Recognizing Distinct Types of Insurgency - "Know the type of conflict you are in."

[TheCurmudgeon]

When I say "political entities" or "political systems" I am not comfortable myself that those are the best terms, but to be clear, I do not mean this is limited to "states" or that the political system is run by some formal government, but that it is under a single system of governance..

Sir,

I assumed as much. I can tell from you trouble defining revolutions.

Harry Summers derived a simple social trinity from Clausewitz in his "On Strategy" of "Government-Army-People." And yes, I realize this is related to, but is not, Clausewitz's "Remarkable Trinity," yet I think it does provide a simple model for what I mean by a single political system or political entity..

I still don't like the over-reliance on the Saint Clausewitz' trinity, so I will propose something different. Imagine a venn diagram with one large circle that represents the entire population of people, regardless of who they are. Marke that circle "all people." Inside of that place a smaller circle that represents the "people." What seperates this group of people from the larger domain of "all people" is some internally derived identity. It can be ethnic, religous, or political, but it is how these people seperate themselves from the larger domain of "all people." Inside of our circle marked "people" is a smaller circle marked "Army." The Army is that subset of the people who have been morally sanctioned to commit violance in the name of the people. I think this does a better job than a trinity, and it does not lock us into the Clausewitzian dogmatic defintion of war as an extension of policy.

As an internal insurgency (revolution) gains success, at some point the political system may well divide as any living cell does, into two or more distinct systems, each with their own complete systems of governance, population and security forces. At this point, if the contest continues, what was once revolutionary non-war becomes war. Defeat the governance of an emerging system, as we propose with our counter-ISIL strategy, and one does not "win" the war, all one does is convert the conflict from war back into revolutionary non-war once again.

When we don't identify this critical distinction, we do not plan for, recognize, or respond appropriately to these critical transitions in the nature of a conflict.

I agree, and that is one of the reasons we cannot find a good defintion of "winning." We have definitionally backed ourselves into a neverending war.