A Modest Proposal to Adjust the Principles of War

[Gian P Gentile]

Sir...First, I would like to clear up one misunderstanding; I did not mean to infer that COIN is not war, although along the spectrum included in full spectrum operations there are a number of things that are not conflict.

Thanks so much but please if you would call me Gian, blogs are by nature very democratic. They follow the democratic tradition of leveling where what matters most is words and ideas and not rank and priveledge.

Yeah, I appreciate and understood what you were getting at in terms of Principles, defining the nature of war, and Coin. I think what i am seeing developing on this thread via the most thoughtful postings by SWC members is that most of us still define the nature of war generally in the same way; albeit with different words and different literal definitions of those words as we use them to define the nature of war. No one has come up on the Net and said yes, yes, we should use "protection of the people" as a Principle of War since it is a fundamental Principle in Coin. And to tell you the truth when i wrote this short piece as primer I really did not expect to get any agreement with my "proposed" changes. What this reinforces to me is that as an Army we do need to consider the dominance that Coin thinking, operating, and doctrine is having on us because that dominance is out of synch--based on at least the postings to this thread--the way most understand the nature of modern war; if that makes any sense.

thanks

gian