Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
Being a chronic heretic, I kind of take issue with that. Or at least believe we need to revise what we mean by it.

I think the idea that counterinsurgency is population-centric reflects the logic of cold war insurgency: insurgents are wannabe states. Therefore they need to control territory. They need popular support to provide them resources, intelligence, and sanctuary. So counterinsurgents need to prevent the insurgents from controlling the population. This is all straight from Galula, Thompson, etc.

Contemporary insurgents exercise a different type of control than Cold War era ones. Rather than being physical, it is more psychological, reinforced by periodic acts of terrorism. And--this is important--they are routinely interspersed within the population rather than spending most of their time in some sanctuary and making occasional forays into areas they don't control.

So, the idea of the government providing 24/7, country-wide security against the insurgents is, I think, an impossibility. I'm not sure exactly where this leads us, but we need to rethink our old ideas about a population-centric approach.

Here's another idea: I'm at least half convinced that the idea that success in counterinsurgency comes from protecting the population was always a myth. When I look at the history of insurgencies, it seems to me that when counterinsurgents lost, it was ALWAYS because of a collapse of will on the part of the regime and the security forces, not an inability to protect the population. That's why I blogged that I believe that the Casey strategy in Iraq which focused on bolstering the Iraqi security forces was actually better than the Petreaus one which emphasizes security the population (forgive me John, Dave, H.R., Pete, etc. if you're reading this!) At least that's what history suggests to me.
I said population centric, not securing-the-populace centric.

Relationships breed trust which leads to intelligence. There's something incredibly human about that. I don't disagree with 85% of what you have above but I think bolstering security forces is a means to securing to the populace. At least that's what I gathered from COL McMaster in his commander's intent.

At the end of the day, I think the winner of the fight is going to be whoever the populace hates least.