Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
The term regime allows for global insurgency if regime is defined as I have used it.

One of the interesting aspects of all of these Small Wars is that, in general, they all encompass the tactics and strategies applied by insurgents - to a greater or lesser degree. This means that the principles of COIN apply equally to a true COIN or a drug war or imperial policing - with adaptation to the circumstances. In all the cases you mention, the war is about competing legitimacies. Note that the drug cartels in Mexico are seeking to legitimze there control of trafficking corridors without having to take on the responsibility (or expense) of maintaining infrastructure and services - and they apparently want to extend that level of control into the US. To do so successfully, their role and presence has to be perceived by the inhabitants of the corridors as legitimate to some extent.

Cheers

JohnT
Supply and Demand.

Demand for illegal drugs in the US drives a requirement for an illegal supplier. If filling that demand also makes said illegal supplier rich and powerful, he may expand his area of interests to other fields...

Demand for Good Governance drives Insurgency. If no effective legal means are available to the populace then someone will come along and leverage that demand. It may be a mix of internal and external actors, but they have unique status based on their unique roles.

The key to true success in both of these cases is the effective reduction of demand, while while mitigating the damage caused by the supplier's efforts. The tactics may be similar, but the focus of where they applied are very different. For example, In Afghanistan the source of "Demand" is the Government of Afghanistan. Focus there. In Mexico the source of Demand is the American Government (yes our populace buys the drugs, but our government makes them illegal and has been unwilling to take the hard steps to curb it).

On the surface they look very similar, but they both demand very different solutions to resolve them. This is like integration calculus. Step one is to be able to identify what type of problem it is so that you can apply the correct type of solution. Even once one's identified the right type of problem there are still a hundred ways to screw it up. But if you misidentify the problem, no matter how well you work through all the reduction steps, one's answer will still be wrong. (Who knew that getting an F in integration and having to retake the class would later help me to better understand insurgency...)