John Robb's "The Switch"

[Bill Moore]

Some interesting links that further inform the discussion.

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=4&gl=us

New Challenges and OldConcepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency, STEVEN METZ

Contemporary insurgencies are less like traditional war where the combatants seek strategic victory, they are more like a violent, fluid, and competitive market.

In contemporary complex conflicts, profitability often is literal rather than metaphorical. There is an extensive body of analytical literature that chronicles the evolution of violent movements such as insurgencies from “grievance” to “greed.”7 The idea is that political grievances may instigate an insurgency but, as a conflict progresses, economic motives may begin to play a greater role.

Conflict gives insurgents access to money and resources out of proportion to what they would have in peace time. As Paul Collier, one of the pioneers of this idea, explains: Conflicts are far more likely to be caused by economic opportunities than by grievance. If economic agendas are driving conflict, then it is likely that some groups are benefiting from the conflict and these groups, therefore, have some interest in initiating and sustaining it.

Internal wars “frequently involve the emergence of another alternative system of profit, power, and protection in which conflict serves thepolitical and economic interests of a variety of groups.”11 Hence the insurgents, criminals, militias, or even the regime have a greater interest in sustaining a controlled conflict than in attaining victory

much more in the article, and Dr. Metz carries a high degree of credibility unlike Robb.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0...lications.html

Wars in Sierra Leone and Somalia have been categorised as 'criminal insurgencies'. Similar to some South American wars, namely those in Colombia and Peru, the 'rebellions' had no clear political aims or known spokespersons with the goal of gaining political power. The 'strategy' of the insurgents was to spread terror amongst the population so denying the government the ability to govern. The rebel gangs were thus able to rule their own territories to their own physical and economic advantage, Unfortunately government forces have been known to act as atrociously as the rebels in their efforts to suppress the insurgents' lawlessness. (4) The resultant violence and human rights abuses have often received world-wide media coverage.

The majority of African wars, which are thus best described as unconventional, seem to have made insurgency or revolutionary war doctrine irrelevant, at least for the present. They can best be described as intra-state 'ethno-political' and/or criminal conflicts. Unfortunately they tend to be very prolonged and come to no definite resolutions.

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=14632

For-Profit Terrorism, Dr. Justine A. Rosenthal

For-profit terrorists are not pure ideologues (though some may remain more true to the cause than others), and they aren’t purely criminals—because they continue to use political rhetoric as a front for their illegal activities. For the most part, for-profit terrorists start out with some real (and sometimes valid) political motivations. But when they shift their priorities and become pure profit-seekers, they turn into this new breed of terrorist.

There are three main catalysts that transform terrorists’ motivations from the political to the financial: destruction of the leadership structure; political changes that debunk the ideological basis of the group; and opportunities for financial gain so great that they subsume ideological motives.

This post is much more serious, and I'll end by diatribe here by pointing out what I think are the limitations to Bob's Populace Centric Engagement (PCE) strategy. In some, if not many cases, if you give the populace what they want it will simply make the situation worse. This is true where criminal insurgencies have established a degree of popular controll, and it is true when the bulk of a target populace wants to pursue a hate agenda (Rwanda). That said I trust he didn't want us to swallow his concept hook, line and sinker, but to use it as applicable, and I think it is applicable in many cases, and I still applaud the article, but I also think there are situations where a PCE strategy could fall short, and for these situations we need to go back and reassess the strategy.