The Arabs have a long tradition of raiding, or ghazi, going back to their nomadic Bedouin days. The word entered the French language as razzia, when Field Marshal Thomas Bugeaud launched punitive expeditions in Algeria:
In Europe we make war against interests as well as armies. When we have beaten the armies we seize the centers of population, of trade, of industry, the custom-houses, the archives, and these interests are soon forced to capitulate.There is only one interest to seize in Africa — the agricultural interest; it is more difficult to seize there than elsewhere, for there are no villages nor farms. I have reflected long upon it, rising up and lying down; and I have not been able to discover any other way of subduing the country than seizing upon this interest. As near as possible to the desert there must be established columns powerful enough to leave the indispensably necessary guard at the quarters, at the stores and the hospital. I have made a calculation that a column of 7000 men, well led, would be enough to beat the largest possible collection of Arabs; for in tumultuous gatherings, and the Arabs are nothing but tumultuous gatherings, numbers have nothing to do with the business; they are a multitude of very brave individuals without power of union. Beyond a certain limit the number is nothing, provided the soldiers are thoroughly convinced of this truth, that their morale may not be affected by the sight of the multitude.
I should wish the columns to be made up to 10,000 men; so as always to have 7000 disposable, and 2000 or 3000 non-effective or as indispensable guardians of the depot. I would establish one column at Tlemcen, one at Tlascara, one at Medeah. I would give the commanders orders not to pursue the Arabs, as it is useless; but to prevent them from sowing, reaping their harvests, or pasturing their cattle.
[Murmurs from the other deputies]
These murmurs seem to say that the Chamber finds this method too barbarous. Gentlemen, war is not made philanthropically; he who wills the end wills the means.
In fact, the Arabs cannot live without Algeria. In the desert there is no corn and but little pasture; only enough for sheep. The dates and wool of the desert are exchanged for the corn of Algeria. The Arabs can fly from your columns into the desert; but they cannot remain there, they must capitulate.
In An Alternative to COIN, Bernard Finel argues that the US should switch to a strategy of punitive expeditions, because that’s what we’re good at. In fact, Joseph Fouché notes, there are many examples of the use of this tactic in American history:
There are many examples of the use of this tactic in American history. It’s little acknowledged these days but American warfare has derived much of its historical effectiveness from making war on women, children, and property. The original tactic probably originated in the English experience in fighting the highly mobile Irish beyond the Pale. It was then applied in the first wars between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy in Virginia. Lord De La Warr, a veteran of the suppression of the Irish in the Nine Years’ War, “employed ‘Irish tactics’ against the Indians: troops raided villages, burned houses, torched cornfields, and stole provisions; these tactics, identical to those practiced by the Powhatan themselves, proved effective”. New England was only saved from being pushed into the sea by a successful razzias into Indian territory during King Phillip’s War. The Civil War provided several notable examples of razzia: the Vicksburg Campaign by Grant can be viewed as a razzia and, directly inspired by the Vicksburg Campaign, Sherman’s March to the Sea and Sheridan’s scouring of the Shenandoah Valley. After the Civil War, Sheridan applied the same tactics to the Plains Indians, launching flying columns in the late winter to catch the tribes in their camps before the melting of the snow restored their mobility. Custer’s force was a lead column who ran into what turned out to be a “tumultuous gathering” that was a bit too large for the coup de main Custer had successfully used against other Indian gatherings.So Finel’s proposal has some positive antecedents as well as some positive points in its own right. It favors the heavy conventional maneuver force of the True Warriors of the Fulda Gap over the culturally aware touchy feely manpower intensive force the COINdinistas favor. It favors firepower over manpower based on the calculus that the other side will run out of men before we run out of high explosive. It favors the short attention span of the American viewing audience. It favors the Army’s most important mission (force protection) because casualties would probably be light (at least at first). It favors a technological and engineering focused mindset over a humanistic mindset.
That being said, I doubt the tactic that Finel proposes would be politically feasible in the United States any time soon. For a tactic of “repetitive raiding” to be successful, you would have to be able to repeat an invasion on the scale of the combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in spring 2003 again and again as needed. Given that every American military intervention in my lifetime has been sold to a generally unenthusiastic American public as the rhetorical equivalent of World War II, demanding an equal level of emotional investment, I doubt the routinization of military intervention would go over well. Nomadic hordes of the steppes could easily justify annual raiding. The ideological and cultural framework that would supporting annual raiding seasons by the United States doesn’t exist.