Line up your insurgencies...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jmm99
As to this:
Could you define and distinguish for me each of the terms "Motivation" and "Causation" in a factual historical context ?
Regards
Mike
American Colonies Vs Britain:
Causation:
Colonists widely perceieved as second class citizens by those living in Britain, and treated as such across the board: Disrespect
Governors selected by the Crown and imposed upon the Colonists; An island attempting to rule a continent; etc: illegitimacy
taxation without representation, sending the Army and Navy to Boston to inforce the rule of law: Injustice
Disbanding of colonial governments, ignoring or refusal to hear Colonial grievances, etc: Perception that no legitimate means existed to address all of the above.
Motivation:
Concepts of Liberty; Events like Concord, Breeds Hill, the Boston Masacre; The writen and spoken words of men like Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin.
Vietnam:
Causation:
French colonization; American reinstatement of French colonization; Western divsion of the country into two; American support for the Government established over the southern half: Illigitimacy, Disrespect, Injustice; no legitimate recourse to address.
Motivation:
The example of China in freeing itself from western colonialism through communism and insurgency; The leadership of Ho Chi Minh, Giap, etc;
Pick an insurgency, any insurgency. This isn't a card trick. The model fits virtually all the time. Depending on one's perspective though it is often hard to see due to a variety of reasons.
As Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story..."
You live in a simplistic world, Robert...
In the American Colonies versus Britain, you left out the bit about the costs of the French and Indian war from which the Colonies greatly benefited and for which they promised to help pay -- then reneged on raising taxes. Add to that a series of provocations by groups of people who were NOT in accord with mainstream Colonial thinking and half dozen or more other things (not least French activities before during and after...) and that conflict wasn't nearly as simple as you infer. You tend to cherry pick your history and ignore things that are inconvenient
Same is true of Viet Nam. That was far more complex than your statements imply -- as was the Chinese example. For example, you ignore the impact of the death of FDR on the acceptance of the French as de-facto rulers of Indo China and you ignore the fact that American support for the southern half was very low key until the Brothers Kennedy decided to use Viet Nam to stimulate the US economy. There were a a lot of wrongs in Viet Nam but not all were US or western wrongs. Not by a long shot.
Bob's World is nice and simple.
The real world is filled with a lot of gray and half tones -- most of which are ignored only at some peril. The good news is that you're smart enough to realize that with statements like this:
Quote:
...Depending on one's perspective though it is often hard to see due to a variety of reasons...
...But, it is very comforting for politicians to be able to blame their shortcomings on others...
You acknowledge the existence of human fallibility but your prescriptions and descriptions usually fail to account for it.
That sort of ambiguates your message... ;)
Motivation vs Causation; Theory and Practice
I think these posts (along with this post and any that follow on the same topic):
this is classic "motivation"
Motivation vs Causation
Line up your insurgencies...
As Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story..."
E= MC2 is simple
Slapout9 (untitled)
Funny....Money
should be moved to a new thread cuz they are beyond the scope of this thread's topic. Perhaps this post's heading (Motivation vs Causation; Theory and Practice) could title the new thread. But, that's up to the Powers That Move Things. :)
I believe it would be worthwhile cuz this discussion has been going on (in one form or the other) for better than a year - the Eagle Landed here in Nov 2008. ;)
The American Revolution and Vietnam seem to me excellent contexts in which to frame the discussion: both were major events (a complex of conventional and unconventional warfare); a lot will be known to members here; and as past events, we don't have to worry about OpSec and other current considerations.
Without answering (yet) prior posts, I am coming at this from the following basic levels:
1. Practitioner, not theoretician.
2. Tactics, not strategy.
And, those at the lowest local level - just the "little" things.
Now, it so happens that I also subscribe to the theory that the practitioner must interface with the theoretician; and tactics have to interface with strategy. Those interfaces are where I am having a problem.
So, if a Power That Moves Things could oblige, I would like to continue this long-standing discourse elsewhere.
Best to all the discoursers
Mike
Motivation vs. causation ?
