Globalization is like steroids. Now one can argue if the use of steroids in baseball favors pitchers or hitters more, but they're still playing baseball.
Same with insurgency and terrorism. The game is faster, some players are stronger or recover more quickly, but the game itself has not changed. Governments are about status quo and insurgents are about change, so I suspect this favors the party seeking change.
Wilf: I completely understand your position, and it is a reasonable one. It just isn't very helpful (in fact, it is quite harmful) for understanding insurgency. If one sees war as war and insurgency as a form of war, then seeing the de jure legitimacy of officialness as the only kind that matters makes sense. But such thinking is, IMO, a hindrance to resolving insurgency on terms that are acceptable for both the populace and the government.
I recommend that one should:
1. Separates insurgency from warfare (which I realize you won't do, not trying to convince you, just stating my perspective);
2. Recognize that causation radiates out from the "official" government and falls upon a diverse populace, many of whom may well question the "legitimacy" of said government;
3. Understand that "control" of the populace is not a security operation to be waged against them, but rather describes the general state of a populace that is satisfied with its form and nature of governance;
4. Realize that COIN is really the day to day efforts of the HN government to create or preserve perceptions of their legitimacy among the populace, and thereby establish a state of control; and
5. Appreciate that the efforts of an external intervening power that comes to the assistance of a government faced with insurgency with a focus of establishing security through defeat of the insurgent is neither conducting COIN nor helping the HN conduct COIN. In fact, such operations serve primarily to enable the HN to avoid conducting COIN and sustain a state of forced, illegitimate officialness.
This approach in point 5 was the model throughout the age of colonialism, and it is a model that largely survives and dominates our COIN doctrine today. It's not COIN at all though, and it probably is actually closer to being warfare as we currently implement it. We believe that if we sustain the current government, defeat the insurgent and establish security we have "won." The only group that "wins" in that situation is the puppet regime we have propped up through our intervention. Certainly the populace as a whole does not win, and when members of that populace are recruited by AQ to wage terrorist attacks against the homeland of the intervening party, it is that populace that suffers as well. The steroids of globalization enhance that last part.
So I remain convinced that it is time to retire the Colonial Intervention (COIN) playbook for foreign interventions. Just as Steam travel and telegraph technology facilitated both the rise and fall of the British Empire; so too has the latest generations of information and transportation technologies facilitated the rise and potential fall of the American age of control as well.
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