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Thread: How To Win

  1. #121
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default National Peoples Action Movement

    The Jones Model may prove most prophetic in the US. Start plotting the graph add the Boycott Backlash in California over Arizona Immigration and we are going to have one long hot summer.


    http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/...ank-of-america

  2. #122
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Default Just an admin note...

    The Jones model has now been published by SWJ and is available here.
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  3. #123
    Council Member Infanteer's Avatar
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    Col Jones,

    Excellent read. I suspect that the difference of opinion between yourself and Entrophy is minimal based off his comment of the stable, unmeddled Afghanistan and your whiteboard diagram of how to get the right players (ie: all Afghan powerbrokers) to the table and the wrong players (ie: us) out of country.

    A few comments/thoughts/questions:

    1. When does an insurgency become a civil war? Are they the same? What is the difference between these and an insurrection. Are there official designations for all these forms of conflict?

    2. Your acceptable level of violence line is very effective and very real. The thing I've noticed is that for Southern Afghans, the bar is much higher than what we in the west are used to. I'd imagine that this is likely due to a combination of 30-years of conflict as well as a cultural acceptance of fighting, especially foreigners.

    3. It is probably not a coincidence that the Taliban and their associates have transitioned from open opposition to GIRoA/ISAF (which means large offensives, destroyed infrastructure and fleeing women and children) which is "above the bar" to a concerted IED campaign (which means loss of certain road use, random civilian casualties, and security force sweeps) which lies below that bar. The obvious reason is they moved "below the bar" because their organization simply wasn't able to handle the punishment of going at it with organized military forces. The other reason (+ or - in importance?) is that this is a level of violence that the Pashtun of Southern/Eastern Afghanistan will tolerate.

    4. The COIN/FID distinction is important. The difference in mentality for a conventional army commander on the ground is between "What do I want to go do today?" (which commonly gets translated into "who's ass do I want to kick today?") versus "what does my Afghan counterpart want to do today?". "Going to get fruit and goats" may be a tough task for a conventional commander to accept, especially when he's trained for months to get on the ground and kick the insurgents around. But this distinction will not be made as FM 3-24 is in everyone's minds and COIN has entered regular military lexicon. To get around this, I started calling our effort "COUSIN" - Countering Someone Else's Insurgency (No it ain't FID, it's COUSIN! ) I'd reckon that a large part of Comd RC(S)'s focus on Partnering is to move conventional forces into the FID domain will still allowing them to hold FM 3-24 aloft for all to see.

  4. #124
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    For those watching events unfold in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, etc with interest, and listening and reading the growing debate as to if the US should back the status quo or remain neutral, or promote change, this thread may be of interest.

    As to the base paper, I wrote a follow-up that might be cleaner read for World Politics Review, but one has to be a member to access. I will see if the editor will allow me to run it here on SWJ as well.

    A Populace-Centric Foreign Policy. World Politics Review
    http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/a...foreign-policy

    Intro to that piece from 2 years ago:

    "Reports of the demise of the Westphalian system are premature, but the shifting of the relative balance of power between states, threats to states, and the populaces these threats emerge from is undeniable. A "populace-centric" approach to foreign policy would recognize the emergence and enduring nature of popular power, and free U.S. interests from becoming mired in fleeting governments or threats.

    The Westphalian system is premised on the concept that all sovereignty over any particular populace is vested in the state. This system places strong importance on the location and control of borders, and empowers a single "sovereign" to speak for the entire populace. A number of recent cases suggest that a focus on developing relations not with the state, but with the underlying populace from which the state is formed, would provide the greatest leverage to achieving the fundamental goal of any strategic policy, which is to change the behavior of nations at the lowest possible cost in national blood, treasure, or credibility."
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  5. #125
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    For a limited time (until 13 Feb 11), the Editors at World Politics Review have made free access available to a follow-up article that takes a cleaner, more policy focused look at this topic. Here is the link:

    http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/a...foreign-policy

    My thanks to the good people at World Politics Review.

    Cheers,

    Bob
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  6. #126
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    My objection to this lies less (predictably) in the "populace-centric" aspect then in what seems to be a very aggressively interventionist interpretation of what is "populace-centric".

    For example, this sequence:

    A way must be found to build strong states while at the same time recognizing distinct populaces. For example, the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be far more likely to see a successful conclusion by recognizing and unifying the Pashtun populace with some lesser form of embedded sovereignty than by enforcing a Westphalian border through the center of that population's traditional homeland.

