Quote Originally Posted by Ian K View Post
Captain Few's article hit on some points that have been running around in the back of my mind for some time. Namely, what do you do when the civilian population hates you?

It is expected that in COIN operations, we will often be looked on unfavorably. We try to win over the population by being the good guys, protecting them from insurgent atrocities and helping develop the economy and basic services to improve life.

But what if the large majority of the population hates you with an ideological fervor? What if they are willing to take our goodwill and throw it back in our faces, ignoring what benefits we may bring them? We want their cooperation, but sometimes just giving benefits won't bring it, and will in fact be seen as weakness (just as troops don't want to be coddled . . ).
I'll start with this part. I think Neil and I are sharing a brain today because I wanted to talk about the whole hearts and minds thing. (BTW Neil, no worries, I've learned a lot throught your work).

Anyways, Ken White and Wilf (William Owen) have drilled into to my head time and time again the irrelevancy of "winning" the hearts and minds. That goes back to your original post on the populace "liking" or "hating" you. It's not about us. We're a third party arbitrator in the conflict.

COIN is "Those military, paramilitary, political, economic, phschological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency" (JP 1-02).
The definition says nothing about making people like or hate you.

A while back, Wilf sent me this quote that I found extremely useful:

"The reason I stress this is that you cannot win these sort(s) of wars with bullets. You can only win the people over in my opinion- to use that nauseating phrase I think I invented- by capturing their hearts and minds."
-Field Marshall Sir Gerald Templer on Vietnam
Templer specifically uses the term capture, not win to describe "hearts and minds."

For my thesis, I'm actually trying to model the arbitration of hearts (emotions) with minds (utility) in an adapted version of Nash's Arbitration to show qualitatively how one goes about trying to transition from COIN to SSTR.

I summed up the following in my introductory chapter:

The purpose of this thesis is to introduce a simple game theory model that explains qualitatively the collective struggle of the Iraqi hearts (emotions) and minds (utility). This thesis reflects my findings based on my personal experience in Zaganiyah.
This thesis explores the possibility of modeling the conflict in Iraq by introducing a simple two-person game using an adapted version of Maynard Smith’s Evolutionary Stable Strategy and John Nash’s Arbitration Point to model the arbitration of hearts and minds necessary for transition from protracted counter-insurgency operations towards reconstruction and stability operations.
This model is not an approach on how to win the hearts and minds of a populace as I believe this concept to be misguided and irrelevant. From personal experiences in combat operations, one can control the minds of a population for a discrete amount of time; however, one can never control the hearts. Instead, this model is intended to describe the concept mathematically and qualitatively to provide a common understanding for planners and decision makers on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels in order to determine solutions, policies, and strategies that are less bad rather than right or wrong.
I realize this post was long-winded, but I hope it was helpful.

v/r

Mike