In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on February 4, 2010

It’s been a busy, but stimulating, week so far.  I just got back from a presentations on Canada’s Evolving Mission in Afghanistan, and I’m preparing to head down to Quantico on Sunday for an interesting workshop next week.  This week and, to a lessor degree last week, have been quite synergistic in terms of my thinking about COIN.  I’m not really ready to put down any models just yet, but I have been toying with some interesting questions.

Some questions I’m toying with

1. If Warfare is an extension of politics / policy by other means, as Clausewitz argued, then is insurgency also an extension of politics?  If so, how?

2. When is an insurgency not an insurgency?  At the moment, I can only answer this by quoting an old truism “Treason never prospers, and here’s the reason; for if it does, none dare call it treason”.

3. How much of “normal” government policy social programing should be considered as a “counter-insurgency” expenditure?  NB: This question comes out of what I see as a rather alarmist attitude towards Canada’s First Nations.

4. Should we junk the entire vocabulary of COIN and replace it with something more dynamic?

A few comments

Most models of insurgency / COIN are predicated on some form of the post-Westphalian nation state.  This works for some societies but, as a general model applicable to the organizational dynamics of the species it is terrible.  It is like looking in a mirror and attempting to say that I see absolute truth; in other words, it is an ego-centric illusion that is dangerous.

What can we base our models on, however, if the post-Westphalian nation state is but a “passing glory”?  Well, we could base them on what appear to be better representations of how we, as a species, organize ourselves.  This is why I tend to use a lot of Alan Fiske’s work when I think about things (okay, and Malinowski’s work, too).  The key, to my mind (my bias if you will), is to develop models that are emergent; yes, Lucy, Athena did spring from Zeus’ head, and insurgencies spring from the collective myths we create.

Category: Anthropology, COIN
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