Fuchs,

Perhaps you read my words and ascribe meanings I do not attempt to convey as you shape them to fit your own bias?

My work is all about human nature. I believe that good tactics in COIN, or dealing with populace-based problems requires a deep understanding of the particular people one is working with. Good tactics demands we appreciate how people are different. But good strategy for dealing with such problems demands we appreciate how people are the same. Over time and and space and across cultures there are strong threads of human nature that bind us all. It is when we fail to recognize these threads, or when we arrogantly think they do not apply to us or our particular situation, that we tend to get into trouble.

Did Caesar struggle with insurgencies? Of course, it is human nature to resist against a system of governance one does not accept. Several other factors contribute to why societies resist or revolt against governance. So Caesar built roads and fleets to move his legions from one problematic spot to the next efficiently so as to retain control of the empire. This is what successful empires do, they build the minimum force necessary to sustain the status quo, and develop infrastructure that facilitates that effort.

But soon it was not just the emperor's legions and his goods moving on those roads and vessels. All manner of commerce, migration and information moved with greater speed as well. This breakthrough in "information technology" designed to ease the control of empire soon drove the cost of sustaining empire to exceed the benefits. When people cannot be controlled in isolation, they will tend to act out en mass.

The same happened to the Holy Roman empire upon the advent of the printing press. When Rome could no longer control information and knowledge, they soon could no longer control those many diverse people who increasingly came to question the legitimacy of that system of rule.

Great Britain's empire began before the age of steam powered industry and transportation and electronic communications. But as their empire was a major facilitator of developing and expanding those technologies in efforts to maximize the income from their far flung possessions, it was those very technologies that soon came to tax the ability of a government in London to exercise control over diverse populaces around the world. As some of the first to rebel noted in America "An island cannot role a continent"! Nor can an island rule the world - not when the populaces of that world are not isolated into virtual islands of ignorance of how their situation compares to that of the situations of others.

The Soviets offered glasnost to the suppressed populaces of the Soviet Union in the hopes that this "openness" and increased transparency of governance would reduce criticisms of governance. Instead it provided a catalyst of information empowerment to many diverse populaces across the empire, and within a decade the empire collapsed. Oh, it could have sustained itself for decades no doubt, through generations of bloody, suppressive state violence and control over the people, but Gorbachev did what few in his position have done before or since: He let the people go, and in so doing sealed the fate of the Soviet empire.

What is going on today in the Middle East is little different. A region of frozen conflicts, autocratic regimes, and powerful external influences. The people there are informed now in ways they have never been before, and with no threat of Soviet dominion to serve as rationale for accepting a much more benign brand of Western manipulation they are drawing courage from each other and acting out to force their own governments to listen and evolve, and to remove what they deem as inappropriate external influence.

As you say, this is human nature. But the speed, scope and scale of events is new. The cost of influence has dropped radically, so that now a small group of networked individuals can conduct UW more effectively than major states such as Russia or the US could in their prime. Equally the cost of control is going up. Governments overly reliant on control to sustain an artificial stability create very brittle systems, and those systems are shattering. Governments that have more flexible systems are also under pressure to evolve, but are better able to flex and bend and continue on.

Governments must evolve in how they govern at home and in how they pursue their polices and interests abroad.

The US is an interesting case. We have tremendous flexibility at home, but in our approaches overseas we cling to rigid systems designed for containing great threats or for bringing some colonial possession back into a "stable enough" status that ensures the costs do not exceed the benefits.

When we learn how to facilitate and accept for others the same freedoms we demand for ourselves, we will break free from the challenges of this period of post -Cold War transition and enter a new age of American influence. But if we cling to the past and the comfort of a status quo designed by and for us, it will break us, just as it has so many before us.

After all, it is human nature.