Newguy,

As much as I have criticized the COINdista doctrine and what I believe to be a misdirected focus on nation-building I should be fair and read the new version. Lots of reading backlogged, so it may take a month or so to get to it, but in the meantime you may find this report interesting and want to compare it to the doctrine to see if there are similar of different findings.

Bill


http://www.usip.org/publications/cou...-afghanistan#!

•Post-2001 Afghanistan exemplifies the deleterious effects of exogenous, militarized statebuilding, which has undermined peacebuilding and statebuilding at many levels.
•The paradox of counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan is that its success depends on a high-capacity regime to put it into practice but that exogenous statebuilding prevents the emergence of such a regime in the first place.