Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
Maybe another angle to take is to look at what types of coercive strategies other nations have employed in the past to defeat or suppress insurgencies, such as the Nazi's, the Sovietsin Afghanistan, Syria, Saddam against the Kurds and Shi'as, and others who have used what many would consider brutal tactics to defeat an insurgency. I'll leave it up to you to determine if they were effective or not. Perhaps with the exception of the Soviets in Afghanistan, very few of these approaches were air centric, but they did use tactics that focused on the offense to suppress (or attempt to suppress) the insurgents, but unlike NCO, they attacked the social entity as a whole to cow them, not specific insurgent targets (which in a conventional sense doesn't exist in an insurgency). Thus the counterinsurgents added a severe costs/benefits ratio into the calculus of the insurgents.
I'm in agreement with the others here, the argument for using NCO to defeat an insurgency is illogical to me, so I "think" it is going to be hard to find that balance you're looking for, but good luck to you. Obviously NCO can support a more comprehensive approach, but I don't think that is what you're asking for?
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