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SteveMetz
10-08-2010, 05:25 PM
As some of you may know, I have long viewed insurgency as a strategy, not a particular conflict or type of movement. I think this is important because it avoids debates I am never able to understand like "Was the Iraq conflict an insurgency or a civil war?" and "Is Hamas an insurgency?"

Anyhow, I'm trying to fine-tune and refine the definition from this perspective for a book chapter I'm working on. Here's what I've got. I realize it's a really long and complicated definition, but it's the best I can do right now. Thoughts?

Insurgency is a strategy used by a weak organization against a power structure and the organizations which dominate it. The weak organization may seek specific political objectives or a total transformation of the power structure. The strategy uses or threatens the use of violence. The weak organization seeks to postpone resolution of the conflict while it adjusts the power balance in its favor. An organization using insurgency assumes that postponing resolution will lead to a shift in the power balance in its favor. This normally means that the weak organization assumes it has superior will and coherence. A strategy of insurgency involves diminishing the importance of realms of conflict or battlespaces where the weak organization is inferior (e.g. the conventional military one) and emphasizing ones where its inferiority is less (e.g. the psychological). It involves building alliances or partnerships to augment the strength of the weak organization, directly augmenting the strength of the weak organization, and diminishing the strength of the state or other dominant organization. A strategy of insurgency is most often used by a non-state organization against a state but may also be used by a non-state organization against a transnational power structure (e.g. al Qaeda), or by a nation (e.g. Iran).

PowerpointSamurai
10-08-2010, 06:26 PM
I agree that insurgency is a strategy, not necessarily a description of a conflict. However, I don't think it's a strategy limited to weak organizations. Major powers have used insurgencies, especially through supporting proxies, to achieve strategic goals they could not achieve directly. This was one of the founding principles of Special Forces.

Perhaps you could argue that the system or environment the dominant power is trying to foster "dominates them" by imposing expectations on behavior (or to avoid perceptions of hypocrisy), leading them to take indirect action or work to undermine a rival in a way that avoids wider conflict.

Also, I don't know if this is a general characteristic of ALL insurgencies, but every one I can think of focuses on undermining the legitimacy of its interlocutor while trying to promote its own (or its objective).

Bill Moore
10-08-2010, 06:54 PM
I think you get away from the focus on insurgency as a strategy when part of the definition defines the insurgent as a weak organization. I think this is generally true, but I also think an opponent may decide that using insurgency as a strategy may just be the preferred strategy. I need to think about this one and cite potential examples, or case histories. However, if a Nation State provides support to an insurgency, they could very well be the stronger military opponent in a developing nation.

We know all war is an extension of politics, but not all war is political warfare as I define it. Regular/conventional warfare is focused on defeating the enemy’s military forces to achieve the stated political ends, while irregular warfare uses violence, psychological operations, subversion, sabotage, political agitation, etc. to directly target the political body in charge. The original Special Forces qualification course was called the PYSWAR course, which in my view indicates our founders had a clearer understanding of the character of this war than we do today. PSYWAR is not dumbed down to leaflet drops, but every action taken is intended to send a psychological message be it an attack, night letter, assassination, economic sabotage, etc.

Final off the cuff comment, does insurgency ever transition into another form of conflict? For example, if the insurgents mass forces and conduct large scale attacks on the opponent’s military is it still an insurgency?

Over the years I have become disillusioned with definitions, while at the same time realizing the need for them. We all intuitively know that every situation is different, but yet our initial response generally involves attempts to blindly apply a doctrinal solution based on how the problem is “defined” versus what the problem really is. Case in point is the narco-terrorism/insurgency in Mexico. I think many see it as a real threat to regional stability, but if Mexico calls it an insurgency that generally means they’ll employ COIN doctrine to counter it (I have no idea how Mexico views the problem, I am simply using this as example). I doubt that a COIN strategy will work. It is a unique problem requiring an unique strategy. How we define insurgency will influence how we approach it, so this is critically important.

I have been a fan of your work for years now, and looking forward to reading your new book. Bill

SteveMetz
10-08-2010, 07:09 PM
Interesting points, but myself don't think that supporting insurgents makes the U.S. an insurgent. The idea of undercutting the legitimacy of the existing power structure fits into my definition--since I stress trying to alter the power balance, that is just one of many methods of trying to weaken the existing power. And since I define it as a strategy, not a form of conflict, of course organizations can shift from insurgency to another strategy just as a nation can shift from one strategy to another. That's the reason that I've never found much use in trying to decide whether an organization is or is not an insurgency.

slapout9
10-08-2010, 07:18 PM
[I]Insurgency is a strategy used by a organization against a power structure and the organizations which dominate it.

I would leave at this. It is a Strategy and two I like Bill Moore's comment about "weak" which is why I would take it out. It is a dangerous assumption to think that an Insurgency Strategy and or an Organization is somehow weak just because they use it IMO.

SteveMetz
10-08-2010, 08:24 PM
I really think that is vital because a strategy of insurgency is so difficult, takes so long, and has such a low probability of success that an organization is unlikely to use it if it has other options. And I really don't think that supporting an insurgency means that a state or other organization has become an insurgent or adopted a strategy of insurgency. I supported my wife when she gave birth, but that didn't make me a mother.

Bill Moore
10-08-2010, 08:27 PM
I really think that is vital because a strategy of insurgency is so difficult, takes so long, and has such a low probability of success that an organization is unlikely to use it if it has other options.

Perhaps because the insurgent only wants to achieve a limited objective, and has no desire to transform the entire power structure? Just a thought.


The weak organization may seek specific political objectives or a total transformation of the power structure.

slapout9
10-08-2010, 08:41 PM
I really think that is vital because a strategy of insurgency is so difficult, takes so long, and has such a low probability of success that an organization is unlikely to use it if it has other options. And I really don't think that supporting an insurgency means that a state or other organization has become an insurgent or adopted a strategy of insurgency. I supported my wife when she gave birth, but that didn't make me a mother.

I use the SBW theory of Insurgency instead of the usual ones. Instead of thinking about it as a death by a thousand cuts, it is more like success through a thousand bites. It is subtle, it is hidden, it is based on Infiltration and Subversion, and every now and then some Targeted violence. But every step they take makes them stronger, which is why they can take a long time.

Bob's World
10-08-2010, 11:34 PM
I think the definition of insurgency is fairly simple, it is defining the things that give rise to insurgency where it begins to get complicated. But here are some positions that I am working on:

But rather than a strategy employed by some group, I would define insurgency more accurately as a Condition. Success lies in treating the condition, not countering the strategy or defeating the organizations that rise to exploit it.

Insurgency:An illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design.

Conditions of Insurgency: A state of mind. The conditions of insurgency arguably exist to some degree within every populace. In most cases such conditions are benign in that they are not strong enough to support the rise of a significant insurgent organization, even if manipulated by outside actors conducting UW or by ideological themes designed for this audience. As perceptions of poor governance increase so does the degree of the conditions of insurgency. Left unchecked these conditions are apt to be exploited by internal and/or external parties for purposes of their own that may or may not have the welfare of the affected populace in mind. Conditions of insurgency are caused by the government and assessed through the perspective of the populace.

Poor Governance: Actions or inactions on the part of governance that contribute to create conditions of insurgency within one or more significant segments of the society they govern. Poor Governance is assessed through the perceptions of each significant segment of society separately as well as collectively. Objective metrics of effectiveness of governance are immaterial to assessments of goodness.

Good Governance: Governance, that may be either effective or ineffective, that through the nature of its performance prevents the growth of conditions of insurgency. Subjective, and measured as assessed by each significant segment of a populace, perceptions of good governance will typically vary across a state. Where good governance exists insurgency is unlikely. Where good governance is lacking the conditions of insurgency will grow, creating vulnerability for exploitation by internal or external actors pursuing agendas that may, or may not represent the best interests of the populace. The most critical perceptions that contribute to good governance appear to be those of Legitimacy, Justice, Respect and Hope.

Perception of Legitimacy: The most critical causal perception contributing to the conditions of insurgency in a society. Legitimate is not synonymous with Official. It is a recognition and acceptance on the part of any significant segment of a society of the rights and duties of governance to govern. This is independent of any official or legal status of governance or any recognition of this governance by others. Historically insurgent movements will ultimately fail when this condition exists, and prevail when it is absent. The absence of legitimacy is the cornerstone of despotism.

Perception of Justice: A critical causal perception that contributes to the conditions of insurgency in a society as shaped by good or poor performance of governance. Justice is not synonymous Rule of Law. Perceptions of justice are based in how the populace feels about the rule of law as it is applied to them. Enforcing the Rule of Law upon a populace that perceives the law as unjust is tyranny and will make the conditions of insurgency worse.

Perception of Respect: A critical causal perception that contributes to the conditions of insurgency in a society as shaped by good or poor performance of governance. Measured through the eyes of the populace, the widely help perception within any significant segment of a society that they are not excluded from full participation in governance and opportunity as a matter of status. Assessments by those outside the affected populace, to include by the government, are immaterial.

Perception of Hope: A critical causal perception that contributes to the conditions of insurgency in a society as shaped by good or poor performance of governance. Hope resides in the absolute confidence within any significant segment of a society that they have available to them trusted, certain and legal means to change their governance. Hope is the great off-ramp for insurgency, as the presence of hope keeps politics within the established and accepted legal parameters.

(these are all a work in progress and will evolve, but will be in a paper I put out soon that looks at many of the long-standing cliche's that dominate thinking on COIN)

slapout9
10-08-2010, 11:57 PM
Insurgency is a Method....used by a Motivated individual(s).....to exploit any available Opportunity.

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 12:13 AM
I need to drink whiskey with Slap someday...:)

Dayuhan
10-09-2010, 01:18 AM
Looking at the RCJ definition:


Insurgency:An illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design.

and the Steve Metz definition:


Insurgency is a strategy used by a weak organization against a power structure and the organizations which dominate it.

One difference is immediately obvious. RCJ's definition involves a challenge to "a governing body", SM's merely requires a challenge to "a power structure and the organizations which dominate it". Under the former definition a "global insurgency" is not possible, as there is no global governing body. There is a global power structure with dominant organizations, so under the SM definition a global insurgency is possible.

In the RCJ elucidation of the causes of insurgency, a significant word appears in significant places:


Poor Governance:Poor Governance is assessed through the perceptions of each significant segment of society...

[Governance, that may be either effective or ineffective, that through the nature of its performance prevents the growth of conditions of insurgency. Subjective, and measured as assessed by each significant segment of a populace

What makes a segment of society "significant"? Is it the size of that segment, or its capacity to make noise, or its capacity for violence? The didtinction is, well, significant, because the modern media and the tactics of modern terrorism allow groups of relatively insignificant size to produce significant noise and significant violence. We cannot assume that whoever shouts loudest or blows things up speaks for a populace or a significant segment thereof.

That distinction answers the question of why so many groups don't adopt the non-violent mass movement techniques that have proven effective elsewhere. They can't. They simply don't have enough popular support to make these tactics effective. That's why they resort to terrorist tactics in the first place.


Where good governance exists insurgency is unlikely.

Good governance may protect against insurgency, but it does not peotect against political violence perpetrated by small groups with passionately held beliefs that are not shared by the bulk of the populace. If I believe that the US needs to be an Aryan state with no homosexuals, or if I believe that Indonesia should be placed under Shariah law, and if I'm willing to kill to advance these causes, my definition of good governance is so fundamentally incompatible with that of the nation at large that any government seen as "good" by the majority is only going to provoke me to violence.

It can be a mistake to mistake broad-based insurgency for the actions of a violent lunatic fringe. It can also be a mistake to mistake the actions of a violent lunatic fringe for a broad based insurgency. We can't assume that we're seeing one or the other, we have to assess each case according to its own unique conditions.

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 02:47 AM
Some illegal challenges are not insurgency. I personally do not thing that Mexico is facing insurgency. I think the Mexican populace, as an example, does not think it is subject to poor governance, so much as subject to criminal competition with governance.

We tend to lump problems by the wrong criteria. A lot of insurgencies around the globe that all work to some degree with one UW actor does not, for example, equate to a "global insurgency."

I try to find distinctions that matter. Many may exist, but not all matter. Mike does a good job of pointing out that under the law some facts are evidence, and some are not. Of those that are some are relevant and some are not. Of those that are relevant, some are material and some are not. I don't think we do a good job of focusing on what is truly important when we deal with insurgencies, and instead, quite reasonably, focus on what is urgent.

Wyvern
10-09-2010, 03:04 AM
Steve,

I agree with RCJ in that an insurgency is difficult to define when including the conditions that give rise to an insurgency. Providing predictions of behaviour such as "seeks to postpone resolution of the conflict while it adjusts the power balance in its favor" renders the definition problematic.

These organisational characteristics that are built into your definition are antithetical to your outlook of insurgency as merely a "strategy".

Likewise your assumption of the insurgent as a weak organisation is too restrictive (I agree with Powerpoint Samurai and Bill on this point); it may be that, in a particular conflict/theatre, that actor may employ an insurgency strategy in conditions or relative weakness (not absolute) or through choice.

Joske
10-09-2010, 10:54 AM
I wouldnt call insurgency a strategy, i would rather call as bob said it a

"An illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design."

Also when you look at the translations of the word insurgency, in for example dutch (opstand : uprising ) or in french ( insurger : insurrection ), this way i think it is better to say that "insurgency" tells us something about the origins of the conflict rather then the way it is being fought.

On the other hand your definition would be a pretty good definition of the strategical part of guerilla warfare.

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 12:29 PM
As way of background, I really began drilling into this topic in depth while I was at SOCPAC '04-'08. During that time I supported at least 5 different JSOTF-P Commanders, and 3 SOCPAC CGs, to include all of LTG Fridovich's tenure their. We we're immersed every day in the challenges of addressing potential threats to US interests from irregular threats in a tremendously large, diverse region where every state is extremely protective of their sovereignty (as they should be, most had to fight long bloody insurgencies to throw of colonial oppression to earn that sovereignty); where few feel they have a "terrorist" threat; where trust between states; is often low; and where the U.S. has a bit of a mixed reputation, largely positive, but taking some serious chin shots as we break glass all over the globe in the name of GWOT. Meanwhile, China is waging a very persistent and subtle influence building campaign. I feel most trust the US more than they trust China, but the prefer the Chinese approach gifts without strings attached (ok, they know and fear those strings, but they are long ones and many not be pulled for generations. The Chinese are patient like that). I also knocked out the two-year War
College program in my "spare" time, with my thesis on COG analysis for the GWOT.

COIN that focused on the insurgent didn't make sense as the results were so temporary. We worked a lot with the Philippines, and that country has been in a virtual constant state of insurgency since the first Spanish ship made landfall. There are many COIN "victories" in the Philippines; yet there is always insurgency. This is victory? It made no sense. So the insurgent clearly wasn't the problem. Same for ideology. Commies in the north, Muslims in the South; commies in the 50's and 60's regionally; Islamist today; etc. It was also very apparent that "defeating ideology" was not an effective approach either.
Many insurgent populaces live in poor conditions, but also many peaceful satisfied populaces. Many insurgents come from wealthy, educated backgrounds as well. Effective governance appeared to me as another bit of superficial analysis.

One by one I drilled into these concepts, and also concepts like "sanctuary."

The one commonality is the existence of some governing body that was perceived as the problem. Often several different segments of a populace would be supportive of very different insurgencies for very different reasons, and employ very different ideologies. But it always radiated out from the government.

So the key is the government, and this "badness" that radiates out from certain governments and not others. So I started looking at governments and how insurgent populaces felt about their governments. This led to a narrowing of factors. While there are many factors, the four I seized upon as the main causal factors seemed to me to be the most important. Most likely to create conditions of insurgency if they exist; and most likely to move a populace back toward "peace" if addressed.

It's a work in progress, that is nested with wise insights that have been drawn from insurgency and COIN over the years, but not constrained by positions that often are very popular, but just don't stand up to hard review. I throw my ideas out here because I want them to receive hard review. I know some won't stand up, and that's fine, because if one falls from hard review a new, better one will emerge from that same review.

John T. Fishel
10-09-2010, 01:14 PM
Steve, while I tend to disagree with your formulation of insuregency as a strategy, that is, of course, your right. If it is useful for you to see it in those terms, have at it. As always, I am intrigued to see what you come up with.

Bob, I would modify your definition to read Regime (in the technical IR sense of a set of rules governing a system) instead of governing body. this would meet the objection that insurgency cannot be a global phenomenon without doing damage to the notion that it is usually a national one.

Regarding your causal varables: While I have no problem with them they ar all intellectually linked to legitimacy. In our quantitative analysis back in the 80s all of these ideas clustered under the Factor that we later labelled Legitimacy. In this sense, then, all insurgencies are conflicts over legitimacy.

Cheers

JohnT

slapout9
10-09-2010, 02:01 PM
Steve, while I tend to disagree with your formulation of insuregency as a strategy, that is, of course, your right. If it is useful for you to see it in those terms, have at it. As always, I am intrigued to see what you come up with.


JohnT


Hi John,
1- If Insurgency is not a Strategy, what do you think it is?
2-I very much agree that it is always about legitamacy.

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 03:25 PM
"We have nothing to fear from Afghanistan, and the best thing to do is to leave it as much as possible to itself. It may not be very flattering to our 'amour propre', but I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us the less they will dislike us. Should Russia in future years attempt to conquer Afghanistan, or invade India through it, we should have a better chance of attaching the Afghans to our interest if we avoid all interference with them in the meantime."

General Roberts, 1880. Switch out "Russia" (for now) with AQ or any other threat and it is as true today as it was then.

I mention this because as John points out, it really comes down to Legitimacy. I break it out on purpose to the components that I see as most important, as "legitimacy" is word that is too often used to mean "offical." GIROA is very official, but they are horribly illegitimate, and it is the crux of the problem there.

Now, Karzai is a sharp guy, and he could fix it if he wanted to, but he would have far less power and far less income if he did so; besides with the Coalition protecting him and sending him Billions, why should he change???

This is the tough love conversation we need to have. Get serious about fixing legitimacy with our help, or be forced to fix it on your own without our funding and security support. We enable bad behavior, we enable poor governance, we enable the causation of the insurgency through our mis-guided efforts to counter the insurgency. Ironic.

slapout9
10-09-2010, 03:32 PM
I mention this because as John points out, it really comes down to Legitimacy. I break it out on purpose to the components that I see as most important, as "legitimacy" is word that is too often used to mean "offical." GIROA is very official, but they are horribly illegitimate, and it is the crux of the problem there.

Now, Karzai is a sharp guy, and he could fix it if he wanted to, but he would have far less power and far less income if he did so; besides with the Coalition protecting him and sending him Billions, why should he change???



Yes, we seem to obsess on the Methods being used, instead of focusing the motives.

John T. Fishel
10-09-2010, 04:17 PM
Slap--

I accept (like and generally agree with) Bob's definition of insurgency as a condition with the substitution of Regime (as it is defined in the IR field -see above) for governing body.

As I noted, I am interested to see where Steve takes his argument given that he is choosing to discuss insurgency as a strategy. The problem he faces is that most folk in the field define strategy in ways similar to Bob. Which brings us to the strange social science notion of operational definition. Here a word means what the author says it means, however, that definition needs to be written so as to exclude all other possible meanings/interpretations.

Is that clearer or muddier?:confused:

Cheers

JohnT

slapout9
10-09-2010, 04:43 PM
Insurgency:An illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design.



John, so basically you believe in this definition? with your substitution/addition of regime?

jmm99
10-09-2010, 06:24 PM
from BW
.... from a piece I am working on on "Perspectives on Insurgency":

Traditional Perspective: “Insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN) are complex subsets of warfare.”

Updated: Insurgency is an illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design. COIN is the action of that governing body working to prevent or resolve the civil emergency.

Addressing those concepts here rather than there seems more appropriate.

As to the "Traditional Perspective", I'd suggest that it could be presented as:

“Insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN) are complex subsets of politfare and/or warfare.”

"Politfare" being the "conduct of" or "journey into" political action (see etymology of "fare"). Note this is not a rigorous definition, but merely a classification, such as "Homo S and Homo N are complex subsets of Hominidae."

The "and/or" is inserted to recognize that multiple variants can occur even when only two parties are involved: each party could use political action only, military action only, or a mix of both.

--------------------------------
As to the updated definition:


Updated: Insurgency is an illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design. COIN is the action of that governing body working to prevent or resolve the civil emergency.

If the political challenge is non-violent, why is it "illegal" and who makes it so ?

Similar thought, if the political challenge is non-violent, why should it be or develop into a "civil emergency" (whatever that is) ?

That definition might apply in an authoritarian country with a very rigid one-party line (all deviations from which, violent and non-violent, are "illegal" and all deviants are "insurgents" - "we shoot counter-revolutionaries.") and with an enhanced state security service which always operates in emergency mode.

------------------------
In Geneva-speak re: armed conflicts, we have to have at least two opposing "Powers" to the armed conflict; and, by analogy, at least two opposing "Powers" to political conflicts.

While Geneva-speak talks of "Powers", it does not really define the term - we know it when we see it. ;)

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 06:25 PM
I left out the critical word of "internal" as well. If the challenger is from outside it is UW.

So, how about:

Insurgency: An illegal internal political challenge to a regime that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design.

the keys being that:

A. The challenging party comes from a populace governed by the regime being challenged,
B. The challenge is illegal,
C. The purpose is political,
D. The tactics can be violent or non-violent.

So, this excludes many situations that often get lumped under "Insurgency"
A. Mexican drug violence. This is profit and power driven, not political. These organizations to not represent a poorly governed populace. (This means that much more kinetic approaches would likely be appropriate against these guys, but the causation of illegal drug demand will ensure that they are always replaced just as causation of poor governance will ensure that insurgent organizations are always replaced).
B. Global insurgency. Only if there is a global government, and there is not. Many distinct insurgencies and global AQ UW, yes.
C. Indian wars. They were separate populaces with their own governance.
D. Rwanda? I need to look into this one, I think it may be closer to what is going on in Mexico currently than to insurgency.

Similarly, many things currently called "terrorism" are actually insurgency.
A. Saudi Arabia. The government there never lets these movements gain much traction, but the causation is the poor governance of the regime, and the goals are to illegally challenge it. For PR purposes they don't call it insurgency.


It would be a worthwhile project to sort and stack these problem sets and look at what wer are really dealing with, and then tailor responses accordingly.

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 06:31 PM
Mike: great question on the "Who makes it illegal"

The regime does. This goes to the "Hope" component of my Good Governance definition. By denying the populace legal, certain, and trusted means to affect change, the government leaves a populace faced with poor governance, with Conditions of Insurgency, no choice but to endure or to act out illegally.

Therefore, what is "insurgency" in a state with no freedom of the press or right to assemble, or freedom of speech, is just a bunch of Tea Partyers out exercising their rights in America.

This goes to why I am so impressed with what a great COIN document our constitution is. It is preventing insurgency every day, and we don't even notice. If we did not have this document, we would have military checkpoints, etc all over the place like they do in Afghanistan, and we would definitely notice.

Good Governance is Good COIN.

John T. Fishel
10-09-2010, 06:53 PM
The term regime allows for global insurgency if regime is defined as I have used it.

One of the interesting aspects of all of these Small Wars is that, in general, they all encompass the tactics and strategies applied by insurgents - to a greater or lesser degree. This means that the principles of COIN apply equally to a true COIN or a drug war or imperial policing - with adaptation to the circumstances. In all the cases you mention, the war is about competing legitimacies. Note that the drug cartels in Mexico are seeking to legitimze there control of trafficking corridors without having to take on the responsibility (or expense) of maintaining infrastructure and services - and they apparently want to extend that level of control into the US. To do so successfully, their role and presence has to be perceived by the inhabitants of the corridors as legitimate to some extent.

Cheers

JohnT

jmm99
10-09-2010, 06:53 PM
from BW
I left out the critical word of "internal" as well. If the challenger is from outside it is UW.

We have an External Power which supports one of two Internal Powers (say "Power B"). To the External Power, it is waging UW vs Power A (and vice versa). However, Power A still could regard Power B as an "insurgent" and as a Power in a non-international armed conflict. Sorta Vietnam, ain't it ?

The UW conflict could be an international armed conflict if both the External Power and Power A are states. Your example of AQ (IMO: agree that AQ as a TVNSA wages UW, not a "global insurgency", using inter alia domestic insurgencies as tools) vice a state Power would be a non-international armed conflict, since AQ is not a nation-state and has neither accepted nor applied the 1949 GCs (as required by Common Article 2).

My other questions and comments still apply from the post above.

Regards

Mike

jmm99
10-09-2010, 07:13 PM
the "regime" (formerly "governing body") declares the internal political challenge "illegal". I don't know where that will take us, but for the moment I'll ride along.

My question for BW, brother Fishel and anyone else is how do I determine which "Power" in the country is the "regime" ?

Hint: I do have views on that issue which are pretty much carved in stone, Defending Hamdan (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=6118), starting primarily with this post, 1949 GC III - Art. 2 - Text & History (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=57871&postcount=13), and ending on second page of that thread.

Cheers

Mike

Bob's World
10-09-2010, 09:56 PM
The term regime allows for global insurgency if regime is defined as I have used it.

One of the interesting aspects of all of these Small Wars is that, in general, they all encompass the tactics and strategies applied by insurgents - to a greater or lesser degree. This means that the principles of COIN apply equally to a true COIN or a drug war or imperial policing - with adaptation to the circumstances. In all the cases you mention, the war is about competing legitimacies. Note that the drug cartels in Mexico are seeking to legitimze there control of trafficking corridors without having to take on the responsibility (or expense) of maintaining infrastructure and services - and they apparently want to extend that level of control into the US. To do so successfully, their role and presence has to be perceived by the inhabitants of the corridors as legitimate to some extent.