    As the U.S. prepares to shift emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, such a change of perspective would set a new tone for that operation. Instead of a focus on preserving the current governments of both states by attempting to make them "more effective," while suppressing the Pashtun populace to make them less resistant to the course the U.S. has plotted out for them, a populace-centric approach would seek to understand and address the root causes of Pashtun popular discontent. Brokering a new form of sovereignty for this important regional populace, while at the same time working to strengthen and enable good governance on both sides of the border would perhaps bear more enduring results.
    I don't see that the US has any brief go about building strong states anywhere else, still less to think about trying to unify the Pashtun populace and providing them with sovereignty. Attempting to do so would step all over the sovereignty of two existing nations and wreak all kinds of havoc on our relations with other populaces in the area. It would likely not get rave reviews even from the Pashtun, who to the best of my knowledge have never expressed any desire to be unified and granted sovereignty by America.

    Any desire to benefit populaces has to be tempered by recognition of certain realities.

    First, populaces may be empowered, but governments still exist. Many governments, even those we dislike or think despotic, still retain support from a substantial portion of their populaces, especially in nations with ethnic, sectarian, or tribal divisions. If we try to do end-runs around government to work with one populace we're likely to violently antagonize both government and some other sections of the populace, often with adverse consequences.

    Second, we should not embrace the delusion that we know what the diverse populaces of other countries want. We don't. We are generally pretty clueless, and when we stumble around we the assumption that all populaces want what we think they should want we make a bull in a china shop look lithe and graceful. Energetic intervention in the misplaced belief that we are working for "the populace" is as likely to make a mess as any other kind of energetic intervention.

    Third, not all fights are our fights and not all situations demand our intervention. Do these populaces want us involved? Do they trust us? Do they actually believe that we are working for their interests? If the answer to any of these questions is "no", might be better just to stay out.

    When I see this:

    It behooves the United States to be clearly viewed as being on the side of the populace.
    I have to respond that nobody will ever view us as "being on the side of the populace". No matter what we do or say, we will be viewed as being on our own side. That's not always a bad thing: it's expected. Might be best for us to simply accept that and acknowledge that, and instead of pretending to "support the populace" just try to pursue our interests with a lighter hand and a bit more restraint.

    I have no problem with the general idea of "populace-centric foreign policy". I just think it has to be tempered with recognition that governments exist and must be reckoned with, populaces are diverse, fickle, and have all manner of conflicting and inconsistent desires and interests, and we have neither the obligation nor the capacity to re-order government-populace relations in other countries, especially where neither government nor populace wants us involved.

    A populace-centric foreign policy, like any foreign policy, will require a light hand, flexibility, realism, subtlety, and the wisdom to know when to stop and when not to dive into other people's problems. Without those features it could make as big a mess as any other sort of foreign policy.

  7. #127
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth...242386295.html

    A parallel perspective on this topic from the other side of the equation.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  8. #128
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    It's hard to criticize the basic idea that spreading good governance is a better long-term solution for the world's ills than just killing bad guys.
    I'll take that bet, and I'll start by pointing out that the term "good governance is a better [insert anything you've predetermined to be not in keeping with good governance here]" is tautology. Try it out for size. Once you weed out the weasel words that presumably fix the statement to a set of facts on the ground, you could read the sentence "good is better than bad."

    The piece doesn't go much farther in fleshing out a notion of "good governance" beyond some "[s]elf [d]etermined government formed from and by the populace of the region that is served by that governing body." You could phrase this as "good governance is government that looks like democracy when people are happy with it." If people aren't happy with it, it's not the institutional structure that's at fault--you're just doing it wrong.

    So here's a question. What does a "population-centric" victory look like when what makes people happy isn't liberty and democracy, but kicking it with their homies around the tribal goat pen, stoning their sisters and daughters should a man even touch them the wrong way, and wondering if the new guy in town is a Jew or not? Elections or not, whatever passes for county life from North Africa to Central Asia isn't going to bloodlessly surrender millenia of custom any time soon.

    If victory requires transforming the society that currently occupies the battlefield into one that finds happiness of a Western fashion, then let's swallow the pill and eradicate the ideology and culture underpinning it. If not, then the only question is who and how many you have to kill or bribe to get enough of the local jefes firing on the enemy more often than us and each other. Hell, you might even get enough of them to work with you and each other to fix something that looks like a lasting peace. But if you're not up to spilling how ever much blood and treasure it takes to remake thousands of clans and millions of families in your image, then give up on the good governance canard.
    Last edited by Presley Cannady; 02-25-2011 at 02:14 AM.
    PH Cannady
    Correlate Systems

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