Clausewitz is a good reference on war. I will never challenge or argue that point.
Where we get mixed messages is when we apply him to things that are not war. A football coach, for instance, could apply Clausewitz in a helpful way as a supporting resource, but not as the driving guide for how to produce a winning football team.
Same holds true for much of what we engage in today.
Going after AQ is not a "war" even though it is called a "War on Terrorism"; it is really much more a law enforcement action that has been granted (or merely taken) expanded authorities and been tasked to the military and the intelligence communities to take lead on. Giving a problem to the military does not make the problem into a war, nor does the military getting itself into combat situations in the pursuit of that problem make it a war. That aspect of the mission remains largely an expanded law enforcement problem, and as such, like the afore mentioned football coach, Clausewitz is helpful, but it does not drive what must be done and it would be dangerous to apply it as a driving resource.
To a lesser extent, but also, IMO, true is that the intrastate violence between a government and its populace that defines Insurgency and COIN is not "war" either.
Certainly in its most violent forms insurgency appears very warlike, but in certain stages a caterpillar looks a lot like a centipede, but that does not make it one. The differences that are critical lie in the reasons of causation for the conflict and the nature of the relationships between the parties, as well as the fact that both are drawing upon the support of the same populace in a competition for governance. It is far more an illegal, often violent, election than a war; but I think is best categorized as a Civil Emergency.
This civil emergency approach is a helpful reminder to responders that civilian leadership still holds the reins, that the host nation is the lead, and that high violence is merely a mix of tactical choice and a phase to be worked through in route to less violent efforts aimed at reducing the friction in the troubled society. Calling such situations "Wars" and passing the problem to military leadership to resolve is a recipe for disaster.
We came to this habit during the past few hundred years of Colonialism. Colonialism was marked by some external party that had established itself, or some local government that answered to them, in charge. These illegitimate governments were and are often challenged. In such a case, the insurgent is not really an insurgent, but is more a guerrilla fighter challenging some external state power. That is fairly a war.
The question for Afghanistan is, do we want control, do want to wage guerrilla war to establish and sustain our control; or do we want to evolve from such colonial approaches and recognize that the best Afghanistan for the west is an Afghanistan governed of, by and for the people of Afghanistan. I argue that it is the latter, and in that case, it is not war. Clausewitz is interesting and helpful, but to apply him literally to such a problem is a recipe for disaster.
U.S. COIN, even with the current Population Centric tactics that dominate it, is still a derivative of European and early US approaches to waging war to sustain control over the populaces of others through the defeat of their guerrilla forces. It is not about insurgency, and it is not in fact COIN at all. It is a colonial intervention manual, a guerrilla warfare manual, and needs to be labeled as such.
We don't need a new COIN manual, we need a manual that is actually about COIN. The primary keeper of that manual should probably be the Justice Department, by the way, rather than Defense.
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