Economics and Irregular Warfare

[Surferbeetle]

Bill,

Your analysis, as always, covers interesting points and I appreciate the opportunities to consider what you have to say. You have been some places and seen some things and it shows in your words.

You're bringing up examples of economic warfare that have nothing to do with economic development as it relates to COIN.

The general point I was/am attempting to make is that economics are an inseparable component of human wars. From this it follows that victors of wars understand how to use economics to further their aims, and that the use of economics has both destructive and constructive components which need to be trained upon.

By walking the land and studying it I have come to the understanding that all living things are designed to find/use/excrete resources, reproduce, and rest. Finding/using/excreting resources leads to competition/fighting/wars (and capitalism is one such manifestation of this design but I digress ). Plants fight for existing space/sunlight/water/nutrients/breeding rights, and animals fight for existing area/water/nutrients/breeding rights. Neither fights all day/night long everyday however, and it is obvious to me that more skills than just fighting are required in order to live life.

This is exactly what I'm taking issue with, we do what we can instead of doing of the right thing. I'm sure ICRC and others "feel good" when they hand out school books and medicine, but during a COIN effort if it doesn't specifically target a select populace with the objective of separating them from the insurgency and pulling them into a closer relationship with the government then you're just doing humanitarian work to simply make yourself feel better, it doesn't contribute to a strategy. I ensure the enemy doesn't just do what it can, but has an agenda when they hand out aid.

My friend, we follow FM's for many things however FM's are just individual trees in the proverbial forest. How about the 'strategy' of the Bible, Torah, and Koran?

As for police officers looking at it differently, could it be they're looking at a different problem set altogether? The elderly in the U.S. may be involved in the Meth trade now because they can't make it on social security, so that is an economic issue that must be resolved, because ultimately in this case that is the underlying issue.

Kids in depressed areas may join gangs and get involved in illegal activities because that is the accepted economic model. If you improve the job aspects you only address one underlying issue. Normally there is another underlying issue that is seldom considered, and that is the security/social norm influence. If the strongest tribe in the neighborhood is the gang and you offered a fair paying job to a kid that is a gang member (without moving him out of that neighborhood/influence), do you think he would take it? More importantly do you think he would leave the gang and place his family and him/herself at risk?

The human condition encompasses the spectrum from all out war to peace. Reductionist thinking/analysis (i.e. problem sets, control volumes, and free bodies) can be very powerful, but at the end of the analysis procedure we must reincorporate the resulting answers into an analysis of the particular system being studied in order to check for accuracy.

I am of the opinion that much of the security LOO, in fact two out of the three blocks in the three block war, can and should be handled by police forces/rule-of-law-forces working in concert with the military. Like you I have been reading about policing, speaking with police friends, and I am also trying to understand our problem set (Iraq and Afghanistan) from this particular viewpoint. At the end of the day however I am a soldier and not a policeman/lawyer/judge and so I am still thinking about it.

No one said insurgencies didn't require economic activity, I said the root cause wasn't about economics. By all means we need to target their economic engines, but you don't necessarily do that through economic development. It may or may not play a role.

I believe that economics are an inseparable component of human wars.

Not germane, we're talking about insurgency and furthermore as you know were many factors that came together to create the perfect storm for the USSR. I suspect they spent far less on their military than we did, but they spent a greater proportion of their GDP. Still that was only one reason the wall came down.

State versus State, not an insurgency

You are correct here, to use Ken's word, I did indeed conflate some of the finer points that you have identified here while in pursuit of the larger point that victors of wars understand how to use economics...sloppy on my part.

I call this the illusion of a plan, and it is the lazy man's way out of doing the real work that a real plan involves. Amazingly now how we can address any problem by making up four or five LOOs, put them on a power point slide, then we're done. If the simultaneous efforts aren't synchronized toward common objectives, then they lines to no where. Read Killcullen's example of building a road in Afghanistan as a form of political maneuvering, it wasn't simply doing what they could, but they built it with specific objectives in mind that had little to do with the road itself.

Being able to successfully execute a campaign comprised of simultaneous efforts synchronized toward common objectives is the result of intensive training. How often does the GPF train on how to use economics as part of a campaign? How about SOF?

We're forgetting the basics.

True.

Our training process and content needs to be revamped...but that is for another thread

Regards,

Steve