Cheers

JohnT

Supply and Demand.

Demand for illegal drugs in the US drives a requirement for an illegal supplier. If filling that demand also makes said illegal supplier rich and powerful, he may expand his area of interests to other fields...

Demand for Good Governance drives Insurgency. If no effective legal means are available to the populace then someone will come along and leverage that demand. It may be a mix of internal and external actors, but they have unique status based on their unique roles.

The key to true success in both of these cases is the effective reduction of demand, while while mitigating the damage caused by the supplier's efforts. The tactics may be similar, but the focus of where they applied are very different. For example, In Afghanistan the source of "Demand" is the Government of Afghanistan. Focus there. In Mexico the source of Demand is the American Government (yes our populace buys the drugs, but our government makes them illegal and has been unwilling to take the hard steps to curb it).

On the surface they look very similar, but they both demand very different solutions to resolve them. This is like integration calculus. Step one is to be able to identify what type of problem it is so that you can apply the correct type of solution. Even once one's identified the right type of problem there are still a hundred ways to screw it up. But if you misidentify the problem, no matter how well you work through all the reduction steps, one's answer will still be wrong. (Who knew that getting an F in integration and having to retake the class would later help me to better understand insurgency...)

SteveMetz
10-10-2010, 10:43 AM
I think the definition of insurgency is fairly simple, it is defining the things that give rise to insurgency where it begins to get complicated. But here are some positions that I am working on:

But rather than a strategy employed by some group, I would define insurgency more accurately as a Condition. Success lies in treating the condition, not countering the strategy or defeating the organizations that rise to exploit it.

Insurgency:An illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design.

Conditions of Insurgency: A state of mind. The conditions of insurgency arguably exist to some degree within every populace. In most cases such conditions are benign in that they are not strong enough to support the rise of a significant insurgent organization, even if manipulated by outside actors conducting UW or by ideological themes designed for this audience. As perceptions of poor governance increase so does the degree of the conditions of insurgency. Left unchecked these conditions are apt to be exploited by internal and/or external parties for purposes of their own that may or may not have the welfare of the affected populace in mind. Conditions of insurgency are caused by the government and assessed through the perspective of the populace.

Poor Governance: Actions or inactions on the part of governance that contribute to create conditions of insurgency within one or more significant segments of the society they govern. Poor Governance is assessed through the perceptions of each significant segment of society separately as well as collectively. Objective metrics of effectiveness of governance are immaterial to assessments of goodness.

Good Governance: Governance, that may be either effective or ineffective, that through the nature of its performance prevents the growth of conditions of insurgency. Subjective, and measured as assessed by each significant segment of a populace, perceptions of good governance will typically vary across a state. Where good governance exists insurgency is unlikely. Where good governance is lacking the conditions of insurgency will grow, creating vulnerability for exploitation by internal or external actors pursuing agendas that may, or may not represent the best interests of the populace. The most critical perceptions that contribute to good governance appear to be those of Legitimacy, Justice, Respect and Hope.

Perception of Legitimacy: The most critical causal perception contributing to the conditions of insurgency in a society. Legitimate is not synonymous with Official. It is a recognition and acceptance on the part of any significant segment of a society of the rights and duties of governance to govern. This is independent of any official or legal status of governance or any recognition of this governance by others. Historically insurgent movements will ultimately fail when this condition exists, and prevail when it is absent. The absence of legitimacy is the cornerstone of despotism.

Perception of Justice: A critical causal perception that contributes to the conditions of insurgency in a society as shaped by good or poor performance of governance. Justice is not synonymous Rule of Law. Perceptions of justice are based in how the populace feels about the rule of law as it is applied to them. Enforcing the Rule of Law upon a populace that perceives the law as unjust is tyranny and will make the conditions of insurgency worse.

Perception of Respect: A critical causal perception that contributes to the conditions of insurgency in a society as shaped by good or poor performance of governance. Measured through the eyes of the populace, the widely help perception within any significant segment of a society that they are not excluded from full participation in governance and opportunity as a matter of status. Assessments by those outside the affected populace, to include by the government, are immaterial.

Perception of Hope: A critical causal perception that contributes to the conditions of insurgency in a society as shaped by good or poor performance of governance. Hope resides in the absolute confidence within any significant segment of a society that they have available to them trusted, certain and legal means to change their governance. Hope is the great off-ramp for insurgency, as the presence of hope keeps politics within the established and accepted legal parameters.

(these are all a work in progress and will evolve, but will be in a paper I put out soon that looks at many of the long-standing cliche's that dominate thinking on COIN)

My problem with definitions like that is that they are so thoroughly Western in perspective, with their emphasis on notions like legitimacy, good governance, and legality based on the Western experience. The unspoken assumption is that insurgencies occur because states don't adequately follow the Western-defined path, and will be defeated if states do.

John T. Fishel
10-10-2010, 11:19 AM
Steve, Bob's definitions are carefully crafted in the sense that they are not uniquely Western. Indeed, each of them relies on local interpretation and perception.

As an example that would fall within Bob's definition of legitimacy let me offer one indicator (variable) from Manwaring's original SSI study - "lack of perceived corruption." Corruption is commonly understood as the missuse of public position for personal gain and exists in all cultures. What is unique in each culture is their definition of missuse. So many things that a Westerner would see as corruption are perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Panama. I would also note that what is perceived as corrupt behavior also changes over time so something that was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago no longer is today. Still, there is a core to the notion of corruption that transcends culture. I believe that Bob has caught this kind of core in his definitions.

Cheers

JohnT

Bob's World
10-10-2010, 12:08 PM
Steve, Bob's definitions are carefully crafted in the sense that they are not uniquely Western. Indeed, each of them relies on local interpretation and perception.

As an example that would fall within Bob's definition of legitimacy let me offer one indicator (variable) from Manwaring's original SSI study - "lack of perceived corruption." Corruption is commonly understood as the misuse of public position for personal gain and exists in all cultures. What is unique in each culture is their definition of miss use. So many things that a Westerner would see as corruption are perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Panama. I would also note that what is perceived as corrupt behavior also changes over time so something that was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago no longer is today. Still, there is a core to the notion of corruption that transcends culture. I believe that Bob has caught this kind of core in his definitions.

Cheers

JohnT

John and Steve:

Steve's concern is extremely valid and something we must always guard against. When we mirror image current U.S. values onto other, or Western ideas of what sovereignty means, or western middle class concepts of what effective government services look like we IMMEDIATELY head down the wrong path. What John grasped is exactly what I have tried to understand and capture.

This is why the most critical metrics are those that are gathered by getting out and getting a true sense of how the people FEEL about their governance. When I speak to Hazara or Tajik people who live in the north they FEEL very differently than the Pashtuns in rural southern provinces in Afghanistan. I think Americans are very sympathetic to the plights of others, I just don't think that in general, Americans are very empathetic. We just can't seem to relate, and tend to see everything as some shade of America, and think that people everywhere see us the way we see ourselves, and see and think about things in general the way we do. I mean, this isn't even true within America. Talk to a smart, educated, liberal living in a major city and then talk to a smart, educated, conservative living in a rural area. What is good governance to one is poor governance to another. Then within those broad area talk to members from different distinct segments. Talk to African Americans in that major city and they see it differently than whites, and talk to the Hispanic community in that rural area and they see it uniquely as well.

What I am trying to develop are tools that identify those key human
nature needs that seem to drive the type of political activism that we see with insurgency. Dr. Maslow is a great start point. Then look at case after case of insurgency in cultures all around the world and look past the focus on ideology and military tactics that dominate the histories and try to grasp what it is the government was doing, and how it was the populace was feeling. If this makes any sense, I think in that every culture is made up of humans, they share core aspects of human nature; but that because every culture is unique in its culture, history, geography, religion, demographics, etc etc; what may be great governance in one country is a disaster in another.

Example:
The President of the U.S. nominates Supreme Court Justices subject to congressional confirmation.

The same is captured in the Afghan Constitution. So it should be as effective as the US system, right?

Well, no. Patronage is such a pervasive all-powerful force in how EVERYTHING gets done in Afghanistan. A US president picks the best person who he believes shares his values and perspectives on key issues. That person then goes forward as a free-thinking individual with no expectation to provide an entry fee and regular monthly payments for this plush assignment, or any expectation to vote the way the President tells them to...In Afghanistan the latter is the norm. So by mirror imaging the US system in their constitution our advisers on Rule of Law probably thought that this was a huge coup to get the Afghans to buy into this great system. I suspect that the Afghans looked at what we proposed to them and thought "cha-ching! This will give the President complete control over the law, provide him with a rich flow of cash that he will need as President to perform his patronage duties, and also give him respected positions that he can award to his most loyal followers."

This doesn't make the Afghan system wrong or require us to fix it. It is what it is. What our advisors need to do at the next constitutional convention that they hold post-reconciliation (power of positive thinking...) is to ask what types of selection processes make sense in this culture to achieve Justice, and what types of Checks and Balances make sense in this culture to prevent abuses of patronage-based corruption? How do we disassemble the Ponzi Scheme without disassembling the government? This is very doable, we just missed a critical step in our thinking.

So is there corruption in Afghanistan? OF COURSE! Is it a problem? Only when it exceeds the socially accepted norm in that country. What we failed to realize when we shaped their government for them is that we disabled the natural system of checks and balances that come form local shuras and Jirgas when we centralized all power in the Central government (translation to Afghan: in the President). We created a massive Ponzi scheme with no true checks and balances, and then committed ourselves to putting our army around it to protect it and pumping Billions of dollars and Euros into it to keep it functioning.

So I try to get past that and ID the base human need; and then craft a definition around it that emphasizes that it must always be assessed from the perspective of the governed, and by distinct groups within the governed. It's a work in progress.

Tom Odom
10-10-2010, 01:28 PM
Hi John,
1- If Insurgency is not a Strategy, what do you think it is?
2-I very much agree that it is always about legitamacy.

Slap

One can have the exact same discussion on terroism and terrorists with the same results.

Best
Tom

slapout9
10-10-2010, 01:38 PM
Slap

One can have the exact same discussion on terroism and terrorists with the same results.

Best
Tom

Yes, you could. Which is why I believe we spend to much time on trying to counter Methods (every "gang/group" uses them). We don't focus enough on the Motive. When you understand the Motive then you can begin to develop Methods to counter them.

Bob's World
10-10-2010, 02:17 PM
Well I certainly see terrorism as a tactic, and the same with counterterrorism.

Often, when the conditions of insurgency exist, groups with too much brain and not enough brawn to try to go toe to toe with the government symmetrically, but who opt for violent tactics over non-violent tactics, will employ the tactic of terrorism to advance their cause.

Similarly, those who emerge from communities that are not experiencing conditions of insurgency significant enough to support the emergence of insurgent groups will often employ tactics of terrorism. This can be a McVeigh from the heartland of America who believes the federal government must be attacked; or perhaps a young man in Paris who's own community is not to the level of supporting insurgent groups (yet) but he acts out in support of a group he strongly affiliates that he believes is being oppressed, or that the oppression is supported, by the government he attacks.

Or it can be by a profit motivated group like a Mexican drug cartel.

Many would argue it is also a tactic employed by governments to break the will of the populaces of the states they wage war against. (Though in equal number there are those who take the position that a state cannot conduct an act of terrorism, which I find a bit self-serving. "I write the rules, so I can't break the rules")

Perhaps a bridge concept is this idea I am developing about the conditions of insurgency.

The conditions of insurgency could be quite high, but there not be any insurgent groups actively working. This could be like in Saudi Arabia where to act out is to disappear, or it could be just because that catalytic event to set things in motion has not happened yet.

So, the Act of insurgency is different than the condition of insurgency. The act may well be considered a strategy, that then in turn employ some mix of violent and non-violent tactics. But success is not from attacking the groups that emerge. Success is not from countering either the tactics or the strategy. Success is from addressing the conditions. The rest you must contend with, but the conditions are what one must understand and resolve.

Typically waging war against the organizations, strategies or tactics is counter-productive to addressing the conditions.

slapout9
10-10-2010, 02:31 PM
Often, when the conditions of insurgency exist,

This is where I disagree slightly. There are no conditions of Insurgency:eek:. There are conditions of Illegitimacy someone and it is always a someone(s) that claims to have some moral right to pass a rule/law that benefits the few at the expense of the many. When these conditions of Illegitimacy exist it will eventually lead to some type of an Insurgency/Strategy to correct the "Moral Bomb" that is about to explode.

Bob's World
10-10-2010, 03:38 PM
Slap, Ok, there is no right answer, and we're both dropping rounds with effects on target. I prefer my breakdown as I have it, as I don't want to pack too much into one box. I very intentionally unpacked Justice and respect and hope as I feel it helps to assess the situation and design solutions.

If you say simply "fix legitimacy" we send in the elections team, conduct elections and then say "there, they held elections so conditions of legitmacy are establshed." Whoa nelly, not so fast... Too simple results in solutions that are too simplistic. Even with the four criteria I use I still routinely get "yes, but what do you want us to do??"

To reduce the entire complexity of insurgency to one concept is like the law student tale of the student who kept reducing his outline for his contracts class until he had it compressed from 100+ pages ultimately down to a single word nemonic. Then when he sat for the test he forgot that word... Too much compression can be a bad thing. :)

slapout9
10-10-2010, 04:16 PM
If you say simply "fix legitimacy" we send in the elections team, conduct elections and then say "there, they held elections so conditions of legitmacy are establshed." Whoa nelly, not so fast... Too simple results in solutions that are too simplistic. Even with the four criteria I use I still routinely get "yes, but what do you want us to do??"


But you see that is my point. That is what we would probably do but that does not make it legitimate to the population in focus. Maybe they don't want an election system that creates continuous turmoil and uncertainty,maybe they would rather have something else. There are other systems out there that are better(in the populations eyes) and we are going to learn and accept that or we will end up with a very hard road to travel.

John T. Fishel
10-10-2010, 06:21 PM
Sir Robert Thompson said, in his book Defeating Communist Insurgency, "If the [revolutionary] organization is already established, well-trained, and disciplined., it will not be defeated by reforms designed to eliminate the cause. It will only be defeated by establishing a superior organization and applying measures to break the revolutionary organization." (For revolutionary organization we can substitute the insurgents or insurgent organization.)

Cheers

JohnT

Entropy
10-10-2010, 06:58 PM
Sir Robert Thompson said, in his book Defeating Communist Insurgency, "If the [revolutionary] organization is already established, well-trained, and disciplined., it will not be defeated by reforms designed to eliminate the cause. It will only be defeated by establishing a superior organization and applying measures to break the revolutionary organization." (For revolutionary organization we can substitute the insurgents or insurgent organization.)

Cheers

JohnT

That seems to pretty much describe the various fighting factions during the Russian Revolution. I can't find the exact quote at the moment, but Lenin said something like, "Power was rolling around in the streets and we just happened to pick it up."

And actually, the demise of the Russian Empire is an interesting history regarding questions on insurgency. There were organizations that began as ideological movements, then became what we might call insurgents, then fielded conventional fighting forces during the civil war, then were beaten to return to underground movements, insurgents etc. Added into this were many nationalist/separatist movements, anarchists, plus a lot of foreign intervention.

Since the definition of insurgency seems to be continually up for debate, I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't one of those things that exists in the eye of the beholder - IOW kind of like pornography - difficult to describe, but one "knows it when they see it."

Ken White
10-10-2010, 07:11 PM
will in future occur not due to poor governance but simply to replace whatever governance exists -- good, bad or as most are, indifferent -- with 'OUR governance.'

Government is not a terribly natural thing. It is needed but it is rarely truly good -- people intrude and screw it up -- I can think of no nation that has a truly 'totally satisfied with the government' population. I can think of a great many that have political parties or grouping that do not like the current milieu and wish to change it. The drive to do that violently often comes from the "poor governane" aspect -- it also comes from the 'we want OUR governance' crowd.

As Steve Metz said:
The unspoken assumption is that insurgencies occur because states don't adequately follow the Western-defined path, and will be defeated if states do.That's true and the western construct can lead one down a primrose path...

Seems to me that Insurgency thus can be -- most often is -- a strategy. If adopted as a strategy by the Insurgents, their issue then becomes the degree or intensity for the insurgency, i.e, what techniques or methods will be used to implement the strategy.

Or, to quote Slapout9:
Insurgency is a Method....used by a Motivated individual(s).....to exploit any available Opportunity.Yep and IMO, that makes it a Strategery to use that method to exploit sumpn... ;)

Bill Moore
10-10-2010, 07:51 PM
Ken, as you well know I strongly agree with your view,


will in future occur not due to poor governance but simply to replace whatever governance exists -- good, bad or as most are, indifferent -- with 'OUR governance.'

Legitimacy is concept that we in the West approach with great bias based on American liberalism (and usually promoted by our lawyers), yet it has little to do with real reasons people fight. In the simpliest and truest terms insurgency is a violent struggle for power. The victor whether insurgent or the current regime will never be viewed as legitimate by all in the vast majority of countries. America and some nations are unique in that we established a functional melting pot, but that is not a model we can impose on other nations. Of course that didn't happen overnight, and it can be argued we didn't achieve internal stability until 100 years after the Civil War.

Posted by John T.


Sir Robert Thompson said, in his book Defeating Communist Insurgency, "If the [revolutionary] organization is already established, well-trained, and disciplined., it will not be defeated by reforms designed to eliminate the cause. It will only be defeated by establishing a superior organization and applying measures to break the revolutionary organization." (For revolutionary organization we can substitute the insurgents or insurgent organization.)

This is a fact that has been demonstrated again and again throughout history. At this point it is no longer really about politics, but more about basic pychology and sociology principles that influence people's behavior. Too many people confuse the underlying causes that led insurgencies to oust the illegitimate colonialists after WWII with all cases of insurgency. Insurgency in 2010 is not about throwing out colonial governments and replacing them with even worse governments, but a struggle for power that has little to do with legitimacy and much more to do with greed and hatred.

Finally injecting UW into the insurgency debate simply muddies the waters. UW is an American definition for a means that other nations and non-state organizations have used for centuries. For the regime still being challenged it is a State sponsored insurgency. It is still an insurgency. Iran may use the strategy of insurgency to pursue its goals in Lebanon for example. This is the risk of falling in love with our definitions, we'll end up describing and responding to the conflict in a way that conforms to our pre-determined definitions and doctrine.

John T. Fishel
10-10-2010, 08:21 PM
as I understand it, requires a desired end, a way of getting to that end, and the means (resources) to accomplish it. A strategy of insurgency would require all three - insurgency, as Slap suggests, is in these terms a method (way), ie part of a strategy. So, unless strategy is redefined to be a method, then to call insurgency a strategy one would have to define it in ends, ways, and means terms. (Is that how you are defining insrgency, Steve?) Unless insurgency is defined in strategic terms, I will continue to prefer Bob's defining it as a condition.

Regarding the culture boundedness of such concepts as legitimacy, I will fall back on the points I was making earlier along with Bob's articulation.

As to the causes of insurgency and its identification with a struggle for power: we are back to Hans Moregnthau's statement in all editions of his Politics Amongnations going back to 1948, "International politics, LIKE ALL POLITICS, is a struggle for power." (emphasis added) This, in turn, harks back to St. Carl aka CvC. In practical terms, however, if there is no more reason for you to support me than my group wants power over the guys that already have it, then that insurgency is very likely to fail. Unless the method of the insurgents is a coup d'etat, there are damn few resources available for the insurgents to overturn the government. As you are all well aware, most insurgencies fail, dying in their infancy, never really posing a threat to the survival of the governments they seek to overthrow. An American case in point that was very ideological is that of the Weather Underground and its leader Bill Ayers.

Cheers

JohnT

Old Eagle
10-10-2010, 08:28 PM
I like your opening paragraph.

Steve, how does that impact on your definition?

Given some time, I might be able to expand insurgency beyond "means" to include all elements of strategy. Just not now.

Bill Moore
10-10-2010, 08:34 PM
Posted by John T.


as I understand it, requires a desired end, a way of getting to that end, and the means (resources) to accomplish it. A strategy of insurgency would require all three - insurgency, as Slap suggests, is in these terms a method (way), ie part of a strategy. So, unless strategy is redefined to be a method, then to call insurgency a strategy one would have to define it in ends, ways, and means terms. (Is that how you are defining insrgency, Steve?) Unless insurgency is defined in strategic terms, I will continue to prefer Bob's defining it as a condition.

John, I don't understand your argument in this case. I agree that insurgency is also a condition as Bob stated (we may differ on why it exists), but I think insurgency is clearly a strategy.

The insurgent organization generally has a desired goal (ends), the means and ways are somewhat blended in my view and can consist of forming militia groups to conduct small to large scale attacks, employing terrorists, employing propaganda, economic sabotage, etc., but all of these must support the overarching strategy. I realize I'm back tracking on my first post, but if insurgency is the only means/ways they have to over throw a regime then I think it is the strategy. On the other hand if it is a State sponsored insurgency for the sponsoring State it is a way to achieve its ends, but for the insurgents it is still their strategy. Thoughts?

John T. Fishel
10-10-2010, 11:18 PM
as well as ends. Unsually, the ends are the overthrow of the recognized (or at least constituted) government. But, if he has control of such means as key parts of the military he can choose a coup d'etat has his method (way). If, on the other hand, he has half the army (means), he can fight a conventional war (way). If he has neither and limited political organization, he can use his few resources to conduct terrorist attacks in the hope of using that to gain the resources (militias, more terrorists, front groups) to mount a classic revolutionary campaign.

Anyway, that's what I mean.

Cheers

JohnT

SteveMetz
10-11-2010, 12:34 AM
I wanted to follow up on my earlier point about Americans, in particularly, using a consummately Western conceptualization.

In social science, the way to test a hypothesis is to ask, "If this hypothesis is true, what would I expect to observe?"

If the hypothesis is "'good governance' and 'legitimacy' defined as per U.S. doctrine are vital to or crucial to defeating in insurgency," then we'd expect to see counterinsurgency campaigns that do those things successful and those which do not unsuccessful.

I'll admit I haven't compiled the data and could be wrong, but I'd be willing to bet Dave Dilegge's last dollar that the historical data doesn't show that. I believe Americans cling to that notion less because it reflects reality than because it reflects our preconceptions, viz. that other people share our priorities, preferences, and perceptions.

I think the notion that insurgency arises when regimes do not reflect Western notions of good governance and legitimacy, and insurgencies are defeated when regimes do reflects the attitudes which drove European colonialism. This idea has become ingrained in American counterinsurgency thinking because this thinking was derived from European colonialists like Thompson and Galula.

SteveMetz
10-11-2010, 12:41 AM
Steve, Bob's definitions are carefully crafted in the sense that they are not uniquely Western. Indeed, each of them relies on local interpretation and perception.

As an example that would fall within Bob's definition of legitimacy let me offer one indicator (variable) from Manwaring's original SSI study - "lack of perceived corruption." Corruption is commonly understood as the missuse of public position for personal gain and exists in all cultures. What is unique in each culture is their definition of missuse. So many things that a Westerner would see as corruption are perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Panama. I would also note that what is perceived as corrupt behavior also changes over time so something that was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago no longer is today. Still, there is a core to the notion of corruption that transcends culture. I believe that Bob has caught this kind of core in his definitions.

Cheers

JohnT

I often wonder about the notion of corruption and insurgency. Have we simply ingrained the connection because Thompson told us it was important, or has someone actually run the data to find out if there is a real, demonstrable correlation between corruption and insurgency. Was El Salvador less corrupt when the insurgency was broken than at the beginning? Colombia? The UK in Northern Ireland? Peru? Iraq?

Again, I don't have the data myself but my gut tells me that it wouldn't support the hypothesis.

John T. Fishel
10-11-2010, 01:19 AM
It is not whether El Sal (to keep my typing down) was less corrupt at the end of the war but whether it was perceived by Salvadorans as less corrupt. But even that is the wrong approach. Perceived corruption is one of a number of variables that we argue make up the Factor we called Legitimacy. So, the real question was whether Salvadorans perceived their government as more legitimate than it was when the insurgency began. The evidence certainly supports that case. One of the reasons that can be adduced is that in the 1988 and 89 elections the Salvadoran voters threw the Christain Democrats out - largely over perceived corruption. The fact that another party could take over the government peacefully was a factor in bringing the FMLN to an agreement. They, of course, won the most recent elections and now govern the country.

Cheers

JohnT

Entropy
10-11-2010, 03:57 AM
Ok, how about this for a definition:

"Insurgency is a condition where a government's legitimacy among a distinct population of the governed declines to the point where that population organizes and is willing to use violence against the government. Insurgency is differentiated from other forms of internal conflict by the strategy insurgents use, which is driven by the insurgent's inability to openly challenge the government. Insurgent strategy utilizes subversion, limited violence and political action."

So here's the idea, very simplistically:

- Strong government / weak opposition = insurgency
- Government and opposition roughly equal in terms of power = civil war
- Weak government / strong opposition = coup or a quick revolution/revolt.

In essence, I think Steve Metz and Col. Jones are both right, or at least their definitions don't have to be incompatible.

Dayuhan
10-11-2010, 04:41 AM
It is not whether El Sal (to keep my typing down) was less corrupt at the end of the war but whether it was perceived by Salvadorans as less corrupt. But even that is the wrong approach. Perceived corruption is one of a number of variables that we argue make up the Factor we called Legitimacy. So, the real question was whether Salvadorans perceived their government as more legitimate than it was when the insurgency began. The evidence certainly supports that case.

