In resposne to Strickland's post:

I respect most, if not all, contributors to this council, for their contributions to the body of knowledge we are all trying to master, yet I still find many of their arguments against EBO illogical, especially when they turn around and embrace the center of gravity theory. While it does have limited application, it also is an extremely limited construct that doesn’t facilitate a strategy for winning a war. In some cases it may allow a strategy to defeat a particular enemy, but that is seldom enough. During phase III of OIF the COG was the Saddam Regime, and as we saw that foucs only provided a worthwhile intermediate objective, but destroying it didn’t allow us to win the war, of which military power is a only a part of.

Getting back to your comments, while thought provoking I think your example is a perfect illustration of the limits of the COG construct. It is a desire to identify a single enabler for a complex problem set, so we can focus our limited assets on a few enabling decisive points around that COG (as close to a silver bullet solution as possible), then we call victory and go home. This is a practice that some have associated with EBO, but I think it is much more prevalent in the COG approach.

The Sunni rejectionist problem you identified must be addressed, but you can’t address it in isolation. Also identifying the Sunni rejectionist as a COG doesn’t give a planner much to work with. You can’t wish away the other problem sets, since they are all interconnected. We can’t fix the Sunni rejectionist problem without establishing a viable economy, you can’t do that without security, you can’t have security within a criminal society with foreign fighters and ethnic hostilities or regional nations that don’t support security, etc.

Little can be done to influence the foreign fighters except kinetic acts? I disagree and this is a problem of trying to find the foreign fighter COG within Iraq. Assuming there is a COG for foreign fighters, maybe it exists outside of Iraq? Foreign fighters can be addressed through a number of indirect means, to include engaging the source nations with information and assisting them with economic development, not to mention swinging the stick when needed. Another indirect approach which is effective in some areas in Iraq is to turn the population against the foreign fighters which denies them sanctuary, and greatly impedes their ability to operate. By the way this is an effects based approach.

I don’t buy into your comparison of Iraqi criminals with U.S. criminals; thereby, disregarding a problem that is equal on scale to the stability of Iraq as the Sunni rejectionists. There is a difference between a criminal and a criminal economy. What we’re really trying to focus on is the underground or informal economy. Let’s face it, at the end of the day the economic system really determines who as the power, so if a tribe makes its wealth (limited as it may be) from emplacing IEDs, kidnapping, or black market fuel sales, then what is the incentive to support a central government in Iraq that at present cannot provide a viable economic alternative to the tribes? The economy and underground economy are the key competing factions regarding the future of Iraq as a stable state. I think that criminals (who are also frequently terrorists and insurgents) are a bigger threat than the Sunni rejectionists, because they are undermining the very concept of the state.

In summary I think an effects based approach is far superior to the center of gravity construct.