Originally Posted by
outletclock
3) Grievance, in my opinion, could be utility-maximizing or emotion, although I think in common terms we think of a grievance as something purely emotional rather than something purely utility-maximizing. I don't see why it couldn't run down the whole spectrum - "I do it partly because I think there will be wealth redistribution when we burn down X's farm because he's on A's side, and also, by the way, I don't like X, and if you asked me to tell you what proportion of my actions are driven by calculations of utility and what proportion are driven by calculations of emotion, I wouldn't be able to tell you; I see a window of opportunity to do something I want to do, for reasons I'm not quite sure of, and I act." Obviously long-standing grievances might differ greatly from my lame example, but nonetheless, why a grievance couldn't be both emotion- and utility-based in any proportion eludes me.
I think even the word "grievance" might be misleading, because it carries connotations of emotion: rationale might be better. That's Stathis Kalyvas's take on FM 3-24, based on my reading of the Perspectives of Politics article by him I read, and how it intersects with the greed versus grievance literature on civil wars; basically, FM 3-24 assumes insurgents operate because of grievances, not greed. Ergo, fix the host nation, one eliminates the rationale for the insurgency, and one eliminates the insurgency. But if insurgents aren't motivated by grievance, but greed (which is an emotion, now that I think about it), then "the solution" changes.
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