Arherring on COIN and xGW

Posted by Curtis Gale Weeks, 26 Aug 2010

Arherring. "The Catch: The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN." Red Herrings. August 24, 2010. http://arherring.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/the-catch-the-cognitive-dissonance-of-coin/ (accessed August 26, 2010).
Arherring takes a look at “The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN: Right Doctrine, Wrong War ,” by Jason Thomas at Small Wars Journal.  That article points out the inadequacies of COIN as it has been practiced in Afghanistan while also suggesting that entrenched theorists and practitioners of COIN are inflexible:  their conception of COIN is not only rigid, but various thinkers hold to particular, varying conceptions of COIN.

Jason Thomas offers six suggestions for improving COIN.  Arherring associates these suggestions with on-going discussion about 5GW, particularly highlighting similarities in:

A lively back-and-forth discussion occurs in the comments section to Arherring’s blog post, over whether noting similarities between 5GW and Thomas’ suggestions for COIN might be either a) an attempt to co-opt a confused or vague doctrine (COIN as it stands) into 5GW/xGW doctrine, or b) an attempt to really broaden COIN beyond its current inadequacies by offering a potential variety of COIN doctrines, each informed by xGW.

On 5GW:
“First, working to trigger established rule-sets of a target population’s Orientation by feeding them information in specific context, through their own prefered information channels, is the basis of Fifth Gradient doctrines. 5GW is also inherently strategic in scope, meaning that anticipating the next hot-spot and preemptively targeting it with 5GW operations is required. Above all, adaptability is a hallmark of, not only 5GW, but XGW itself. “

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