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

[Taiko]

Oi vey! Talk about a mishmosh! Three different definitions without significatory distinctions? Definitely Foucault mixed with Neitzsche!

Hardly a mishmosh, more a accurate explanation of reality, rather than a normative descriptive exercise that bleeds the concept of all meaning. You are way off base with Foucault and Neitzschel. I am not a naval gazer, try Machiavelli instead, I'm more interested in praxis.

Ridiculous. Those are merely indicators of potential actions (behaviours) and the socio-cultural acceptance of such indicators. If these were indicators of empirical power, then the US would not exist (the Brits had more guns and there was never a vote in the fullest sense in the thirteen colonies for succession).

One of the problems with an inductive approach. Mistaking specifics for a generalisation. I stand by my statement that the casting of a vote is a direct measurement of power in a democracy. I'll take your point that the amount of force a person/political unit brings to bear in order to impose their will is an indirect measurement of power.

If it was the case, then the Taliban would not be operational any more. And "balance of power" is an empty phrase unless you have a better definition of power.

Ever heard of an organisation called ISI and A'Q? Apparently they have very deep pockets. A fascinating study of how to measure power via the resources an individual or political unit brings to bear in imposing their will. Quite a practical one as well, if this was not the case in reality, then was the attempts by the US to cut off funding to A'Q merely an aberration of my imagination? Or am I being too subjective in accounting for reality in objectively determining the cause as being the struggle for power?

Balance of power is a correct phrase to explain the reality of the role of power in domestic and international politics

Most theologies are phenomenological abstractions. The generalization might be "superior", then again it may not be. If you look at the history of science, one thing that is pretty clear is that rigid, deductive models that metastesize into theologies are always overthrown by inductive models (check out Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Always? So far you have presented a normative argument that bears very little resemblance to reality and confused specifics for generalisations.

Always good to see people spouting theological truisms, especially when they are taken from theologies that would disagree totally with what you have said so far - I doubt the Quakers would agree with your definitions of power .

Don't you mean what you disagree with what I have said so far? Quakers are not trying to impose their ideology on other people.

What, pray tell, do you see in my statement either implying a metaphysical "purpose" or "design", or a direction to a final result? You, on t'other hand along with many others in the Realist School of IR, automatically assume a telelogical position by asserting the "struggle for power" as both a cause and an end.The danger with such a position is that you already know the cause - "now lets finish the proposition by identifying the cause, the struggle for power". That is a theological position.

Hardly. The roads to human power and knowledge lie close together and are nearly the same; nevertheless on account of perniciousness and inveterate habit of dwelling on abstractions, it is safer to begin and raise the sciences from those foundations which have relation to practice, and let the active part be as the seal which prints and determines the contemplative counterpart (Novum Organum). I don't assume I prove via fact that in reality the struggle for power is the cause. I do not arrive at that statement by applying a tautology based on a teleological assumption arrived at via induction. The struggle of power is the cause the ends of that struggle is the imposition of an individual or political units will over another individual or political unit. Considering that is the reality of what you are doing right now, how can you conflate those two distinction as being the same? Just because reality does not conform to your theory does not mean that reality is false, just may be, your theory is false. You should reread Kuhn. I'll save you the trouble of rebutting this statement by rebutting your next statement. Are you making an objective statement that all reality is subjective?