Economics and Irregular Warfare

[Bill Moore]

What I find most interesting about these posts, with the possible exception of Slapout's last post is the discussion of economic development separate from the COIN effort.

This is the fallacy with the lines of operations approach to military operations and USG strategy in general. Instead of developing and executing a strategy (not talking strategic level, but rather clear operational objectives and integrated plans for achieving those objectives instead of everyone doing their own line of operation independently, what I call lines to no where).

If you're waging a COIN effort, then is it wise to support economic development blindly and haphazardly, or better to integrate economic development as part of the over all COIN strategy?

We can use economic development as one form of influence to shape specific populations.

Use economic development to influence a populace if at all possible. Identify a project of value (the people will tell you what it is, you don't determine it), ensure you can deliver, then tell them what the cost is (no IED attacks upon coalition forces for 2 weeks and we'll start on it (you better deliver), and as long as no IED attacks are the norm we'll continue to work on it.

This is only one example. I think we need to take a step back and relook how we better integrate economic development with the COIN strategy. Perhaps this being done in Afghanistan, but from what I'm reading it is not apparent.

If they have essential services restored, what else do we need to do? Why are we doing it? Are we giving them a free lunch, or are we getting a desired result? What effect is it really having?

[Surferbeetle]

With a H/T to Registan; The Design Observer Group: Between Mission Statement and Parametric Model by Tim Love

So where are we? What do we need to do to synthesize the powerful formal possibilities of parametric modeling with the need to realign disciplinary priorities? This is a large question, which I’ll explore in future articles. For now I’ll suggest that one approach is to better understand the complexities and pressures of mainstream practice. How do existing professional power structures, working with real clients and regulatory frameworks, encourage certain kinds of design production and inhibit others? Why does the DNA of almost every office building in North America — maybe the world — consist of the same center-core diagram with the same ungainly and clumsily dimensioned floor plan, no matter how sophisticated the skin? Why are the majority of new public school buildings soulless and isolated object-buildings surrounded by acres of parking lots and sports fields? Why do super-sized arterial roads, and the retail big boxes that line them, continue to be developed when the landscapes that result are so banal, and widely reviled as such? My hunch is that if design pedagogy began to engage these everyday conditions, whether in the market-driven economy or through the mechanism of public funding (or a combination of the two), then a new design-focused pedagogy would emerge, one that would gain intellectual weight through the relevance of the problems. Such a context might inspire designers to use sophisticated professional tools — including parametric modeling — to produce truly new and meaningful paradigms.

[slapout9]

Perhaps this being done in Afghanistan, but from what I'm reading it is not apparent.

IMO the real 800 pound Guerrilla in A'stan is the Economy. Without a stable Economy no country can survive.......Including the USA.