I agree with many of the points you raise. For example, those observations about the current state of counterinsurgency theory and practice.

I'm still yet to be convinced that 4GW as currently expressed, or indeed any other paradigm including COIN, contains all the answers we seek for the present round of conflicts.
Similar comments from the "Conclusions" of Countering Global Insurgency and Three Pillars of Counterinsurgency expressed this so well I will use them prominently in my next article.

I disagree with you regarding a few points.

I'm fundamentally a practitioner rather than a theorist ...
You are obviously both. Anybody reading all 72 pages of Countering Global Insurgency – esp. Appendix C, CASE STUDY – SYSTEMS ASSESSMENT OF INSURGENCY IN IRAQ -- will mark you as a theoretician of the first water.

Likewise I believe you are too modest regarding the conceptual foundation of “28 articles. My first draft examined the recommendations of 28 articles as expressions of your longer works, which would have been conceptually a stronger paper. Unfortunately the readers of DNI do not, I believe, respond as well to long, complex works as well as that of the professional journals which publish your work. It’s a disadvantage of writing for a wide audience. With 28 articles you appear to have had the best of both worlds, as it brought the thinking from your greater works to a general audience.

This quote goes directly to the heart of the debate:

I have huge confidence in the adaptability and agility of the guys in the field and have been impressed, again and again, as I have served with them in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. But even if the advice is not strictly achievable, I still think it's worth giving since it helps turn the "ship of state" in the right direction.
I agree totally with the first sentence, and disagree absolutely with the second. The article was an attempt to highlight this point, expanding on similar views expressed in my previous articles. Our troops might be doing things right, but are we strategically doing the right thing? As you know, getting this wrong is an easy and oft-traveled road to defeat.

Equally important, I agree with the following:

I would argue that this set of conflicts we are in actually breaks all our existing paradigms so that we need a fundamental re-think.
The conundrum of 21st century warfare is exactly a “paradigm crisis” as described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
History suggests that these complex debates are resolved through exchange of papers. That is, exchange of articles and correspondence, with new ideas often coming from unlikely sources.

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I'll addition to the last line of this response ... it could come from you, me, someone on the SWC, anyone. We need to have our minds open to recognise solutions when they appear.