James Madison - Greatest COIN leader in History

[Bob's World]

John and Mike,

Actually, you both are right. Most of the rights and grievances identified in the Declaration of Independence can be directly cross-walked over to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In this one can see how those perceptions that drove insurgency in 1776 were addressed by the new documents of those same men now acting in the role of "Counterinsurgents" as they formed a new government.

As to those specific rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, that is why the "sweep-up" clauses of 9 and 10 were added.

I believe the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration is covered by the 9th Amendment:

Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

[John Grenier]

JM was hardly an insurgent looking to mix up the old order. He wrote the Bill of Rights because of the radicals' (in places like PA and NC, two very large "states to be" with powerful Anti-Federalist lobbies) reaction to the conservative bent the Constitution took. The only way that PA and NC agreed to ratify was if changes (the BoR) we made to the extend the revolutionary gains of the Rev to more people. The BoR was a compromise to bring more "radical" elements into the US polity. If you really want to read some good history on this, I suggest Bernard Bailyn, Gordan Wood, Jackson Turner Main, and Cecilia Kenyon. Drew McCoy's work on how Madison's political philosophy changed over the years is excellent. Madison was a man of the established and elite political order.

[John Grenier]

You understand, right, that "happiness" was 18th-century code word for "property," most fully in the form as in slaves? John Locke, when he was writing the "constitution" for the creation of South Carolina (from the start a colony designed to be a slave-based plantation complex) defined Life, Liberty, and Property as the keys to republican virtue -- without property, a man could not be "competent," that is "disinterested" and willing to serve the greater good than himself. It is really too bad that we have taken such complex and nuanced ideas and "dumbed them down" into parodies of their original meanings. It is ironic that those (those clowns Limbaugh and Beck and Palin, for example) who call for us to follow the Founders' "original intent" don't understand the original meaning of the philosophy they want us to emulate. Capitalism, for example, was a radical idea that did not shape the Founders' understanding of what they called "political economy." The Founders lived and worked under the ideas of mercantilism and the Physiocrats. To suggest that they would embrace laissez-faire economics is ahistoric.

[Dayuhan]

Certainly the American structure and system have done wonderful things for America, and would provide an ideal framework for managing any hypothetical insurgency in the US. The extent to which it can assist in managing anyone else's insurgency is debatable.

There's a lot that emerging democracies can learn from the US structure, particularly from the manner in which it anticipates and manages the need to protect minority rights from a potential tyranny of the majority, always a danger in a democratic structure. That does not, of course, mean that the US system is necessarily adaptable to any other culture.

Political systems evolve, and when we see a political system that works for a country we're generally not looking at something that was created, we're looking at something that emerged over time. Because the evolution is often messy and often involves conflict (as it did in the US and most other working democracies), there's always a temptation to step in and try to short-cut the messy bits by showing them how it should be done. That's a temptation well worth resisting. Americans in particular often see structures and institutions as the defining factors of a working government, but the developing world is littered with governments that look ideal on paper but are poorly adapted to the society they're trying to govern, and in many cases simply don't work. What we think is right doesn't always translate. Compare Oman, a reasonably prosperous, well-managed, emerging nation ruled by a medieval monarchy, to Yemen, a basket case with (on paper) an admirable western-style republic structure.

Obviously there's no hard-and-fast rule on what works, but it should be obvious by now that what doesn't work is a bunch of well-meaning outsiders trying to come in and install a government.

[Bob's World]

I agree that Madison's intent may well not have matched up with his ultimate effects, but it is effects that matter.

Yes his thinking and positions evolved, yes he recognized that the landed would need protection from the unlanded that a pure democracy was not likely to provide. The end result is a form of government, and a codified set of constraints on governmental powers, and preservation of state and individual powers that in its own, clumsy, ineffective way, works to prevent the type of Poor Governance that gives rise to insurgency.

As lesson for Afghanistan is that just as the Articles of Confederation were adequate to get the US through the war with England, but would have doomed the emerging nation; Afghanistan too should strongly consider what an evolved Constitution would look like for them that is more appropriate for the nation that is emerging there.

[John Grenier]

Well, his effects were counter-revolutionary, so to say he was a great insurgent thinker is seriously ahistorical. If he was in fact an insurgent like you claim, he then in fact became like most insurgents in history: a failure.

[John Grenier]

The United States did not (in 1783-1787/89) have the same ethno-linguistic divisions that AFG has today. To expect the different AFG tribes and clans to come together and put aside their self interests to form a larger union is just fantasy, IMHO. We cannot impose our model of historical development on them -- it just will not work. To get AFG to agree to something as limited in unifying power as an Arts of Confed would be a miracle. The clans have no interest in the concept of "divided sovereignty" that made the Arts of Confed and the constitution work for Americans. Don't forget, also, that we had to have a civil war to decide whose version of the Constitution would dominate American political, social, economic, and cultural life. This all goes back to your original point about JM, and exactly why he was not an insurgent; everything he did (Constitution, Bill of Rights, VA/KY Resolutions) was to support and uphold the established political order that kept him and his peeps in control.

