Coin Modeling

In the summer of 2003, the United States Army was ill prepared to wage an effective counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq. The lack of institutional readiness can be seen in many areas, but one of the most glaring was its utter lack of doctrine concerning planning counter-insurgency operations and campaigns. Despite having built one of the most effective conventional warfare tactical training systems in the world, the Army had little focus on counter-insurgency training or doctrine. This monograph argues that the UEX planner must broaden the MDMP in order to make it an effective COIN planning process. The MDMP was designed as a planning process for conventional operations. It is, therefore, focused on planning conventional operations leading to the defeat of the enemy in battle. Successful COIN operations do not necessarily lead to a decisive battle, but successfully isolate the insurgent from his sources of power. Therefore, an effective COIN planning process must be comprehensive enough to address the military and non-military conditions that sustain the insurgency. This requires the planners to understand the critical aspects of the overall society and its key participants while developing logical lines of operations to achieve the desired endstate. This monograph recommends a modification to the MDMP in order to make it compatible with the realities of counter-insurgency warfare. The term coined here for the new planning technique is COIN Modeling.