Strategic Narrative

[Dayuhan]

In the US we have called such things "feuds" as in the Hatfield's and the McCoys; also "Range Wars" or "Water Wars" as parties in an expanding West battled for control of critical grazing, or more often, water resources. More modernly "turf wars" between rival gangs of various criminal nature. But we don't call them insurgencies.

I don't know that you can reasonably compare the Hatfields and the McCoys to, say, the Muslim/Christian tensions in the southern Philippines or Nigeria, or the Israeli/Palestinian issues, or the Shi'a/Sunni violence in so many places, or... well, the list goes on. There are divisions in many places that vastly exceed anything the US has known since the civil war.

But do we think that some populaces prefer to fight and die and bring state violence down upon their self, their families and their communities when effective, trusted, and certain legal means that make sense within the context of their culture exist to address their grievances with that same government???

Again, I think you're assuming a grievance with the government, and not considering the possibility that some people just plain want power. If the grievance is that they have the power and we want it, there are certain problems with trying to supply avenues for resolution, especially when nobody's interested in sharing.

"Poor Governance" as I define and apply it is a broad family of critical perceptions between a populace and their governance.

I realize that. I just think that in many cases those involved in the conflict may not be defining and applying the term as you do.

Another example is AQ. What Kilcullen calls "global insurgency" conflates what are dozens of separate nationalist movements and localized grievances, that are indeed in most part each a unique insurgency against some government or another, all under the common banner of AQ who conducts UW to leverage those diverse pools of insurgent energy to their common cause, while applying a common unifying ideology. That is UW, that is not "global insurgency" any more than the efforts of the US and the Soviets to leverage the insurgent energy of various populaces to their larger Cold War goals in that era were "global insurgency."

No argument from me there; I never bought into the "global insurgency" construct.

I know with great certainty that Bill Moore, Dayuhan and Bob Jones all are in about 90% agreement on these matters, yet we flog each other over the 10%. Yes, the 10% is important, but much of it is because the lexicon of this field of conflict is such a muddy mess.

Probably true on the 90%, but I suspect that we argue over the 10% less because its important than because we are a contentious bunch by nature.