Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)
Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.
Clearly, they are incorrect. Rome is an example, annected territories embraced the Etruscan/Latin way of life.
This will not apply to all cultures, but positive examples exist: South Korea, West Germany, Japan, Taiwan. US propaganda is just weak, if they do not know how to approch this problem, then leaving might be the right thing to do. This however will result in greater pressure on Saudi Arabia and might induce a domino effect (leaving Syria was probably a mistake).
As for the actual issue, US decision makers should be aware of the fact, that the chess board reaches beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. Mentality is also the key, rearing (the Soviets were masters of brainwash), education, provoking a clash between new generations and the old taliban (or pick whatever clan you prefer) rulers.
Insurgencies will cease to exist, if they are rejected from the inside and will also diminish without any support seeping in from the outside. This is quite comparable to the constellation in South/East Asia, between South and North Korea. If the Chinese and Russian grip on this system would loosen, a unification would be in sight.
Another example that comes into my mind is Ansar Allah/Huthis: Young men are abducted and indoctrinated (possibly by Iran), then redeployed with the phrase: “Death to the West, Death to the US”.
From a development economist’s perspective, I disagree that “road building, school building, and all that has zero impact on winning the people” — it just has little impact if it doesn’t address the felt need of the people to be won. If land reform is the felt need of the people (the felt need of the revolting people rather than of the people who haven’t taken up arms or who aren’t inclined to support the militants) then the response needs to adequately reform the land-access situation (or “clearly” address an underlying issue that makes the other issue to be a mute issue such that giving those metaphorical prize-pigs produces the kind of sustainable prosperity and political/social relevance for those new pig owners that they had envisioned would be the case under land reform).
However, from a spiritual warfare perspective, it needs to be understood that even meeting the felt need might not resolve the issue. In a case involving militancy, the necessary warfare can be against something other than “flesh and blood” — it might not be a matter of appeasing felt needs of militants (or appeasing local gods/spirits or local warlords/rebels), but a matter of prevailing against powers and principalities in the spiritual atmosphere (Ephesians 6:12). The issue of evil can be deeper than what might be envisioned by the development economist, or by the military strategist.