Reconciliation and COIN in Afghanistan

[TheCurmudgeon]

Bob, food for thought, this idea is still rough, but it was pointed out by some astute historians that the American Revolution happened long before the conflict with the Mother Ship England. The actual revolution was a series of memes, core beliefs, social/poltical norms that emerged, and all these eventually ran into the "state" and triggered a conflict. The fight was NOT the revolution, that was the war, which was the result of the revolution that already happened. This is a paradigm shift from our doctrinal view of revolution.

Not really a new paradigm. Take, for example, the Davies J-Curve that predicts political unrest resulting from an economic downswing.

"Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. People then subjectively fear that ground gained with great effort will be quite lost; their mood becomes revolutionary. The evidence from Dorr's Rebellion, the Russian Revolution, and the Egyptian Revolution supports this notion; tentatively, so do data on other civil disturbances. Various statistics—as on rural uprisings, industrial strikes, unemployment, and cost of living—may serve as crude indexes of popular mood. More useful, though less easy to obtain, are direct questions in cross-sectional interviews. The goal of predicting revolution is conceived but not yet born or matured."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chowning_Davies

Broadened out it really predicts revolution based on a continuing disjunction between a society's expectation of what they should have and the reality of what they do have.

I should note that these ideas are generally attacked by the anti pop-centric COIN crowd.

I am not sure this model is applicable. The model here will be a power vacuum that will be filled by whomever has the ability to coerce others, has charismatic influence backed by followers with weapons, or can bribe others to maintain influence.