Class Analysis and COIN

[AmericanPride]

The destruction of the enemies forces has political effect on the other elements of the trinity - Leadership and people. All useful military acts have political effect at some level and for some duration. In fact I would submit that is how you judge the usefulness of military action, and I think CvC makes this point.

I agree. I think we are talking past one another rather than actually disagreeing. What I pulled from Clausewitz is that a tactical decision, while subordinate to strategy (and ultimately the political object), is aimed at the immediate destruction of the enemy's capacity to fight. Because this is the case for all sides in a conventional conflict, the political decision can be separated from the military act. The decision to destroy one battalion vs. another, for example, is driven by a desire to degrade the enemy's capacity to fight rather than any political decision made on the battlefield and, with everything else being equal, will produce similar results regardless of what battalion is targeted. In contrast, because in insurgency each belligerent is assuming the faculties of a state (that is, to make political decisions, specifically to make war), even the lowest tactical decision is political. Targeting one militia vs another may generate significantly different results based on the politics of those militias.

Destroying the military capability of an insurgency, is one way to defeat the insurgency. - and this alwasy makes me wonder why all the great and good are trying to examine insurgencies as some kind of exclusive case, instead of starting from the premise that COIN is warfare, and not "social work with guns," or some other post-modern take on a very ancient problem.

I agree. I am starting from that same premise, except that I would argue in addition that in an insurgency environment, the various classes of a society assume the political characteristics 'traditionally' reserved for the state.