Bill, the part you highlighted was my assessment of why Gordon picked Norway, not a rationale that he offered. I want to be clear and not imply that any of my ideas are his.

But I agree, that his model is clean and helpful. It is a start point for identifying who the players are, and how they interact. I think the additional concepts he added were helpful as well. I was fortunate to host Gordon in Kandahar last year for a week or so, and had some great conversations.

Worth adding here is that he shared three kinds of wins:

1. A "Weak Win," where one side "breaks" the other side but fails to control the populace space.

2. A "Strong Win," where one breaks the other side and also gains control of the populace space.

3. A "Complete Win" where one breaks the other side, controls the populace space, and also addresses the issues of causation within the populace.

Afghanistan was probably a "Weak Win" in running the Taliban out. Sri Lanka is probably a "strong win", the insurgent is crushed, the government has access to the space, but has done nothing to address the underlying causation. On my model they crushed the problem straight down and now have it suppressed.