A Modest Proposal to Adjust the Principles of War

[TheCurmudgeon]

Dear Norfolk:



Curmudgeon's quote here is a good example of why i am interested in this problem. He states that Coin is not war at least in terms of Principles, so then if that is the case then perhaps we should recommend to the writers currently working on FM3-0 to ditch the Principles all together and not include Coin in its discussion of full spectrum operations.

gian

Sir,

First, I would like to clear up one misunderstanding; I did not mean to infer that COIN is not war, although along the spectrum included in full spectrum operations there are a number of things that are not conflict. When someone blows up a vehicle in your convoy, engages you in a running gun battle while you try to recover your vehicle, you have to call in CAS and you take prisoners, I would agree that is war, even if all we were trying to do was build a road.

Second, as professionals, I think we are capable of recognizing that different problems have different solutions. That there are general guidelines we can follow but that not every one applies in every situation. Rather than the engineering example, I will use a doctor and a patient. You examine the patient, determine the disease, determine the appropriate treatment, treat, monitor to ensure the treatment is working, and if not adjust.

So if you treat a cold different than cancer, why not treat COIN different than Nation-State conflicts. Why do we always feel the need to beat that square peg into that round hole?

I would also like to throw out there that there are different insurgencies. That you should treat an external insurgency (AQ) different than an internal insurgency (Sunni). That you should destroy one while you might want to co-opt the other.