Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Our definitions of insurgency and the related operations of COIN and UW trap us in ways that are very confining. These definitions create small boxes with high walls that prevent our minds from seeing answers that otherwise are near at hand.

I personally believe that the only healthy way to think about COIN is as a domestic operation, one that is in truth the vast majority of the time the day to day business of any system of governance to operate in a manner consistent with the will and expectations of the entire populace affected by their actions.

"Insurgency" is the sum of "Civil War" and "Violent Resistance to Occupation" (the latter including wars of independence).

The both are vastly different, and Westerners have come to think of the latter mostly and have begun to apply that thought to civil wars.

It is noteworthy that from the "host" or "puppet" government perspective an occupation war may be a civil war - see Afghanistan.


Civil wars are almost all about loyalty (or more generally: motivation), with hardware and even military competence being of relatively small relevance.
Occupation wars are largely about buying time and limiting expenses nowadays. Few countries still occupy in the Roman way, where breaking an uprising shall break an ethnicities' back and ensure lasting control (Russia and China still do and Sri Lanka did, not sure about Turkey).