Everything You Know About Counterinsurgency History Is (possibly) Wrong!

[Taiko]

If our current campaign is primarily about deterrence (this is what militaries do in times of peace); and it is not really GWOT, then what is it? The concept that I am playing with is to shift it from a campaign focused (in name) on countering terrorism to one focused on Deterrence of Irregular Threats.It also allows for a much more positive narrative that our allies and own non-DOD agencies can much more readily get on board with.

Sounds good in theory:

1. How do you deter an individual or group of individuals with no fixed address?

2. How do you deter an individual or group of individual who a) are not afraid to die b) prefer the consequence/cost, and in some cases the reward of death, over inaction?

I've been having a look at this subject area for some time now and concur with David that this is very worthy of a thread of its own.

Where I suspect we disagree is on the nature of causality. I view "causality" in an inductive format, i.e. by changing the frequency distribution of a particular behaviour, that technology has "caused" that behaviour to change. The social understandings at the time of those changes are the "ideas" which, since they are embedded in the change themselves, are "created" by that change. I know, it sounds post-moderninst, but it actually isn't

I view causality deductively within the framework of power, in this case political power. Your ontological framework of preferencing behaviour is problematic in the sense that it is conditioned by the presence, or lack there of, of power, or the aspiration for power. Power, more specifically political power is the independent variable and behaviour is the dependent variable. All the technological innovations you have cited and the 'change in behaviour' they have created are examples of human's attempting to control the minds and actions of other humans, they are examples of aspirations for power. In short the exercise of power (the why) that has been a ongoing condition of human nature's struggle for power and, it will continue, despite the advances in technology (the how). You are correct in highlighting the variations in how this struggle for power takes place, but it does not change the struggle for power. There is no neo-marxist or liberal condition which will see technology as the route to the perfection of man and the end of history. The theoretical position itself, the belief that it will change behaviour, is an exercise in power! Rather than a linear progression of history there is an enduring cyclical quality based on the struggle for power at the domestic and international level. Hence, war, the use of violence, is the continuation of politics by other means. To draw on a poker analogy: I'll see your Alex Wendt and raise you one Hans Morgenthau