Your best post ever, Wilf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
Well then I am at fault for being unable to progress my idea, in clear and simple terms. Here's the "Wilf for dummies" version.
A.) Use military force to confront military problems.
B.) If someone/your enemy, is using military means, then it's a military problem.
C.) People only use military means to promote political agendas.
E.) The political agenda and how it is changed and altered by the means used to promote it and counter it, is what you are fighting about. Therefore, always relevant in every type of conflict for the last < 3,000 years.
F.) Morality is a function of politics. Political belief is a statement of a moral position. Warfare promotes political positions, therefore moral positions in the eyes of those doing it. If actions undermine that, then it is nearly always problematic and usually counter-productive.
... and nothing we see today is new, in terms of the nature of war. Warfare yes, but the purpose to which it is put.
...and Carl Von Clausewitz, said everything I say, better and said it long ago.
Your best post ever, Wilf
"Cept for the CvC stuff...:D
Tom
The dumb lawyer again, in response to
this:
Quote:
from Wilf
Here's the "Wilf for dummies" version.
A.) Use military force to confront military problems.
B.) If someone/your enemy, is using military means, then it's a military problem.
C.) People only use military means to promote political agendas.
E.) The political agenda and how it is changed and altered by the means used to promote it and counter it, is what you are fighting about. Therefore, always relevant in every type of conflict for the last < 3,000 years.
F.) Morality is a function of politics. Political belief is a statement of a moral position. Warfare promotes political positions, therefore moral positions in the eyes of those doing it. If actions undermine that, then it is nearly always problematic and usually counter-productive.
Point F muddies the waters, and is not material to my presentation - so, for the present, I place it on the shelf.
Points A, B and E correctly state CvC's: War is a continuation of Politik (inclusive of both politics and policy in German) by other means. So, no argument there since CvC is one of my favorite law books. :)
Point C ("People only use military means to promote political agendas.") is simply wrong on its face.
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I am happy enough to use the term "political agenda" as a good starting and end point. Might as well start with Lenin, Mao and Giap as examples for use of the political effort and the military effort (in their terms, the Political Struggle and the Military Struggle).
As to the Political Struggle, use of your Points A and B is appropriate by changing a few words:
Quote:
A.) Use political means to confront political problems.
B.) If someone/your enemy, is using political means, then it's a political problem.
Also your Point E (should be "D" ?) is valid in the Political Struggle:
Quote:
E.) The political agenda and how it is changed and altered by the means used to promote it and counter it, is what you are fighting about.
although "struggling" (closer to CvC's "wrestling match duel") is probably a better term.
OK so far - we are following CvC (as our Com friends did also, starting with Lenin), and now have to ask: What was the common political agenda of Lenin, Mao and Giap ?
The basic answer is that their political agenda was a desired end state which would see the coming of the dictatorship of the proletariat which would in turn wither away leading to the utopian communist paradise. None of them deviated from that end goal; but they all realized that the precise paths to be followed were dependent on the particular conditions and contradictions of the country in which they worked.
This brings us to the political effort, which must be distinguished from the overriding political agenda. The political effort is framed by The Narrative (the apparent ideology, cause, slogan - which may be multiple and which does not necessarily include explicit reference to the political agenda).
For example, The Narrative in Russia, China and Vietnam focused on anti-feudalism and anti-imperialism (a different set of messages for each country based on its particular conditions). The Narrative is more operational and tactical than strategic; but The Narrative must in the end lead to the end goal of the political agenda (in the Com case, the dictatorship of the proletariat).
The nuts and bolts of the Com political effort was ideally to develop broad popular fronts encompassing causes that appealed to a broad spectrum of the populace. The Coms did not try to sell full-blown Communism to the masses (knowing they would not understand it), leaving that field of study for education of the Party infrastructure. In short, their political effort did not include their political agenda; but the Party kept in control of that political effort (e.g., the NLF in Vietnam via COSVN controlled by the Lao Dong).
However, The Narrative (which defines the political effort) had to be flexible enough to allow development into the political agenda's end goal. Example, land reform: kill or drive out those greedy landlords; distribute their lands to the tenant farmers; raise the political consciousness of the farmers (e.g., we gave you land, you give us your sons and also logistics, etc., help); and mobilize the farmers (note that "mobilize" goes beyond neutrality or even passive support) into active supporters of the revolution (even if they don't know what the political agenda calls for once the revolution succeeds). Of course, collective farms were the end goal of the Com's political agenda re: agrarian reform, but that knowledge was kept to the cadre (the "well-educated" party members).
