Steve, I think that you are fixating on the wrong level of analysis. Supporting government operations in states that are undergoing an insurgency is not necessarily about "winning a war" or securing strategic resources. A lot of it comes back to a really simple point: is the US' word any good?
Diplomacy, as someone once put it, relies on credit established on the battlefield. Nobody would trust a country who said "we are your friend, so give us free trade, but we won't help you defeat those people who are trying to destroy you". This is reminiscent of Achilles grumping around in his tent
.
Having said that, I would also like to point out that your two categories, COIN and Stability Ops, are also problematic
. First, they are not discrete, they are a continuum. Second, by casting them solely in kinetic terms you are leaving out other possible solutions.
It strikes me that a far better way of casting the entire problem set would be to recognize that "stability operations" are multi-faceted from natural disaster recovery through refugee issues and economic displacement to outright insurgencies. These types of operations should be, especially towards the natural disaster end, should be an automatic action rather than a diplomatic action (it's a case of is your word good when you [the US] says that X, Y, and Z are your values). The issue of supporting your allies should not be a question, although the issue of making some one or some faction your allies should be.
On the issue of an insurgency in Canada - not only would you loose your supplies of comedians and natural gas, but you also might want to check out how much petroleum, hydro electric power and fresh water you get from us as well
. Believe me when I tell you that the Canadian public would be quite happy to stop exporting gasoline to the US if we could get it ourselves at even a 100% markup over the oil sands production cost of $15.85 (CDN) per barrel
!
Marc
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