Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Thanks, but that's Clausewitz!


The "Nouveau COIN," guys like to call the Neo-Classical and/or "Neo-Orthodox" tendency "threat centric." It's true. We are!

...but as Ken very well explains, you focus on the precise, proportionate and discriminating use of violence against those who deserve it, because doing so has political benefit. Military force must serve the political aim.

As fare as I can tell the Nouveau COIN guys want military force to explicitly serve a social-moral aim, which in reality has no relevance without the political context.
Some Nouveau COIN guys just might, that said It might be that although they might not be completely right they are probably not much further from the truth then those who feel that "any" given political aim is going to be sustained for any reasonable period of time(decades/centuries) sans some sort of social-moral aims without persistent and rather messy enforcement of those political non-social aims.

Then again I could be mistaken. Wouldn't be the first time nor likely to be the last