Since The Narrative (apparent ideology, cause, slogan) is not the political agenda, The Narrative can (and will) morph as the revolutionary situation gets nearer and nearer to success. That is the doctrine of the Manipulation of the Cause (or Slogan). The Political Struggle (like the Military Struggle) may be viewed as a series of political engagements (each with its own character as determined by situational awareness), which are strung together as beads of pearls into a necklace which culminates in the end goal determined by the political agenda (the true ideology).
Now, since the political agenda (the Politik in CvC's words) controls both the Political Struggle and the Military Struggle by defining the end goal, both the Political Struggle and the Military Struggle have to end up at the same place. They also have to support each other during the period when they are stringing their respective engagements together to reach the common end goal.
The bottom line is that the political agenda should be distinguished from the political effort - they may be the same (as I view Malaya) or they may differ in apparent ideology, cause or slogan.
I am also not saying that the political effort can or should be used in all situations. The Indonesians saw no real need for a political effort; and Sri Lanka seems to also fit that mold.
Anyhowways, that's my take on the political agenda and the political effort. The latter, in a revolutionary insurgency, is basically Saul Alinsky + armed propaganda teams (convert and if not, then kill).
Regards
Mike
coming late, but trying to catch up
Hello everybody,
Coming late in the debate, I took the time to read most of the post (My apologies to those I did not read).
As first comment, I would say: one thing that stunned me is how COIN has became the model of war rather than one way to do war. COIN is just one way to do war. What is different is the war among the people (And it's an old history) rather than COIN.
Secondly, not here but sometime ago, most of the authors, including P Gentil, were found of Algeria war. And here we have the exact opposite of Wilf position: Algeria war was a defeat despite a military victory. At the end of the war, most of FNL were jailed and FNL was no more a threat. OAS was a threat and a real one.
This to come to several thoughts:
1) Military action is the main part of war but not all of it. War has several fields, including military. Politic is one of them. Algeria or Suez just prove that you may military win a war and politically lost it (which is in accordance to Clausewitz but not with Wilf post). I'll take Suez as it was an attempt from France and UK to re enforce their political position through military operation. But they just forgot they were no more the world power they used to be at that time. So even with political will you may loose a war on the political field.
2) Nature of the insurgents may change even during war. Iraq is a good example of a multi nature enemy conducting multiple insurgencies. To caricature a complex situation: Us fought an insurgency lead by Sadam and at the same time several insurgencies lead by various groups who did not agree with the fact to be colonized by US, by Al Quada and finally by the government they putted in power (may be the easiest one). Some may even add that this turned, at some stage into civil war… COIN was the requested tool for the US but was not the nature of war.
3) It is too easy to say all who is against a state power is an insurgent. The qualification of insurgent is not a neutral term, unlike enemy. There was even an article in SWJ stating that civilian non violent actions to overthrow a government could be seen as an insurgency. Gandhi was an insurgent for the British but not for the Indian. (And he was not non violent neither).
4) Tomorrow's war will be something we did not see coming and the response still has to be invented. As theoretical example, if an enemy overflows US with fake money, conducting to massive economical break down and violence among civilian be an insurgency? Would the response be a COIN operation? Not sure. But here, I go out of Wilf mantra: war is just a military operation between military.
5) Insurgency as in Afghanistan and Iraq, from my point of view, comes more from an approximately planed occupation/stabilization phase rather than a purposely planned operation from the enemy. COIN has been a way to adapt to an enemy using terror and irregular warfare from the US but insurgency takes its roots elsewhere.
6) War is hard and tuff for everyone who lives it, including civilian. Personally I prefer that others did land on D Day rather than me. But I am not sure the average WWII soldier would have liked to be involved into internal fights between armed villagers for a reason he barlly understand. Neither would a nowadays soldier like to go, unarmed, to explain to unfriendly crowed that he is coming to help him and build a school and reinforce the central power they are against. At war, everyone task in not easy and dangerous even just being there is dangerous.
What COIN acknowledged is the fact that war do not end up in occupying a land and putting all the heads down. But this is a comment from Gallieni in 1898. And I am sure that looking into historical records, we would find a guy saying the same thing during the Roman Empire.
But what makes COIN or its extension in future interesting is the development of interaction between civilian and military power to achieve the same goal while they internally oppose to each others. (This may be taken as too think tanker… I which I could be one. I would be in a cozy office rather than a dirty container.)
Hope I am not too much out of the target.