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One of the biggest foreign policy mistakes is to treat an insurgency as a war.
We see this often because war appeals to our baser natures and is unidemensional: go kill the bad guys. Us v.s them mentality is deeply rooted in human tribal behavior. 1/11
We see this often because war appeals to our baser natures and is unidemensional: go kill the bad guys. Us v.s them mentality is deeply rooted in human tribal behavior. 1/11
Insurgencies are more difficult. As Kilkullen discusses in "The Accidental Guerilla", most insurgencies have a core of fanatics who sway, either by threat (if you don't join us, we will kill you) or other means, the more moderate in the populace. 2/11
This leads to the median guerilla being, contrary to what a "war" mentality would have you believe, a relative moderate fighting to generally keep their family safe. The median guerilla is not evil, they are people stuck between a rock and a hard place. 3/11
We risk today falling into the same dilemma, but in the form of domestic politics. Politics is increasingly framed as a war, between us and them. Entire swaths of people are written of as "radical" or "deplorable", and they must be defeated. 4/11
You don't fight an insurgency by annihilating the enemy. It was found in Iraq that patrols in tanks were detrimental to security because the local populace had no connection with the humans driving them. Locals did not offer up intelligence and were not helpful. 5/11
Killing locals, often by accident as collateral damage in skirmishes against the fanatics, also turns the median guerilla more extreme. What starts as a small movement becomes an uprising against a foreign invader seen as WORSE than the fanatics. 6/11
In politics today, both sides are waging a war, and neither is fighting an insurgency. An effective counterinsurgency strategy involves reaching out to those with grievances and offering non-violent solutions and assistance. 7/11
I was for Hillary, but her deplorables comment was itself deplorable. Nobody is born a bigot or a racist, they are MADE into that through circumstance, just as insurgents are MADE into insurgents through circumstance. The answer is not to write them off, it is to ask "why" 8/11
Wokeism is akin to patrolling in tanks. You cannot win over people by telling them their problems don't matter, regardless of their race. And win them over we must, because the alternative is ruin, both politically, and for the very people whose futures look dimmest 9/11
Until politicians and the tribes they represent start reaching across and asking why, converting the median guerilla to their side, we are doomed to watch this insurgency play out as they all do: a quagmire with lots of dead bodies. 10/11
So, going forward, recognize this: you're not fighting a war against "them", you're fighting an insurgency. It means a different set of rules. Stop seeing "them" as the enemy, and see them as people between a rock and a hard place. Start with why, not woke.11/11
