Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Best we remember that France's history, interests and goals in this region are completely different than those of the US, and in many ways much more practical, I suspect.

We need to be careful about getting too excited about any tactical insights when not balanced against a context of strategy. Next thing you know we'll be publishing a manual derived from the lessons learned of colonial and containment suppression operations, celebrating its tactical brilliance as somehow adding up to a strategy, and attempting to apply it as "COIN" to what we have been trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. Crazy.
Yes, hence the RAND author's numerous caveats.

What would be interesting is a comparison with the approaches used by the US military in a region familiar to them, using Bob's 'history, interests and goals'. The Phillipines comes to mind.

Being a civilian I was interested in the use of small company sized units as the basic building block and the use of troops based in West Africa and in France itself. The authors do refer to some issues over this.