Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[Madhu]

Carl:

You are misreading my point. No one is advocating mimicking Syrian strategy, but pointing out our doctrinal focus on winning over the population in a civil war as a way to reduce violence, especially through a nation building approach does not address the underlying hatred driving the conflict. If governments can address underlying issues before passio n and hatred override reason that approach may work . Once the red line is crossed it won't.

No, I believe Bill's point is that a complex sectarian and civil war with multiple ethnic militias and splintered anti-government factions is different than a classical Maoist insurgency/an insurgency in the mold of classical wars of liberation (post colonial).

To switch examples, would you have fought the American Civil War as a classical Maoist insurgency?

Population centric counterinsurgency with its emphasis on providing government services by a third party on behalf of a quasi Sovereign entity in order to win over locals, as in the case of Afghanistan--sometimes we respect sovereignty, sometimes we don't--is something almost sui generis and it hasn't worked very well because it doesn't do the trick for a variety of reasons. Safe havens because of our heavy logistical needs, the Af Pak strategy paying or training two armies, the Taliban taxing our nation building work, our money serving as a corrupting source that prevents good goverment.

Why do you think this can be fixed? Developmental aid as nation building has been tried in many places around the world and it has often been a big fat failure. And that is in peace time.

What evidence supports the thesis that money for development projects changes the essential governing situation?

I keep quoting the following book but there are so many passages pertinent to the conversation on multiple threads:

That spring, traveling around Iraq, reading the various commander's memos and intelligence reports, Casey had an epiphany: the was had degenerated into a battle for political and economic power among many ethnic and sectarian factions; in other words, the enemy was no longer an "insurgency". That being the case, he inferred that it no longer made sense to pursue a counterinsurgency strategy.

Kaplan, The Insurgents

Nation building as understood from population counterinsurgency is built on much bad science, poor quality studies, and outright mythology when examined clinically, IMO.

What is the evidence to support that it worked? The actual, hard evidence by past example?

For instance, Algeria: violence and coercion were used against the population but somehow pulling out the examples of providing services is supposed to work in a different country in a different century against different people. And Algeria didn't even work.

If factors X, Y and Z add up to a particular small wars pacification, then how can one justify taking only Y out and saying it will work every time?What if you needed all three to break the insurgency?
Each event is contingent.

On some of the famous papers from Military Review circa 2005, well, I understand the pressure the military was under and why practical papers were rushed out and it is noble when viewed in that context, noble and wonderful and admirable, and, unfortunately, flawed upon reflection. They are basically just a bunch of random opinion when examined critically. I am sorry to say that, but that is what I get from reading a few.

When examined at a distance and clinically, they are bunch of war stories about what some guys thought. Fine, that is one important data point but it has to be backed up with other data or you are basically just repeating a bunch of myths. Maybe they are correct, maybe they are not, but the evidence is not, "hey, this is what I think and my opinion is the same as a fact or evidence."