Economics and Irregular Warfare

[jmm99]

As to this:

from Dayuhan
These are all excellent and useful ideas, but they all hang up on one of the basic realities of our current COIN problems: we're not fighting our insurgencies, we're fighting someone else's.

I see no "Made in USA" label on what I wrote:

from JMM

I suggest that a less elaborate approach to civil affairs is more feasible.

The following could be realized by using a few benches sitting in the shade of a pleasant grove:

1. A school, where the important factors are who the teacher is and what the teacher teaches.

2. A court, where again the important factors are who the judge is and what the judge decides.

3. A council, where again the important factors are who the elders are and what they legislate in accord with what the local concept of governance is.

Since we are dealing with a semi-permissive environment, the folks who assist in establishing these very basic local institutions have to be an armed political action team capable of self-defense. And, since we'll posit the presence of larger groups of bad guys, that team needs its own set of protective Dobermans cruising the neighborhood.

or on what Steve added:

from Surferbeetle

We could also discuss a five-year master plan for the AO on those same benches. Lets consider the demographics of who will be participating in these four separate events upon the multi-use benches.

1. Teachers/Teachers Assistants who are educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to educational system.

2. Judges/Lawyers/Police who have been educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to judicial system.

3. Politicians who have been educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to political system.

4. Engineers/Tech’s/Blue Collar Workers who have been educated, vetted, paid, and supplied by an agreed to engineering system.

Capacity building (aka raising/training a local technocrat army) allows us to focus scarce resources upon the systems which sustain benches or buildings as the situation dictates.

Strictly a generic framework for one portion of a civil affairs program.

Unless the foreign armed political action workers happen to have solid language and cultural training and education, as well as considerable in-country experience, I can't see how they could execute very well at the very basic level I'm talking about.

Taking Steve's four systems (educational, judicial, political and engineering), I'm positing those systems to be indigenous, which would require foreign "assisters" to learn the local systems and to adapt to them - not the other way around.

You hit the problem for external intervenors (goes beyond GOs and includes NGOs), with this:

from Dayuhen
Of course it's best if this sort of organizing is done by the Government we're supporting, but it often isn't... or if it is, it is aimed less at building durable institutions with popular support than at supporting individuals or groups that suit the convenience of the governing elite.

It is often in the enlightened self-interest of "governments" in failed or failing states - also applicable to the various armed groups that may well be roaming around - to preserve what we (liberal democracies) see as instability and insecurity; and to use what they see as a rational distribution of instability and insecurity to serve their own ends. Credits: Marc Legrange.

The fundamental issue is whether to intervene or not, which is a basic policy issue for Politik. Frankly, we (US) have intervened over my lifetime in a number of situations where the governments we supported were greater or lesser mutts - and where FID assistance sometimes morphed into much larger GPF commitments. In a number of those situations, the narratives of the insurgents have had greater appeal to me than the narratives of the "host governments" - realizing that the folks behind insurgents had their own agendas which did not correspond to the narratives that were being propagated. In short, in many cases, a Third Way would have been the more preferred solution to me - not really feasible since then we (US) would have been waging unconventional warfare against both the "host governments" and the insurgents.

For Politik, the reason for intervening will determine the initial desired end state and also the parameters of the Political Struggle and the Military Struggle to reach that end state. The possible reasons for intervention are not likely to be totally consistent with one another. For example, in SOCOM's 2008 Strategic Appreciation, we have for Africa this (p.23):

U.S. INTERESTS

The group viewed the dynamics of Africa through the prism of United States national interests. Specifically:

- Maintaining access to African resources

- Ensuring homeland security (with a particular focus on disease; violent extremist organizations [VEOs]; transnational criminal organizations [TCOs]; and weapons of mass destruction [WMD] proliferation and transportation)

- Supporting human development (political, economic, and social) as a means toward establishing stability in Africa

The United States must review its African selective engagement policies in light of national interests. Simply stated, the United States cannot effectively engage all the challenges that exist across the entire continent.

It is easy to posit a situation (or find one in existence) where the first interest (access to resources) might well be better or more easily secured by support of a "government" that does not support "human development" or "stability".

Once Politik decides to intervene, the civilian and military subordinates of Politik don't have the luxury of reversing the decision, but must try to make the best of what may be a bad situation.

Regards

Mike