Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
The one thing that I think is most significantly unique about COIN COG, at least revolutionary COIN COG (as opposed to resistance or separatist COIN) anyway, as compared to the traditional state vs state warfare that CvC studied, is that in COIN, the COG is something that both sides are competing for the support of, so there is just one prize to be won; whereas in conventional both sides have their own COG that the other side wants to defeat, and that they must protect.

That COG that the government and the insurgent are competing for the support of is the populace. Whichever side gains this will ultimately win.

Similarly the CRs and CVs are not then subsets to be identified and defeated, but rather supporting tasks that must be identified and accomplished.
Perhaps, but there are two sides to this coin. In Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars Andrew Mack points out that it is total war for the insurgency, and limited war for the large power - yet both are fighting to break the will of the other. The counterinsurgency (large nation) fighting to gain legitimacy for the Host Nation government while the Insurgency is trying to break the political will of the large nation by undermining its population's opinion that the war is a legitimate affair.