The Lessons of the Philippines

It's not on the public radar, but the U.S. has been waging another counter-insurgency while the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were raging. It's occurring in the Philippines and Wired's Nathan Hodge takes note of the recent death of two American servicemen there, while adding:

Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines has only around 600 personnel, and they are limited to training missions — like the ordnance-disposal exercise pictured here — and civil affairs projects. It’s the traditional foreign internal defense approach: The military of the Philippines has to take the initiative, with behind-the-scenes support from U.S. advisors.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is used to taking the lead — albeit in very different circumstances. But as the experience in the Philippines suggests, there are ways to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign without a large foreign force.

I'm not an expert on the Philippines, but it seems to me the major reason why the U.S. can take such a low key approach is that the country has a solid institutional infrastructure already in place. The U.S. is not so much building capacity as improving it. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. was forced (or is forcing itself) to start from scratch.

(AP Photos)