Conflict Resolution in Small Wars
Conflict Resolution in Small Wars
A Counterinsurgent’s Guide to Controlling the Hearts
by Major Michael Few, Small Wars Journal
Conflict Resolution in Small Wars (Full PDF Article)
Nobel Laureate John Nash’s arbitration for non-cooperative games explains how to negotiate a fair settlement of utility in the midst of irreconcilable differences. This compensation helps to balance the minds of the populace, but it does not account for the emotional or hearts aspect. Utility is merely the value placed on a good or service. To achieve ashura, the constant absence of sorrow, a negotiator must arbitrate the emotional grievances. Nash shows us how to control the minds, but the economic models is exhausted in this limitation.
The current rationale is that these types of conflicts cannot be resolved simply by military or rational, economic action. Paradoxically, the truth may be more subtle yet more complex. Is not one’s heart collectively intertwined with one’s mind? Certainly it is so we must extend past economic theory to offer some resolve. To heal, one must mend both the heart and mind. In the realm of hearts or emotions, sometimes one plus one equals three. Sometimes everything is a paradox.
The purpose of this paper is to explore non-kinetic, non-military indirect methods of conflict resolution for the Iraqi people. To explore these methods, we must turn to the field of psychology. This paper will examine how theories for conflict resolution and substance abuse treatment and recovery methodologies. Collectively, I will merge economic and psychological theory to model the hearts and the minds. In the end, and somewhere in between, this method may allow the United States to transition from the role of occupier to the role of arbitrator, negotiator, and peace-maker. This method allows us to begin redeploying home. Furthermore, this method may serve as instrument of acceptance and healing from our own psychosis derived after the attacks of 9/11.