It is true that the relationship between populace and government is driven by local perceptions of good governance, which may or may not have anything to do with Western standards.

It is also true that our capacity to understand these conflicts, and our decisions on intervention, or on how we wish to position ourselves with respect to any real or imagined confrontation between populace and governance, are based not on local perceptions, but on our perceptions - and those are very heavily affected by our concept of good governance.

When we discuss these matters in the abstract, of course we concede that it is local perception, not our perception, that matters. The moment we move to specific cases, and far more so when engagement is contemplated, our perceptions come into play. We often don't know the full range of perceptions prevailing in any given foreign populace, or how much of any given populace falls into what categories in that range of perception (speaking of "the perception" of "a populace", as if these were singular terms, is generally absurd). Rather than trying to find out, we often make assumptions based on our criteria... another good reason to think twice, thrice, and again before messing in anyone else's internal affairs.

Bob's World
10-11-2010, 08:26 AM
One may want to consider that Sir Robert confused cause and effect. In that while he was working efforts to defeat the insurgent and separate him from the populace, other efforts were going on that vastly reduced the discrimination against the ethnic Chinese populace of Malaya, that restored to them legal means to influence and participate in government/politics, and removed the British High Commissioner out of the equation of exercising total British control of the government.

These same programs of defeating insurgents and separating the populace were then carried by him to Share with the Americans to use to produce similar success in Vietnam. Except, while still good programs, they did not produce success in Vietnam. I would argue that while certainly the insurgent in Vietnam had an edge in that we had created a formal state of North Vietnam to provide them the ultimate sanctuary and staging base with all the full protections that state sovereignty provide (when you have a credible, nuclear-capable big brother backing you up as they did), along with the sanctuaries of Laos and Cambodia as well; that he missed the point of what actually worked in Malaya.

That in fact, the efforts to defeat the insurgent and separate the populace were good, necessary supporting efforts, but that what actually ended "The Emergency" there was the addressing of the conditions of insurgency so that while the insurgents were still wanting to continue, they found that their base of support had melted beneath them.

In Vietnam we took Sir Robert's recipe for success and applied it with no success. The difference? We took none of the steps taken in Malaya to reduce the conditions of insurgency. We too mistook the supporting effort for the main effort, we made it a war, we fought it like a war and we ignored the main effort of addressing the conditions of insurgency and ultimately lost the war. The insurgent never lost his base of support. One has to look at Vietnam as whole, and over the course of the entire era of French Colonialism and American intervention; without overly focusing on the line drawn on the map to separate the state into two parts as a compromise; and then what happened during the American tenure for the final 10 years of what was a multi-generational conflict for the people of the region. We were trying to roll back communism, but the people were merely employing communism to roll back colonialism. Then as now we put far too much emphasis on the nature of the ideology employed than on the nature of the conflict itself.

Insurgent conflicts of today are not far different than the ones that followed WWI and the ones that followed WWII. While people took advantage of the power upheavals following those two conflicts to make large strides in throwing off colonialism; much of the governance, or certainly self-determination of governance remained heavily controlled/manipulated across the Middle East as part of our containment strategy on the Soviet Southern flank, denying them control of the Oil resources, warm water ports, and key maritime LOCs. Not colonialism, but certainly a denial of self-determination.

John T. Fishel
10-11-2010, 11:58 AM
Bob, for a long time I thought as you do about the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam. But then I read Rufus Phillips' memoir/analysis, Why Vietnam Matters, and greatly revised my thinking. I recommend it highly to one and all.

Cheers

JohnT

SteveMetz
10-11-2010, 12:35 PM
It is not whether El Sal (to keep my typing down) was less corrupt at the end of the war but whether it was perceived by Salvadorans as less corrupt. But even that is the wrong approach. Perceived corruption is one of a number of variables that we argue make up the Factor we called Legitimacy. So, the real question was whether Salvadorans perceived their government as more legitimate than it was when the insurgency began. The evidence certainly supports that case. One of the reasons that can be adduced is that in the 1988 and 89 elections the Salvadoran voters threw the Christain Democrats out - largely over perceived corruption. The fact that another party could take over the government peacefully was a factor in bringing the FMLN to an agreement. They, of course, won the most recent elections and now govern the country.

Cheers

JohnT


Point taken. The Western notion of legitimacy largely functioned in El Salvador because it was of Western culture. My problem with legitimacy as it is used in Western counterinsurgency thinking is that it is a culturally Western perspective--the lingering of the colonial mindset. (And I've argued with Max over this because he believes there is a trans-cultural concept of legitimacy and I don't).

But I'm still struggling with the idea that it doesn't matter whether corruption, repression, etc--all of the stuff we consider part of "good governance"--really has to change. But we just need to help "the people" be more accepting of it.

Think of where that leads logically. Among Afghan males, the repression of women and pedophilia are perfectly acceptable. In some cultures, genocide against an "out" group is acceptable. So setting acceptability as the standard is, to say the least, problematic.

SteveMetz
10-11-2010, 12:39 PM
Insurgent conflicts of today are not far different than the ones that followed WWI and the ones that followed WWII.

That's where we'll disagree. I think we want to believe that because we kind of figured out what to do about those kinds of insurgencies.

John T. Fishel
10-11-2010, 01:37 PM
but then, you knew I would be.:wry:

Serously, take a look at the anthropological literature - which of course is clear as mud - but may provide some different ways of looking at the problem,

Marct, where are you when we need your input????

Cheers

JohnT

Bob's World
10-11-2010, 01:38 PM
Steve,

Actually, I don't think we figured out what to do with those insurgencies very well at all. I think it is the belief that we have that causes us so much difficulty with the current crop. Certainly much study has taken place, yet we'll still list the Philippines or Algeria as multiple insurgencies, with a mix of failures and successes; rather than recognizing instead what looks to me like a long train of efforts by government to address the symptoms of a problem by suppressing the organizations that emerge from it; only to find what you are calling "resurgency."

I too believe in resurgency, but we associate different factors to why it happens. I believe it happens because the root cause of insurgency is government. When government is out of touch with various segments of its populace in certain fundamental human nature (rather than Western nature) ways, conditions of insurgency exist that are easily exploited by external or internal actors. This continues until such time as those conditions are addressed.

This is why when an insurgent "wins" it does not automatically end the "insurgency." The successful insurgent becomes immediately a struggling counterinsurgent until such time as the conditions of insurgency are addressed. Those who fail to address those conditions suffer the same fate that they dished out to their predecessor. Most insurgents have no interest in bringing good governance to the people, they merely take advantage of poor governance to put themselves into the power position. The American experience is unique in that regard. But for the moral stand of one man, America would likely have become a Kingdom and suffered an even rougher transition to stability than the one we took.

The big difference in insurgency today are the tools of globalization. These do not change the nature of insurgency, IMO, but they do certainly change the impact of insurgency, the resilliance of insurgency and the TTPs that are apt to work.

One could contribute to suppressing an insurgency in the 1950s by "separating the insurgent from the populace," today such separation is virtually impossible. Not only are they connected to the populace, but they are connected to the world. In essence, government can no longer ignore the people and suppress their voice. Governments must actually answer to their people.

This same factor has also rendered obsolete the tried and true policy TTP of "friendly dictators". Now these populace are able to reach out and touch the external parties that enable their governments to act with impunity. The US still has far too many friendly dictators on the books, and the fact that we are attacked most by the populaces of our allies rather than the populaces of our enemies is a powerful metric that we would be wise to quit ignoring. Attacking the foreign enabler government is often easier than attacking the domestic impune government. This makes AQ's UW efforts fairly easy. A shift in focus from helping governments suppress their populaces to one of helping populaces address their governments is more in line with our principles as a nation and would take away much of the impetus behind international acts of terrorism that exists today.

Even the current administration is careful not to call out these allies when speaking about civil rights abuses. The hypocrisy is deafening in its silence.

SteveMetz
10-11-2010, 04:31 PM
Point taken, but I'm still sensitive to the extent that the mentality of colonialism pervades our thinking about insurgency (again, because we learned from colonialists.) Viz the idea that the problem is elites which don't govern as per Western ideals. Maybe I'm jaded, but given that the systems that elites in conflict prone states have constructed benefits them personally, our counterinsurgency strategy calls on them to act against their own personal and family interests. I think that's a dead end.

I do believe that it would work to totally re-engineer such societies, but I don't think that's going to happen by prodding elites with a vested interest in the existing system. It might work through a lengthy occupation. But that's not going to happen.

SteveMetz
10-11-2010, 05:04 PM
Most insurgents have no interest in bringing good governance to the people, they merely take advantage of poor governance to put themselves into the power position. The American experience is unique in that regard.

I'm not sure. If you define "good governance" as Western liberalism, perhaps. But if you don't use that as a universal model of "good," then perhaps not. Using non-Western value criteria, one could argue that the majority of the population was better off--at least initially--after insurgent victories in Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, China, Vietnam, Cuba.

And in the American case, one could also argue that had the Revolution not succeeded, the political evolution of the U.S. would have mirrored that of Canada, meaning an earlier abolition of slavery and no Civil War.

Bill Moore
10-11-2010, 05:33 PM
Posted by Bob's World
Most insurgents have no interest in bringing good governance to the people, they merely take advantage of poor governance to put themselves into the power position. The American experience is unique in that regard.

Bob, this has been my point from day one, insurgency is a power struggle (there are a whole host of reasons there be may be underlying conditions that lead to an insurgency to include, but definitely not limited to poor governance).

My view is that lawyers and politicians put too much emphasis on governance as the cause and cure for insurgencies, and completely disregard underlying psychological and social factors that have a much greater influence on behavior. While none of your comments are simplistic, they do sound similiar to the argument that if you just produce more jobs in the inner city kids will leave the gangs. I suspect if Jose is a member of MS-13 belonging to the gang is very much part of his identity and life style. Getting a job at McDonalds won't replace that. That applies at least equally for many insurgent groups. You can't simply implement a few policy changes and expect the insurgents to turn their weapons into plows.

You, like John Nagel, make completely irrelevant comparisons between the efforts in Vietnam and Malaysia. The only commonality between the two is that they're both located in SE Asia. The insurgents in Malaya were very much isolated, and they were aggressively pursued by security forces. After years of being on the receiving end of military defeat after defeat it is probably fair to say that the organization didn't appeal to new recruits, and those who weren't really commited in the first place, but the cadres were defeated militarily, which you simply disregard. Political policies were eventually put in place that addressed some of the underlying issues, but that was not the so called defeat mechanism. As we all know defeat or adequate suppression of an insurgency is due to a combination of efforts, and the security force actions is one of those efforts. In Malaya the security forces were very effective.

I agree with Steve (maybe not for the same reasons) that we're dealing with post-colonial insurgencies now, and they're different. Government has less influence because its power has been diluted due to the spread of globalism and information technology (which equals the playing field in some regards). I'm not convinced we can't separate the insurgents from the populace (at least in some cases), but the techniques to do so are politically unacceptable in today's world. The challenge is finding a strategy that is effective and acceptable in the 21st century. The old school methods no longer seem to fit the bill.

Bob's World
10-11-2010, 06:51 PM
Government is more important to certain parties than others. For example I really believe that we are dealing with what I call a "two-tier Insurgency" in Afghanistan. The top tier being that of the senior leadership of the TB and other groups, that are conducting what is best seen as a revolutionary insurgency, and is driven primarily by these factors of poor governance. (They don't recognize Karzai's legitimacy, they are excluded from any means of legally addressing that problem, and the Pashtuns as a whole are having their faces rubbed in it by the long suffering groups making up the old Northern Alliance.) This is the key to stability in Afghanistan and requires reconciliation. Not necessarily reconciliation with particular individuals or groups, but rather reconciliation of these issues of Poor Governance. We largely ignore this aspect of the insurgency and instead focus on the lower tier. This is our comfort zone.

The Lower tier is a resistance movement made up of the rank and file. They are largely self-governing, want or expect little from government; but do demand to be treated with respect, and can see from the very presence of the Coalition, with foreign advisors sitting at the shoulder of virtually every official, that the government has no true legitimacy. They fight because the Coalition is there, because they get paid, and because it is the honorable Pashtun thing to do. Most of us who frequent SWJ, if we were Pashtun, would be right there with them.

We focus the vast bulk of security efforts, development efforts and governance efforts at the bottom tier; yet this is a resistance. So long as the top tier remains committed to the effort and so long as the coalition is present there will be a bottom tier. You cannot defeat this insurgency by digging at the bottom, that is what the "nation building" strategy has us do. Foolishness.

We ignore the top, as that forces hard decisions in regards to GIROA, and we've adopted a definition of COIN that says our job is to keep GIROA in power rather than to focus on what best supports our interests. Where is the full court press to fix legitimacy? Where is the full court press to shred this abortion of a Constitution that enables Karzai's poor governance every bit as much as our military protection of his regime?

We called it a war, so we're fighting the war, we are trying to WIN when we should be working to simply enable conditions that support the rather minor interests we may have in this region.

By shifting our main effort to political/diplomatic efforts at the top, and reconciling the key causal issues at that level the lower tier of the insurgency will largely take care of itself. Our current approach merely enables Karzai to delay making any substantive changes at his level. He understands this very well. Some may call him the puppet, but he is more the puppet master in how he leverages Western fears to support what he knows full well is an unsustainable system of governance.

Its frustrating. Fighting season is about over for the year. We should pull all of our troops back into the FOBs and rotate the bulk of them home. We should then put Mr. Karzai on clear notice that how many come back and what we have them do is largely dependent on how successful he is in fixing his constitution and reconciling the issues that drive the top-tier of the insurgency. This also give us time to get our own strategy straight and our operational design as well.

People need to understand that be it Marjah or Zari, or the Arghendab, or anywhere else in Afghanistan, if we do "Shape-Clear-Hold-Build" on our little checklists; but the insurgency all around that little temporary pocket of effort is still at a solid Phase II Strategic Stalemate, we haven't made any enduring progress at all. Our phases of COIN mean nothing, it is the Phase the insurgency is in that means everything. Even then, phases are designed to flex based up the level of resistance, so the only true success is when you get the insurgency to Phase 0. You can't make that happen with S-C-H-B aimed at the lower tier of the insurgency. You make it happen by focusing on the issues driving the Top Tier.

(Oh, and Bill, I really rarely think much about Malaya as I see it as a COIN operation were we learned the wrong lessons because we don't understand what of all the things that were done actually contributed to the success. Besides addressing governance, the fact that it is a lower portion of a Peninsula and the government dominated the sea and air is probably the second largest factor to the success there. (Probably why South Korea is a success as well) So I have only selected a couple issues that are indeed relevant in comparison with Vietnam. I can't speak for Dr. Nagl. I bought his book years ago, but was never able to get though it because I agree, most comparison between Malaya and Nam are of little value.)

William F. Owen
10-11-2010, 07:41 PM
In social science, the way to test a hypothesis is to ask, "If this hypothesis is true, what would I expect to observe?"

If the hypothesis is "'good governance' and 'legitimacy' defined as per U.S. doctrine are vital to or crucial to defeating in insurgency," then we'd expect to see counterinsurgency campaigns that do those things successful and those which do not unsuccessful.
Well based on Clausewitz's hypothesises/observations, insurgencies are defeated when the insurgents give up using military/violent means obtain their policy objective. Most the time that is because enough have been killed or captured, as in any form of armed conflict.

Based on that, I cannot see what "good governance" and/or "legitimacy" has to contribute other than being simplistic political opinions.

jmm99
10-11-2010, 08:14 PM
I believe there is room in our little discussion for both the "political struggle" and the "military struggle", which go back, as John Fishel posted (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=107997&postcount=43), to a common well:


from JTF
As to the causes of insurgency and its identification with a struggle for power: we are back to Hans Moregnthau's statement in all editions of his Politics Amongnations going back to 1948, "International politics, LIKE ALL POLITICS, is a struggle for power." (emphasis added) This, in turn, harks back to St. Carl aka CvC.

So, we are dealing with "power" and "Powers", which would be my starting point - not really very "Western". The Powers of the East and Middle East had to deal with "insurgencies" before there were Powers in the West.

Maybe more of Morgenthau, realism and Powers tomorrow nite.

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-11-2010, 09:42 PM
Insurgency is certainly not new. The Hebrew people in Egypt is a great example (of course they called upon the ultimate WMD to help make their case). I suspect the Hebrew people questioned very much the legitimacy of the Egyptian Pharaoh to govern over them in such a way as to be able to deny them the freedom to leave Egypt; that the rule of law as applied to them was unjust; that they were treated with disrespect as a matter of status; and that they had no hope under the law to change their situation. This gave rise to a tremendous condition of insurgency within this significant and distinct segment of the populace. All of this could have easily (as is often the case) been addressed by the Pharaoh by simply accommodating the reasonable issues of the Hebrew populace. This is, after all, what Kennedy and Johnson did with the Civil Rights Act in the US. Instead he opted to enforce the rule of law; as did King George with the American Colonies; pushing a subversive movement into full-blown insurgency.

Now, the Pharaoh did try capture/kill operations on the insurgent leader, but he lacked adequate ISR and the ability to penetrate the sanctuary that Moses found in Midian among a supportive populace.

Then God put Moses on a UW mission, much as bin Laden claims that he too has been put on a UW mission by God. (I would ask bin Laden to show us some miracles as Moses did, as his bona fides are a bit weak compared to how God supported his original UW actor).

So Moses returned, armed with an ideology to radicalize the Hebrew populace and create an insurgency. I would argue that he found success in getting unarmed slaves to stand up to the most powerful King and Army in the world because such strong conditions of insurgency existed among this target populace, and also he had selected an ideology that spoke to them and took positions that the Pharaoh was unable / unwilling to co-opt.

We all know this story. It is not a Western one. The principles that drove this populace are the same that drive populaces today. These are human principles, not western ones.

Of note, the Hebrews first employed non-violent tactics of insurgency, and escalated only after they proved ineffective.

Now I have seen nothing to indicate that AQ has any of the god-given legitimacy that the Hebrew people exercised in this case. In no way do I mean to infer they do by this little example. He does however have the power of fairly strong conditions of insurgency in many of the states across the Middle East where he is peddling his influence, so his message is taking root. This is not one large populace or one global insurgency, but several smaller ones being leveraged by AQ to serve a larger purpose that is AQ's alone, along with the many nationalist purposes.

This is fundamental human dynamics. Now, would WILF have advised the Pharaoh "insurgencies are defeated when the insurgents give up using military/violent means obtain their policy objective. Most the time that is because enough have been killed or captured, as in any form of armed conflict." ??

Insurgencies happen for a reason, and typically it is rooted in the actions of the government. The government never wants to hear this, and more rare still seeks to address it. Easier just to enforce the rule of law and to capture kill enough of the populace so as to make them stop complaining and get back to making bricks.

Ian K
10-12-2010, 07:41 AM
Hello all, I'm a student of DR Fishel's who wondered into this thread and couldn't resist barging in. Hopefully I'll have some worthwhile points to make.

The endeavor we're discussing is really kind of odd; we have these things that we call insurgencies, now we're trying to figure out what group of words best describes 'insurgencies' so we know when to use the word and when not to. (It seems rather backward, where is the simplicity of giving ideas words? If it was good enough for God and Adam . . . ). At this point, either the Jones/Fishel definition of insurgency as a form of illegal action or the Metz/White/Moore definition of insurgency as a form of strategy is equally correct. The question is, which will be more useful for researchers, theorists, and practitioners in the future?

Let's compare the two again:


1. Insurgency: An illegal internal political challenge to a regime that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design.



2. Insurgency is a strategy used by a weak organization against a power structure and the organizations which dominate it. The weak organization may seek specific political objectives or a total transformation of the power structure. The strategy uses or threatens the use of violence. The weak organization seeks to postpone resolution of the conflict while it adjusts the power balance in its favor. An organization using insurgency assumes that postponing resolution will lead to a shift in the power balance in its favor. This normally means that the weak organization assumes it has superior will and coherence. A strategy of insurgency involves diminishing the importance of realms of conflict or battlespaces where the weak organization is inferior (e.g. the conventional military one) and emphasizing ones where its inferiority is less (e.g. the psychological). It involves building alliances or partnerships to augment the strength of the weak organization, directly augmenting the strength of the weak organization, and diminishing the strength of the state or other dominant organization. A strategy of insurgency is most often used by a non-state organization against a state but may also be used by a non-state organization against a transnational power structure (e.g. al Qaeda), or by a nation (e.g. Iran).

Or simplified:

1: a Challenge for Political Control
that is Illegal
and Internal

2: a Strategy
used by Weak Against Strong
that is Violent
to Postpone Resolution
and a whole bunch of notes on common characteristics of insurgencies.

Here's the difference I see: Option 1 creates a neat little box that we can fit most things we consider insurgencies into, but includes other things we don't usually think of as insurgencies as well. Option 2 is also pretty straightforward, but is even broader - it only comes to resemble 'insurgency' with the addition of more modifiers.

I prefer Option 1 because I find it simpler and easier to use (more useful), and because it more closely resembles my own opinions (more accurate;)).

I buy the assertion that 'insurgencies' are about 'legitimacy', and I don't see how the latter is a uniquely Western construct. Pretty much any society has a power structure with rules, and that power structure exists either with some level of consent of most of the society's members, or through sheer force. Any challenge for political control by members of the society (internal) against the power structure that breaks the rules of the power structure (illegal) is thus an insurgency, and is a result of someone thinking that the current power structure's rules weren't worth following (legitimacy) - I challenge the skeptics to give a non-Western example that violates one of those points. (It wouldn't be the first time I was wrong).

Some thoughts:
1) The term 'illegal' is not a value judgment against the insurgents (though some may read it as such)
2) The presence of a state of illegitimacy does not automatically lead to insurgencies (the power structure is good at nipping them in the bud), nor can insurgencies be stopped solely by creating legitimacy, but it does cut into the insurgency's source of support and prevents future outbreaks.

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 10:39 AM
I buy the assertion that 'insurgencies' are about 'legitimacy', and I don't see how the latter is a uniquely Western construct. Pretty much any society has a power structure with rules, and that power structure exists either with some level of consent of most of the society's members, or through sheer force.

That runs the risk of becoming tautological: people oppose governments they don't like. The only way I can think of to make it non-tautological is to add a value component: a government becomes legitimate by operating according to some rule set.

That's where the cultural component comes in: we believe that legitmacy is not governing in accordance with majority approval, but governing according to a set of rules which we claim are universal (but I think are culturally defined).

For Americans, "good governance" means Western style government. I'm not sure any Afghan government that promotes women's rights would be legitimate, yet it would be exercising "good governance" as Americans define it.

Even the idea of "consent" has a cultural dimension. Most governments throughout history have ruled based on passive consent. But one of the innovations of the European Enlightenment was the notion of active consent. We Americans have extrapolated this in a universal feature rather than a culturally-based one.

So, I'll stick to my argument that we in the West use the phrase "legtimacy" to sugar coat a colonial mindset--that societies are "modern" and "stable" to the extent they reflect the principles of Western liberalism.

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 11:15 AM
Steve,

I completely agree that "Legitimacy" is a much abused term, but also that I have tried to narrowly define it to simply whether or not a distinct segment of a populace recognizes and accepts the right and duty of some body to govern them. I don't think the absence of this automatically causes insurgency, nor does it make insurgency inevitable; but I do believe that it is the primary causal factor and that for anyone doing COIN or supporting someone else's COIN that it's presence or repair should be the main effort.

Hope is the great off-ramp for insurgency, the presence of trusted, certain, legal means to affect change of governance. This is very much a culturally driven thing. The Afghans have a great process that they trust and believe in, but that was suppressed by the Taliban. We killed what the Taliban suppressed and replaced it with elections that mean little in this culture and are so easy to manipulate in a centralized (again our creation), patronage system that all hope was lost. Repairing hope should be right behind addressing legitimacy.

Justice and Respect are major contributing factors. We obsess on Rule of Law, which when enforced on a populace that believes the law to be unjust is most likely to make the situation worse and expand the support base of the insurgency. Respect is universal, be it basic human dignity, or be it a proud, accomplished man like George Washington being told by his own government that he was not worthy of a regular commission in the King's army due solely to the place of his birth.


Currently we attack the organizations; we seek to defeat ideologies; we capture/kill leaders; we seek to produce effectiveness of government services; we seek to deny ungoverned spaces; etc. We essentially arm ourselves with a handful of cliché's and then set out in pursuit of the symptoms of the problem. Done with enough vigor this will in fact suppress an insurgency. Similarly, if a state is willing to exert enough control, it can also prevent insurgency from breaking out in a major way. Neither of those approaches are really acceptable to the America I believe in.

By understanding that bad government action can create the growth of a "condition of insurgency" among a single or multiple segments of its society, and by better understanding what actually feeds that condition, and what metrics really matter, we can then make better decisions about where to engage at all, and if we do opt to engage, how to do so in a manner that is apt to produce the best effect.

It's a work in progress.

Bob

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 11:19 AM
I wouldnt call insurgency a strategy, i would rather call as bob said it a

Quote:
"An illegal political challenge to a governing body that may be either violent or non-violent in terms of tactics employed and campaign design."

Also when you look at the translations of the word insurgency, in for example dutch (opstand : uprising ) or in french ( insurger : insurrection ), this way i think it is better to say that "insurgency" tells us something about the origins of the conflict rather then the way it is being fought.

On the other hand your definition would be a pretty good definition of the strategical part of guerilla warfare.


I personally don't find that very useful. It would make the democracy movements in places like China and Iran insurgencies. In fact, it would mean that governments have the ability to determine what is or is not an insurgency by the laws it passes.

