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> "stop doing COIN in poor countries" is a political solution that requires a top-down policy change Yeah? That was my whole point. You make it sound like it's

• cstross 10y ago
  In the abstract, yes, it's the most sensible course. Unfortunately, from where I'm watching (hint: not an American) it looks like the State Department has an ad-hoc de-facto promotion track whereby you can't make it to the top unless you've got a proven record of running a short, victorious war. Not that this is official policy or anything so formally clear-cut -- it's more like an emergent property of the institution itself, and the priorities that the bureaucracy has evolved to service -- but you don't get to become SecState unless you're a hawk and the best way to acquire hawk credentials is to "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business" as Michael Ledeen put it (according to Jonah Goldberg). (Tertiary source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ledeen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ledeen )
• gozur88 10y ago
  The military doesn't get to decide when to go to war or against whom.