Everything You Know About Counterinsurgency History Is (possibly) Wrong!

[marct]

Hi Taiko,

I view causality deductively within the framework of power, in this case political power.

And which framework would that be, since there are several that use that term?

Your ontological framework of preferencing behaviour is problematic in the sense that it is conditioned by the presence, or lack there of, of power, or the aspiration for power. Power, more specifically political power is the independent variable and behaviour is the dependent variable.

Behaviour is empirical - you can see it; "power" isn't, it has to be inferred. Also, at least as far as research methods are concerned, even within a nomonological-deductive framework in the social sciences, you can always exchange the dependant ind independant variables. A strict deductive methodology that doesn't allow that is usually called a theology .

All the technological innovations you have cited and the 'change in behaviour' they have created are examples of human's attempting to control the minds and actions of other humans, they are examples of aspirations for power.

That is certainly one interpretation, but it isn't the only one. I'm begining to suspect either a Marxian or Foucauldian framework, with a touch of Nietzsche.

In short the exercise of power (the why) that has been a ongoing condition of human nature's struggle for power and, it will continue, despite the advances in technology (the how).

Personally, I think you are confusing the potentiality for power (however that may be defined) with the socio-technical conditions that allow for or inhibit the practice of power. You might want to take a look at Stewart Clegg's Frameworks of Power.

You are correct in highlighting the variations in how this struggle for power takes place, but it does not change the struggle for power. There is no neo-marxist or liberal condition which will see technology as the route to the perfection of man and the end of history.

That sounds like one of your axiomatix assumptions. As to the teleological implications, I don't subscribe those implications - I'm more along the lines of a neo-Darwinian that a Teilhard de Chardin.

The theoretical position itself, the belief that it will change behaviour, is an exercise in power!

Sounds like another axiomatic assumption - did you want an "Amen, Brother" after it ?

More seriously, anyone who doesn't think that changes in technology will cause (in the inductive sense I described earlier) changes in behaviour needs to seriously rethink their position. Is that an "exercise in power"? Maybe... what is your definition of power?

Rather than a linear progression of history there is an enduring cyclical quality based on the struggle for power at the domestic and international level. Hence, war, the use of violence, is the continuation of politics by other means.

Neitzsche meets CvC, with Foucault hosting the lovefest!

To draw on a poker analogy: I'll see your Alex Wendt and raise you one Hans Morgenthau

I'll see your Morgenthau and raise you a Dilthey .

Cheers,

Marc