War is War

[Bob's World]

I too believe that war is war, and that it must be executed in its extremes.

Where I differ from most is that I do not believe that COIN is war, but rather a civil emergency and should be addressed as such; perhaps with equal vigor, but with a very different focus. In COIN one is not defeating some other state to preserve one's own; one is repairing the failures of governance to preserve the populace in the longterm, while protecting them from immediate threats in the near term.

Defeating an opponents military while breaking the will of his populace to continue the fight is victory in war.

Defeating an insurgent organization while breaking the will of ones own populace to make a political challenge through illegal means when legal means have been denied to them is tyranny. Such suppression avoids the enduring problem for some period of time as it fails in large part to address the conditons of insurgency that allowed a violent insurgent movement to arise to begin with; making the rise if a new insurgent challenger inevitable.

So yes. "War is War" But all violence is not war, and certainly approaching COIN as war is a common (and U.S. Doctrine), but I believe tragic mistake.

So, if COIN is not war, then FID is not war either, as it is the support of another's COIN effort.

Paradoxically perhaps, I believe that Insurgency often rises to the level of war. For the insurgent he must either make the state evolve or make it go away to prevail; while the counterinsurgent can merely address his shortcomings internally to prevail.

So, if insurgency is often war, then Unconventional warfare to support such insurgency can be war as well.

The state has none of the constraints in dealing with the UW actor that he does in dealing with its insurgent populace, so that can be war, which is straight forward when the UW actor is a state, not so straight forward when the UW actor is a non-state as Al Qaeda is for so many states where they are waging UW today.

More important then to "separate the insurgent from the UW actor" (so that one can deal civilly with one, while waging war against the other); than the tired cliché of "separating the insurgent from the populace." This is the largest problem with the current drone campaign in Pakistan; it makes no such separation and wages war in equal parts against both the insurgent and the UW actor as if they were one. (see thread on Conflation I started a couple days ago for more on that).

[SteveMetz]

I too believe that war is war, and that it must be executed in its extremes.

Where I differ from most is that I do not believe that COIN is war, but rather a civil emergency and should be addressed as such; perhaps with equal vigor, but with a very different focus. In COIN one is not defeating some other state to preserve one's own; one is repairing the failures of governance to preserve the populace in the longterm, while protecting them from immediate threats in the near term.

Defeating an opponents military while breaking the will of his populace to continue the fight is victory in war.

Defeating an insurgent organization while breaking the will of ones own populace to make a political challenge through illegal means when legal means have been denied to them is tyranny. Such suppression avoids the enduring problem for some period of time as it fails in large part to address the conditons of insurgency that allowed a violent insurgent movement to arise to begin with; making the rise if a new insurgent challenger inevitable.

So yes. "War is War" But all violence is not war, and certainly approaching COIN as war is a common (and U.S. Doctrine), but I believe tragic mistake.

So, if COIN is not war, then FID is not war either, as it is the support of another's COIN effort.

Paradoxically perhaps, I believe that Insurgency often rises to the level of war. For the insurgent he must either make the state evolve or make it go away to prevail; while the counterinsurgent can merely address his shortcomings internally to prevail.

So, if insurgency is often war, then Unconventional warfare to support such insurgency can be war as well.

The state has none of the constraints in dealing with the UW actor that he does in dealing with its insurgent populace, so that can be war, which is straight forward when the UW actor is a state, not so straight forward when the UW actor is a non-state as Al Qaeda is for so many states where they are waging UW today.

More important then to "separate the insurgent from the UW actor" (so that one can deal civilly with one, while waging war against the other); than the tired cliché of "separating the insurgent from the populace." This is the largest problem with the current drone campaign in Pakistan; it makes no such separation and wages war in equal parts against both the insurgent and the UW actor as if they were one. (see thread on Conflation I started a couple days ago for more on that).

I've been thinking along the same lines. Here's a framework that I rolled out at a workshop at the National Defense University last week and am developing into a chapter for a forthcoming Routledge Book.

For the US, there are three alternative ways of conceptualizing counterinsurgency: 1) as a variant of war; 2) as a violent competition for political support; 3) as a manifestation of a deeper and broader social pathology.

Which one we use has immense implications for strategy, operations, and organization.

My sense is that we use some blend of #1 and #2, but #3 is probably most accurate.

[Tukhachevskii]

If I'm not mistaken wasn't the phrase "War is War" originally penned by Colin S Gray? He defiend war and warfare as specific activites or some such. I'll try and find an artile of his as I don't immeidately have the reference to hand(I'm sure it's a Strategic Studies Institute product).

[SteveMetz]

Colin often makes that point. His SSI monographs are here.

I'm in the "war is war, but not all use of organized violence is war" school.

[Rex Brynen]

Does it make a difference that the insurgents almost always think of insurgency as war?

[SteveMetz]

Not to me it doesn't. Defining something as war implies a specific set of actions and permissible responses. I don't want someone else deciding that for my nation. There are probably dozens of organizations in the world today that consider themselves "at war" with the United States. It would be lunacy for us to treat it as such.

[Tom Odom]

Does it make a difference that the insurgents almost always think of insurgency as war?

Naw we don't let them vote

COIN like insurgency is war, especially to those doing the killing or suffering the casualties. Otherwise we do end up in an intellectual rabbit hole

[slapout9]

What if the fundamental definition of war is wrong or rather only half right? What if we said war is the use of force or fraud to achieve your ends. What if war was viewed as a crime?

[SteveMetz]

Disagree Tom (despite the fact that Dan gushed over you when I was in his office a couple of weeks ago). We're talking about something with strategy, policy, and legal implications. We dont define those from the foxhole perspective.

[Eden]

I've been thinking lately that what distinguishes "War" from "war" is the alignment between the targets of violence and the objects of the conflict. In conventional wars violence is directed at the warmaking capacity of the enemy regardless of the overall object of the war itself, partly in an effort to insulate civil society from the destructiveness of violence. In less conventional wars, violence is applied directly to the object, and warmaking capacity is often only targeted indirectly.

Examples from opposite ends of the spectrum: The cabinet wars of the eighteenth century, where being placed at a military disadvantage through the loss of a fortress or a battle was often enough reason for one side to give way and settle whatever political, dynastic, or economic dispute led to the military contest; Vietnam, where political opponents of the communists and their supporting populations were targeted directly.

Obviously, because we are speaking of a spectrum here, the examples bleed into each other, and you can always find an exception, but this idea of using violence to directly gain your objectives (rather than indirectly when two militaries clash) seems to me to be a useful analytical tool.

[reed11b]

Your Post

I am not sure if I agree with you, but you have succeeded in causing me to pause and reassess my opinion.
Reed