Robb's comeback on Mumbai
Friday, July 14, 2006 at 8:44AM Found as an update to his original: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/07/bombing_systems.html.
John's point on "think Israel, not Vietnam" is a good one. But I think it works better for me than him.
I'll take Israel's enduring connectivity and resilience, no matter what counter-guerrilla wars they are forced to wage.
But in the end, Israel's Old Testament choices reveal themselves to be strategically unsound, in that they do not get them what they really want: eyes for eyes makes the Middle East blind.
Our model here is not Israel, but the Brits in Northern Ireland. This is what Chiarella argues and seeks to achieve. It's is amazingly hard stuff (reducing kinetcs on all sides), requiring a discipline among troops that is profound and hard to train up.
And John, that's why the COIN won't push 4GW. The celebration of gore implied far too often in its enunciation makes it inappropriate for a Field Manual. Full-throated 4GW (is there any other kind?) is too Israeli and too Old Testament in tone. What Petraeus and Nagl and Crane and others are reaching for here is counter-4GW that recognizes, sensibly, the limits of military power. 4GW adherents want too often to militarize our responses or make our military too much of the lead. Don't assume that countering 4GW looks like 4GW. Assume we meet their asymmetry with a better version of our own asymmetry. Defeating 4GW doesn't mean you become adept at 4GW. It means you become supremely resilient, as in, anything you can do I can counter faster.
Reader Comments (2)
Tom,
I'm not sure how resilient Israel would be without the ongoing receipt of billions in aid from the United States.
Removing that would change little. You need to read up on Israel's amazing business climate. By all accounts and measures by people like The Economist, Israel's risk-taking business culture is second only to the United States.
Remove that aid, Israel just takes more risks, and that wouldn't tap their society much at all.
Now Egypt, that would be a different matter.