Recommended Reading
Top Billing! Crispin Burke –Be honest: Who actually read FM 3-24?
The past year has done little to bolster the COINdinistas’ cause. General David Petraeus, the lead architect of counterinsurgency theory, has ramped up airstrikes and night raids, and has even begun to re-institute body counts as a measure of effectiveness. Last week, a UN report undercut US claims of success, pointing out that civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased twenty percent in the last year alone, with the ten-year campaign displacing over 400,000 Afghans. And let’s not forget a recent scandal involving a beloved counterinsurgency text, “Three Cups of Tea“, which, to this day, still features in some military organizations’ recommended reading lists.
All this has led some to proclaim the “death of COIN“, and others to muse how to save the COIN baby from the bathwater. In light of all the COIN resentment, noted COINtra Carl Prine has even quipped, “Everyone is Gian Gentile now“.
But is all the criticism deserved? Let’s take a look.
A tour de force by Starbuck. Hat tip to Adam.
Joseph Fouche –Unhappy Medium: The Perils of Annoyance as Your Strategic Default
…The U.S. system of government is designed around the institutionalized stasis of factional trench warfare. Governmental power derives from the consent of contingency, built on system of representation heavily tilted towards votes cast by catastrophe. Based on the rule of crisis, not of men, the U.S. federal government creaks limply forward only under the lash of perceived calamity. In such an environment, without a crisis (real or manufactured) at hand, strategy leans imperceptibly towards the unhappy medium of a strategy of annoyance. Reasons of state demand that strategically substantive and consequential action be taken from time to time. But the inertia of the system demands that nothing be done within the system to raise an inconvenient stir or distract the American public from its patriotic consumption. This places two constraints on strategically significant action:
- It must be small enough to escape sustained public awareness.
- It must be big enough to have real strategic effect.
The result of struggling to square these two incompatible constraints is settling by default on a strategy of annoyance. A strategy of annoyance is big enough to irritate an enemy but not big enough to produce real strategic effect. It produces increased friction for the U.S. from the enemy so irritated without the compensating strategic effects that build toward real strategic gain…
JF has been en fuego – this is just one of many excellent strategy posts he has written lately.
Part investigative reporting, part anthropology and part analysis, Lex hears trial balloons for 2012 being floated by emissaries from the Party machinery to the well-to-do, liberal activist base, observes their reaction and ponders where the presidential election is headed. A must read for political junkies.
Bruce Kesler –The Immorality of Scapegoating Greece’s Jews
European anti-semitism is on the rise again, as the economic crisis in Greece makes old stereotypes politically fashionable on the Left and Right.
Galrahn –Israeli Soft Power Crushing Free Gaza Movement
….Israel appears to have operationalized the Adapting, Adopting, and Adeptness model with the latest Gaza flotilla. As Melanie Phillips laid out, by targeting INMARSAT and maritime insurance companies with advisory letters ahead of the flotilla, Israel set the bar very high on the issue of compliance to law. Israel has essentially leveraged a lawfare model often effectively leveraged by NGOs against states back against the Free Gaza Movement. The media has frequently discussed the behind the scenes pressure by the United States and Israel, but they have been short on details regarding the pressure points. You see, the Israeli’s and US are pressuring Europeans to rigidly enforce their own laws. That puts a lot of pressure on organizations like the Greek Coast Guard not to make any mistakes, and the resulting red tape is burying the flotilla every time a vessel makes port. Pardon me while I laugh that the most leveraged weapon by Israel against the flotilla so far is European government bureaucracy….
An important analysis by Ray.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING:
John Robb speaks on the business model he is developing.
