “COIN Perspectives From On Point: Lessons Learned in Iraq (PDF),” Sergeant Michael Hanson, USMC, writes about technology, the notion of safety, and their capacity to undermine effective counterinsurgency praxis:

Our Marines are overloaded. This weight limits their speed, mobility, range, stamina, agility and all around fighting capability. They can’t go out far and they can’t stay out long with all of this gear. It is simply too much. Combat patrols are typically four hours, and even that short amount of time is exhausting. Our Marines are being consistently outrun and outmaneuvered by an enemy with an AK, an extra magazine and a pair of running shoes.

The ideal of “all the best equipment for our soldiers” is responsible for this. The American people think they are helping their soldiers out by demanding they get as much protective equipment as possible. American civilians do not like seeing young Americans maimed and killed in foreign lands, rightly so. They see it on television, exploited by the news media and they demand “all the best equipment for our soldiers”. And to satisfy Americans at home, the troops get weighed down with more and more gear. The more gear troops wear the “safer” they are, or so the thought goes. But to that Soldier or Marine on patrol staggering along under the weight of all of this unnecessary gear it doesn’t seem to be in his best interests. No matter how new or expensive it is. All that matters to him is how much it weighs.

The connection between technology and safety can be seen across American military discourse, both within the military and among civilians.  What is often ignored is that this connection is the a product of a cultural rather than technological shift.  In the wake of the Vietnam War, American political and military leadership became caught up in what Christine Paretti called “the politics of casualty aversion.”   However, casualties were but one facet of this.  Weary of another disastrous military defeat and attendant political fallouts, military interventions after Vietnam had to be constructed in such a way that eliminated most—if not all—risk.  This contributed to the military’s need for informational dominance as well as the increased reliance on technological proxies rather than human actors on the battlefield.  Over time, the phenomenon came to permeate the military and intelligence communities.  Much in the same way “Vietnam Syndrome” affected the military, the Iran-Contra scandal triggered a growing risk aversion within the Intelligence Community.  As a result, human intelligence was on the decline in favor of sophisticated signals based intelligence systems.

This same shift makes it difficult for military and civilian leaders to adopt changes such as those Hanson recommends. They look advanced armor, organizational structure, and armored war machines not because of operational requirements but rather cultural anxieties.  Here, the strategic solutions need to affect cultural change rather than a simple adoption of counterinsurgency theory and doctrine.