Nation-building, Stability Operations and Prophylactic COIN

Nation-building, Stability Operations and Prophylactic COIN – Dr. Adam Shilling, PKSOI Perspectives.

The Army is abuzz with the concepts surrounding counterinsurgency (COIN), stability operations and other irregular warfare as the United States contends with a complex international environment. The following will examine these concepts doctrinally and then suggest another way to look at them.

Doctrine is simply a mental model that the military uses to organize and understand its environment and its activities, and then to build a shared understanding of those among service members. The value of a particular mental model—in this case, a doctrine—is not really whether it is right or wrong, but whether it is useful; useful in aiding understanding and in prompting an appropriate institutional response to the environment. An alternative mental model is not necessarily a contradiction of doctrine; it may be merely another useful way of looking at things…

More at PKSOI Perspectives.