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 11:26 AM
Steve,

I completely agree that "Legitimacy" is a much abused term, but also that I have tried to narrowly define it to simply whether or not a distinct segment of a populace recognizes and accepts the right and duty of some body to govern them. I don't think the absence of this automatically causes insurgency, nor does it make insurgency inevitable; but I do believe that it is the primary causal factor and that for anyone doing COIN or supporting someone else's COIN that it's presence or repair should be the main effort.

Hope is the great off-ramp for insurgency, the presence of trusted, certain, legal means to affect change of governance. This is very much a culturally driven thing. The Afghans have a great process that they trust and believe in, but that was suppressed by the Taliban. We killed what the Taliban suppressed and replaced it with elections that mean little in this culture and are so easy to manipulate in a centralized (again our creation), patronage system that all hope was lost. Repairing hope should be right behind addressing legitimacy.

Justice and Respect are major contributing factors. We obsess on Rule of Law, which when enforced on a populace that believes the law to be unjust is most likely to make the situation worse and expand the support base of the insurgency. Respect is universal, be it basic human dignity, or be it a proud, accomplished man like George Washington being told by his own government that he was not worthy of a regular commission in the King's army due solely to the place of his birth.


Currently we attack the organizations; we seek to defeat ideologies; we capture/kill leaders; we seek to produce effectiveness of government services; we seek to deny ungoverned spaces; etc. We essentially arm ourselves with a handful of cliché's and then set out in pursuit of the symptoms of the problem. Done with enough vigor this will in fact suppress an insurgency. Similarly, if a state is willing to exert enough control, it can also prevent insurgency from breaking out in a major way. Neither of those approaches are really acceptable to the America I believe in.

By understanding that bad government action can create the growth of a "condition of insurgency" among a single or multiple segments of its society, and by better understanding what actually feeds that condition, and what metrics really matter, we can then make better decisions about where to engage at all, and if we do opt to engage, how to do so in a manner that is apt to produce the best effect.

It's a work in progress.

Bob


I think we're kind of talking past each other. I was looking for a definition that is purely analytical, stripped of political and value connotations. Your use--which is certainly every bit as valid but simply different--is more focused on political and value connotations. This is like the difference between a political scientist talking about "democracy" or "fascism" and a politician using the same words.

Following that, I still see your use as tautological. What you're saying is that people oppose a government when they don't accept its right to rule. Where it gets tricky is in deriving implications from that.

We assume that the "right to rule" derives from things like governing according to the rule of law and attaining power through a transparent, formal process. But--and this is the point--we also assume this is universal. I just don't think so. For most governments throughout history, the right to rule derived from creating and sustaining stability, pure and simple--the "mandate of heaven"--or simply from being from the correct family. The vast majority of governments throughout history have been authoritarian, and most have been considered legitimate in terms of a working majority of the people who mattered accepting them (and most people throughout history have not been political significant.)

Let me give an example of the process of cultural "mirror imaging"--assuming that others see the world the way we do. We often say that everyone wants "justice." That is true. But most cultures define "justice" differently than the Western notion. The Western notion is that justice is determined by process. In other cultures, only the outcome determines whether justice has been served. If a guilty person is lynched, that is justice. They do not see having a guilty person go free because he or she could afford a better lawyer or found a legal loophole to be "justice." So they do not see our method as necessarily promoting justice.

In Islam, the legitimacy of a government is determined not by how it is selected, but whether its members are pious and it rules in accordance with sharia. I'm hard pressed to find that notion in FM 3-24.

M-A Lagrange
10-12-2010, 11:41 AM
We assume that the "right to rule" derives from things like governing according to the rule of law and attaining power through a transparent, formal process. But--and this is the point--we also assume this is universal. I just don't think so. For most governments throughout history, the right to rule derived from creating and sustaining stability, pure and simple--the "mandate of heaven"--or simply from being from the correct family. The vast majority of governments throughout history have been authoritarian, and most have been considered legitimate in terms of a working majority of the people who mattered accepting them (and most people throughout history have not been political significant.)

Steve and Bob,

May be we can come to the definition of an insurgency to and only to the events which occure when a population/a part of a population is dissatisfy with its rulers or government and use violence to overcome the monopole of violence of a government in order to set a new government.
Now, the only limits is how you qualify/quantify that violence to make the distinction between a riot and an insurgency.

Also, the question of legitimacy through Rule of Law has little to see with an insurgency. It just means that a government follows the law. If the law is to have a kingdom and the kings rules by the law: you do have rule of law. There's a necessity to differenciate Rule of Law and the idea of democracy as the less worst form of government. Also, Rule of Law is differenciated from Human Rights. The idea of Rule of Law is Human Rights + democracy is just a remain from the Cold War ideological battle.

The main key point, in my opinion, is: does a government, in its form and practice of governance, satisfy the people. The rest is purely ideological and not technical (in a politic science understanding).

M-A

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 12:07 PM
The main key point, in my opinion, is: does a government, in its form and practice of governance, satisfy the people.


To me, this is still seeing the world through a Western cultural lens. In the vast majority of states throughout history, the vast majority of the people were politically insignificant. The government didn't have to concern itself with satisfying them. The whole concept of a politically significant "people" is a Western notion.

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 12:10 PM
Let me take a stab at illustrating the pitfalls of a political/value based definition of insurgency.

Rather than the regime-focused on that has been used here, how about a people-based one: A method used by oppressed people to punish an unjust, repressive, corrupt, and illegitimate regime when they have no peaceful way of doing so.

The point I'm trying to make here is that a value-based definition is inherently subjective. Subjective definitions are useful as "calls to action" but have limits if the purpose is purely analytical.

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 12:16 PM
Well, as an odd mix of "former Green Beret, former Prosecutor" I suspect I may look at rule of law uniquely. But Justice is far more important than the rule of law for me, and certainly in regards to insurgency. As often as not it is the rule of law that is used to oppress a society as it is to liberate the same.

As to definitions, I don't think this is like "The Highlander" where "there can be only one..." Such drama leads to debating words rather than seeking understanding; and I know that Steve is as committed as I am, not to be "right" but rather to help shape better understanding of a complex problem.

There is value in understanding that in certain contexts insurgency can be thought of as a strategy, and have that conversation. Similarly there is value in looking at it as conditions that come to exist within a populace and having that conversation. All of this contributes to greater understanding and moves us forward beyond some well-worn clichés that each contain a nugget of truth wrapped in thick coating of old wife's tale.

But Steve, I do think one point is critical to the American look at these things, you said:

"that governments have the ability to determine what is or is not an insurgency by the laws it passes."

That is exactly my point. These things are completely situational. Just as the U.S. Constitution has prevented the growth and development of countless such uprisings; so too has the absence of such governmental action resulted in continuous uprising in places like the Philippines. This is indeed wholly within governmental control to set the bar based on their own culture, their own tolerance for popular feedback. Some countries set the bar too low though, and they are the ones that are challenged. To set it too high is anarchy.

And nothing I write is a defense or attack on US military doctrine on insurgency. The point being that what the US military thinks or does not think insurgency is only shapes how the US military looks at and engages insurgency; it does nothing to shape what insurgency is. In fact, I am on record I see FM 3-24 as "Zombie COIN" - a soulless tome that like a zombie looks and generally acts properly, but for lack of a soul is just a shade off. The soul that FM3-24 lacks is a foundation in an understanding of insurgency itself.

I know it is in re-write currently. My advice to that team is to focus on what exactly is insurgency, and multiple definitions are fine for its many aspects; to lay that down up front, and then weave that "soul" through the manual to apply that critical nuance that is missing from much of the current one.

All insurgency is indeed in the eye of the beholder, shaped by their respective cultures. Similarly all governments have it within their power to allow their legitimacy to come from what is locally accepted (from god, birth, vote, Shura, or whatever) and to ensure that local perceptions of justice and respect are supported. And when they don't, every populace faced with such Despotism needs to know that America stands for the principle that "..it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."

We need to put our American rulers away and stop measuring whether or not some populace somewhere is right or wrong; or if some government is good or bad. The populace holds the ruler and they get to do the measuring. That is what America stands for.

We muddy the dignity of insurgency when we call every form or populace uprising insurgency (Mexico is NOT an insurgency); and we trap ourselves into a family of bad options when we see all COIN as war, and all US action in support of someone else's COIN as also being COIN for ourselves.

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 01:24 PM
Since I've been arguing throughout this thread that the values-based definition of insurgency, which dominates Western doctrine and strategy, is a reflection of the colonialist worldview, I need to point out that there are two very different critiques of imperialism and this worldview.

The one from the left originated with Lenin, was refined by a number of Third World intellectuals and political leaders, picked up by the post Vietnam American left, and represented today by people like Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson. It's essence is moral subjectivism: the imperial mindset is wrong because Western values are no better than non-Western ones.

The critique from the right is best typified today by the writing of Andrew Bacevich. It is based on the notion that America is ill suited for the imperial mission. That it has adverse effects on us like leading us toward a militarized foreign policy, and placing us in partnership with unsavory, even evil people.

My own position is the latter.

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 01:55 PM
That is exactly my point. These things are completely situational. Just as the U.S. Constitution has prevented the growth and development of countless such uprisings; so too has the absence of such governmental action resulted in continuous uprising in places like the Philippines. This is indeed wholly within governmental control to set the bar based on their own culture, their own tolerance for popular feedback. Some countries set the bar too low though, and they are the ones that are challenged. To set it too high is anarchy.



I wasn't arguing that everything is sitautional (That's a truism that doesn't tell us much.) I was arguing that by your definition, what makes something an insurgency is whether the government decides to pass a law which makes it one rather than decisions made by the insurgents themselves to opt for insurgency.

And aren't you simply arguing that the existence of violent opposition to the state proves the state is flawed? I mean, I can't argue with that, but again I'm not sure what it tells us.

Plus, the U.S. has certainly had violent opposition. But its leaders felt strong enough to opt for conventional war rather than a strategy of insurgency. The UK faced a protracted insurgency. Was this because the US and UK governments set the bar too low for popular feedback?

M-A Lagrange
10-12-2010, 02:26 PM
To me, this is still seeing the world through a Western cultural lens. In the vast majority of states throughout history, the vast majority of the people were politically insignificant. The government didn't have to concern itself with satisfying them. The whole concept of a politically significant "people" is a Western notion.

May be, I am a westerner so I can't avoid having such default. But my point was rather that people are satisfy with the form of government they have because it allow them to conduct normal life activity with a little interference from the government. A dictatorship that allows you to make business and provides you a satisfying legal environment may be seen as a satisfying government by the population. Therefore there is no reasons to rebel against it ans start an insurgency.
Even if people had an insignificant weight in politic for long time in most of the history, the fact that they were "satisfied" does count. The day they are unsatisfied they rebel and you end up with an insurgency.
I do agree that leninist approach does see the population as marginal in term of decision making but population, even in the eyes of Lenin, does remain an important component as they are the army of the revolutionary intellectuals. (Communist revolutionnaires were the first to win hearts and minds).
What/who triggers an insurgency is different from who does constitute the combattants.

Satisfying the people is not providing a "etat providence" as in Europ or a "US like democracy", it is not even based on access to services... I take it as a form of government that does match with people expectation from State/Government involvement and interraction in their daily life.

It is also clear that most of the time (if not always) the group starting an insurgency has a political weight much more important than the masses and populace. In my opinion, we do come to the same end: a small group with a large individual political weight trying to size power through violence = a large group of individual with limited individual political weight trying to size power through violence.
To size power both need a populace support to be abble to militarily defeate the government.
And to gain that populace support, both promisse to the people a government that will provide them a more satisfying form of governance. The rural based communist revolutions are all based on the promisse of land reform and smaller taxes: what the rural populations will see as more satisfying. (Even if that is not true as JMM demonstrated in a previous threat with Viet Nam).

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 02:28 PM
Well based on Clausewitz's hypothesises/observations, insurgencies are defeated when the insurgents give up using military/violent means obtain their policy objective. Most the time that is because enough have been killed or captured, as in any form of armed conflict.

Based on that, I cannot see what "good governance" and/or "legitimacy" has to contribute other than being simplistic political opinions.


That would be true IF insurgency is simply a different form of war. I'm not sure how I feel about that notion. I know that some people I respect greatly like Ralph Peters take it.

At its essence, such an approach seeks to manage threats rather than resolve them. That may be the most realistic. The implication is that if we need to return every decade and kill more insurgents, that is better in the long run than trying to re-engineer a society, culture, economy, and political system.

Two things are clear, though. If we are to conceptualize insurgency as a variant of war, we need to abandon the notion that the goal of war is always decisive victory. Second, if we are to adopt that conceptualization, we need to make fundamental change to our doctrine and strategy.

slapout9
10-12-2010, 02:34 PM
Since I've been arguing throughout this thread that the values-based definition of insurgency, which dominates Western doctrine and strategy, is a reflection of the colonialist worldview, I need to point out that there are two very different critiques of imperialism and this worldview.

The one from the left originated with Lenin, was refined by a number of Third World intellectuals and political leaders, picked up by the post Vietnam American left, and represented today by people like Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson. It's essence is moral subjectivism: the imperial mindset is wrong because Western values are no better than non-Western ones.

The critique from the right is best typified today by the writing of Andrew Bacevich. It is based on the notion that America is ill suited for the imperial mission. That it has adverse effects on us like leading us toward a militarized foreign policy, and placing us in partnership with unsavory, even evil people.

My own position is the latter.

Wise words Steve. All systems have a purpose and when ever you violate that purpose sooner or later the system will either adapt or it will begin to dis-integrate. Our system (country) was created by "Operational Design" one of the first of it's kind. And we were never designed to be an Imperial Power so when ever we violate our very purpose as a nation(system) we will almost always get into a lot of trouble.

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 02:35 PM
May be, I am a westerner so I can't avoid having such default. But my point was rather that people are satisfy with the form of government they have because it allow them to conduct normal life activity with a little interference from the government. A dictatorship that allows you to make business and provides you a satisfying legal environment may be seen as a satisfying government by the population. Therefore there is no reasons to rebel against it ans start an insurgency.
Even if people had a unsignificant weight in politic for long time in most of the history, the fact that they were "satisfied" does count. The day they are un satisfied they rebel and you end up with a rebellion.
I do agree that leninist approach does see the population as marginal in term of decision making but population, even in the eyes of Lenin, does remain an important component as they are the army of the revolutionary intellectuals. (Communist revolutionnaires were the first to win hearts and minds).
What triggers an insurgency is different from who does conduct the combat.

Satisfying the people is not providing a "etat providence" as in Europ or a "US like democracy", it is not even based on access to services... I take it as a form of government that does match with people expectation from State/Government involvement and interraction in their daily life.

It is also clear that the group starting an insurgency has a political weight much more important than the masses and populace. In my opinion, we do come to the same conclusion, what ever is the approach we take: a small group with a large individual political weight trying to size power through violence = a large group of individual with limited individual political weight trying to size power through violence.
To size power both need a populace support to be abble to militarily defeate the government.
And to gain that populace support, both promisse to the people a government that will provide them a more satisfying form of governance. The rural based communist revolutions are all based on the promisse of land reform and smaller taxes: what the rural populations will see as more satisfying. (Even if that is not true as JMM demonstrated in a previous threat with Viet Nam).

My sense is that what you described WAS the essence of Cold War insurgencies. There were political and economic systems which did not reflect the interests of large segments of the population, particularly peasants. Historically, the interests of peasants did not matter. When the peasantry was mobilized, their interests DID matter and sometimes it required violence to force the system to adjust to this.

But the question is: Is this a universal conceptualization or was it specific to the 20th century? Does it explain contemporary insurgencies?

I don't know the anwer but have a suspcion that it is not.

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 02:46 PM
Well, the American Civil War does not really fit within my definition of insurgency, as the people worked through the law, through government, and it was the government of the various states that declared their independence from the Central US Government. Considering that each of these states began as a colony, and then became fully sovereign states that agreed to work with each other (while retaining all sovereignty in themselves) under the articles, and then surrendering a portion of that sovereignty under the Constitution with the belief that they could always withdraw from the Union if they decided it didn't work out; their actions were reasonable under the law. Not acceptable, but reasonable. I believe President Jackson put an end to the legality of such a withdrawal, but the Civil War drew from the first real test of that law. It was warfare, pure and simple between two sovereigns. When the Union prevailed it validated the Jackson holding.

Now, that said:

Did "conditions of insurgency" exist in the South? Yes.
Did the southern populace choose a "strategy of insurgency"? No.
Could they have? Yes.
Could the nation have devolved into insurgency at the end of the Civil War? Certainly.
Why did that not happen? Certainly there were those who wanted to, but the full and immediate focus on true reconciliation by Grant at Appomattox and Lincoln; the bringing the South back into the fold as full partners; and yes, the full and complete military defeat coupled with a defeat of the will of the majority of the populace to resist, all combined to put this to rest. The loud voices that pushed to punish the south following the war were every bit as dangerous to the survival of the union as the loud voices to secede were prior to the war. I think the wounds are largely healed now, but that took several generations.

Oh, and what does my approach tell us:

1. That it is Governments who cause insurgency, not Populaces.
- Therefore resolution comes through understanding the populace and addressing the failures of governance.

2. Each populace assesses it situation with its governance through its own lens.
- Any objective measure of what insurgency is or is not would require the universal application of someone else's lens; and would therefore be universally inaccurate.

3. There are certain critical aspects of governance that seem to contribute the most to conditions of insurgency.
- What actions or inactions might cause such perceptions is unique to each recipient society.
- A diverse state like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Philippines with multiple distinct societies assessing their own unique perceptions of a single, poor government, may well give rise to multiple insurgencies that are each very unique. What they all hold in common is that they are responses to poor governance. The solution lies in understanding these unique perspective, in understanding what perceptions are most critical to promoting insurgency, and focusing on fixing the aspects of governance that are driving them.

I admit I turn the equation upside down. I place the responsibility on government to govern well, and I fully support the right and duty of the populace to act illegally when no legal means exists, when government refuses to do so.

A right is something that cannot be taken away.
A duty is something one must perform.

I personally am not ready to re-write the documents or modify the principles upon which this nation was founded simply because our current approaches to foreign policy have made them inconvenient. I feel strongly about that, and sometimes that emotion slips into my work.

Now, I realize this is an American document, so I am not saying that we need to force every government in the world to recognize this same right, this same duty for their own populace. What I am saying, is that when we dedicate ourselves to supporting those governments that do not, we set ourselves up for fair criticism for supporting the suppression or rights in other populaces that we demand for ourselves. Many an insurgent populace has held up the American Declaration (Vietnam and Algeria to name but two) and looked to America for help in their plight. We do not have a great record in answering those calls. I think when we look for ways to move forward, we will do best by first looking back to our own roots and being more empathetic of challenges faced by others today that in many ways mirror our own.

Today we are attacked most vigorously and most persistently by the populaces of our allies. We really need to think about that.

William F. Owen
10-12-2010, 03:02 PM
Oh, and what does my approach tell us:

1. That it is Governments who cause insurgency, not Populaces.
- Therefore resolution comes through understanding the populace and addressing the failures of governance.

Ya All*h! That is pure sophistry. Governments do not cause insurgencies. Insurgents cause insurgencies. It is the choice of some of the population to use violence against a government that causes so called insurgency. People rebel because they want to. Not because they need to.

If we forget that we will all disappear down the liberal post-modern plug-hole which is responsible for all this hand wringing about how to crush rebellions.

Resolution comes about killing and capturing the right folks. That done the non-violent politics can kick in.... or not.

slapout9
10-12-2010, 03:05 PM
Did the southern populace choose a "strategy of insurgency"? No.
Could they have? Yes.


Bob, the South had a mixed Strategy, which was one their problems. But there was certainly an Insurgent component to it.

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 03:19 PM
Ya All*h! That is pure sophistry. Governments do not cause insurgencies. Insurgents cause insurgencies. It is the choice of some of the population to use violence against a government that causes so called insurgency. People rebel because they want to. Not because they need to.

If we forget that we will all disappear down the liberal post-modern plug-hole which is responsible for all this hand wringing about how to crush rebellions.

Resolution comes about killing and capturing the right folks. That done the non-violent politics can kick in.... or not.

:) We'll forever agree to disagree on this one.

However to accuse another of "sophistry" is either poor word choice or an intentional attempt to start a fight by calling anothers intentions into question, rather than simply disagreeing with their positions.

(•sophism: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone)

My argument is every bit as valid as any posted by any other; is backed by the facts of a thousand insurgencies over time, and is offered to deceive no one, merely rather to offer a persective that is too often shouted down those who cannot get past the inherent illegality of insurgency to assess why such a drastic approach was thought appropriate to begin with.

William F. Owen
10-12-2010, 03:56 PM
(•sophism: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone)
Take it as a complement! :D

My argument is every bit as valid as any posted by any other; is backed by the facts of a thousand insurgencies over time, and is offered to deceive no one, merely rather to offer a persective that is too often shouted down those who cannot get past the inherent illegality of insurgency to assess why such a drastic approach was thought appropriate to begin with.
You certainly have a right to your argument, but I cannot accept that it is valid to suggest "Governments cause insurgencies," as a statement of fact. It's certainly an ingenious argument to free the populace for responsibility for their actions.

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 04:12 PM
I hold everyone resposible for their actions. Governents as well as populaces. We must seek balance.

Not all that is legal is also right, though certainly much that is illegal is also wrong. With insurgency we get deep into that grey area between right and wrong, legal and illegal. Complicating it further is that governments assess "facts" from their perspective, and populaces assess very different "facts" from theirs.

Like an arguement between a husband and his wife, being "right" will only take you so far, and telling her how she is supposed to "feel" about your actions is rarely a wise path. Sure the husband is stronger and can always play that card, but there are consequences and such decisions should not be made lightly. Better to listen, adjust, and move forward. (Oh, and yes her friends will conduct UW to encourage her frustration is they don't much like you; just as yours may conduct FID suggest ways you could be more effective in your approaches...)

But "I'm right and you're wrong because I said so" is not apt to lead to resolutions acceptable to anyone. Certainly not the poor bloke in this example, nor for Mr. Karzai in his example either.

jmm99
10-12-2010, 04:13 PM
I'm not totally buying this:


from Wilf
Resolution comes about killing and capturing the right folks. That done the non-violent politics can kick in.... or not.

in terms of how I view the "political struggle" and "military struggle". The term "non-violent politics" applies, e.g., to what we in the US are seeing now (the pre-election month).

The JMM "political struggle" is not necessarily non-violent. In my construct, both the "political struggle" and the "military struggle" have as their goal "neutralizing" the opposing group (using three means). In the "political struggle", the priority of means is more "convert, capture, kill". In the "military struggle", the priority of means is more "kill, capture, convert".

"Conversion" (to JMM) includes infiltration and subversion; and frankly, the threat or use of violence if necessary to remove (kill or capture) barriers to the conversion process.

The JMM "political struggle" also includes activities such as intelligence gathering and establishing networks. For example, Wilf, you want to use my Special Branch and its networks. Fine, you are welcome to drink from my well; but please remember who owns the well.

Where I believe you err (not necessarily in every case) is on putting the "political struggle" (as I am using it) on a shelf until the military has put paid to "killing and capturing the right folks".

As a general rule, I'm suggested a triad arrangement at all levels: Policy Group (that drives both the "political struggle" and the "military struggle"), Political Struggle Group and Military Stuggle Group. We've been discussing this on and off for about a year.

Regards

Mike

William F. Owen
10-12-2010, 04:29 PM
Where I believe you err (not necessarily in every case) is on putting the "political struggle" (as I am using it) on a shelf until the military has put paid to "killing and capturing the right folks".
I am in no way putting the political struggle on the shelf. They go hand in hand, and they alter and fuel each other. The issue is that any action the government wants to take AFTER the conflict will be by its very nature "non-violent." War is merely the violent transmission/"setting forth" of policy.

If folks want to change sides (convert) then OK. They wouldn't have wanted to unless you had used violence to convince them they were going to suffer. The conversion is the realisation of a policy.


As a general rule, I'm suggested a triad arrangement at all levels:
A triad? Could you say Trinity? Have I heard this before? :D I wish I could claim credit for my views. Sadly they are all CvCs!

SteveMetz
10-12-2010, 04:36 PM
A triad? Could you say Trinity? Have I heard this before? :D I wish I could claim credit for my views. Sadly they are all CvCs!


Actually, it was more Pythagoras

Entropy
10-12-2010, 04:44 PM
Col. Jones,

I'll repeat here what I think is the biggest flaw in your theory: Government's limited ability to deal with irreconcilable differences within a governed population. Your theory, by placing all responsibility on government, assumes that government always has the capacity to satisfy all its people enough to prevent insurgency from occurring or defeating insurgency through government reform. I don't think this is universally true. It also fails to consider cases where government simply cannot meet the demands of a populace.

I'll try to illustrate this point with a bit of reductio ad absurdum:

Is it possible, for example, to unite the populations of the US and Pakistan under a single system of governance? Could any kind of "good governance" keep such a Frankenstein nation together, much less keep everyone happy enough to forgo violence? Probably not in my view, since the nation of "USPAK" would have too many internal, competing and irreconcilable contradictions. The very idea of such a nation is ludicrous. Yet we tend to assume that because a nation's borders are drawn on a map that such nations are not similarly Frankensteins.

The point here is that national viability is a problem that good governance cannot solve. Those same questions can be asked of any number of "nations" especially those often referred to as "failed states." See also the USSR, Yemen, Yugoslavia, etc. It seems to me that under your theory those states failed only because of bad governance.

So before addressing governance, I think one must consider whether a state is viable to begin with. If you focus on improving governance in a state isn't viable, or is just barely so, then one is not likely to get the outcome one expects.

