"Making the Spoon:" Analyzing and Employing Stability Power in Counterinsurgency Operations
Abstract
This thesis seeks to determine if the U.S. Military's conduct of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations requires the assignment of combat sustainment and support units as the main effort. In assigning these units this new decisive role, the military maximizes their intrinsic organizational advantages in non-kinetic stability operations. Such stability operations encompass what is decisive in defeating an insurgency. However, the design of current combat power analysis tools is not applicable for stability operations. The determination of a unit's capability in stability operations requires a new analysis model. Therefore, the military needs Relative Stability Power Analysis. Defining an organization's relative stability power is its ability to simultaneously represent all the elements of national power in proportion to the scale of the intervention to stabilize a failing state. As the theory of stability power requires a new analytical model, it also requires a new concept of employment. A concept of employing stability power is a hybrid of subject matter on counterinsurgency, crisis response, and domestic policing. In all, this vision of a force with balanced combat and stability power may prove the only acceptable alternative to meet the immediate emergency and security requirements of a failing state.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 11, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA470661
Entities
People
- Sean P. Davis
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College