Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
What is a "populace based conflict?"

I only ask as all Wars are about political outcomes. It's the authority to which the people defer and obey, which is the issue, not they themselves. That is the same for all human conflict.

In those terms, fighting the Taliban is no different from fighting the Waffen SS. The prize was not the German people, no more than the prize is the "Afghan" people. The prize is someone exercising a useful degree of authority over them.

The nature of the fighting however, may have to be different, for POLITICAL reasons, as Clausewitz explains.
This is a phrase I use to differentiate between a state seeking a political objective from another state through war (state-based conflict) and a populace seeking a political objective from its own government through warfare (populace-based conflict)

My position being that how I resolve my differences with my own populace MUST be very different to how I resolve my differences with the government of some other state. I may well want and need to crush the will of the populace of that competitor state in order to defeat their government; but if a government needs to crush the will of its own populace in order to sustain itself in power, that is probably a governemnt that is so failed it needs to be replaced.

Some would quibble that a good COIN effort is only out to crush the will of some narrow segment of the populace...this is a slippery slope. Far better to ensure the dissident populace has a voice and to work to effect changes where appropriate and to keep the COIN as much in the lanes of law enforcement as possible in dealing with the criminal elements of the movement; while bringing the majority of the group back into the fold of good citizenry.

King George could have crushed the American Revolution with few simple reforms and an apology. Instead he sent the most powerful Army and Navy in the world and initiated the demise of his Kingdom. There are lessons to be learned from the mistakes of others.