Consequently, I suspect that many authoritarian states are actually just on the edge of viability and are only held together through authoritarian governance. Take away the authoritarian component and the state falls apart. Promoting "good governance" in such cases has the effect of advocating the dissolution of the state itself as a coherent political entity. It shouldn't be surprising that these countries resist such calls for reform and I doubt there is any amount of pressure the US can bring to bear to cause them to reconsider.

Ken White
10-12-2010, 05:00 PM
My argument is every bit as valid as any posted by any other; is backed by the facts of a thousand insurgencies over time, and is offered to deceive no one, merely rather to offer a persective that is too often shouted down those who cannot get past the inherent illegality of insurgency to assess why such a drastic approach was thought appropriate to begin with.That's true. Conversely, the arguments of others also have the same validity and merit the consideration you desire for your arguments. You rarely give that consideration and thus perhaps do your arguments no favors. Bulldozing may be overkill when only a Bobcat is needed. Said another way, shouting is a two way street.. :wry:

Can you provide me a list of those "thousand insurgencies?" Does that list also include those where the governance was an issue only in the sense the insurgents wanted to replace the existing governance with their own brand -- which they KNEW would be less tolerable. Iran comes to mind. The Cuban, US and USSR (among others) fomentations around the world during the 60s are prime examples of 'our' form of governance versus anyone's status quo and with little to no regard for the quality of said quo. :eek:

A response to that is that if poor governance did not exist, such efforts would draw no followers. That is almost certainly an erroneous assumption. There are a lot of malcontents in every society. IIRC, Bertrand Russell put the figure at nearly half, providing a low threshold for violence with the proper incentives. My personal observation says Bert overstated it, I'd say in most societies it runs around 20 to 30 percent. However, that is enough to provide a cadre of folks who see only slight difference between grumbling and fighting versus the big difference their more complacent neighbors see. Which it will be often lies in subtle manipulation... ;)

I'm not at all sure too many get upset about the illegality of insurgency. In fact, my belief is that most are far more concerned about the potential threat to their perceived well-being than they are about legality. Nor am I sure that insurgency is a drastic approach in many cases. Again, Iran comes to mind -- as do several of the various Mexican Revolutions.

Then we also have various worldwide military coups as insurgencies...:D

Pete
10-12-2010, 05:26 PM
Bob, the South had a mixed Strategy, which was one their problems. But there was certainly an Insurgent component to it.
John S. Mosby's operations in Northern Virginia weren't a grass-roots insurgency by the local population -- rather, it was an organized military unit of the Army of Northern Virginia that used unconventional tactics to infiltrate into Union rear areas. By and large Mosby's operations were supported by a sympathetic local population. However, there were times when local farmers were in the same position as South Vietnamese peasants; not wanting to show overt allegiance to any of the combatants in the area.

jmm99
10-12-2010, 06:00 PM
this:


from Wilf
The issue is that any action the government wants to take AFTER the conflict will be by its very nature "non-violent."

One cannot expect violence to turn off instantly - it's not a spigot. There will be violence before and after an armed conflict. The level of violence simply does not rise to that level (which gets into another discussion of what is "war" and what is "armed conflict").

This also is overstated:


from Wilf
If folks want to change sides (convert) then OK. They wouldn't have wanted to unless you had used violence to convince them they were going to suffer.

If fact, violence can cause folks to change sides in the opposite direction. E.g., the executions of the 1916 Easter Rebellion rebels pursuant to military commission sentences (perfectly legal violence) ended up making the republican movement (IRB, etc.) respectable in the eyes of many Irish who initially opposed the 1916 Rebellion itself.

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 06:05 PM
That's true. Conversely, the arguments of others also have the same validity and merit the consideration you desire for your arguments. You rarely give that consideration and thus perhaps do your arguments no favors. Bulldozing may be overkill when only a Bobcat is needed. Said another way, shouting is a two way street.. :wry:

Can you provide me a list of those "thousand insurgencies?" Does that list also include those where the governance was an issue only in the sense the insurgents wanted to replace the existing governance with their own brand -- which they KNEW would be less tolerable. Iran comes to mind. The Cuban, US and USSR (among others) fomentations around the world during the 60s are prime examples of 'our' form of governance versus anyone's status quo and with little to no regard for the quality of said quo. :eek:

A response to that is that if poor governance did not exist, such efforts would draw no followers. That is almost certainly an erroneous assumption. There are a lot of malcontents in every society. IIRC, Bertrand Russell put the figure at nearly half, providing a lo
w threshold for violence with the proper incentives. My personal observation says Bert overstated it, I'd say in most societies it runs around 20 to 30 percent. However, that is enough to provide a cadre of folks who see only slight difference between grumbling and fighting versus the big difference their more complacent neighbors see. Which it will be often lies in subtle manipulation... ;)

I'm not at all sure too many get upset about the illegality of insurgency. In fact, my belief is that most are far more concerned about the potential threat to their perceived well-being than they are about legality. Nor am I sure that insurgency is a drastic approach in many cases. Again, Iran comes to mind -- as do several of the various Mexican Revolutions.

Then we also have various worldwide military coups as insurgencies...:D

Such a focus leads to overly agonizing over what the challenger offers or what his motivations are; rather than what the problems of the current governance are and what the causation among the affected populace is that allowed this challenger to come in and make headway.

So, ok, lets pick one off of your list and look at. Cuba sounds interesting. To put everyone on a common footprint to begin with I'll look at this reference
The Casebook on Insurgency,
http://www.usgcoin.org/library/USGDocuments/AD416553.pdf
or
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=2943&highlight=casebook+insurgency

I've not looked much at this particular insurgency, nor this reference version of facts. It is in Section II Latin America; #5 Cuba 1953-1959.

I'll look at it with an eye to how the populace percieved their government and why it is that Castro could emerge to take down a standing government supported by a powerful backer only a few miles away.

jmm99
10-12-2010, 06:36 PM
your links to the The Casebook on Insurgency do not work for me; and I and others had problems with the link in the original thread (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=2943&highlight=casebook+insurgency):

- as to .pdf link - present message: Sorry, "www.usgcoin.org" is unavailable or could not be found.

-------------------
Anyway, Cuba is a very unusual case where one Power (Batista group) in effect committed suicide - the other Power (Castro group) took advantage of the default and vacuum.

Regards

Mike

Ken White
10-12-2010, 06:50 PM
missing the point...
Such a focus leads to overly agonizing over what the challenger offers or what his motivations are; rather than what the problems of the current governance are and what the causation among the affected populace is that allowed this challenger to come in and make headway.I do not agree agonizing is involved for most people nor do I think most fail to look at causation. Most do look for it. Many will see poor governance (as it often is), many will see other factors (also often the case). It is possible to over-focus on things besides the protagonists.

The really sharp will divine the truth which is likely somewhere between the two. Well, as much truth as any conflict offers -- to wit: not much...:D
So, ok, lets pick one off of your list and look at. Cuba sounds interesting. To put everyone on a common footprint to begin with I'll look at this reference
The Casebook on Insurgency...Umm, Bob -- we're off on the wrong foot. You missed the point or tried to divert the argument. Don't waste your time on the why of the Cuban revolution. Note I did not give a list, nor did I cite Cuba as an insurgency -- what I did write was:

""The Cuban, US and USSR (among others) fomentations around the world during the 60s are prime examples of 'our' form of governance versus anyone's status quo and with little to no regard for the quality of said quo."" (emphasis added / kw)

Note I said the 60s and the fomentations of the Cubans plus the US plus the USSR (among others). So I'll give you Cuba as a case of bad governance leading to the Castro insurgency of 1956-59.

My reference was to the attempts of Cuba to export 'revolution' to Africa and South America and to those of us, the USSR and others to change the governance in other nations (which may or may not have been bad) for 'own' governance (which may or may not have been one bit better * )
I'll look at it with an eye to how the populace percieved their government and why it is that Castro could emerge to take down a standing government supported by a powerful backer only a few miles away.Good try, but leaners only count in Horseshoes. Batista was a creep and had a bad government. Castro is not the issue, Ol' Che and exporting insurgency is... :wry:

As for why he prevailed, I can tell you that -- because many in the US government of the day totally supported Castro, hated Batista for being a minor despot and their librul instincts allowed them to voice and provide support to Fidel, thus over riding those who warned that Fidel was not what he seemed...

Same thing happened in 1976-9 in Iran. The well intentioned and poorly informed would not listen then, either. They rarely do because they are so-o-o-o righteous... :mad:

Bad trait, that...

Note in both those cases (and in Kosovo for another...), the librul intelligentsia fostered insurgencies which effectively replaced poor governments with a far worse government. Fidel, Che and Khomeini all killed more people in their first two years than the previous regimes had in a decade or so. Big help we were...

* That includes the 'governance' fostered by the US which in many cases was not really a bit better for most of the populace than were the ideas of the former regime. Though a good lawyer could probably twist that. ;)

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 08:06 PM
Well Ken, it is pretty widely appreciate that throughout the Cold War the U.S. and the Soviets waged a broad game of what I call "pawn warfare", each employing their agents and conducting FID where they had interests and relations with a government, or UW where had interests but no relations with the government.

Cuba was clearly an agent of the Soviets, little different than the relationship of Israel with the U.S. Both needed a big daddy and were willing to do "dirty deeds, done dirt cheap." Both big daddies had plenty of dirty work that needed doing.

But all of that misses the point. My point is that if you look at any of those states where the Soviets or the U.S. or any of their surrogates, showed up to conduct UW, it only had significant effect when conditions of insurgency already existed in the target populace.

You can't pin Angola, for example, on Cuba. Cuba did not place an illegitimate colonial governments over Angola, Portugal did. Cuba saw opportunity in countries rich in natural resources but subjugated to colonial control and offered hope (yes, wrapped in Communist ideology and with long strings running back to Moscow). But this was the game of the day, this jockeying of pawns on the periphery as the two super powers each looked to gain advantages short of nuclear exchange. So the Soviets worked through Cuba, the US worked through South Africa...it was the Cold War.

None of this would have been going on in Angola though, but for the promise to super power national interests of the resources there; and the conditions of insurgency from generations of colonial rule. To blame Cuba for Angola is like blaming a shovel for a hole.

There will always be jockeying for power where conditions of insurgency exist. Some will be internal to the state, some will be external. Some of those external players are the agents of other external players. But at the core of this all, is a populace that is ripe for exploitation. And still, I do not see conditions of Good Governance being successfully exploited by anyone, internal or external. But where poor governance exists, and there are interests (power, money, key terrain, etc) to be served, the exploiters will gather.

Bob's World
10-12-2010, 08:46 PM
your links to the The Casebook on Insurgency do not work for me; and I and others had problems with the link in the original thread (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=2943&highlight=casebook+insurgency):

- as to .pdf link - present message: Sorry, "www.usgcoin.org" is unavailable or could not be found.

-------------------
Anyway, Cuba is a very unusual case where one Power (Batista group) in effect committed suicide - the other Power (Castro group) took advantage of the default and vacuum.

Regards

Mike

Apparently "links" are one of my many challenges. If all else fails, just use the SWJ search function and it takes you to the thread with the link to the casebook (that drill into 23 separate insurgencies in pretty fair fashion) and also a link to the '65 Human Factors.

Break...just tried it and you're right, the Casebook link is broken. Human Factors is working though.

WILF will love this from Page 11 of Human Factors (to show I recognize that his position is one that man subscribe to)

"PART VI. GOVERNMENT COUNTERMEASURES

The most effective countermeasure is the use of immediate, overpowering force to repress the first signs of insurgency or resistance. (empahsis added) Nations with a representative or constitutional form of government are often restrained from such action by moral, legal, and social considerations, and often attempt to combat the first recognized signs of underground movement through social, economic, or political reforms. All too frequently, however, these positive programs fail, either because of the advanced stage of the underground movement, or because of inadequate resources or time. A government must then organize for more direct, increasingly forceful countermeasures.

As an insurgency gains momentum and government countermeasures move from simple police action to involvement of the armed services, a new centralized command structure is generally required for effective counterinsurgency action."

M-A Lagrange
10-12-2010, 09:57 PM
But the question is: Is this a universal conceptualization or was it specific to the 20th century? Does it explain contemporary insurgencies?

I don't know the anwer but have a suspcion that it is not.

The main question is rather: was Irak a new model or wasn't it just a huge chaos to which the response was COIN?

The "insurgency" in Irak did happen because the absence of government and incapacity of occupying power to immediatly impose order ans "satisfy" the populations needs. Basically reimpose an administration and political platform that correspond to what the local powers were expecting in terms of access to power.

Also, the exemple of the peasants is still valid. Sudan is an insurrection conducted by peasants lead by a group of intellectuals. Basically a leninist revolutionary action. The rest is just ideological blabla.

Also, I do believe that if COIN did work in Irak, it's because COIN is what you do during stabilisation phase not because it was an insurrection in the first place.
To have an insurrection you need to have a government. When you do not have real effective government and disband all the remains of what was a government you have chaos and anarchy. So you respond with COIN to install a government and make it more attractive than the other challengers.

Personnally I do not see why what was true before the 21st century would sudently become falt because you passed the year 2000.
Insurgencies and rebellion did occure in history again and again. And always, it has been the same story of a battle to size power inside a country by a group of disatisfied individuals against a government.

COIN and modern warfare are may be (and I say MAY BE) "new" in the sens that since Napoleon in Spain, partisan have become the "norm" for insurgents. But the problematic remains the same:
Government: keep on being in power
Insurgents: sizing power which is i the hands of the government

The rest is only a different appreciation of how you achieve those objectives: like Wilf, like Bob or through a combination of both.

The idea that COIN objective is to impose a democracy and that insurgencies are liberation wars are remains of Cold War.
COIN objective is, and only, to preserve power in the hands of those who claim to be the legitimate government. Insurgent objective is, and only, to size power from the hand of the government.
Is that government and the governance it applies a "good thing" is an ideological question nothing else.

My point being COIN is the technicall tool to respond to several problematic.

Now explaining "contemporary" insurgencies starts by defining what is different in "new" insurgencies versus "old" insurgencies. And I am not sure that there is something really different (part from the technology) in new insurgencies compare to old insurgencies. The non state actors did exist before 21st century: the spanish particsans were non state actors.

Pete
10-12-2010, 10:04 PM
John S. Mosby's operations in Northern Virginia weren't a grass-roots insurgency by the local population -- rather, it was an organized military unit of the Army of Northern Virginia that used unconventional tactics to infiltrate into Union rear areas.
One could make a convincing argument that Mosby's operations weren't really that unconventional, what they were was an extension of the long-range scouting he had done for J.E.B. Stuart that made the ride around McClellan's army possible in 1862. The main difference between his recon work and what he later did in 1863-65 was that once he had infiltrated he did hit-and-run engagements, after which he vanished. Hence the name "Gray Ghost."

What I'm saying is that these definitions of conventional and unconventional warfare may be a bit arbitrary. One could say Mosby took conventional long-range scouting to a higher degree, because later he added brief, sharp and surprise engagements to his modus operandi.

This feeds into the notion of full-spectrum operations, that some things can have elements of both conventional and unconventional warfare at the same time. It isn't wise to let SOCOM be the UW experts, and to make armor and mech infantry the Fulda Gap guys. Both communities have to be able to adapt to the situation at hand.

Ken White
10-12-2010, 10:59 PM
Cuba was clearly an agent of the Soviets, little different than the relationship of Israel with the U.S. Both needed a big daddy and were willing to do "dirty deeds, done dirt cheap." Both big daddies had plenty of dirty work that needed doing.I missed all that dirty work the Israelis did for us. Could you point that out for me?

How's that list of a thousand insurgencies coming? :D
But all of that misses the point. My point is that if you look at any of those states where the Soviets or the U.S. or any of their surrogates, showed up to conduct UW, it only had significant effect when conditions of insurgency already existed in the target populace.See, GO material! Omar Bradley said, in late '49, I believe, that there would never be another significant amphibious landing on the scale of Sicily or Normandy. Not too long after that, 1 MarDiv and 7th ID landed at Inchon, allowing the Marines to chortle at Omar (who, six years earlier had to be told by Ike that he, Omar, was not going to pull off that beach head...). Causing Omar to in defense of his statement point out that he used the word 'significant.' Define "is"...

Was Angola significant? Was Bolivia?

No problem, Bob. I long ago gave up trying to point out to you that things other than poor governance can create insurgencies and have done so for a long time -- likely will again.
You can't pin Angola, for example, on Cuba. Cuba did not place an illegitimate colonial governments over Angola, Portugal did.I'm not trying to pin anything on Cuba. I merely pointed out that your "pawn warfare" was often responsible for fomenting an insurrection to replace poor governance (I also gave up long ago pointing out to that poor governance is the norm, not the exception -- and the US, for one, is afflicted with it). Added that the replacement was quite often worse than the replaced crowd. I note you had / have no comment on that aspect; perhaps because it isn't germane to your theory of poor governance. Or is it?

As an aside, not only Angola. Check the number of 'insurgencies' in all those places where the British and French (and others...) drew lines on maps and then just left. The Comintern went to work on those fault lines in the 1920s and I can visualize a bunch of old, fat NKVD / MVD / KGB retirees sitting around a TV in Yekaterinburg today just chuckling over the Vodka and admiring the success of their handiwork over the past 90 years or so.

However, your option to select Angola, the recent Colony among several other places Che boy visited is noted -- and unsurprising. :wry:
...the US worked through South Africa...it was the Cold War.You might want to research that a bit more...
And still, I do not see conditions of Good Governance being successfully exploited by anyone, internal or external.That's because there is no really 'good governance' but only acceptable governance and less acceptable. Even Scandinavia, probably the best governed Region or Singapore, one of the best governed States in the world have their dissidents. They have populations that are not terribly volatile (that matters...) and are willing to be patient and give the Government of the day a break.

However, for examples of decent -- not good -- governance that drew insurgencies, look at Riel, L.D.; Chin, P. for just a couple and then there's this statement by Alexis de Tocqueville, who remarked in his Recollections of the period that "society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror." [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848[(LINK)[/url]. sometimes just plain old greed raises its ugly head. Like the Revolution in Brazil in 1889 where the Guvmint were the good guys and the bad guys were the wealthy landowners. :D
...But where poor governance exists, and there are interests (power, money, key terrain, etc) to be served, the exploiters will gather.Yes, that's what I said, backward but the same thing. Low hanging fruit and all that and, y'know what? Sometimes said exploiters work long and diligently to create conditions of poor governance in an effort to foment hate and discontent (see U.S.A. ...). ;)

Ken White
10-12-2010, 11:12 PM
What I'm saying is that these definitions of conventional and unconventional warfare may be a bit arbitrary...This feeds into the notion of full-spectrum operations, that some things can have elements of both conventional and unconventional warfare at the same time. It isn't wise to let SOCOM be the UW experts, and to make armor and mech infantry the Fulda Gap guys. Both communities have to be able to adapt to the situation at hand.Well said and quite true. There's nothing wrong with SF -- not SOCOM, two different kettles of Squid, Catfish and the occasional Frog there -- having the lead and primacy in FID but they need to be able to do the MCO UW stuff as well. Likewise for the GPF, they've got to be able to do the whole spectrum.

Your point on arbitrary definition and delineations is important. That sort of stuff leads to overly focused views of the world; target fixation is a dangerous thing. Every war is different. We cannot forget that and trying to believe or convince folks that all types have a similar cause or an effect or methodologies that can be codified is really dangerous.

Uniforms are cool, no problem figuring out what to wear in the morning. Uniformity is okay if not taken to excess as the US Army far too often tends to do.

Uniformity of thought is a killer.

jmm99
10-12-2010, 11:42 PM
Maybe, someone out there can solve this technical problem.

I said I and others had a problem with the original link, in Jedburgh's original thread (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=2943). Using that link:

http://www.usgcoin.org/library/USGDocuments/AD416553.pdf

I get this from IE 8.0 (same IE version, but a different computer and network from this afternoon): Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.

If I reduce the url to this:

http://www.usgcoin.org

I get: Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.

This afternoon (since it's a different network). I got: Sorry, "www.usgcoin.org" is unavailable or could not be found.

I'd love to read through summaries of 24 "new" insurgencies in "The Casebook on Insurgency". Please, can some very kind soul give us a link we can use ? COL Maxwell to the rescue ?

-------------------------
I'd do some things in addition to what the quote in 1966 Human Factors suggests (let's not be quite so "immediate"). Human Factors and its companion, 1963 Undergrounds in Insurgent, Revolutionary, and Resistance Warfare - SORO (http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0436353), discuss my "political struggle" stuff as well.

Depends on your power position vice the other guy, who is stronger and who is weaker in each given geographic, demographic, etc., etc. (area study). All that seesaws; no two situations are exactly alike; and generalities are just that.

Basic courses of action - don't think of them as phases or stages - situational awareness would seem useful:

- use the power of vexation and provocation in the other guy's balliwick

- manage savagery and chaos (perhaps, via relative insecurity) in contested areas

- establish military, police & political control in your own balliiwick

The last is the immediate concern for both Powers to the conflict - "strategic base areas" or whatever you want to call them.

As to the first point, either side may invade the other's balliwick - and, if it wants an acceptable outcome, probably will. The question is when. You might want to do some preliminary stuff first.

Cheers

Mike

Bob's World
10-13-2010, 12:24 AM
Ken,

Not a general, just a concerned, thinking civilian like yourself.

I will admit that I am searching for your point. I suspect we both understand that the Pied Piper is a fairy tale. No one can come along to some well governed populace with their magic flute of ideology and create an insurgency. The conditions must exist in advance.

Oh, and we had Israel do some wet work for us as quid pro quo to support their bid for indepencence.

I have my thousands (ok modest exaggeration admitted) of insurgencies, I'm still waiting for you to come up with just one where my model does not apply. I need that exception to prove the rule.

We aren't good at COIN. We don't understand insurgency well. We don't know our own history, and we sure as hell don't know the history of others. We can do better than this. If everyone just nods their head and says "good idea, boss," or if no one asks "why" we won't get in front of this.

Is it disturbing to think that US foreign policy laid much of the foundation that Bin Laden has built his UW campaign up? Yes, absolutely. But if we just go out and kill him and his handful of compadres and do nothing to change ourselves, to tear down that foundation, some other group will get up on it and really hurt us next time. Is 9/11 our fault? Absolutely not. Do we need to take responsibility for how our actions contributed to the conditions that Bin Laden feeds upon? Absolutely yes.

Dayuhan
10-13-2010, 01:04 AM
I'll repeat here what I think is the biggest flaw in your theory: Government's limited ability to deal with irreconcilable differences within a governed population. Your theory, by placing all responsibility on government, assumes that government always has the capacity to satisfy all its people enough to prevent insurgency from occurring or defeating insurgency through government reform. I don't think this is universally true. It also fails to consider cases where government simply cannot meet the demands of a populace.

I'll try to illustrate this point with a bit of reductio ad absurdum:


You can illustrate it well without the reductio...

Look at the insurgencies in the southern Philippines and in southern Thailand. Of course you can blame these on "bad governance", but the issue goes well beyond that. In both cases the dominant national culture and the bulk of the populace is faced with a minority that they regard as inherently inferior and untrustworthy, to which they are unwilling to extend equality or in many cases even tolerance. Of course you could say that government should rise above this, but governments do tend to reflect the cultures from which they emerge. At root the issue is not bad governance but a fundamentally irreconcilable gap between two populaces that find themselves rolled into one nation. In each case the government simply reflects the prevailing prejudice of the dominant majority of the populace, as one would expect.

Ken White
10-13-2010, 01:20 AM
Not a general, just a concerned, thinking civilian like yourself.You left out the more important adjectives, old and stubborn...:D
I will admit that I am searching for your point. I suspect we both understand that the Pied Piper is a fairy tale. No one can come along to some well governed populace with their magic flute of ideology and create an insurgency. The conditions must exist in advance.Oh, I think you've found my point. As well as that of Bill Moore, Dayuhan, Mike and others. You just acknowledged that bad governance is not a cause of but rather a facilitator of insurgencies. None of us have ever questioned that, the question was that you -- sometimes -- say it is THE sole causation...

Since you have now agreed with us, we can take the rest of the week off...;)
Oh, and we had Israel do some wet work for us as quid pro quo to support their bid for indepencence.Uh huh. Right, I've heard those rumors as well -- in the last few years. Funny they didn't float around at the time. Since that independence occurred in 1948 over the strenuous objections of most of foreign policy crowd in DC -- Marshall, then SecState, is reliably reputed to have told Truman "Mr. President, I serve at your pleasure but you should know that if you recognize Israel, I will not be able to vote for you in the next election." He was not alone and for most of the 50s and 60s, there was a strong anti-Israeli bias in DoD and the Intel clique -- probably mostly related to the potential to get sucked into a war that would really be little to none of our business, that and budget competition. That 'wet work' -- really hokey fiction term, that -- May not be an old wives tale but it sure is suspect.:rolleyes:
I have my thousands (ok modest exaggeration admitted) of insurgencies, I'm still waiting for you to come up with just one where my model does not apply. I need that exception to prove the rule.I've done that and so have others; you can search those responses up if you wish. You did note that in this thread and today I mentioned two, ala Riel and Chin, where your model doesn't apply -- plus one where it not only doesn't apply, the reverse was true? The good governance was tossed out in an effort to retain slavery which said good Government had banned. Not to mention the Mexican Revolutions (plural...).

