This is the first post of a few on this topic if the moderators don’t shut me down. In this one I just want to introduce some additional context that will shape later posts on the efficacy of our economic development efforts as means to counter threat economic systems, which can probably be described as the life blood of any movement.

Eventually I hope to evolve these thoughts with your help to where I can make a case for changing “clear, hold and build” to clear, hold, and consolidate” where build is one subcategory of consolidate. Then I hope to collaborate with the SWJ larger mind to develop effective approaches of neutralizing enemy economic systems (slap, I’ll know you’ll love this), which will hopefully push the populace to rely on State endorsed economic systems (without conducting economic warfare against the populace). However, I think this will prove to be a tough nut to crack.

I think that even with over eight years of experience with GWOT, our military and other government organizations such as State remain largely incapable of understanding unconventional warfare, since our perception is biased by outdated doctrine.

The U.S. military focus on unconventional warfare is really nothing more than a focus on the warfare piece (i.e. maneuvering guerrillas within the constraints of the law of land warfare) against enemy forces. This really isn't UW at all, but simply a fifth column of surrogates that is conducting a limited form of guerrilla warfare that is very much tied to the our interpretation of CvC’s view of war as a state versus state conflict where the military is the decisive factor.

If this is true (open for debate), then it is only natural that our counter UW, or COIN doctrine is largely focused on militarily defeating the IED networks (in the current fight). Once again the conventional force has learned this isn’t a conventional war (but they were slow learners), so they slowly revisited previous lesson from previous conflicts that had a similar (not identical) character. They started protecting the populace, providing essential service and focused on developed relationships with community to facilitate more effective intelligence operations, which were largely focused on finding and destroying the IED networks. It still keeps coming back to that, because CvC taught us the way to win was to destroy our foe’s ability to wage war. CvC wasn’t wrong, but we failed to see that the enemy can wage war without IED networks through propaganda, political subversion, quiet terrorism behind the scenes to influence key personnel, establishing shadow governments, taking over the local schools, economic subversion, etc. We tend to largely ignore these threats, we may deal with them if we stumble across them, but that isn’t what our intelligence is focused on. I think Jmm would agree that we simply don't have the legal authority to fight fire with fire in the shadow wars, so we focus on what we can.

Specifically I want to focus on the E in DIME, and challenge the idea that our economic development efforts are achieving the desired results. A combination of luck, intent and globalism is allowing our irregular foes to effectively undermine our economic power. As Naim wrote in his book “Illicit” there is a growing gap between the haves and have nots as globalization spreads. This has facilitated, perhaps out necessity, the rapid growth of the black economy, which according to Naim is in the trillions of dollars. How does the Taliban manage to pay their fighters more than the State of Afghanistan paid theirs? How do numerous NGOs who are clearly tied to various terrorist organizations effectively fund the development of schools, medical clinics, etc.? How do we displace black economic activities such as the narcotics trade and other forms of smuggling without harming the locals who thrive off of it? The State is no longer relevant in this economic system (thus legitimacy is further undermined), and if the State intends to crush or displace this activity, what economic system will they replace it with?

While this doesn’t apply to all conflicts, it does apply to OIF and OEF-A. If we even hope to understand the problem (system) we have to look at it globally, because the black economic systems are tied into the new global economy of which less and less is controlled by States.

We see a rapidly increasing trend where organized transnational crime networks (its an open system) and other irregular threats such as insurgents, terrorists, etc. are converging on a global scale, and I suspect we don’t really understand the implications of this.

These relationships are often based simply on mutual business interests. Such as AQ affiliated groups in the Trans Sahel assisting drug cartels from S. American and W. African smuggle cocaine into Europe. This is just one of many examples of how a terrorist network expands its links (perhaps unintentionally) from a regional effort in the Trans Sahel to bad actors in W. Africa, South America and Europe. The amount of money involved in these activities is overwhelming for developing states, so centers of power shift from State to non-state actors. These groups can now buy effective influence from the windfalls garnered from their illicit activities. Over time, I suspect this corruption/subversion changes the character of the war and its goals, thus my reference to new economic cultural norms in my previous post. We now have an area that neither our law enforcement nor military is ideally organized, trained, or enabled through authorities to confront effectively. Those limitations extend to our partner nations who are afflicted with this threat.

I recommend a quick read through "Illicit" (there are other books on the topic now) to get additional context.

http://www.amazon.com/Illicit-Smuggl...1677733&sr=1-1