New book release

[M-A Lagrange]

The thought is: are the authors seeking to define "war" in legal terms or military terms; or are they creating some awful hybrid of legal and military mishmash ? Not having the book, I can't really say; but the trailer seems to point in the latter direction.

Mike, as always, you come with the thousand dollars brilliant question.
I believe they come with a military classification of conflicts nature based on the nature and projects of the actors. But we will have to read first the book.

At this point, I'm looking forward to reading anything of substance that gets past false debates like CT v/s COIN.

I believe the real question would be how to reduce risks to fall into civil war and/or insurgency during hold phase.

Looking at it quickly, I came out with this:
- Not timely addressed internal collapse of political and/or economical local context leading to ethnic/political clashes.
- External disruption of the political and/or economical institutions leading to ethnic/political clashes.
- Mismanagement/dispatch of the occupant men power creating security vacuum leading to either or both ethnic/political clashes and insurgency.
- Mismanagement of the former politico-military apparatus leading to insurgency.
But there are more.

Also, looking at US history, there are basically 2 main approaches for stabilization:
- The post Civil War approach.
Based on an immediate exploitation of economical resources of the conquered territory. That is what has been put in place in Iraq. This comes with the aim of the war: natural resources control.

- The post WWII approach
Based on a strong funding of development as the marshal plan. This is what was used for Europe in the 50. The aim being building a friendly ally from a previous enemy.

For me the question of coming with a linear approach of conventional war followed by ethnic/political war ending into counter insurgency hides the main question: how to conduct hold. What are the immediate priorities that military and civil actions have to address for hold phase to be a success? And not taking as granted that you always end up into a ethnic/political clashes and an insurgency (that will always be there by the way).
For example:
- Do you first try to exploit natural resources and then dispatch significant forces and efforts to do so or do you first provide basic security in the streets and electricity at night in the main cities?
Responding to that question may probably help. (But I may be wrong). From my point of view, if you end up into ethnic/political clashes and counter insurrection operations: you may have forgotten to finalize something.