Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Brother Beetle,

What is politics? Generally, every political armed group in the world conforms to a CvC trinity of People, Leadership and Armed Force. - so yes,
"Security and Economics variables are inseparably interrelated with Politics/Governance variables" - I agree. It's all politics.
Security is a political condition, just as much as a "social condition." Economies require governments of similar bodies. When those governments fail, so does all else and alternate policies flow in to fill the vacuum.

I think we may be in agreement.
Brother Wilf,

As always, I greatly appreciate the clarifying discussions on CvC and war.

I believe that we are in agreement with respect to the nature of war = man's inhumanity to man. From where I stand and try to describe War it seems to me that it is composed of many different types of warfare methods. I hope that we are in agreement that TTP are types of warfare and infinitely variable, i.e. Conventional, COIN, Financial, Nuclear, Chemical, Biological, etc.

Wikipedia gives us the following definition for Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power"[1] and refers to the regulation of a political unit,[2] and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.[3]
However when solving a multivariate equation such as war = politics + economics + security = 1 + 1 + 1 we can not assume that war = politics. In this simple example politics = war - economics - security....

In summary, a politician does not equal a loaf of bread/cake, a secure city block, or a war...

Regards,

Steve