War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics

[basquebromance]

in the Afghan conflict, and in contemporary conflicts more generally, liberal powers and their armed forces have blurred the line between military and political activity. More broadly, they have challenged the distinction between war and peace. this loss of clarity is more a response to the conditions of combat in the early wenty-first century, particularly that of globalisation, than a deliberate choice. The issue is thus not whether the West should engage in such practices, but how to manage, gain advantage from, and mitigate the risks of this evolution in warfare.

The tension that animates the argument throughout this thread is the distinction between these practices: first, the use of armed force within a military domain that seeks to establish military conditions for a political solution, a practice traditionally associated with the concept of war; second, the use of armed force that directly seeks political, as opposed to specifically military, outcomes, which lies beyond the scope of war in its traditional paradigm.

"The outcome of an action is usually better gauged by the chat at the bazaar the next day...than body counts. The control of political space is as important, if not more important, than controlling physical space" - Gen David Patraeus

The Insurgents; War From the Ground Up; Blowtorch

Much has already been written about the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq, which led to a marked improvement in the country’s security situation. A good deal of the attention has gone to General David Petraeus’ role in shaping the strategy, which was the culmination of an insurgency of sorts...

www.foreignaffairs.com

 

[basquebromance]

 

[basquebromance]