Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
If the enemy makes you believe that doing him harm, will somehow do you harm, he's won! - and you have no legitimate recourse to armed action. - EG: Ghandi - and Ghandi was not an insurgent! He used Politics, without warfare - so not a military problem.

This is one area where WILF and I take very different perspectives. I take WILF's position to be that insurgency begins when the violence begins, as does the military mission, with both also ending along with the violence.

I see Insurgency as a continuous spectrum that every populace and governance are continuously operating within. Most well down below Mao's Phase I insurgency in what has been described as "pre-insurgency" or "phase 0 insurgency". Perhaps most accurately it is "pre-violence insurgency".

Not only was Ghandi, and also Dr. King here in the states, insurgents; they were so successful at insurgency that they never had to resort to violence to force the government to address the conditions of poor governance that gave rise to their movements.

On the flip side of that "COIN," I also see the passing and implementation of the U.S. Civil Rights Act as the most successful COIN effort ever executed by the US government as well.

Once either the insurgent or the counterinsurgent resorts to violience to accomplish their ends it recognizes a failure at accomplishing the same peacefully first. It does not mean the earlier effort was not equally insurgency or counterinsurgency.

The critical benefit of taking my perspective is that it puts and keeps the onus for COIN on the civil government, making the case that this is an enduring committment and the essence of their function in relation to the populace: Provide Good Governance. Just becuase their failure may result in violence in no way relieves them of their duty to that end. The military comes in as needed and out again once good governance is restored.