Operationalizing The Jones Model through COG

[Bob's World]

Today's Development-Focused Population Centric COIN is very focused on producing effects that I would categorize as "Critical Capabilities." These are capabilities that one would expect to see as outputs of a healthy Populace-Governance relationship. I believe the rationale is that because these things are missing, there is insurgency; so if these things are provided artificially, there will be no insurgency.

I see this as applying the same logic of if one imports thousands of Toyotas, and parks them in rows, that somehow a Toyota factory will appear. Maybe it will, but to me it appears that we focus on the wrong things, that these things cost way too much, and show little promise of producing enduring effects in terms of Good Governance and stability.

The counterinsurgent approach focuses on defeating the insurgent himself. Again, as this approach does not address the root causes, and increases governmental oppression of the populace in the process, it typically merely suppresses an insurgency for some number of days, months, or years.

The Jones Model directs attention to what are admittedly broad concepts, rooted in the top end of Maslow's hierarchy. The theory being that it is abuses of these fundamental, higher order human requirements that drive a populace to insurgency (at least the leadership, the heart and soul of the movement. The rank and file will recognize these causal perceptions, but may be driven by baser issues life, survival, and raising a family).

So under the Jones Model:
1. Security operations remain a critical supporting function. Always remembering that the insurgent is part of the populace, and tailoring violence accordingly. (As ADM Olson recently announced, there must be some counterinsurgent operations in counterinsurgency).

2. "Population-Centric COIN" is fine, but it must be operationalized with a clearer understanding of the nature of Insurgency. Afghanistan is filled with well intentioned professionals and experts in a wide range of disciplines; sadly while some are newly minted "experts" on COIN, few know much about INSURGENCY. One cannot counter what one does not understand.

3. This tool provides a methodology for going after those things the Jones Model identifies as most critical to removing the causal factors of insurgency.

a. The first step is to, by focused district or area, assess and attempt to understand what the populace of that specific area's perceptions are on the 4 causal factors.

b. Step two is to then determine your CVs or those CRs that are most important to that populace and that you are most likely to be able to positively affect.

c. Step three is to then break this down in more detail by determining, across the disciplines of you COIN force, what type of engagement/projects you could specifically do designed to get directly at the CVs. In the example provided, where "justice" is lacking it is assessed that a regular, professional, fair, and assessable court system is lacking. Elements of providing this are ID'd as HVTs.

d. Step four are your HVIs (Individual people or projects) that go toward building that missing capability or capacity that is deemed most likely to address the CV of concern in that community.

e. Step five is to execute all of this in a manner that empowers the HN governance and keeps them to the forefront.

f. Step six is to continue to assess and refine and minimize external influence (by both the FID forces AND the UW forces) at every opportunity.

Updated operationalizing tool:

[William F. Owen]

In the example provided, where "justice" is lacking it is assessed that a regular, professional, fair, and assessable court system is lacking.

OK, question: Surely if you can provide "justice" you've won, regardless of everything else. Populations support those that have power over them - "the man with a gun at their door, at midnight"-
If you are the arbiter or what is right and what is wrong and you can demonstrate that, that is power. If no one can challenge that, you are in control. People will support who ever dispenses the justice they want. Is that not the case?

Question 2: What is justice is this Power Point Slide? My guess is you mean promoting a US style form of justice, which folks will probably fight against, because if patently is not "just" in their eyes.

[Bob's World]

All critical causal factors are as viewed from the perspective of the populace in question.

What foreigners think matters not at all; and typically the HN counterinsurgent is blind to what the populace perceives as well, so there take will lead you astray as well.

Current efforts In Population Centric COIN are on promoting "Rule of Law" - my point is that greater enforcement of a legal system percieved by the populace as unjust is tyranny.

While Taliban justice is harsh, it is, by populace assessment, perceived as more "just" than that provided by the GIROA.

So, yes, it must be the pursuit of "justice" ie, how the populace FEELS about the legal system that is the goal.

[William F. Owen]

All critical causal factors are as viewed from the perspective of the populace in question.

