Everything You Know About Counterinsurgency History Is (possibly) Wrong!

[Taiko]

The young guns can be seen as 'cherry-picking' history, but given the dynamics that are present in the world, we have to. No classic model or example comprehensively integrates the factors that shape the current environment.

As a 'young gun' who has very deep respect and appreciation of the classics: if CvC, Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli or Mao Tse-Tung did not say it then its not worth saying.

I would bet, CvC for example, would argue that technology is little more than an enabler that extends the strategist's understanding of the role of the laws of probability in military combat. It has to be taken into account, but it is not the dominating principle from which we can then argue that everything else, especially friction and fog, can be assumed away as an invalid element in the nature of war and its conduct. It is still humans that fight the wars, and it is still humans who articulate the political objectives which set the war into motion. How they communicate and exploit that objective to a wider audience has changed. How they utilize technology and exploit our so called 'globalized' world has changed. However, wars natural laws of cause (politics) and effect (violence) and the regulating principles that go to make up its objective and subjective character have not changed.

I am not saying that the various technological innovations and globalization are irrelevant. Far from it, they need to considered within a framework. I would be very confident to argue that all of the 'technological' innovations you have listed can be considered within the framework of what CvC called chance and probability. Technological shifts in warfare and the tools of war are constantly changing how we fight, not why we fight. There is little utility in trying to reinvent the wheel every time a 'buzz concept' comes into being.