Others have been mentioned; you tend to not accept them not by directly refuting the case but by sliding to one side or the other and aiming at OBL or some such...
We aren't good at COIN. We don't understand insurgency well. We don't know our own history, and we sure as hell don't know the history of others. We can do better than this. If everyone just nods their head and says "good idea, boss," or if no one asks "why" we won't get in front of this.You and I have agreed on this many times. I still agree and am not disputing any of that.
Is it disturbing to think that US foreign policy laid much of the foundation that Bin Laden has built his UW campaign up? Yes, absolutely. But if we just go out and kill him and his handful of compadres and do nothing to change ourselves, to tear down that foundation, some other group will get up on it and really hurt us next time. Is 9/11 our fault? Absolutely not.All true and we have previously agreed on all that -- so why bring it up now?
Do we need to take responsibility for how our actions contributed to the conditions that Bin Laden feeds upon? Absolutely yes.Who has said that we are not or have not?

May I suggest that taking responsibility and undoing the past are two very different things? One can rant for days on the dumb (many) and evil (few) things we have done and that will change nothing. One can acknowledge responsibility and that changes nothing.

However, one can change ones approach and preclude further errors. You have suggested some strong and positive steps in that direction with which I agree. You have suggested others with which I do not disagree but have urged caution or an indirect approach.

The foremost of those is that you seem to wish to ignore the way the US government really works. My point to you for a couple of years is that what you wish for will not happen because you appear to insist the system change to the way you think it should operate. It won't. You cannot ignore the domestic politics in this huge nation and their effects on our relations and interface with the rest of the world.

Now that you've realized and acknowledged that poor governance is sometimes a cause of insurgency and that it is most always a facilitator and hopefully that it is sometimes not really an issue at all, if only rarely, you've taken the first step toward true enlightenment. Now for US domestic politics, election and budget cycles... ;)

Dayuhan
10-13-2010, 01:24 AM
We aren't good at COIN. We don't understand insurgency well. We don't know our own history, and we sure as hell don't know the history of others. We can do better than this.

Agree with the first two sentences, but when you get to "we can do better" I balk. All very well to point out that insurgency arises from defects in government, and it's generally true... but the moment we set out to do something about the relationship between government and populace in another country we are seriously overstepping any reasonable boundary to our rights, responsibilities, and capacities. Unless both parties want us to mediate the dispute we have no business trying to insert ourselves as referee in someone else's game.

I absolutely agree that we should not be installing dictators (or installing governments at all) or protecting them from their own people. We've actually cut that way back since the cold war, it's a dying practice. That does not mean we need to go around trying to tell other governments how to relate to their people: all we accomplish by doing that is to simultaneously antagonize, the government, the populaces, and any actual or incipient insurgents that happen to be about.


Is it disturbing to think that US foreign policy laid much of the foundation that Bin Laden has built his UW campaign up? Yes, absolutely. But if we just go out and kill him and his handful of compadres and do nothing to change ourselves, to tear down that foundation, some other group will get up on it and really hurt us next time. Is 9/11 our fault? Absolutely not. Do we need to take responsibility for how our actions contributed to the conditions that Bin Laden feeds upon? Absolutely yes.

Whoa, hold on. AQ wasn't founded on American intervention, it was founded on Soviet intervention. When that intervention ended AQ attempted the UW campaign you describe, primarily in Saudi Arabia. That campaign failed miserably. It didn't fail because of government repression: you and I both know that if an insurgent movement has real popular support repression only builds it. It didn't fail because the Saudis love the royals. It failed because the bulk of the Saudi populace, even those that disliked their government, did not see what bin Laden offered as a viable alternative. They were quite willing to support his jihad as long as it was somewhere else, but when he brought it home they didn't buy it. A few did, but not nearly enough to build the critical mass needed to move from incipient insurgency to active insurgency. That does not in any way invalidate your assessment of the general causes of insurgency, but it the idea that we can or should try to undercut AQ by fixing the Saudi government just seems to me to be utterly inconsistent with reality. We can't fix their government, and we don't have to.

I think your general assessment of the cause of insurgency (opposition by a populace or portion thereof to perceived bad governance) is for the most part accurate. When you move into your list of what causes popular discontent, though, it really does seem like you're imposing western values to an inordinate extent. For one thing, in many parts of the world the two things a populace wants most from a government are security and prosperity, two things you don't mention much... and many populaces out there will tolerate what we would consider gross intrusions on liberty and justice as long as they have security and prosperity. Maybe that's not how we would feel, but it's not about us.

When you step from specific casuses into the realm of what the US can or should do to resolve government/populace issues in other countries... there I think you move into some very risky country indeed.

jmm99
10-13-2010, 02:07 AM
and at CADS (http://www.c4ads.org/node/728) - despite the fact that you have done away with one of my introductory clauses: There's this nutty SF COL I know who says ..... :D

---------------------------------
From 1963 Undergrounds (pp.166-167) (not the "bible" in its every word, BTW; but some good points even for today) (emphasis added):


OBJECTIVES OF COUNTERMEASURES

At the beginning of an underground movement government countermeasures are limited by lack of information about the nature of an enemy which is coming into being. Although the ultimate aim of all government countermeasures is to destroy the leadership and organization of an underground, initially the government must find out who the enemy is. Therefore the government's first objective is to identify the underground leaders, usually by infiltrating the movement. Next the government tries to prevent growth of the underground by restricting its access to the populace and to supplies. To do this the government may seek the cooperation of the people for intelligence purposes, offering them both protection from threats by the underground and evidence that the government measures are in their best interests.

In the second stage of development of the underground the objective of government countermeasures depends upon whether the underground is a resistance or a revolutionary movement and on circumstances external to the underground itself. The aim may be either pacification or control. Pacification entails obtaining a large amount of popular support and willing cooperation. Control does not require such a high degree of popular support; if the government's security forces control resources and production facilities, and the lines of communication and transportation in strategic areas, that may be sufficient. In both resistance and revolutionary situations pacification is preferable, because a progovernment populace requires a minimum of physical restraint and permits the government to use security forces for other duties. If an occupying government aims for pacification in a resistance situation, a great many troops will be needed originally for occupation duty. In practice it has proved expedient during a military campaign for an occupier merely to establish control without attempting to achieve pacification.
.....
In revolutionary war, however, control alone cannot be a sufficient aim for the government. The ultimate objective must be pacification even though the government may be required to restrict personal freedom to such an extent that martial law is invoked. Such restrictions may cause resentment and aid the revolutionary movement by adding credence to its claims of government persecution. On the other hand, failure to undertake prompt and effective countermeasures may permit tho illegal organization to grow rapidly. In dealing with revolution, a government typically works under several handicaps: (1) the revolution is usually well underway before control measures are applied, and therefore the security forces are on the defensive at the offset; (2) security forces are often subject to legal restraints; and (3) the government faces conflicting goals--to suppress the revolution and gain the active support of the people.

A different slant from "immediate" use of military force. I'd use some different terms (e.g., "mobilization of the masses" for "pacification", which to me is a form of "control" - Undergrounds uses "control" in its more coercive meaning).

Regards

M-A Lagrange
10-13-2010, 05:56 AM
I think your general assessment of the cause of insurgency (opposition by a populace or portion thereof to perceived bad governance) is for the most part accurate. When you move into your list of what causes popular discontent, though, it really does seem like you're imposing western values to an inordinate extent. For one thing, in many parts of the world the two things a populace wants most from a government are security and prosperity, two things you don't mention much... and many populaces out there will tolerate what we would consider gross intrusions on liberty and justice as long as they have security and prosperity. Maybe that's not how we would feel, but it's not about us.

200% true. I do face this “live on stage”. I personally do not buy the form of government people (politicians/military mainly) are building where I am but it’s not my choice, it’s theirs.
I believe we are going to the question: what is the end of COIN?
Is that securing a friendly government access to power (even if it’s the most atrocious dictatorship) or do the US want to spread democracy as a grand strategy for their foreign affairs and initiate changes in non democratic governments?

Also, what we can acknowledge is that it’s easier to conduct COIN to preserve a non democratic government which does govern with arbitrary than conduct COIN to establish a democracy (or a failed democracy at the best if you are cynical).

I was discussing this with a Russian political analyst and he was the first to state that even a failed government is better than no government. And that’s probably the main key point: until which point that approach is viable and not counterproductive. Supporting/installing a government for the sake of having someone to speak with does not work. Then do insurgents propose something that you can work with is also another question. Chad is a good example. Idriss Deby is not the best to work with for anyone (US, France…) but for the moment he is a better interlocutor than insurgents for both France and US. Also in Chad, the population involvement into politic is lower than 0. But as they do not give a dam about any kind of government, they are pleased with what ever they have as long as it has no contact with them.
We may have here a limit of Bob’s model (which I like very much by the way).

William F. Owen
10-13-2010, 06:12 AM
One cannot expect violence to turn off instantly - it's not a spigot. There will be violence before and after an armed conflict. The level of violence simply does not rise to that level (which gets into another discussion of what is "war" and what is "armed conflict").
Again I concur. Look at Ulster. The aim is to reduce the level of violance to where "normal politics" can take over. The point is the Government cannot "use violence" as part of the normal transmission of policy. The time and the place is important.


If fact, violence can cause folks to change sides in the opposite direction. E.g., the executions of the 1916 Easter Rebellion rebels pursuant to military commission sentences (perfectly legal violence) ended up making the republican movement (IRB, etc.) respectable in the eyes of many Irish who initially opposed the 1916 Rebellion itself.
So what you are telling me is that ineffective killing does not work, and that the action didn't match the policy objective? If so, I agree. The military operations that under-pinned UK operations in Ireland after WW1, were woeful. The UK basically "failed to fight," because the policy object had been set a "dominion status," prior to WW1.

Outlaw 7
10-13-2010, 11:01 AM
We spend a large amount of time defining things like what is an insurgency---why do look at the concept of "open source warfare' in far more detail than previously given to the topic here in SWJ.

It gets waved off as fast as it is mentioned but after the recent salafist web release of this magazine which in ENGLISH used the term "open source jihad" maybe it is now time to discuss the theory instead of running from it--it is really interesting that few in the IC and even fewer in the military even understand the concept. But tied to Kilcullens' "conflict ecosystem" it moves the conversation forward.

Monday, 11 October 2010
JOURNAL: Open Source Jihad
A resource manual for those who loathe tyrants… a disaster for the repressive imperialistic nations:the open source jihad is America's worst nightmare. Al Qaeda's stated goal for Inspire.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula put out a magazine this summer called Inspire. It's a slick glossy e-zine. What really makes it interesting isn't how slick the magazine is. Instead, it is the purpose of the magazine: to promote "open source jihad" by providing readers with the tools they need to plan, motivate, organize, and pull off effective attacks against Western targets (i.e. specifics on recipes for bombs that don't use controlled substances and how to's on secure Interent communications via the software Asrar Al-Mujahideen).

This is yet another example of how young, innovative insurgents around the world are embracing open source warfare (OSW).

Bob's World
10-13-2010, 11:18 AM
We are limited by our words. The ones we use, and how they are received and understood by others.

Dayuhan frequently points out that there is no insurgency in Saudi Arabia. Certainly that word is not used there. However:
- by some accounts upwards of 9,000 Saudis have been detained by the government indefinitely on terrorism charges since 2003. Closed trials began in 2008 and with some 300 convictions as of July.
- creation of exit options for militants. The authorities declared month-long general amnesties in mid-2004 and mid-2006. (Saudi version of "go to jail or join the army" Except for them it is "go to jail or go join Al Qaeda and wage your fight against other aspects of your cause, as we will not let you wage it here)
- Most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis
- Most of the foreign fighters for AQ in Iraq were Saudis.

I only point this out, as this is a classic suppression campaign of insurgency. If one lives in a state such as Saudi Arabia these tactics work for them, but they also keep the ranks of AQ full to do their business elsewhere. Sure, SA is AQ's primary target, but they are patient to go after easier targets first. SA understands this, but they are walking a fine balance here, and such amnesties can be sold as "hard on terrorists" to one community, and "supporting jihad" to another.

But this goes back to my definition. Insurgency is not the presence of some named organization actively operating within a country conducting illegal violence to take down the state. Insurgency is a condition that exists within the populace. It is a condition created by the government measured as perceived by the populace.

Most Saudis want reasonable changes. My understanding is that many feel that the Royals have drifted from their religious path. Not enough Church and State is a big concern for the citizens. Others would like reforms of Justice, a judiciary that is not under total control of the Royals. All of this is exacerbated by declining incomes, greater gaps between the governed and those who govern. etc Is there hope in Saudi Arabia? Not if hope is defined as having trusted, certain, legal means to affect change. Saudis pay no taxes. Saudi government quips "No representation without taxation." Someday that will be inscribed right below "Let them eat cake." In the book of "Stupid things leaders say who are in denial about the conditions of insurgency in their country."

So, is there no insurgency in Saudi Arabia, or is there no insurgency based on our current definitions that focus on the insurgent rather than the conditions within the populace?

A few simple, reasonable adjustments of governance would reduce the conditions in Saudi Arabia to well within phase 0. Doing this would cut off the supply of recruits to AQ like no other LOO. As Jefferson noted in our Declaration "..Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed." The Saudi populace is indeed accustomed to their current form of government and would rather support it than resist it; but it has drifted across a line. Better to ease it back now than to allow it to explode to a level where it finally meets our definition of insurgency

Dayuhan
10-13-2010, 12:05 PM
Dayuhan frequently points out that there is no insurgency in Saudi Arabia. Certainly that word is not used there. However:
- by some accounts upwards of 9,000 Saudis have been detained by the government indefinitely on terrorism charges since 2003. Closed trials began in 2008 and with some 300 convictions as of July.

This is true. What matters, though, is the reaction of the general populace. For example, when the Shah of Iran cracked down on Islamic militants, the populace took to the streets and the resistance snowballed, because the militants were just the tip of the iceberg: they had real popular support. That hasn't happened in Saudi Arabia, because the popular support just isn't there. That does not mean the populace loves their government, it means they don't see what the AQ types are peddling as a viable alternative. AQ has made converts, but they have not converted the populace; far from it.



- Most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis
- Most of the foreign fighters for AQ in Iraq were Saudis.

We're talking about how many people here? Not a populace, that's for sure.



But this goes back to my definition. Insurgency is not the presence of some named organization actively operating within a country conducting illegal violence to take down the state. Insurgency is a condition that exists within the populace. It is a condition created by the government measured as perceived by the populace.


I think at some point you have to distinguish between the condition, which exists largely as a function of our western-conditioned perception, and the translation of that amorphous and immeasurable condition into action. It is only when there is action that we can begin to observe the extent to which the populace actually perceives what we think they perceive, or the extent to which they are willing to act on their perceptions.



Most Saudis want reasonable changes. My understanding is that many feel that the Royals have drifted from their religious path. Not enough Church and State is a big concern for the citizens. Others would like reforms of Justice, a judiciary that is not under total control of the Royals. All of this is exacerbated by declining incomes, greater gaps between the governed and those who govern. etc Is there hope in Saudi Arabia? Not if hope is defined as having trusted, certain, legal means to affect change.


How do we know what "most Saudis" want? Aren't there some assumptions involved there?

I think you'd find that lots of people want lots of things, many of them contradictory. Certainly there are those who feel that the government is insufficiently religious, but that's not by any means all, and many of those still don't buy the AQ line. Even among the conservative religious hierarchy AQ is often viewed as a loose cannon and as a potential competitor for influence among the flock. We cannot put simple interpretations or assumptions on these matters, because they're a long way from simple.

If you look at recent data I think you'll find that Saudi incomes have increased quite dramatically in the last 6-7 years. The oil glut was a hard time in the Kingdom, but for better or worse the price surge brought a major reprieve. Many hundreds of billions got poured out; they're still pouring and the effect is very real. For better or for worse, the spending has had a major blunting effect on the translation of anti-government sentiment into action, as it is wont to do. It's a buyoff and how long it will last remains to be seen, but the money looks to keep flowing for some time. As with China, I doubt that there will be enough popular impetus to generate significant political change until there's a significant economic dislocation.



So, is there no insurgency in Saudi Arabia, or is there no insurgency based on our current definitions that focus on the insurgent rather than the conditions within the populace?


How do you measure "conditions within the populace"? Are you talking about conditions within the populace, or about our perceptions of those conditions, or our assumptions about those conditions?



A few simple, reasonable adjustments of governance would reduce the conditions in Saudi Arabia to well within phase 0... Better to ease it back now than to allow it to explode to a level where it finally meets our definition of [I]insurgency[I]


That may be true, but we cannot adjust the conditions of Saudi governance. We can't ease it back to anything, and we can't allow it to do anything. It is not within our control, and attempting to control it would only blow up in our faces. We are not controlling or sustaining the Saudi government; they do what they want. We've defended them against outside aggression, and we would do so again, but that's a completely different matter. The relations between that government and that populace are not our business, they are wholly outside our control, and there is no reasonable way for us to usefully intervene.

Dayuhan
10-13-2010, 12:09 PM
We spend a large amount of time defining things like what is an insurgency---why do look at the concept of "open source warfare' in far more detail than previously given to the topic here in SWJ.

It gets waved off as fast as it is mentioned but after the recent salafist web release of this magazine which in ENGLISH used the term "open source jihad" maybe it is now time to discuss the theory instead of running from it--it is really interesting that few in the IC and even fewer in the military even understand the concept. But tied to Kilcullens' "conflict ecosystem" it moves the conversation forward.

Monday, 11 October 2010
JOURNAL: Open Source Jihad
A resource manual for those who loathe tyrants… a disaster for the repressive imperialistic nations:the open source jihad is America's worst nightmare. Al Qaeda's stated goal for Inspire.


Nothing new, really... back when I was young and silly we had copies of The Anarchist's Cookbook being passed around to eager hands, along with the little red book, The War of the Flea, etc. Of course most of the people who devoured them never got to the point of doing anything, and those who did were generally too disorganized and too incompetent to have much impact.

Taking an old concept and giving it a snappy new name from the world of computer science is a good way to get attention, but it's hardly revolutionary.

Bob's World
10-13-2010, 12:56 PM
Never discount the "iceberg effect" in assessing a populace.

The diagram on page 29 of http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/docrepository/dapam550_104insurgencies.pdf
is as good of breakdown of this as any.

Today in Afghanistan and Pakistan the foreign fighters come from three main sources

1. Arabs.
2. Uzbeks
3. Turks

No Chechans, and actually a surprising number of Germans.

It is also best to remember that the primary goals for all of these groups, and most of their members, lie back where they came from, not where they are at. If we want to disempower AQ we need to focus less on killing all who show up in the FATA, and more on helping the governments of the states they come from to understand and address the conditions that give rise to these guys. And I suspect that foreign fighters are probably the thinest slice of the top of the pyramid/iceberg of discontent.

Good pitch on foreign fighters here:

http://www.fpri.org/multimedia/20100928.panel5.afpak.html

A better understanding of insurgency and its roots gives us a better understanding of AQ and foreign fighters and how to better deal with them as well. Killing them in the FATA actually helps recruiting back home. Photos of dead foreign fighters are used to recruit new members back home.

Tukhachevskii
10-13-2010, 01:37 PM
but I had to reply to these statements. What follows is tantamount to a rant (and rambles towards the end too) and I apologise to Bob’s World for any offence. Despite the wording of the below post I am attacking your statements not you (using emoticons are no help in this regard), in particular these three gems from separate posts...




Is it disturbing to think that US foreign policy laid much of the foundation that Bin Laden has built his UW campaign up?




When we begin to hold governments accountable for their actions we begin to get in front of the current conditions of insurgency that are being exploited by AQ's UW campaign.

&


COIN is Governance

COIN is most certainly NOT governance. COIN begins where governance ends. As far as I am concerned if there’s no military action (war by any other name) going on then it’s not COIN it’s social outreach (politics). It’s the military aspect that makes it COIN (the logical extension to riot police). In the words of Carl Schmitt, a declaration of war is a declaration of enmity. In other words (theoretically speaking in the spirit of Clausewitz) those who declare war (armed conflict for political purposes) are no longer friends. They are enemies and thus, in the domestic context, cease to be citizens and therefore cease to have the right to be citizens until such a time as they re-acknowledge the authority of the government (if I’m not mistaken this is in a nutshell how the IRA and the Loyalists were brought to heel). If they are supported by an external third party then it’s bordering on war proper (by proxy). Until they come to heel or acknowledge your government (and system of laws) they are no longer your citizens and therefore they are combatants (the law be damned), if people are trying to kill me I won’t let the law stand in my way (“In time of war law stays silent”). I believe in reciprocity; if they fight civilised so will I. I detect in your somewhat fashionable relativistic prose (which I would agree with if I didn’t think you were hiding behind it simply to make a point) that you are actually still a universalist with your pronunciation of the justness of any insurgent’s cause. That is a subjective not a universal judgement. There is no Natural Law to which you can appeal (one needs at least two people who agree to understand the functioning of the universe in a certain way before they can say that it functions so. Natural law is not a universal structuring principle, it is opinion shared by the likeminded). By your account the attacks on London in 2005 were justified because it was a failure in governance; a failure on the government’s part to accommodate Islamic goals, which is tantamount to appeasement and collaboration. The reasons for the attack are obvious to veryone who cars to listen (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/01/comment.religion1).

The logical consequence of your proposition is that to disarm Muslim terrorists/ insurgents/ revolutionaries/just plain vanilla Muslims (delete as appropriate) all governments have to do is to recognise their demands as legitimate (which is the tacit presupposition of your proposition) and thus hand over every state in the world to our local (un)friendly Muslim (of course, the rather happier corollary is that armed opposition to Islam also becomes “just”, but I doubt they’d be so even handed). Your view of AQ is also slightly jaundiced suffice to say. The idea that we are the cause of AQ ignores Islamic theology and history (sort of like dismissing Hitler’s racisim). The Kilcullen view that we merely satisfy Islamic desires assumes that there is a point at which they will be satisfied...anyone who understands Islam (i.e., its historical apriori (http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html#priori)/deep grammar) know's differently. AQ is but one manifestation/symptom of a wider, global problem that of the reconnection of the previously sundered parts of the Islamic terrain through, ironically, the technological revolution of modernity/ globalisation and the reawakening of its sense of mission.


But for the military success of the first khalifs Islam would never have become a universal religion. Every exertion was made to keep the troops of the Faithful complete. The leaders followed only Mohammed's example when they represented fighting for Allah's cause as the most enviable occupation. The duty of military service was constantly impressed upon the Moslims; the lust of booty and the desire for martyrdom, to which the Qoran assigned the highest reward, were excited to the utmost. At a later period, it became necessary in the interests of order to temper the result of this excitement by traditions in which those of the Faithful who died in the exercise of a peaceful, honest profession were declared to be witnesses to the Faith as well as those who were slain in battle against the enemies of God,—traditions in which the real and greater holy war was described as the struggle against evil passions. The necessity of such a mitigating reaction, the spirit in which the chapters on holy war of Mohammedan law books are conceived, and the galvanizing power which down to our own day is contained in a call to arms in the name of Allah, all this shows that in the beginning of Islam the love of battle had been instigated at the expense of everything else.
-Hurgronje, Mohammedanism (http://ia311006.us.archive.org/1/items/mohammedanismlec00hurg/mohammedanismlec00hurg.pdf), p. 88-89

And in the words of W. H. Norton, ‘The Influence of the Desert on Early Islam’ (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1195034), The Journal of Religion, Vol. 4, No. 4, July, 1924, p. 394;

Sometimes the essential spirit of a religion is best seen when magnified in its fanatical sects. It would really seem that the more orthodox and pious a Moslem sect, the more ferocious and bloodthirsty is it.
That, sir, has absolutely nothing to do with governance.

To defeat AQ (and every other Muslim self-starter that decides to fulfil their universal obligation to Jihad (http://kalamullah.com/Books/MashariAl-AshwaqilaMasarial-Ushaaq-RevisedEdition.pdf) which has nothing to do with US or European foreign policy, which is just an excuse the Left use to advance their own agenda) we have two options, allow me to quote the late, great von Clausewitz (note that so-called “Attritionist” and “Manouvrist” approaches are considered two sides of the same coin [COIN?] by CVC)...


‘If you want to overcome your enemy you must match your effort against his power of resistance, which can be expressed as the product of two inseparable factors, viz. The total means at his disposal and the strength of his will. The extent of the means at his disposal is a matter, though not exclusively, of figures, and should be measurable. But the strength of his will is much less easy to determine and can only be gauged approximately by the strength of the motive animating it.

Given the deleterious effects of liberal prejudices regarding attacking Islam at the root (i.e., its generative grammar/COG- The Quran, Mohammed , the Shari’a and Sunna) the only other option is the one we took with the Nazis. In the words of an Arab who almost rid us of our present enemies....


“... only force of arms can bring a stop to this idiocy”. ―Abu Tahir Sulayman Al-Jannabi (http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/9495254)

Or in the words of El-Lawrence...

An opinion can be argued with: a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one[.]
-The Evolution of a Revolt (http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/lawrence.pdf) by T. E. Lawrence p.6


That’s all I have to say on the matter. I know I rambled onto other issues toward the end but I consider them part and parcel of the same strategic malaise afflicting our respect nations in the current fight. I appreciate that many consider me plain wrong regarding Islam and its relationship to Islamism (“there he goes again...”!:mad:), so be it. That’s your prerogative...I have no problem with being Churchill to your Halifax (no doubt the great man is turning in his grave at the comparison).


And yet we had plenty of warnings, if we had only made use of them. The danger did not come on us unawares. It burst on us suddenly, 'tis true; but it’s coming was foreshadowed plainly enough to open our eyes, if we had not been wilfully blind.