What foreigners think matters not at all; and typically the HN counterinsurgent is blind to what the populace perceives as well, so there take will lead you astray as well.

As a statement in isolation, I can agree with all of that.
However you may end up supporting the mutilation of women, death sentence for minors, and Shariah Law - so essentially support the policy the population wants - the Population sets the Policy, not your CoC?

Current efforts In Population Centric COIN are on promoting "Rule of Law" - my point is that greater enforcement of a legal system percieved by the populace as unjust is tyranny.

OK, but there is never one populace with one opinion. Insurgencies/rebellions are usually the product of a minority.

While Taliban justice is harsh, it is, by populace assessment, perceived as more "just" than that provided by the GIROA.

In most cases the Taliban are the ONLY form of justice because they are the only ones doing it - thus people support it.

So, yes, it must be the pursuit of "justice" ie, how the populace FEELS about the legal system that is the goal.

So, if I may, the objective is to force into place a level of control that the population will largely accept. - thus you need to destroy the other competing forms of control?

[Bob's World]

So, if I may, the objective is to force into place a level of control that the population will largely accept. - thus you need to destroy the other competing forms of control?

No, the objective is for the Governance of a particular populace to gain a better understanding and empathy for the concerns of their own populace; and to rededicate themselves to meeting those needs.

The insurgency and the insurgent are merely symptoms that come in many flavors. As you say popualaces are diverse. One can see this in Afghanistan as there are actually multiple insurgencies going on. But they are all in response to the failures of ONE government.

One can chase down all of the many groups that sprout up in response to percptions of poor governance within the various segments of a society; or they can fix the one root cause, the failed government itself. The engagement to work those fixes would then be tailored by the perceptions of the many different communities and populaces involved.


this whole idea of "forcing" and "controlling" strikes to my problems with UK COIN. That last real COIN in the UK was the failed effort against Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s, resulting in the execution of King Charles in 1649.

All subequent "COIN" efforts have been all about maintaining control and legitimacy over the governments of others. That is a very different game altogether. True COIN can only be done by a governemnt within its own borders, with its own populace. Once you take it next door you are doing FID or UW. Current vogue of mixing and merging these concepts is not helpful. States often force controls on the populaces of others, working through governments that they have either placed in power, or at least taken on the role of sustaining in power. THAT IS NOT COIN.

The last US COIN campaign was the government's efforts to resolve the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's.

(Of note, our kinder, gentler approach; rooted in understanding and addressing the legitimate concerns of the insurgent segment of the populace, was much more effective that applied by King Charles in England's last insurgency.)

[Steve the Planner]

I was reading a summary of a big pow-wow at Leavenworth. The summary indicated that they needed good census data on these places.

Sorry, folks, but as a planner/demographer, I simply don't buy into a lot of this stuff about how we can re-shape major themes and events in the non-Euro, non-US spaces by rearranging deck chairs and scattering trinkets around (schools, cash, health clinics).

So much of the world, and particularly Centcom and conflict zones are undergoing massive demographic, economic and social/political transformations on an unprecedented level (for them). Populations exploding (and mostly with youngsters unprepared and unable to engage positively), populations crowding to cities (mostly slums), and face-to-face conflicts between previously rural and isolated villages and cultures with the forces of change, conflict, challenge or oppression.

Last week, I read a WP story about "honor killings" in India, and a family that is in Indian courts now to challenge the practices, after their child was killed for marrying out of love, but against the village elders' "accepted" ancient wisdoms. Even India is decades away from coming to terms with all these issues, as populations press against each other, new versus old cultures collide, and ancient farming techniques come face to face with genetically altered seeds, high-growth production techniques, localized water catastrophies emerging because of the new practices, and old fashioned farmers being driven to suicide due to borrowing to stay competitive with the new techniques.

This is down-right tough stuff, being boiled down in the soup of these populations. Massive new challenges they are trying to sort out (some running for the cover of ancient ways, some deathly fearful of outside influences, and some marching to a new and different tune). Amongst it all, money lenders, schemers, and scammers of every kind are emerging. It only gets worse in immediate post-conflict phases where populations have been shattered by displacements and refugee flows, and "good governance" vanished when pre-existing village and tribal structures collapsed, giving way to gangsters and grafters.

