Redux: revisited
p.2 insurgency is a struggle to control a
contested political space
p.6 Modern insurgents operate more like a self-synchronizing swarm of independent,
but cooperating cells, than like a formal organization. Even the fashionable cybernetic discourse of "networks" and "nodes"
often implies more structure than exists.
p.9 In modern counterinsurgency, the side may win which
best mobilizes and energizes its global, regional and local support base - and prevents its adversaries doing likewise.
p.9 In modern counterinsurgency, the security force must
control a complex "conflict ecosystem" - rather than defeating a single specific insurgent adversary.
p.10 we might conceive of the environment as a "conflict ecosystem"
with multiple competing entities seeking to maximize their survivability and influence. The counterinsurgent’s
task may no longer be to defeat the insurgent, but rather to impose order (to the degree possible) on an unstable and chaotic
environment.
p.11-12 The last word belongs to Bernard Fall, who learned
resistance warfare in the French underground, mastered counterinsurgency during the 1950s in Indochina, and reinvented it
during the American effort in Vietnam, before being killed near Hue in 1967:
There are no easy shortcuts to solving the problems of revolutionary
war. In fact, I would like to close with one last thought, which applies, of course, to everything that is
done in the armed forces, but particularly to revolutionary war: If it works, it is obsolete. [JLJ
previous quote was unattributed, but it is sourced to Marshall McLuhan. The original Bernard Fall lecture
delivered at the Naval War College on 10 December 1964 continued as follows] In Viet-Nam and in many other similar situations
we have worked too often with well-working but routine procedures and ideas. It is about time that new approaches
and--above all--ideas be tried; obviously, the other ones have been unequal to the task.
