The Insurgent View vs. US Military View

[J Wolfsberger]

... except to inform the Political Leadership, to whom you report whether the goals they seek can be aided or achieved by military means. When they say "do it," you do it.

I think this gets to the point of Cavguy's (really excellent) slide. If "war is the continuation of politics by other means," the traditional, institutionalized response of most Western armies is that "we do war, not politics." That's probably an inevitable outgrowth of the idea of military subordinated to civil authority, and the strict non involvement of serving military in political affairs. If that is the cultural paradigm, it will carry over to the battlefield, where the military will focus on combat and leave the political dimension to the politicians. I think that is Col. Gentile's point:

This is why I have argued that CE Callwell's book still has relevance and insights for today in that he saw small wars as essentially wars to create moral effects among local populations and leaders but saw the use of military force not in symmetrical but asymmetrical sense.

Our adversaries, on the other hand, view this as a political struggle, and a "totalitarian" one at that. There is nothing off limits, if it will further the desired political goal. Their military actions may be determined by operational or tactical concerns, but the strategic goal has little to do with troops in the field or territory conquered.

How we deal with the issue is another question. Do we ask the military to become more attuned to the political dimension? Does the State Department need to develop some sort of "Directorate for COIN" to address the political dimension while the military focuses on combat? Is there an intermediate approach? Or something else entirely?