These nasty, brutish conflicts are playing themselves out on a very large scale, and will continue to until, as Dayuhan suggests, they find their way through it. It has nothing to do with COIN, and COIN offers little or nothing to it. At best, in my opinion, the COINISTA thought leadership is just a bunch of ex-soldiers with little serious training in the relevant subject fields, trying to draw quickie inferences for highly complex problems being their grasp or appreciation.

Oh, that's right, Afghanistan is somewhere in there, but compounded by extensive foreign and extra-territorial factors.

Like WILFs comment, the British Empire gave way when the economics changed. They made a fortune for centuries, and ended it when it didn't work anymore. Is the UK really any worse off for having done so? In the big scheme, they have done pretty well for themselves in adapting to modern times, while still giving a nod to limited foreign exploits grounded in that old history (keeping the old folks happy). There is a lesson in that.

Iraq is a very different country, generally on the way to modernization, but in need of serious post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction. Like it or not, even as a post-conflict success story, Iraq, because of its history, culture and geography, will, like Iran, straddle an unique set of challenges that will always drive others a little crazy.

This is not the same problem set as Afghanistan and its comparable environments who are all in the midst of profound demographic, economic and social changes.

[slapout9]

All subequent "COIN" efforts have been all about maintaining control and legitimacy over the governments of others. That is a very different game altogether. True COIN can only be done by a governemnt within its own borders, with its own populace. Once you take it next door you are doing FID or UW. Current vogue of mixing and merging these concepts is not helpful. States often force controls on the populaces of others, working through governments that they have either placed in power, or at least taken on the role of sustaining in power. THAT IS NOT COIN.

BW, so we (USA) are either doing FID or UW because it is literally impossible for a foreign power to do COIN?

[Bob's World]

BW, so we (USA) are either doing FID or UW because it is literally impossible for a foreign power to do COIN?

"COIN" is just a fancy word for a government doing the best it can to support its own populace. As day to day governance grows more and more out of touch with its populace the populace discontent grows as well, manifesting in subversion and, if left unchecked, ultimately insurgency.

The role of the Government never changes, it is to govern. It is to provide Good Governance. We call that COIN when it is done in the face of growing insurgency. When someone comes in to help you govern, they are "helping with COIN" We call that FID, or IDAD or a variety of things. Too often of late we call it COIN, and push the primary provider aside, because A. we think we can do it better, or faster; and B. because if it’s the same mission, what does it matter who leads?

Because who leads is an essential factor of effective COIN!

Steve the Planner says "Hey England exploited the globe until it was no longer in there interest to do so, so they then just tossed those used and abused populaces aside of their own volition and look, it was all great for England." What about those populaces???? Was it great for them too??

Virtually all of the insurgencies of the past 100 years have been rooted in populaces risking everything to rid themselves of such benevolent European Colonial rule. Oh, sure, England brought them European technologies, and governance; and also exploitation, slavery and disease and the right to be treated as a second class citizen in your own land.

I hear Americans making the same arguments today, how American exploitation brings technology, governance, the rule of law. But it brings those same humiliating second order effects as well. Until we can walk in the shoes of those whose lands we work our national interests in, and treat them with the same respect we treat our own citizenry with, there will be movements to throw off the governments we put in place, or sustain in place over the will of the governed. More and more as the world becomes more globalized and connected those populaces will seek to travel to the homes of those who oppress them and strike them there.

Even now we call those states that dare to reject European forms of governance as "failed states". Read Foreign Policy. Read their definition of a "Failed State." Pure Western arrogance. We define failed as a rejection of doing it our way.

Until you can develop empathy, you cannot understand insurgency. Until you understand insurgency, you cannot understand counterinsurgency. Until you understand counterinsurgency, you cannot effectively travel to the land of another and help him effectively with his insurgency.

Most need to start at square one. Develop empathy.