Motivation vs. causation

[jmm99]

That was nearly as quick as the retreat of the Languedoc Grenadiers from Johnson at Baron Dieskau's Defeat near Lake George in 1755. Ah, he who fights and runs away, gets to farm at Maskinongé.

Regards

Mike

[marct]

de nada, Mike !

[jmm99]

As to all these (realizing that others have added or want to add more):

from BW

American Colonies Vs Britain:

Causation:
Colonists widely perceieved as second class citizens by those living in Britain, and treated as such across the board: Disrespect

Governors selected by the Crown and imposed upon the Colonists; An island attempting to rule a continent; etc: illegitimacy

taxation without representation, sending the Army and Navy to Boston to inforce the rule of law: Injustice

Disbanding of colonial governments, ignoring or refusal to hear Colonial grievances, etc: Perception that no legitimate means existed to address all of the above.

Motivation:
Concepts of Liberty; Events like Concord, Breeds Hill, the Boston Masacre; The writen and spoken words of men like Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin.


Vietnam:

Causation:
French colonization; American reinstatement of French colonization; Western divsion of the country into two; American support for the Government established over the southern half: Illigitimacy, Disrespect, Injustice; no legitimate recourse to address.

Motivation:
The example of China in freeing itself from western colonialism through communism and insurgency; The leadership of Ho Chi Minh, Giap, etc;

I first have a hard time seeing why some factors in those conflicts are placed in the Causation box and others in the Motivation box. Both boxes include tangibles and intangibles, for example.

How do I make up my own little Causation and Motivation boxes for my little piece of heaven; and make them meaningful ?

Example: double role playing in a small village complex (ville + 5 hamlets; say 5000 population, located somewhere between Saigon and the Parrot's Beak):

1. "NLF" cadre commandant (actually regular PAVN, but of a peasant family from the village complex, who as a teen went North in 1954 and then was infiltrated back in the 60s).

2. VN Pacification commandant (regular ARVN, also from the village complex, but from a family of local notables; long service, but relatively low grade because he lacks "Saigon connections").

Posit roughly equivalent military resources.

How do the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary each use your Causation and Motivation constructs for his own purposes ?

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

So which is primary Motive or Causation? I say motive because insurgencies are caused by people and people have a motive before they start causing things to happen. Thoughts?

[Ken White]

People (in the individuals sense) try to look for simple, mechanistic theories to explain the things that People (in the collective sense) do. Wasting effort, angels on the head of a pin, etc.

Each and every cause has many differing causations and all the people involved have differing motivations. You can generalize but you must realize that's the best you can do...

For each event then, one must look below the surface causative factors for the real, not expressed, motives and...

Ah, humbug. Wasting pixels I is -- what Slap said!

[Kiwigrunt]

I’ve got a few spare pixels here that I wasn’t planning on using for anything else.

So is it not a spiralling chicken and egg situation? Causation leads to motive leads to causation leads to motive etc. So in reverse, searching for the underlying causation or motive may be like trying to identify either the original egg or the original chook.

[Entropy]

Bob's World,

I have some questions and criticism of your theory I've been meaning to put to you, so thanks for starting this thread and providing the opportunity:

To begin, have you considered the possibility that "good governance" may not be possible in some cases? IOW, is it not possibile that a state's internal tensions may ultimately be irreconcilable? That gaining the legitimacy and respect of one constituency will cause illegitimacy and disrespect from another group? This possibility seems particularly relevant to places like the Balkans, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia where the tribal and ethnic rivalries are fierce and violent. Your theory seems to assume that there is always some kind of "governance" that will be viewed as legitimate enough by everyone to prevent or end insurgency. That's seems quite doubtful - otherwise fantastical scenarios enter the realm of possibility - think world government or a united India and Pakistan (Indiastan?).

Secondly, if my contention is true and there exist situations where governance within a state is not possible, then that would seem to indicate that state borders matter greatly in the application of your theory. And if so, then I would think that border demarcation becomes at least as important, if not more important, than governance since redrawing a border could bring good governance where it could not exist previously. Consider the case of East Pakistan, for example.

The point being, have you considered the possibility that "good governance" is not practically achievable (or achievable only through violent means) in several "nations" (quoted intentionally), particularly those I previously mentioned?

[jmm99]

Since Entropy has added "good governance", which is central to COL Jones' populace-centric construct, I'm going to add one more term, "legitimacy", as viewed by Timothy J. Lomperis, Vietnam's Offspring:The Lesson of Legitimacy (Winter 1986, Conflict Quarterly).

From that, we have this chart:

Domestic Legitimacy.jpg

In this chart (more fully discussed in the article), Lomperis is not considering "legitimacy" from the viewpoint of a nation-state; but from the different viewpoints of persons (three levels) in each of two incumbant models and the revolutionary insurgency model.

The individual "legitimacy issues" (which Lomperis considers fluid and variable) look much to me like "causation" or "motivation" issues - whichever box you put them in.

I understand that the 1986 article was expanded and became a chapter in Lomperis' 1996 book, From People’s War to People’s Rule: Insurgency, Intervention, and the Lessons of Vietnam. Only two reviews, but the second (from 2005) is interesting:

This is a book about the non-lesson "lessons" of the Vietnam War. Published in 1996, it could be considered the most horribly confusing book about political-military strategy ever conceived. Based tightly on articulating research bounded inside a "paradigmatic presupposition," many early readers would venture to believe Lomperis wasted a decade of research to make sense of a society "in the throes of a revolutionary insurgency struggling to form and consolidate an independent and modernizing state." But reading this book in 2005 makes it all relevant. It actually makes perfect sense, so much so that when read and digested properly, it can be used to predict not only how the newly formed Iraqi government will stabilize and prevail, but will also predict when it will happen by month and year, and that will determine the US exit strategy.
....
To bring about the change of government from turmoil due to insurgency and into a sphere of stability, Chapter 11 is the most interesting and useful because it demonstrates how to create a timeline for an exit strategy. Using lessons from six case studies ranging from Mao's long march in China from 1920-1949, Greece 1941-1949, Philippines 1946-1956, Malaya 1948-1960, Cambodia-Laos 1949-1975, to Sendero Luminoso's Peru 1970-1992, Lomperis benchmarked insurgent successes and defeats in a smartly laid out timeline that identifies factors important to legitimate governments. He then plots categories and possible futures which are laid out for policy analyst to mull over. Lomperis' work shows that from legitimate national elections to victory will take approximately five years to achieve, if, all involved will stay the course.

I guess I will get sucked in to see what he actually says.

Regards

Mike