Insurgoterrmilitia Ideogangs

[selil]

The basic theme of the presentation is that we hinder ourselves by building a unitary model based on our most recent experience, and then trying to cram everything into state. For decades we treated every insurgency like it was a reflection of the Viet Cong, and now I'm afraid we're going to approach everyone like it is a variant of the AQ network. I identify ten dimensions of violent, non-state movements:

formal/complex------------informal/simple
ideological---------------------nonideological
self-serving-------------------constituency serving
homogenous-----------------heterogeneous
limited goals-----------------revolutionary goals
tightly bound------------------loosely bound
non-threatening-------------most threatening
less violent--------------------more violent
autonomous-----------------dependent
linked----------------------------unlinked


You can use these to build two or three dimensional models which allow greater granularity than the one-size-fits-all approach we currently use.

The appropriate strategy against such a group depends, in part, on whether we seek to weaken it, moderate it, or crush it. Again, our current strategy (as codified in doctrine) is a one size fits all and that does not serve us well.

Are these either/or only or continuum's of selection?

This is my last semester of course work on my doctorate and one of the courses I'm taking is social conflict and law enforcement a sociology course. You all make me feel out my depth, putting a technologist in a sociology course is torture for all involved. I'm sure their will be a war crime investigation soon.

In any regards.

The readings from Tilly, Sunstien and others are leading to some interesting conclusions and lack of clarity. On the subject of insurgency and violence in society there are some interesting corollaries between labor unions, civil strife, and war like insurgency. At some point the ideology has a switch thrown and the strife jumps to insurgency (beyond AQ type threats).

All that to make one point.

I think you need some more elements like;
evolutionary......de-evolutionary (coming from within something or destroying it)
flexible......inflexible (able to adapt to new forces or not)
Violence prone.......peace prone (Is the group militant and violent by nature or are they leave me alone and let it be?)
Ruling class..... peon class (Is this a rich elite chaffing under rule or a serf and servant supported which would effect resources and COG)

Make the whole thing into a Likert 1-10 scale make a spider web graph by collapsing sections onto each other and you'd have a nice graphical representation. I don't know what it would represent but they look really cool in journal articles.