Operationalizing The Jones Model through COG

[Bob's World]

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu


Is much of our current engagement merely the noise before defeat?

With so many talented providers swarming into places like Afghanistan, and with so much funding currently available to resource such engagement one would expect that if "effectiveness" (security, development, government) is indeed the road to victory, that victory will soon be ours.

But what if "effectiveness" is far more the output of a stable, insurgency-free state, rather than being the input that will ultimately produce such a state??

In other words, is the conventional wisdom attempting to back its way into stability by importing the products of good governance rather than going in the front door by targeting the perceptions of good governance among the disaffected populace?

I have produced COG-based engagement tools in the past, and shared them with the SWJ community on other threads. My recent work the Jones Insurgency Model caused me to go back and readdress that work. In the past I came to the position that there are two COGs; "The Populace" for COIN; and "The Network" for CT. Once I completed my work on my Insurgency Model I realized that I needed to reassesses my COG for COIN. Many had challenged the rather broad category of "The Populace" previously, but I had nothing better to offer to describe what I was getting at, and frankly, neither did any of these challengers. I wasn't fully satisfied, but I couldn't "get no satisfaction" either.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/201...urgency-model/

So this morning I dusted off my old COG targeting model and reframed it in the context of the Jones Insurgency Model. I offer that product here for your collective consideration and comment. In the example below let us assume that a variety of HN, interagency, military, and NGO teams are all working independently to conduct COIN in a specific community. For currency sake, let us say that community is the Arghandab valley on the northern outskirts of Kandahar City. Each of the teams has its own mission, chain of command, authorities, funding, priorities, etc. In other words, they are systemically prevented from being able to agree on virtually anything. In this (hypothetical) case, they all have read about the Jones Insurgency Model, and decide to conduct an assessment of the perceptions of Poor Governance among the populace of the Arghandab. Upon completion of that assessment they determine that the number one concern of the populace that was also a causal factor of insurgency under the Jones Model was the lack of Justice. (Thus elevating "Justice" from being a CR to also being a CV in this community). Continuing to drill down on this CV they derive a series of HVTs and HVIs and a scheme to work within their respective lanes to mutually produce this critical line of operation aimed directly at the heart of the center of gravity, and to make it each of their number one priority project.

Armed with this new focus each is able to tailor their overall schemes of engagement by minimizing or cancelling ineffective engagement that they had been working on (with the greatest of intentions) previously; and also many discovered that they had more in common with each other than they had thought prior to this new effort.

Equally important, the shared assessment and collective plan for achieving it was sitting the desk's of all of their respective bosses, creating enhanced synergy at the highest levels, as well as down at the operator level.


(Note, I do not employ the COG process as described in the Joint Pub, as I find it illogical and as likely to produce arguments and confusion on a staff as it is to produce focus and synergy. CvC didn't prescribe any particular rules, so I feel free to think about this concept in a manner that makes sense to me.)