[Bob's World]

The United States did not (in 1783-1787/89) have the same ethno-linguistic divisions that AFG has today. To expect the different AFG tribes and clans to come together and put aside their self interests to form a larger union is just fantasy, IMHO. We cannot impose our model of historical development on them -- it just will not work. To get AFG to agree to something as limited in unifying power as an Arts of Confed would be a miracle. The clans have no interest in the concept of "divided sovereignty" that made the Arts of Confed and the constitution work for Americans. Don't forget, also, that we had to have a civil war to decide whose version of the Constitution would dominate American political, social, economic, and cultural life. This all goes back to your original point about JM, and exactly why he was not an insurgent; everything he did (Constitution, Bill of Rights, VA/KY Resolutions) was to support and uphold the established political order that kept him and his peeps in control.

Not selling either the Art of Confed, or the US Constitution to AFG; merely noting that just as we dumped a bad form as we entered peace, AFG too could take advantage of a period of transition to dump their equally flawed constitution for one more apt to produce durable stability.

[Bob's World]

Well, his effects were counter-revolutionary, so to say he was a great insurgent thinker is seriously ahistorical. If he was in fact an insurgent like you claim, he then in fact became like most insurgents in history: a failure.

So, the only failure here are your skills of reading comprehension.

All governments are counterinsurgents every day. The best COIN is done by governments in times of peace. It is only failed governments and their inextremis efforts to preserve themself that we typically think of as COIN. A limited perspective in my view.

No, I stand by my claim. Madison is the greatest counterinsurgent, as the main force in developing a family of governance structures uniquely born of insurgency, and therefore designed to prevent the same. ( But, for the record, all of the founding fathers were insurgents first, and they prevailed against the most powerful nation in the world. That's a win in any book)

[MikeF]

No, I stand by my claim. Madison is the greatest counterinsurgent, as the main force in developing a family of governance structures uniquely born of insurgency, and therefore designed to prevent the same. ( But, for the record, all of the founding fathers were insurgents first, and they prevailed against the most powerful nation in the world. That's a win in any book)

I agree with this approach. It may be helpful to define some of the threats that the Founding Fathers faced and label them as insurgencies, subversion, or existential threats. Additionally, we can examine how effective each COIN approach was along with the secondary and tertiary effects. Wow, this is starting to sound like a great dissertation topic.

Plus, we have to keep in mind the level of violence that was acceptable during that time. In 1804, the secretary of state and vice president resolved their differences with a duel. I'd imagine that would be a huge pay per view event these days .

Internal threats

1. Tories. After the Revolutionary War, the Americans had to conduct conflict resolution with the British Loyalist. In the South, many of the Loyalists were wealthy landowners who did not want to upset the status quo. Some were reintegrated into the new United States, some lost their estates, and some fled back to England or the British Isles.

2. Disenfranchised Veterans. After the war, many of the veterans returned home to poverty and frustration. Daniel Shay and Henry Gale's led one of the most famous revolts. These actions combined with others encouraged the need for a stronger central government.

3. Native Americans. After a series of failed/ignored treaties and agreements, Andrew Jackson enacted the "final solution" for the the Native Americans forcing them west out of the colonies. The Army enforced this move known as the Trail of Tears.

4. African Americans. This issue took well into the 20th century to resolve.

External Threats

1. Working with neighbors. The US had to figure out how to contain the British, French, and Spainards surrounding the US borders. Thomas Jefferson bought out the French with the Louisiana Purchase, Britain reattacked in 1812, and Andrew Jackson attacked and claimed Florida in 1821.

2. Piracy. Initially, the founders did not see a need for a standing army; however, the need of the navy was strong to protect commerce and borders. One of the initial tasks of the navy was protecting US ships from piracy.

Mike

[tequila]

No, I stand by my claim. Madison is the greatest counterinsurgent, as the main force in developing a family of governance structures uniquely born of insurgency, and therefore designed to prevent the same.

We Americans do tend to have a rather odd concept of our Constitution as a sort of magical document where Madison and the Founding Fathers somehow glimpsed a template of Good Government in the ether and then brought it back to America for enshrinement in perpetuity. A whole legal ethos in the U.S. - originalism - appears to be based on this concept.

As John Grenier points out, the Constitution is a document of its time, built out of the political compromises necessary to pull many very different interests and entities together. These compromises failed in the long term - the result was a massive civil war that nearly resulted in the breakup of the country. A long period of civil unrest followed that saw many state-level insurgencies where the losers of the civil war managed to reassert political control at the local level through a campaign of bloody violence abetted by corrupted/infiltrated security forces and sectarian militias. Peace was largely restored because these insurgencies achieved victory at that level.

So while the Constitution was not exactly a failure, I would hardly call it an unmitigated success.