Iraq - the Modern Equivalent of the Spanish Civil War
The part that has intrigued me so far are the sections on bad guy lessons learned in Chapter 3 beginning on page 42. Regardless of whether you buy in to the future as proposed by BNW, the lessons learned from Iraq (what Robb calls the modern equivalent of the Spanish Civil War) will likely be studied, used and improved upon by a wide-assortment of guerrillas, terrorists and criminals.
What concerns me is that we have a hard time learning our own lessons (though I think we are doing a much better job now in at least capturing lessons) - so who is capturing enemy lessons learned into a relevant and accessible form for use by the good guys?
I imagine the IC (to include the Service Intel centers and activities) may be doing some of this – but is it readily accessible to those that need it to include future planners and concept writers?
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
I don't know - the analysis BNW uses to draw conclusions may give more credit to the AIF then they deserve. While I do believe that one problem often creates multiple problems -
ex. insufficient electrical power generation - say the electric company has to generate more because there is a lack of benzine (mogas) or DF2 (diesel) which in turn drives up the price of the black marketers of benzine, DF2 and propane which in turn outrages the people which in turn leads to violence and retribution, or the appearance of ineffective govt - which in turn overwhelms the 1950s electrical grid - with the whole thing made worse by graft, extortion and corruption and then effects countless other systems in an attritional cycle. However, is this really AIF intelligent design, or is it just the AIF being able to take advantage of the home court "perfect storm" conditions that exist because the infrastructure is outdated, a lack or breakdown of services is likely, population growth over the years with no commensurate investment in public works, and the other conditions that are just 50 years of dictatorship and going on 30 years of sustained and conflcit that is Iraq?
The conditions in Iraq that make it so advantagous to the AIF/Global Guerillas are not present everywhere in the world - you'd have to be talking Somalia or somewhere that is not only impoverished, but war torn at least close to the degree Iraq is. I guess my point is that part of the AIF's success is due to the conditions they inherit inside of Iraq. Iraq is a kind of Petri dish for creating or maybe attracting "global guerillas", but to export their destabilization 100% I think they'll either have to adapt it to less generous conditions to compensate for effective government, or take it on the road to war torn, failed states with Iraq like conditions. To me this also explains where we are likely to see these AQ like groups appear with some degree of success next – and also may help us allocate resources (DIME) to combat those conditions.
So the question is can you extract the "global guerilla" success in Iraq and lay it over any state you want to bring down, or are there conditions that must be met first.