How To Win

[Surferbeetle]

Bob,

That is one way of defining it to be sure, and you are not alone. Personally I find it much easier to grasp the true dynamics at work, and therefore the true solutions required to the problem, by looking at the military aspect as not some separate event, but as a capability that is brought into a much larger event when it rises to a level that the civil government can not handle by itself.

War is not just limited to the 'traditional military operations' which first come to mind, economic warfare, information warfare, tribal warfare, and many other types of warfare are also involved. Competition for resources takes many forms, not just overt physical violence. I too prefer the broader definition, but Wilf's point is a favored approach by many and perhaps by the majority...

Phased in as needed, phased out as not needed. Sometimes bringing warfighting capabilities, and other times bringing the vast civil capabilities inherent in the manpower, training, organization, and equipment capacity that the military has on hand and uncommitted when not warfighting. Civil capacity is by designed pretty much maxed out. The governmental "reserve" is really its active military force first for overseas engagement, and reserve component military force for domestic engagement.

I look at this differently. While in Mosul my casual survey of the number of coalition engineers who spoke Arabic, who had a social network optimized for the the AO, and who fully understood the location and nuances of the existing public works and utilities infrastructure convinced me that engaging the civil public works and utilities capacity was vital. Iraqi's had the knowledge and numbers needed to assess the situation, and develop a targeted plan which addressed the situation we found on the ground. From my perspective by effectively engaging the 'host nation' we are able to truly mass upon the problem...military CMO force numbers are insufficient.

To look at insurgency and its many related missions as "military operations focused on defeating the threat" does two very dangerous things in my mind:

1. It focuses a solution on a symptom of a problem vs the causes of the problem.

2. It lets the Civil government off the hook for their failure that brought us here in the first place.

By looking at support to a foreign country's insurgency as "COIN" does one very dangerous thing: It causes you to look at their war as your war, and then you beging to take over, and then your very presence expands the insurgency by adding a "resistance" component to the "revolutionary" or "separatist" movement you came to help with. By keeping our intervention in the context of FID, we can focus on repairing the breach between the failed government and the revolting populace.

Makes sense.

Regards,

Steve