- Gen. G. T. Chesney, The Battle for Dorking (http://ia331418.us.archive.org/3/items/battleofdorking00chesrich/battleofdorking00chesrich.pdf): Reminiscences of a Volunteer (London: Grant
Richards Ltd., 1871/1914), p. 17

Bob's World
10-13-2010, 04:02 PM
A good checklist for COIN (pre-violence as well as post)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Checklist_Questions.pdf

and how the region that encompasses most of a proposed "Caliphate" fares:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Map_MENA.pdf

What Freedom House assesses as "Free" - "Partly Free" - "Not Free" could just as easily be assessed as "Low Conditions of Insurgency" - "Moderate Conditions of Insurgency" and "High Conditions of insurgency"

Of note the onus for all of the factors measured lay with the government, and not some rabble rousing internal or external actor. Governments acted consciously to allow these perceptions to develop. What the U.S. must ask itself, is how much has a foreign policy rooted in Containment of the Soviets impacted these populaces since 1945; and how might the perceptions of the need for those policies to persist 21 years beyond the Soviet collapse be today?

Also worth asking is how many of these governments feel enabled to act with such impunity toward their own populaces due to their relationships with the U.S.?

Finally, and most importantly, ask and answer those questions not from your own perspective, but try to empathize with what the perspective of a 20 year-old man from one of these countries might perceive the answers to be...

Steve Blair
10-13-2010, 06:23 PM
A good checklist for COIN (pre-violence as well as post)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Checklist_Questions.pdf



Now we know we're doomed...there's a checklist....;)

jmm99
10-13-2010, 07:51 PM
telling you this:


from Wilf
So what you are telling me is that ineffective killing does not work, and that the action didn't match the policy objective? If so, I agree. The military operations that under-pinned UK operations in Ireland after WW1, were woeful. The UK basically "failed to fight," because the policy object had been set a "dominion status," prior to WW1.

The killing and capturing of the 1916 Irish rebels (many more were detained than executed) were very effective in taking down the violent Irish Republican membership from top to bottom. Those killings and detentions (less a few exceptional summary executions) were also quite legal and pursuant to trials or review proceedings mostly before military commissions. Those killings and detentions were very much in pursuance of the UKG's policy objectives: to quell and then try the rebels using military forces and military law.

Of course, prior to the 1916 Easter Rebellion, the IRB and its paramilitary allies were very much minority groups. In a West Cork ryding (later a hotbed of IRA activity under Collins), the "Sinn Feiner" came in a distant third to two "Home Rule" candidates.

The 1914 non-resolution of the Unionist-Home Rule negotiations basically put Home Rule on the shelf until WWI ended - folks didn't think it would last as long as it did. Home Rule was not Dominion status by any means, but called only for a separate Irish Parliament and government administration from Dublin (which was the Crown-Ireland relationship from 1200 to 1800).

The rebels were confronted by southern Irish military (Royal Irish Regiment and Royal Dublin Fusiliers) and police (RIC) stationed in the Dublin area. In 1916, there were far more (by orders of magnitude) southern Irish serviing in the British Army than there were rebels at the Post Office. The rebels were initially disparaged in southern Ireland.

My point - a simple one - is that a coercive military solution, even though it can be effective and pursuant to governmental policy as to first order effects, can have much more serious negative higher order effects. And, in the case of Ireland (1916-1919, when the real fight began), did result in much more serious negative higher order effects. In another case, a non-coercive political solution might also lead to dismal results in the end.

It's easy in hindsight to claim that those higher order effects ought to have been taken into account; or that a much different "COIN" strategy ought to have been elected (milder or harsher, dependent of the critic). I'm not arguing any of those positions re: 1916-1919 because that would be speculative history. What I am saying is that exclusive reliance on an absolutist cookie-cutter course of action (whether hard or soft) can and probably will lead to unexpected negative consequences.

Regards

Mike

---------------
PS: I speak of the Royal Irish Regiment (1684–1922) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Irish_Regiment_(1684-1922)), not the current RIR incarnation, which is a northern Irish unit. The Dublin Fusiliers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dublin_Fusiliers) were obviously southern.

Pete
10-13-2010, 10:24 PM
Your point on arbitrary definition and delineations is important. That sort of stuff leads to overly focused views of the world; target fixation is a dangerous thing. Every war is different. We cannot forget that and trying to believe or convince folks that all types have a similar cause or an effect or methodologies that can be codified is really dangerous.
These different categories of warfare shouldn't be sealed up in separate compartments from each other; military professionals shouldn't assume that just because a certain service, branch of service, or command is the proponent or SME on a certain type of warfare that it's outside of their lane and therefore someone else's responsibility.

When I was in 7th Infantry Division on a JRX in 1983 I attended a briefing by the battalion S-3 of a unit in the Division Support Command in which he said that the battalion had a comprehensive perimeter around it. It was a bald-faced lie -- there wasn't even a guard at the entrance to its position to screen incoming vehicles. No MGs, not even guys with M16s, nobody at all. My first sergeant (1st ID, Vietnam, CIB) had commented that anyone could drive into the position and toss grenades wherever they wanted to.

In the artillery CSMs and first sergeants usually establish perimeters, so I told the CSM of the DISCOM battalion that things were seriously amiss. The next day the XO of the unit told me I had made the CO of the battalion really angry, and the day after that the commander of the battalion told me he refused to put out a perimeter unless his supported infantry brigade gave him a platoon to man it, "just like in Vietnam," he said.

(My personal opinion is that he was derelect in his duties as far as tactics went. To hell with it, the battalion CO was Medical Service Corps and I had received training at the Infantry School. The episode described above was a major factor in my being given the old heave-ho out of the Army a year later.)

When the U.S. Army screws up big time it is usually because of interfaces between different organizations, or the belief that solving a particular problem is someone else's responsibility. The same thing could be said about these categories of war, they're everyone's responsibility, not just a specific branch or school.

jmm99
10-14-2010, 12:34 AM
To provide some rigor (and access to some original documents) to my assertions re: 1916 and the executions (far fewer than the detentions), the National Library provides a good overview of the participants in the 1916 Rebellion, PDF Version of the Exhibition (http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdfs.html).

The decision making process leading to the executions involved John Maxwell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maxwell_(British_Army_officer)) (assigned the task of cleaning up the mess); and the choice between three methods of proceeding: (1) via the civilian criminal courts under normal criminal law (not seriously considered by HMG for the Dublin rebels); (2) via Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) regulations for general courts martial with full courts of thirteen members, a professional judge, legal advocate and held in public; or (3) via field general courts martial without defence counsel, without jury (other than the officer board) and in camera.

After the rebellion began and before Maxwell reached Dublin, martial law had been declared for the city and county of Dublin by then Lord Lieutenant Lord Wimborne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Guest,_1st_Viscount_Wimborne). While that proclamation did not foreclose the milder civilian criminal courts and DORA courts venues, it certainly gave Maxwell the authority to proceed by field general courts martial as allowed under martial law.

The issue seems to have become whether London consented to Maxwell's use of martial law - was Maxwell something of a "rogue officer" ? Indeed, that canard was proved "not so" from this original document (from "1916 in the de Valera papers (http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume14/issue2/features/?id=114028)"):


The executions

On 3 May French writes to Maxwell concerning the executions and Asquith’s surprise at the speed of events:

‘The prime minister expressed himself as “surprised” at the rapidity of the trial and executions — I pointed out that you were carrying out your instructions exactly & correctly and in strict accordance with military and martial law. He quite understands but asked me to warn you not to give the impression that all the Sinn Féiners would suffer death — I told him that the fact of 3 of them having been amended to much less severe sentences was evidence enough of the attitude you were adopting towards them and that I thought it much better to leave you alone to your own discretion. He agreed to this.’

Therefore, thanks to this document, we know that the COA followed by Maxwell was pursuant to the policy accepted by both his military and civilian superiors.

The National Library's "Aftermath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Asquith)" discusses some of the reasons why the executions and detentions produced consequences which Maxwell and French did not intend - and from which Asquith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Asquith) tried to wiggle away. See House of Commons debate (starting at p.3 pdf) which occured as the trials and executions were proceeding.

Regards

Mike

William F. Owen
10-14-2010, 05:52 AM
What I am saying is that exclusive reliance on an absolutist cookie-cutter course of action (whether hard or soft) can and probably will lead to unexpected negative consequences.

OK, but what I am saying is that is the government policy is to "counter the insurgents" then the destruction/defeat/suppression of the enemy armed force is required. What makes it "required" is the outcome of not seeking to do it = the "rebels" win.

M-A Lagrange
10-14-2010, 06:23 AM
Wilf,

I believe the point Mike is trying to make is that sometimes a response perceived as too strong or too violent by a governement can actually participate to build support to the insurgents and not rally support to a government.

It is true and normal that a government respond to violence by tracking down the insurgent. But the way it is perceived by the population is important too. You need to take in consideration not only the part of population that support the government but also the population that is potentially supporting the insurgents.
As with Ireland.

M-A

Dayuhan
10-14-2010, 08:29 AM
Today in Afghanistan and Pakistan the foreign fighters come from three main sources
1. Arabs.
2. Uzbeks
3. Turks

No Chechans, and actually a surprising number of Germans.

It is also best to remember that the primary goals for all of these groups, and most of their members, lie back where they came from, not where they are at. If we want to disempower AQ we need to focus less on killing all who show up in the FATA, and more on helping the governments of the states they come from to understand and address the conditions that give rise to these guys.

How do you know what the goals of these individuals are? It’s best to remember that AQ was able to recruit foreign fighters just as easily, maybe more easily, for his jihad against the Soviets, which had nothing at all to do with the home front. A charismatic recruiter with a good pitch and an audience of testosterone-addled young males can pull a few hundred to fight for practically anything, there’s no basis there to deduce an insurgency. I think you're imposing assumptions here.

If we want to solve the cforeign fighter problem, we might want to think less about changing the governments in their home countries, which we can't change anyway, and more about the basic conditions enabling them: the existence of a jihad. They can't travel to join the fight if there's no fight to join. Foreign fighters aren't created by bad governance in Saudi Arabia or Turkey or Libya or Germany, they're created by the opportunity to go fight a foreign invader in Muslim lands. If we want fewer foreign fighters, fewer large scale extended military occupations in Muslim space will achieve that goal... and unlike change to foreign governments, this is at least within our control. We cannot change the way the governments of these countries treat their people. We can change our own habit of providing foreign fighters with a standing target. We can "address the conditions that give rise to these guys" simply by reducing direct, extended, large scale military intervention and by eschewing regime changes that require us to provide extended military sustenance to the regimes we install.


A good checklist for COIN (pre-violence as well as post)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Checklist_Questions.pdf

and how the region that encompasses most of a proposed "Caliphate" fares:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Map_MENA.pdf


An excellent summary of those Western assumptions that were discussed earlier, but does nothing at all to measure local sentiment, local attitudes toward governance, or local conditions… and therefore a completely inadequate way of measuring the proposed condition of insurgency. How do you measure the attitudes of a populace except through their actions?


What the U.S. must ask itself, is how much has a foreign policy rooted in Containment of the Soviets impacted these populaces since 1945; and how might the perceptions of the need for those policies to persist 21 years beyond the Soviet collapse be today?

Why start at 1945? And why assume that US foreign policy is the cause of what we’re seeing? Maybe this is simply the local habit of governance… has it altered significantly since 1945? What basis have we to assume that US foreign policy has shaped local patterns of governance?


Also worth asking is how many of these governments feel enabled to act with such impunity toward their own populaces due to their relationships with the U.S.?

I think you drastically overestimate that supposed enabling factor, and I can’t see any evidence that it’s there at all. What government do you think is so enabled, and why exactly do you think it is so enabled?


Finally, and most importantly, ask and answer those questions not from your own perspective, but try to empathize with what the perspective of a 20 year-old man from one of these countries might perceive the answers to be..

Might also look at the perspective of the 40 year olds, and reflect that few nations anywhere allow 20 year olds to set policy… for good reasons.

Here’s another example of an externally imposed assumption, from a prior post…


Is there hope in Saudi Arabia? Not if hope is defined as having trusted, certain, legal means to affect change.

I doubt that many people in the region under discussion, or even in the West, share that definition. For most, “hope” lies in the belief that next year will be better than this year, that our children’s lives will be better than ours, and that we will have security and a little more prosperity than we do now.

I think you look too much for what you want, and thus assume others want, and not enough at what people fear. After many years around the Arabian Gulf area, I think people there fear chaos far more than they fear tyranny: they know very well that they are sitting on top of something the whole world wants, and many believe – with good reason – that if they show any internal dissension or inconsistency the outsiders will come in and take it. Two comments that reappear with almost metronomic regularity in conversation in that part of the world, with only minor variation…

Osama is good, he is brave and pious and we support his jihad… but if he takes power here we will go to war and we will lose everything.

America wants us to have democracy so we will fight each other and the CIA can manipulate our elections and take our oil for nothing.

I actually think that if the bulk of that region’s populace had a choice between AQ-style Isalmism, American-sponsored democracy, and the status quo, they would take the status quo… not because they like it best but because they fear it least.

I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in the Gulf in the last 6-7 years, but the difference, relative to the very grim 1990s, is really striking to me. The oil price surge provided a lot of latitude and the rulers have been fairly canny in plowing back in domestically, most unlike the late 70s-early 80s oil boom. Lots of money around, lots of jobs, incomes way up. Averages don’t tell you much in the land of skewed distribution, but consumption of middle-class goods has skyrocketed, and that tells you something. I suspect that as with China, significant popular impetus for political change in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf may have to wait for a significant economic dislocation.

Again I have to ask... even if your analysis is accurate, which you clearly believe it is... what do you propose that we do about it? Do you really believe that the US has the right, the responsibility, or the capacity to adjust the way other governments relate to their populaces... or that anyone, populace, government, or insurgent, wants us meddling in their domestic affairs?

Dayuhan
10-14-2010, 08:46 AM
Wilf,

I believe the point Mike is trying to make is that sometimes a response perceived as too strong or too violent by a governement can actually participate to build support to the insurgents and not rally support to a government.

It is true and normal that a government respond to violence by tracking down the insurgent. But the way it is perceived by the population is important too. You need to take in consideration not only the part of population that support the government but also the population that is potentially supporting the insurgents.
As with Ireland.

M-A

As usual, Wilf is looking at the issue from the perspective of a soldier charged with executing a political policy that has already been decided upon, RCJ is looking at it from the perspective of a soldier charged with advising the policy makers on what decision to make. Naturally these perspectives lead to very different conclusions.

You're right of course, if the effort to kill one insurgent leads 10 more to take up arms, you haven't gained much. This is something that practitioners of State terrorism, like practitioners of non-state terrorism, often forget. Sometimes the people you're trying to terrorize into submission just get pissed off.

Bob's World
10-14-2010, 11:50 AM
How do you know what the goals of these individuals are? It’s best to remember that AQ was able to recruit foreign fighters just as easily, maybe more easily, for his jihad against the Soviets, which had nothing at all to do with the home front. A charismatic recruiter with a good pitch and an audience of testosterone-addled young males can pull a few hundred to fight for practically anything, there’s no basis there to deduce an insurgency. I think you're imposing assumptions here.

If we want to solve the foreign fighter problem, we might want to think less about changing the governments in their home countries, which we can't change anyway, and more about the basic conditions enabling them: the existence of a jihad. They can't travel to join the fight if there's no fight to join. Foreign fighters aren't created by bad governance in Saudi Arabia or Turkey or Libya or Germany, they're created by the opportunity to go fight a foreign invader in Muslim lands. If we want fewer foreign fighters, fewer large scale extended military occupations in Muslim space will achieve that goal... and unlike change to foreign governments, this is at least within our control. We cannot change the way the governments of these countries treat their people. We can change our own habit of providing foreign fighters with a standing target. We can "address the conditions that give rise to these guys" simply by reducing direct, extended, large scale military intervention and by eschewing regime changes that require us to provide extended military sustenance to the regimes we install.



An excellent summary of those Western assumptions that were discussed earlier, but does nothing at all to measure local sentiment, local attitudes toward governance, or local conditions… and therefore a completely inadequate way of measuring the proposed condition of insurgency. How do you measure the attitudes of a populace except through their actions?



Why start at 1945? And why assume that US foreign policy is the cause of what we’re seeing? Maybe this is simply the local habit of governance… has it altered significantly since 1945? What basis have we to assume that US foreign policy has shaped local patterns of governance?



I think you drastically overestimate that supposed enabling factor, and I can’t see any evidence that it’s there at all. What government do you think is so enabled, and why exactly do you think it is so enabled?



Might also look at the perspective of the 40 year olds, and reflect that few nations anywhere allow 20 year olds to set policy… for good reasons.

Here’s another example of an externally imposed assumption, from a prior post…



I doubt that many people in the region under discussion, or even in the West, share that definition. For most, “hope” lies in the belief that next year will be better than this year, that our children’s lives will be better than ours, and that we will have security and a little more prosperity than we do now.

I think you look too much for what you want, and thus assume others want, and not enough at what people fear. After many years around the Arabian Gulf area, I think people there fear chaos far more than they fear tyranny: they know very well that they are sitting on top of something the whole world wants, and many believe – with good reason – that if they show any internal dissension or inconsistency the outsiders will come in and take it. Two comments that reappear with almost metronomic regularity in conversation in that part of the world, with only minor variation…

Osama is good, he is brave and pious and we support his jihad… but if he takes power here we will go to war and we will lose everything.

America wants us to have democracy so we will fight each other and the CIA can manipulate our elections and take our oil for nothing.

I actually think that if the bulk of that region’s populace had a choice between AQ-style Isalmism, American-sponsored democracy, and the status quo, they would take the status quo… not because they like it best but because they fear it least.

I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in the Gulf in the last 6-7 years, but the difference, relative to the very grim 1990s, is really striking to me. The oil price surge provided a lot of latitude and the rulers have been fairly canny in plowing back in domestically, most unlike the late 70s-early 80s oil boom. Lots of money around, lots of jobs, incomes way up. Averages don’t tell you much in the land of skewed distribution, but consumption of middle-class goods has skyrocketed, and that tells you something. I suspect that as with China, significant popular impetus for political change in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf may have to wait for a significant economic dislocation.

Again I have to ask... even if your analysis is accurate, which you clearly believe it is... what do you propose that we do about it? Do you really believe that the US has the right, the responsibility, or the capacity to adjust the way other governments relate to their populaces... or that anyone, populace, government, or insurgent, wants us meddling in their domestic affairs?

We focus on symptoms, which should be a supporting effort. We ignore causation, which should be a main effort.

We focus on changing others, when we should focus on what we must change about ourselves first.

We focus on insurgents, when we should focus on insurgency.

We focus on the defeat of "threats", when we should focus on addressing why they became "threats" to begin with.

We focus on ideology, when we should focus on why an ideology that has existed for hundreds of years is leading to a surge of violent backlash at government now.

We focus on ourselves wherever we go, thinking how do we shape a situation to support our needs, and do so in the way ones particular profession likes to operate; when we should focus on the locals and either leaving well enough alone or enabling them to achieve what they need based on their perspectives and thereby garnering their support.

We put the maintenance of friendly dictators above the maintenance of friendly populaces.

etc.

I only argue for a shift in priority and focus, not an abandonment of the hard security work that must support, that is often very very much war-like combat, but still best not approached as "war" all the same.

And fine point, I defined hope as a term of art for my model. Certainly there are all kinds of hope and usages of that word. The usage I focus on is the one that goes to the heart of providing the type of off ramps that can best prevent insurgency even when governments are weak, uncaring, or even evil.

Dayuhan
10-14-2010, 12:22 PM
We focus on symptoms, which should be a supporting effort. We ignore causation, which should be a main effort.

A main effort for who? If you're talking about the internal politics of other countries, how is that a place for us to be exerting effort? We cannot change the governments of other countries, we cannot change the way they relate to their populaces, and nobody - not government, populace, nor insurgent - wants us to try.


We focus on ideology, when we should focus on why an ideology that has existed for hundreds of years is leading to a surge of violent backlash at government now.


You're assuming a backlash at government, rather than what we actually observe: a backlash at foreign intervention. It's also to a large extent a "backlash" against a pattern of modernization that threatens some, but which many see as highly desirable. I think you're drastically oversimplifying the conditions that produce these events and pushing them into a US-centric Cold War paradigm where it doesn't fully fit. We are neither the cause of nor the solution to all of the world's problems.


when we should focus on the locals and either leaving well enough alone or enabling them to achieve what they need based on their perspectives and thereby garnering their support.

We put the maintenance of friendly dictators above the maintenance of friendly populaces.


Assigning ourselves, uninvited, the role of enabling other populaces is hubris of a quite extreme - and I suspect quite dangerous - degree.

Where exactly do we maintain friendly dictators? Again, I thing you wildly overstate the degree of sustenance we provide anyone. Our infuence and our aid are just not that great.



I only argue for a shift in priority and focus, not an abandonment of the hard security work that must support, that is often very very much war-like combat, but still best not approached as "war" all the same.


I know. But if your new focus expects us to impose ourselves on the domestic affairs of other countries in an effort to impose our values - even if we assign those values to others and pretend they aren't ours - please stop the train, because I want to get off. It's not going anywhere good, despite the best of intentions.

Bob's World
10-14-2010, 01:25 PM
Dayuhan,

If you persist in twisting everything I say into something I've never said or even insinuated just so you can argue a counter position, it doesn't help the debate, as you are really debating yourself at that point more than any of the ideas I have presented.

Afghanistan and Iraq are the least of the U.S. concerns in terms of insurgent populaces. I realize you have your definition that you like to work with, that's fine; but that does not make my positions invalid simply because I recognize the conditions of insurgency as existing long before they erupt in organized violence. By the time militaries are brought in the Civil authorities failures are already long in time and severe in nature. The horse is out of the proverbial barn.

Nothing I write is intended as a prescription for any particular insurgency, but rather as insights based up my study and experience into why these types of disturbances tend to occur and the advice that dealing with the insurgent should be a supporting effort, that creating effective government services is nice but won't in of itself solve the problem; but that understanding how a particular populace feels about their governance on a few key issues and working with the governments to address those perceptions should be the focus of engagement.

Many places we should engage far less or not at all. But if we engage or not, it should be a decision that takes into account more effectively what the risks and problems are than much of current doctrine recognizes.

In a paper I just completed I look at whether or not President Obama is during his tenure seeking to finally retire a grand strategy of Containment (that has had patches of "Interventionism" and "Preemption" slapped on it by his two predecessors) and wheeling out a brand new Grand Strategy that I suggest would best be called "Empowerment."

At one point I highlight the President's oft stated position that "refuses the false division between our values and our security." My personal observation being:

"While Containment often required compromising our values to maintain control, what Empowerment will likely require is compromising control to maintain our values."

Personally, I'm pulling for Empowerment; but also realize there is an inertia of thought and action that make such a change difficult at best.

William F. Owen
10-14-2010, 01:46 PM
I believe the point Mike is trying to make is that sometimes a response perceived as too strong or too violent by a governement can actually participate to build support to the insurgents and not rally support to a government.
That would be my point as well. Tactics must not undermine the policy. Sometimes that is unavoidable and unknowable, but where known, should be avoided. Having said that the concept of deterrence should be central to the outcome you seek.

jmm99
10-14-2010, 04:02 PM
from jmm99
What I am saying is that exclusive reliance on an absolutist cookie-cutter course of action (whether hard or soft) can and probably will lead to unexpected negative consequences.

from Wilf
OK, but what I am saying is that is the government policy is to "counter the insurgents" then the destruction/defeat/suppression of the enemy armed force is required. What makes it "required" is the outcome of not seeking to do it = the "rebels" win.

from M-A Lagrange
I believe the point Mike is trying to make is that sometimes a response perceived as too strong or too violent by a governement can actually participate to build support to the insurgents and not rally support to a government.

from Wilf
That would be my point as well. Tactics must not undermine the policy. Sometimes that is unavoidable and unknowable, but where known, should be avoided. Having said that the concept of deterrence should be central to the outcome you seek.

As with all forms of armed conflict, the basic concept for each party is to neutralize the other party via kill, capture or convert - not necessarily in that order. In what order is why they pay practitioners the big bucks. :D

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-14-2010, 04:26 PM
As with all forms of armed conflict, the basic concept for each party is to neutralize the other party via kill, capture or convert - not necessarily in that order. In what order is why they pay practitioners the big bucks. :D

Regards

Mike

Perhaps both appropriate to this thread:

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

and

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved."


Sun Tzu

jmm99
10-14-2010, 05:36 PM
"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

and

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved."

The first is a platitude, unless one can present evidence that Sun Tzu actually won multiple non-violent victories. In the absence of such evidence, his theory is berift of practice. At least, with Subotai, I know what he actually did (in strategy, campaigns and tactics; where in the last he personally was not as strong).

The second, read literally, presents a situation of little utility. I.e., if "what none can see is the strategy", that strategy is confined to one mind and cannot be transmitted.

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-14-2010, 10:43 PM
Mike,

I think Sun Tzu isn't an old Chinese guy so much as hundreds of years of lessons learned compressed into poetic sound bites of wisdom.

As to applying these two sayings to COIN it's largely the "stitch in time saves nine" aspect of COIN, in that when Civil governance recognizes it is their duty to serve the populace in a civil way, much of what we now see as COIN (Gov't forces vs insurgent forces) can be prevented. Or, as to AQ and their UW campaign, by adjusting our foreign policy to reduce the Cold War induced ass-hat factor, and by pressuring allied governments to make reasonable accommodations with their populaces in terms of fundamental issues such as a just judicial process; or reasonable rights to comment or affect government legally based on their respective cultures, we rob AQ of much of their base of support. Something 100 drone strikes will never do.

