http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/....html#comments

Traditional guerrilla movements and insurgencies were founded on strict ideologies or political agendas. As a result, their organizations tended towards hierarchy and strong central control. However, the advent of a dominant global market (that no organization, despite claims to the contrary, controls) and the subsequent and inevitable weakening of the nation-state changed that. It substituted market values for ideological or political values and insurgencies are quickly changing to reflect that.

This "switch" also means that control of the nation-state became is nearly useless in an environment where success was only generated by competition within a global market system at a local level. As a result, modern or 21st Century guerrilla movements/insurgencies increasingly don't put ideology or politics first (although there are some high profile hold-outs, reversals such as al Qaeda suffered in Iraq demonstrate that an inability to invert goals is the path to failure). Increasingly, they put economics first, or more specifically: they focus on the ability of the group and its members to generate wealth. They do this through the integration of their military capability with production centers and supply routes that power the multi-trillion dollar flows of Black Globalization. This connection provides them with the ability to:
grow support, grow operations, etc.

John Robb can be painfully arrogant and doesn't have much of a grasp on history, but he is still very much value added to the collective body of futuristic thinkers on warfare.

This post is interesting (although not entirely accurate from a historical stand point), and so are the comments provided by his readers. It is definitely relative to the SWJ community, since one of the key lines of operation according to our COIN doctrine is economic development.

Some of the key take aways (my perspective):

1. The black or underground economy is nothing new, but the global demand for black products by increasingly wealthy countries is larger than ever, as is the ability to shift mega dollars around the world in seconds.

2. Ideology is still critical to insurgencies, and is still the main driving force of most "true" insurgencies, even if it is a thinly veiled attempt to cover up the main effort which may be organized criminal activity. I would agree that criminal organizations are many ways similiar to insurgencies, so his points are still valid. Regardless, many failed insurgencies have evolved into organized criminal groups.

3. The challenge of the global market on our stability efforts is immense, and one need look no further than Mexico, Columbia and Afghanistan for well known examples. The opium problem in Aghanistan continues to challenge our efforts and presents us with a wicked problem.

4. How do you make the Nation State relevant economically to the populace(a key to controlling and governing their populace) when the global trade in underground drugs, humans, pirated software and videos, is so lucrative, and what drives the many local economies? What can the State offer? When the State attempts to control this so called illicit trade due to pressure from other States, they are in effect declaring war of sorts on their own entrepreuers, their own people (sort of like excessive taxes on small businesses, but much worse), so the State is labeled an enemy, and a criminal insurgency starts. There are no easy answers to this.

5. Robb didn't address the ability of terrorists/insurgents to raise money locally with the drug trade, kidnappings, etc. They are no longer dependent on some mosque in Saudi anymore, they have adapted the street gang model to generate money (supplements other funding efforts), thus raise thoursands of dollars through extortion, pedaling black market gasoline in Iraq, kidnapping in the Philippines, selling drugs everywhere, etc...

More thoughts on this later, I just wanted to get out to the community for now.