Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
Steve Metz, so lets here the rest of the story, what method would you use?
Being the pathologically lazy son of a firearm that I am, let me just answer by quoting myself:

If, in fact, insurgency is not simply a variant of war, if the real threat is the deleterious effects of sustained conflict, and if it is part of systemic failure and pathology in which key elites and organizations develop a vested interest in sustaining the conflict, the objective of counterinsurgency support should not be simply strengthening the government so that it can impose its will more effectively on the insurgents, but systemic reengineering. The most effective posture for outsiders is not to be an ally of the government and thus a sustainer of the flawed socio-political-economic system, but to be a neutral mediator and peacekeeper (even when the outsiders have much more ideological affinity for the regime than for the insurgents). If this is true, the United States should only undertake counterinsurgency support in the most pressing instances.

Outside of the historic American geographic area of concern (the Caribbean basin), the United States should only undertake counterinsurgency as part of an equitable, legitimate, and broad-based multinational coalition. Unless the world community is willing to form a neo-trusteeship such as in Bosnia, Eastern Slavonia, Kosovo, and East Timor in order to reconstruct the administration, security system, and civil society of a state in conflict, the best that can be done is ameliorating, as much as possible, the human suffering associated with the violence by creating internationally-protected “safe areas.” In most cases, American strategic resources are better spent attempting to prevent insurgency or containing it when it does occur. Clearly systemic reengineering is not a task for the United States acting alone. Nor is it a task for the U.S. military. When the United States is part of a stabilization coalition, the primary role for the U.S. military should be protecting civilians until other security forces, preferably local ones but possibly coalition units, can assume that task.

To summarize, then, American strategy for counterinsurgency should recognize three distinct insurgency settings, each demanding a different response:
•A functioning government with at least some degree of legitimacy can be rescued by Foreign Internal Defense.
•There is no functioning and legitimate government but a broad international and regional consensus supports the creation of a neo-trusteeship until systemic reengineering is completed. In such instances, the United States should provide military, economic, and political support as part of a multinational force operating under the authority of the UN.
•There is no functioning and legitimate government and no international or regional consensus for the formation of a neo-trusteeship. In these cases, the United States should pursue containment of the conflict by support to regional states and, in conjunction with partners, help create humanitarian “safe zones” within the conflictive state.