As to Strategy, well, I take this as strategy isn't obvious, it isn't intuitive, it is often not seen for the battles, much as the forest is not seen for the trees. We see far too much 'strategy of tactics' of late. As if I pile up enough tactics it will equal strategy; or if I pile up enough violence an insurgency becomes a civil war. We have a COSTCO mentality that more of a little thing equal a different thing. That is not always the case.

Dayuhan
10-14-2010, 10:47 PM
If you persist in twisting everything I say into something I've never said or even insinuated just so you can argue a counter position, it doesn't help the debate, as you are really debating yourself at that point more than any of the ideas I have presented.

I don't see myself trying to twist anything, just responding to the words I read.


Afghanistan and Iraq are the least of the U.S. concerns in terms of insurgent populaces.

What other insurgent populace is a US concern or requires action from the US?


I realize you have your definition that you like to work with, that's fine; but that does not make my positions invalid simply because I recognize the conditions of insurgency as existing long before they erupt in organized violence.

This may well be true, but you seem to take it to the point of assuming that any government not meeting western criteria for good governance (e.g. Freedom House rankings) must therefore have an insurgent populace. I'm not sure that's valid. I think you need some way of assessing that condition that reflects internal standards, not external ones, and I can't imagine what that would be. I also think you need to differentiate between the active insurgency, which can to some extent be measured and assessed in terms of goals, motivation, and popular support, and your condition of insurgency (maybe pre-insurgency would be better?) which you seem to measure uncertainly and by externally imposed standards.


In a paper I just completed I look at whether or not President Obama is during his tenure seeking to finally retire a grand strategy of Containment (that has had patches of "Interventionism" and "Preemption" slapped on it by his two predecessors) and wheeling out a brand new Grand Strategy that I suggest would best be called "Empowerment."...

Personally, I'm pulling for Empowerment; but also realize there is an inertia of thought and action that make such a change difficult at best.

Fine, but whom do you propose to empower? The US does not have the right, responsibility, or - most important - the capacity to empower citizens of other countries. In most of these countries even the citizens don't want us mucking about in their internal affairs; they assume that our "help" is intended to advance our interests, not theirs, and they're generally right.

The obstacle is not just inertia, it's the quite formidable problem, and potential for adverse consequences, of inserting ourselves uninvited into other people's business.

Bob's World
10-14-2010, 11:46 PM
Freedom house rankings are based on how the populaces of each country feel. It is not some western team showing up with a western ruler and judging by western perspectives.

jmm99
10-15-2010, 12:35 AM
from BW
I think Sun Tzu isn't an old Chinese guy so much as hundreds of years of lessons learned compressed into poetic sound bites of wisdom.

but then one should be able to point to hundreds of non-violent victories won over those "hundreds of years of lessons learned". My point remains the same: the record is berift of Chinese practice to prove the theory delivered in those "poetic sound bites of wisdom" that you cite.

The first aphorism you cite (Griffith Trans., III Offensive Strategy, pt.3) is preceded by two others:


1. Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.

2. To capture the enemy's army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a battalion, a company or a five-man squad is better than to destroy them.

Those two (pts. 1&2; emphasizing neutralization by capture), combined with pt.3, lead to this "Thus":


4. Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.

The first annotation comment to pt.4 (by Tu Mu) advises pre-threat deterence - but, how to resolve difficulties "before they arise", or to triumph "before threats materialize". To do so, one must adopt some kind of "1% solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Percent_Doctrine)" of preventive strikes (ala Suskind of VP Cheney), or massive programs that seek to cure all of the "Conditions" that might lead to the threat. The latter seems more akin to your prescription than the former. I reject former and latter.

The second annotation comment to pt.4 (by Li Ch'uan) takes the statement "Attack plans at their inception" quite literally. The ultimately winning general there, being confronted by his opponent's "stubborn and rude Planning Officer" acting as a envoy, simply beheaded the Planning Officer. The general noted that: "The supreme excellence in war is to attack the enemy's plans." :D

Li Ch'uan's example is a targeted killing; and is scarcely non-violent - although the end result was the enemy's surrender once the Planning Officer was killed.

I'll certainly look at your concept of "Empowerment" whenever you link the article; but that to me sounds only like a more benign form of interventionism.

Since I'm a "Never Again, but ..." type, any form of US interventionism is suspect, especially outside of pre-defined areas. We (you and I) have, I believe, a fundamental policy difference on the scope of US intervention in the affairs of others.

My "platitudes" re: "insurgency" and "counter-insurgency" are aimed at an indigenous vs indigenous mixup, unless otherwise stated. Just to make that clear. If we do intervene, we should read Sun Tzu's (Griffith's), XIII Employment of Secret Agents - which to me is more of the "political struggle" than of the "military struggle" (though both are necessarily linked).

Obviously, we have to defend ourselves against external threats such as AQ waging special operations warfare vs US. But, we do not have to occupy ourselves with the entire World, nor do we have to occupy large chunks of the World, to neutralize that threat.

Regards

Mike

Pete
10-15-2010, 02:13 AM
I think Sun Tzu isn't an old Chinese guy ...
Did you ever have the opportunity to meet him? I never served in Asia during my military service, but I've always wondered what kind of guy this Mr. S. Tzu was. Does he like Scotch or bourbon?

jmm99
10-15-2010, 02:39 AM
obviously not Chinese, Sun Tzu spent his misguided youth in Japan and became addicted to Umesha (http://japanesefood.about.com/od/japanesedrinkgreentea/r/plumwine.htm) (plum "wine").

Honest

Mike

Backwards Observer
10-15-2010, 04:23 AM
As far as I can tell, "Sun Tzu", is virtually unknown outside of the United States, and certainly does not figure prominently in any of the Asian studies of war or warfare. The most important Chinese philosopher is probably Dale Carnegie who I believe was a contemporary of Mo Tzu.

Backwards Observer
10-15-2010, 05:38 AM
In my limited estimation, a cursory study of contemporary strategic thought suggests that the cutting-edge theorists have, through a sheer act of will, freed themselves from the tyranny of "reality", which after all can be used to justify any number of falsehoods.

Thusly, the most effective manner in which to reduce friction is to assert that it does not and will not exist. The swiftest way to claim the moral high ground is to merely assert repeatedly that one has already done so. The best method of fool-proofing a plan is to say, "Trust me, this plan is fool-proof".

Needless to say, there will always be small-minded detractors who inevitably refuse to comprehend the almost mystical nature of these strategic configurations. Their feverish fulminations do no more than illuminate the darkness of their collective failure of the imagination.

M-A Lagrange
10-15-2010, 07:33 AM
"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

Bob,

Actually I do have some concernes with the approach you refer to. I did witness this in many times and it always had the same result.
First you buy your opponent to "defeat" him without fighting.
Secondly the opponent takes the money, stay quiete for a short time and then restart the fight.
(Dozen of exemples in Africa)

I personnaly do not see were you do defeat your opponent, you just delay the confrontation (at the best).

This could be proven to be true if you surround your ennemy with a force that is so mighty that the only option left to him is to surrender.
But that would never happen as in assymetric war (and I am teaching you nothing new) the opponent use the fact that his forces are "small" as his best advantage against his super mighty opponent.

I do agree that for political rest, a government has to respond/please some of the exigences of the populations in the geographic area the insurgent get support if it cannot defeat through force the insurgent. (As in Malaysia by promissing independance, the core political demand from the insurgents).

Now, in "modern" insurgencies (as Astan or Irak) which are protracted (nothing really new here), or with AQ more specifically, the Sun Tzu statement does not work neither as the insurgents are just the visible part of an iceberg. This would mean you have to basically terrorise or rally to your cause all middle east populations + a great part of Asian population + all the Muslims of Europ and America (north and South). This is just not possible and does not work.

As a tactic a very small scale level: this works. (Most of the police work is based on that).

But I may have abused of Umesha yesterday night. :D

Dayuhan
10-15-2010, 08:48 AM
Freedom house rankings are based on how the populaces of each country feel. It is not some western team showing up with a western ruler and judging by western perspectives.

A few clips from what Freedom House says, here:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=351&ana_page=341&year=2008


The survey operates from the assumption that freedom for all peoples is best achieved in liberal democratic societies.


The survey findings are reached after a multilayered process of analysis and evaluation by a team of regional experts and scholars

The Freedom House rankings are measurements of how close a given state comes to the Western ideal of liberal democracy. They do not and do not claim to measure a populace's perceptions of its government.

You stated that the insurgent populaces of Iraq and Afghanistan are the least of our problems, and I asked which insurgent populaces you believe to be greater problems. You stated that you support empowerment, and I asked whom you propose to empower, and how. These are not efforts to twist or distort, I'm simply seeking clarification of comments you made. Given that these are quite central to the matter under discussion, I think those questions deserve answers.

Bob's World
10-15-2010, 10:51 AM
The principles of liberal democracy are different than saying liberal democracy is the type of government everyone should have. In fact, probably the primary tenant would be that of self-determination, and if the populace wants a king, who adheres strictly to Sharia, and they have the mechanisms available to them to ensure the King stays on that track, then one could argue that is liberal democracy at work. It is certainly in sync with the principles the US was founded upon.

#1 insurgency the US needs to worry about: The one in Saudi Arabia.

Now, I realize you say "what insurgency?" Fine, I say there is one, and it is the pulsing heart of what the US calls the GWOT. 9000 Saudis arrested and jailed with no rights to trial or habeas corpus since 2003 on charges of "Terrorism." Now clearly there have not been 9000 acts or attempted acts of terrorism in Saudi Arabia since 2003, so one must presume there are networks of those who are collaborating and plotting to act illegally against the state and their membership is being sniffed out and rolled up.

In a county with 1/10th the population of the U.S. this is equivalent to 90,000 Americans being pulled out of their homes, their college dorm rooms, their place of work in the middle of the night, thrown into a police car and hauled off never to be seen again over that same period of time.

The Saudis are backing off from some of their more harsh tactics (reportedly). but have always employed the major tactic of letting these guys out of jail if the simply promise to take their fight elsewhere, and has thus always been a primary source of foreign fighters, be it to fight with the Muj during the Cold War; or now in this post-Cold War era to provide manpower to efforts such as AQ's to support their larger cause, while at the same time clinging to their nationalist cause at home.

Why is this most important to the US? Saudi Arabia has the most oil, American oil companies developed that oil, and we have a close post-WWII relationship. Much of the failings of the Saudi government are blamed on Western influence and money that have had a corrupting effect. Probably a lot of truth to that. By working to sustain the status quo in Saudi Arabia and attacking the spokes of the problem that come out of that hub, we empower AQ's message. Even if we deal with a spoke in Iraq (though I don't think anything about Iraq had anything to do with AQ or this Saudi factor. We built the spoke to Iraq when we invaded) or the AFPAK region, it merely leads to new spokes developing out to other areas or reinforces current ones into places like Yemen and North Africa and the Horn of Africa.

But we think COIN is war, and we don't want to wage war in Saudi Arabia, and neither do the Saudis want the American's showing up with their big, clumsy COIN machine. But the hard truth is that less is more, but understanding what aspects of governance are them most important, and tailoring them to the very real concerns of both the Saudi populace and the Saudi Government we can turn down the heat in Saudi Arabia in a way that causes these spokes to retract, that makes a huge powerful Stratcom message for the US that cuts to the heart of AQ's message, and that is executed within our value system without asking the Saudis to act outside their value system either.

By usurping AQ's role as the solution to the problem we reduce the perception that the US is the source of the problem. The US had a very positive relationship in much of the Middle East back when we had to tiptoe around careful not to upset the European and Ottoman powers who had staked claim to the region. It was only once those powers retracted and we filled that vacuum that things began to go downhill. The factors of increased petro riches and the politics of Cold War Containment exacerbated these factors, as has the increase in communications technology. Islam is under pressure, and much as little to do with the US, but the US has set itself up to be the easy outside party to blame it on.

How does "Empowerment" work? To be candid, I'm not sure. Currently it is a fuzzy concept woven throughout the administration's foreign and domestic policy output; but there is certainly no clear framework for what exactly it means or how to implement it. There is also the inertia of Containment. The boss is asking for empowerment, but everyone around him is trained, organized, equipped, experienced, etc in containment. So what he says and what his implementors hear and do are two different things. I think one can see this in some of the frustration between the white house and their action arms.

I do think that empowerment means working toward people having legal means to express their concerns and to address their governments that are developed and tailored locally between those respective governments and populaces. I don't think that means we make everyone a mini-me US brand democracy.

I do think that empowerment is the opposite of what we are doing in Afghanistan. That is probably more accurately "Enablement." We enable the Karzai regime to be ineffective and corrupt by our very presence and approach to the problem. We also disempower the populace by enabling the government to disconnect their historic means of shaping government (the use of shuras, Jirgas; and when that fails swords and rifles). So empowerment means changing how we engage governments and populaces both, and relinquishing a lot of control over outcomes. Tricky stuff. It may just fizzle out and never take root. That is what happened to FDR. He to had a bold vision, but his death and the realities of the post-WWII developments combined to put his vision on the shelf. I see a lot of FDR's vision in Empowerment. We'll see. Maybe it's time has come, or maybe it is still a bit too "pie in the sky" for the dirty realities of maintaining one's status at the top of the heap.

jmm99
10-15-2010, 04:37 PM
The "slippery slope" argument to my eyes has never been overwhelming in and of itself. We can put the brakes on the "downward slide", or prevent it completely, often via use of ad hoc barriers.

That being said, words like "empowerment", "self-determination" and "good governance" can mean different things to different people. Colbert King brought that out earlier this year in President Obama, Marion Barry: Two takes on 'empowerment' (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021903379.html) (WP):


By Colbert I. King
Saturday, February 20, 2010

President Obama and D.C. Council member Marion Barry obviously had something different in mind when they each recently referred to the notion of "empowerment."

In his Feb. 1 National African American History Month proclamation, President Obama said he selected the theme "The History of Black Economic Empowerment" to honor African Americans who overcame racial barriers to reach "financial independence and the security of self empowerment that comes with it."

Barry, used it, too, when he defended himself this week against a D.C. Council-authorized independent investigation that found that, among other improper actions, he had benefited from a city contract that he obtained for a former girlfriend. Claiming he is a "different kind of council member," Barry said he sought office to get resources to the people of his ward, and do all he could "to empower them."

Unlike Barry's use of the word, Obama's "empowerment" referred to African American trailblazers who overcame racial prejudice to become skilled workers, professionals and entrepreneurs. Obama praised that generation of African Americans who acquired land and founded banks, educational institutions, newspapers, hospitals and businesses of all kinds. His proclamation honored those who rose above "the injustices of their time" -- black codes, Jim Crow laws -- to take actions that bettered their lives and those of others. ... (much more in the WP article)

The article was spurred by this year's theme for African American History Month, "The History of Black Economic Empowerment" and President Obama's Proclamation for that event (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-proclamation-national-african-american-history-month). When you go to that link, you might avail yourself of "Search WhiteHouse.gov" and enter - empowerment. 81 items returned as I type this.

You will find in those entries something of a trinity composed of "empowerment, good governance, and economic opportunity" as in the July 21, 2010 Statement on the President's Forum with Young African Leaders (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-presidents-forum-with-young-african-leaders).

More practically (how does "empowerment" fit into the foreign policy of the Obama administration), Democracy & Human Rights (http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/presidents-speech-cairo-a-new-beginning/democracy-human-rights) (based on the President's Cairo Speech) sets the scene.

First generally:


The President said that no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other, but that America is committed to advancing governments that reflect the will of the people. He committed the U.S. to support human rights everywhere: the ability of people to speak their mind and to have a say in how they are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; and the freedom to live as people choose. Governments that protect these rights, the President said, are ultimately more stable, successful and secure.

The U.S. works to advance democracy and human rights by living these values at home, standing up for human rights in public and in multilateral institutions, speaking frankly and consistently about these issues with governments and civil society, and supporting democracy advocates and civic groups working bravely to expand freedom in difficult environments.

and specifically to "empowerment":


Strengthening Civil Society: The U.S. supports local civil society groups working for political, economic, and social empowerment in their home countries through a variety of programs, and local grants now represent more than half of MEPI’s projects across the Middle East and North Africa.

Potentially, "empowerment" could be a very broad construct - once you've covered "political, economic, and social", what's left ? Shades of a new "New Frontier" to a global "Great Society" ? - or will the "empowerment struggle" lead more to localized Marion Barrys (see Colbert King link) ?

In the end, the US COAs will be affected by the elections next month and in 2012 - but those elections will not necessarily determine those COAs (e.g., 1964 when LBJ ran as something of a "peace candidate", as did Nixon in 1968).

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-15-2010, 06:09 PM
Mike,

Nice pull. I had plucked the word empowerment out of the NSS, and I too put it into the search function on WhiteHouse.Gov while writing my paper. What you've laid out here is very helpful.

A couple of the best examples of what this means for foreign policy are the President's recent speech to the UN on 23 September; from that speech:

“The common thread of progress is the principle that government is accountable to its citizens. And the diversity in this room makes clear -- no one country has all the answers, but all of us must answer to our own people.”

(I would argue that we currently enable many governments to ignore their populaces, and that this more than any factor gets to the roots of GWOT)

And also his clear deliniation between the government of Iran and the people of Iran when he sign the Iran sanctions: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-signing-iran-sanctions-act

Pete
10-15-2010, 06:27 PM
That being said, words like "empowerment", "self-determination" and "good governance" can mean different things to different people. Colbert King brought that out earlier this year in President Obama, Marion Barry: Two takes on 'empowerment' (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021903379.html) (WP) ...
After his career of 30 years as a newspaperman in Washington DC my Dad said Marion Barry is a chameleon -- during the '60s he pretended to be a sharecropper, later he'd dress like a big businessman, and even later he professed to be a black nationalist.

jmm99
10-15-2010, 06:57 PM
just so long as you understand that, from a political policy standpoint, I don't want either a new "New Frontier", a global "Great Society" or any other "Wilsonian" schematic (i.e., to make the World safe for democracy).

Some revision seems needed in the "Realist" view(s) of foreign policy; but that is another post.

Regards

Mike

Bob's World
10-15-2010, 07:22 PM
FDR had four points, I think they are sound:

FDR’s vision centered famously on his “Four Freedoms;” freedom of religion and speech, and freedom from fear and want. Over the course of his final years, FDR worked to shape his full vision for the world which would emerge from WWII, adding:

• The Four Policemen – Recognizing the U.S. could and should not attempt to maintain stability around the world on her own; he envisioned a team made up of the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, and China. Each would have regional responsibilities, but also keep an eye on each other and work together where necessary to help keep a peace that supported the interests of all. He saw this as a more suitable replacement to a revival of the old League of Nations as promoted by Winston Churchill.

• The End of Colonialism - Enabling these societies to achieve independence through an evolution of governance, rather than revolution against governance; all under the watchful eye of the four policemen.

• The Right of Self-Determination – FDR recognized "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live."

Realities are that FDR trusted Stalin more than he should have, and underestimated how much Churchill strongly distrusted the man and equally strongly wanted to re-establish control over lost colonies. Anyway, we slid into Cold War, Containment, let the Euros retain their colonies, and then fell into two generations of post colonial insurgency, now to be followed by a generation or two of post-Cold War insurgency. I think if FDR had lived, the Grand Strategy would have been a happy medium between his idealistic vision and what we ended up with.

(hey, I'm just an observer, you can't make this stuff up!)

slapout9
10-15-2010, 07:46 PM
In that great big book that West Point puts out on Strategy in Chapter 16 I believe, you may find what empowerment means as far as what Government is supposed to do. There are basically 2 responsibilities.... to provide Protection and Prosperity. The same reason that people join gangs I might add. The 2 primary means to do this is a Sovereign military and the right to print Sovereign Money!!!!! Sovereign money is money created by the Government that is issued DEBT free, something we seem to forget we have the power to do, but choose not to:mad:. It is the reason that China is and will continue to kick our A?? economically anytime they want to. Strange that a communist government would use a Democratic idea to beat us:confused:then again maybe not so strange. They are masters at Economic Insurgency.

Dayuhan
10-16-2010, 01:43 AM
#1 insurgency the US needs to worry about: The one in Saudi Arabia.
Now, I realize you say "what insurgency?" Fine, I say there is one, and it is the pulsing heart of what the US calls the GWOT. 9000 Saudis arrested and jailed with no rights to trial or habeas corpus since 2003 on charges of "Terrorism." Now clearly there have not been 9000 acts or attempted acts of terrorism in Saudi Arabia since 2003, so one must presume there are networks of those who are collaborating and plotting to act illegally against the state and their membership is being sniffed out and rolled up.

Ok, as you define “insurgency” there is one in Saudi Arabia; as the rest of the world defines “insurgency” there isn’t one. This I think highlights two problems with your proposed redefinition of the term.

The first problem is that if we adopt your definition of “insurgency”, we’re going to have to find another term for what everyone else calls “insurgency”, because they are two very different things. This kind of semantic realignment is going to cause a good bit of confusion in the discourse; might it not be better to let “insurgency” keep meaning what it already means and come up with a new term for what you’re proposing as the conditions that generate what we now call insurgency?

As a comparison: lack of clean water and sanitary facilities produce a high risk of a cholera epidemic. They are the conditions from which a cholera epidemic grows, and they must be corrected if the epidemic is to be averted or, once started, if it is to be halted. They are not a cholera epidemic and it would cause all kinds of confusion if we referred to them as such.

The second problem is that while your definition rests on popular sentiment toward government, we often need to apply it in places where we don’t know what that sentiment is. In practice, you seem to base your assessment not on popular sentiment, but on the existence of conditions that you believe should produce popular resentment. You seem to be saying that insurgency exists where governments that you dislike exist. I don’t think this works. Our perceptions of government in other countries are irrelevant, and our observations of popular sentiment in other countries are often highly speculative and heavily impacted by our prejudices. While your definition of insurgency may be valid (if semantically inconvenient for reasons stated above), it is extremely difficult to measure or assess, and thus difficult to base decisions on.


By working to sustain the status quo in Saudi Arabia and attacking the spokes of the problem that come out of that hub, we empower AQ's message.

Are we working to sustain the status quo in Saudi Arabia? Not really. We protected them from outside aggression, yes, but that was a common interest and I doubt that turning the place over to Saddam would have won us any points with the Saudi populace. We kept troops there after Saddam was defeated because it was useful for us in ongoing operations in Iraq, not because the Saudis needed them to sustain the status quo. The Saudis don’t get or need any help from us in protecting their status quo from internal dissent.


But the hard truth is that less is more, but understanding what aspects of governance are them most important, and tailoring them to the very real concerns of both the Saudi populace and the Saudi Government we can turn down the heat in Saudi Arabia in a way that causes these spokes to retract, that makes a huge powerful Stratcom message for the US that cuts to the heart of AQ's message, and that is executed within our value system without asking the Saudis to act outside their value system either.

It seems to me that when you bring that little “we” into the picture your argument goes completely off the rails. We can’t “turn down the heat in Saudi Arabia”. We have no influence at all on Saudi internal politics. None. The populace doesn’t want us messing in Saudi internal politics. Nobody wants us messing in Saudi internal politics. If we try the only beneficiary will be AQ.


By usurping AQ's role as the solution to the problem we reduce the perception that the US is the source of the problem.

AQ isn’t filling that role. They tried, but they couldn’t persuade enough people that they offered a solution to allow them to fill that role in any viable way. Neither can we, and it would be silly for us to try. We are not the solution to Saudi Arabia’s internal political issues, and for us to try to force ourselves uninvited into the relationship between the government and its populace would be hubris to an extent bordering on insanity. It’s not our problem, we have no solution, we have no influence. Let it be.


How does "Empowerment" work? To be candid, I'm not sure. Currently it is a fuzzy concept woven throughout the administration's foreign and domestic policy output; but there is certainly no clear framework for what exactly it means or how to implement it. There is also the inertia of Containment. The boss is asking for empowerment, but everyone around him is trained, organized, equipped, experienced, etc in containment.

Is the boss asking for empowerment, or is the boss rolling out a buzzword that his audience likes to hear? Politicians do that. I don’t think Mr. Obama is naïve enough to think we have the right, the responsibility, or the capacity to designate ourselves as the empowerer of the world’s populaces.


I do think that empowerment is the opposite of what we are doing in Afghanistan. That is probably more accurately "Enablement." We enable the Karzai regime to be ineffective and corrupt by our very presence and approach to the problem. We also disempower the populace by enabling the government to disconnect their historic means of shaping government (the use of shuras, Jirgas; and when that fails swords and rifles). So empowerment means changing how we engage governments and populaces both, and relinquishing a lot of control over outcomes.

I don’t fully grasp how you reconcile a desire to relinquish control with proposals that, for example, we should turn down the heat in Saudi Arabia or take it on ourselves to empower others. Interference in the domestic affairs of other countries is not consistent with relinquishing control. It sounds to me like you're not arguing for relinquishing control or reducing interference, but for using control and interference to advance an agenda that we think is best for the populace. That seems to me a dangerous idea.


(I would argue that we currently enable many governments to ignore their populaces, and that this more than any factor gets to the roots of GWOT)

Which governments do we enable to ignore their populaces? Certainly not the government of Saudi Arabia… but which others? I think you vastly overestimate the influence we have and the degree to which we can enable anyone to do anything… other than in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course; our two post-9/11 aberrations.

I realize that perception can mean more than reality, but our first step in devising a response to perception is to assess whether the perception is accurate. If a negative perception of a US policy is based on an actual policy, we may be able to change that perception by changing the policy. If a negative perception is inaccurate it’s a bit more difficult: we can’t stop doing what we’re not doing in the first place, and we can’t relinquish control that we haven’t got. Certainly there are things we can and should do, like resolving the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and making no more attempts to install governments, but they have to be based on what we are actually doing and what we can actually do.