The New Physics: Key to Strengthening COIN
The New Physics: Key to Strengthening COIN
by A. Lawrence Chickering
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In a series of short reflections, Tom Ricks neatly summarizes major themes in current thinking on how to strengthen COIN. Sharing a trait that is evident in most current theoreticians, he omits serious discussion about how to recruit the populace of countries threatened by insurgencies to play an active role in COIN. This failure has several dimensions. I want, in this short essay, to address one of the most interesting of them, which relates to the importance of basic principles in physics to counterinsurgency warfare. I will focus, especially, on the difference between the "old" (Newtonian) physics and the "new" physics of quantum mechanics and relativity theory.
Download The Full Article: The New Physics: Key to Strengthening COIN
A. Lawrence Chickering is a social entrepreneur and writer who designs and implements civil society strategies in public policy. He is founder and President of Educate Girls Globally (EGG), which has developed a powerful program for promoting girls' education and empowering traditional communities by reforming government schools, partnering with the government of the very tribal state of Rajasthan in India. Before that, he founded the International Center for Economic Growth, which was headquartered in Panama and played a major role in promoting economic reform in the more than fifty countries over ten years. He is coauthor of Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (2006).
