Who are these Strategists of whom you write?
Civilian or military, they need agricultural expertise in an advisory capacity, no question. They do not need to possess the knowledge themselves. In fact, I suggest if they were not bona fide agriculturalists / farmers with crop and area specific knowledge they'd do mor harm than good. If the Strategists did possess such knowledge it would be area and crop or product specific to such an extent that it could very easily be superficial and do more harm than good. There are few things more dangerous than a person with directive power who thinks he or she knows more than is the case...Originally Posted by ganulv
(See Afghanistan and most US sponsored agricultural efforts therein...)
All that begs the question. The military function is combat. Period. Other applications are possible but all will have an adverse impact on the primary function -- and far more importantly, those other jobs will never -- never -- be done very well.
So-called population centric COIN is a holdover from the colonial era when the colony's nominal government was integrated and military governors existed -- with copious civilian expertise provided by other government agencies in a more or less unified effort. We, the US, did not have that tradition, do not have it today and should have foregone the COIN bit with our abject failure in Viet Nam. We're slow learners...
Changes in both US and world societal norms since the 1960s have made those types of operation even more difficult and made even marginal success less possible.Amen! May or may not be be less than fully informed but it's a quite accurate assessment.And my semi-informed opinion is that with COIN 2.0 the United States Military asks far too much of itself.
It asks too much of itself and our system of governance and budgeting forces it to do so. It just cannot say "It's not my job..." even though many things it does are clearly not its job and in fact detract significantly from ability to do the principal job.
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