As to all these (realizing that others have added or want to add more):
Quote:
from BW
American Colonies Vs Britain:
Causation:
Colonists widely perceieved as second class citizens by those living in Britain, and treated as such across the board: Disrespect
Governors selected by the Crown and imposed upon the Colonists; An island attempting to rule a continent; etc: illegitimacy
taxation without representation, sending the Army and Navy to Boston to inforce the rule of law: Injustice
Disbanding of colonial governments, ignoring or refusal to hear Colonial grievances, etc: Perception that no legitimate means existed to address all of the above.
Motivation:
Concepts of Liberty; Events like Concord, Breeds Hill, the Boston Masacre; The writen and spoken words of men like Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin.
Vietnam:
Causation:
French colonization; American reinstatement of French colonization; Western divsion of the country into two; American support for the Government established over the southern half: Illigitimacy, Disrespect, Injustice; no legitimate recourse to address.
Motivation:
The example of China in freeing itself from western colonialism through communism and insurgency; The leadership of Ho Chi Minh, Giap, etc;
I first have a hard time seeing why some factors in those conflicts are placed in the Causation box and others in the Motivation box. Both boxes include tangibles and intangibles, for example.
How do I make up my own little Causation and Motivation boxes for my little piece of heaven; and make them meaningful ?
Example: double role playing in a small village complex (ville + 5 hamlets; say 5000 population, located somewhere between Saigon and the Parrot's Beak):
1. "NLF" cadre commandant (actually regular PAVN, but of a peasant family from the village complex, who as a teen went North in 1954 and then was infiltrated back in the 60s).
2. VN Pacification commandant (regular ARVN, also from the village complex, but from a family of local notables; long service, but relatively low grade because he lacks "Saigon connections").
Posit roughly equivalent military resources.
How do the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary each use your Causation and Motivation constructs for his own purposes ?
Regards
Mike
1 Attachment(s)
Good governance, legitimacy, causation, motivation
Since Entropy has added "good governance", which is central to COL Jones' populace-centric construct, I'm going to add one more term, "legitimacy", as viewed by Timothy J. Lomperis, Vietnam's Offspring:The Lesson of Legitimacy (Winter 1986, Conflict Quarterly).
From that, we have this chart:
Attachment 1023
In this chart (more fully discussed in the article), Lomperis is not considering "legitimacy" from the viewpoint of a nation-state; but from the different viewpoints of persons (three levels) in each of two incumbant models and the revolutionary insurgency model.
The individual "legitimacy issues" (which Lomperis considers fluid and variable) look much to me like "causation" or "motivation" issues - whichever box you put them in.
I understand that the 1986 article was expanded and became a chapter in Lomperis' 1996 book, From People’s War to People’s Rule: Insurgency, Intervention, and the Lessons of Vietnam. Only two reviews, but the second (from 2005) is interesting:
Quote:
This is a book about the non-lesson "lessons" of the Vietnam War. Published in 1996, it could be considered the most horribly confusing book about political-military strategy ever conceived. Based tightly on articulating research bounded inside a "paradigmatic presupposition," many early readers would venture to believe Lomperis wasted a decade of research to make sense of a society "in the throes of a revolutionary insurgency struggling to form and consolidate an independent and modernizing state." But reading this book in 2005 makes it all relevant. It actually makes perfect sense, so much so that when read and digested properly, it can be used to predict not only how the newly formed Iraqi government will stabilize and prevail, but will also predict when it will happen by month and year, and that will determine the US exit strategy.
....
To bring about the change of government from turmoil due to insurgency and into a sphere of stability, Chapter 11 is the most interesting and useful because it demonstrates how to create a timeline for an exit strategy. Using lessons from six case studies ranging from Mao's long march in China from 1920-1949, Greece 1941-1949, Philippines 1946-1956, Malaya 1948-1960, Cambodia-Laos 1949-1975, to Sendero Luminoso's Peru 1970-1992, Lomperis benchmarked insurgent successes and defeats in a smartly laid out timeline that identifies factors important to legitimate governments. He then plots categories and possible futures which are laid out for policy analyst to mull over. Lomperis' work shows that from legitimate national elections to victory will take approximately five years to achieve, if, all involved will stay the course.
I guess I will get sucked in to see what he actually says.
Regards
Mike