22
" I’ve written elsewhere in detail on the intellectual history of counterinsurgency, and on various critiques of the theory.120 For now, though, it’s enough to note that there is solid evidence that counterinsurgency, or COIN, can work if done properly, with sufficient resources, for long enough.121 But it’s also clear that COIN is not the answer to every question. Likewise, counterterrorism (ranging from the comprehensive “global war on terrorism” of President George W. Bush’s administration to President Obama’s unrestrained drone warfare) can help to temporarily suppress a particular type of threat, but it can’t do much about the broad and complex range of challenges we’re about to face. In fact, any theory of conflict that’s organized around dealing with a single type of enemy is unlikely to be very helpful in a conflict environment that includes multiple overlapping threats and challenges. "
― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
23
" the strongest US capabilities are clustered in the center of the spectrum, from economic through military, space, and cyber capability. Thus, any Chinese attempt to escalate in this part of the spectrum would involve symmetrical confrontation and possible conflict. Outside that zone of confrontation, in the categories of social, legal, and infrastructure activity, China would be better placed to compete, given weaker American capabilities and the fact that US leaders might not consider these part of the conflict spectrum, "
― David Kilcullen , The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West
24
" Instead, to deal with complex future conflicts, we’re going to need something more like a unified field theory: an approach that is framed around the common features of all types of threats (rather than optimized for the particular characteristics of any one type of threat) and considers the environment in toto as a single unified system. We’ll need to acknowledge that many security challenges in the future environment will be “threats without enemies,” which, by definition, are just not amenable to military solutions. And we’ll need to recognize that even when there’s an identifiable adversary—usually, but not always, a nonstate armed group—there are still no purely military solutions to many of the challenges we will encounter, meaning that disciplines such as law enforcement, urban planning, city administration, systems design, public health, and international development are likely to play a key part in any future theory of conflict. "
― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
25
" This theory has been part of many people’s thinking about insurgency and civil war for a long time. But the cases we’ve examined in this chapter suggest that it applies to any nonstate armed group that preys on a population. It applies to insurgents, terrorists, drug cartels, street gangs, organized crime syndicates, pirates, and warlords, and it provides useful explanations and insights for law enforcement, civil war, and diffuse social conflict—not just for insurgency. I will suggest that we treat this theory (until another theory emerges that better fits the available facts) as a working model for dealing with future threats. "
― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
29
" By this time (in mid-2012) the country had been without a functioning government for more than twenty years, and the city was a byword for chaos, lawlessness, corruption, and violence. But this wasn’t the Mogadishu we saw. Far from it: on the surface, the city was a picture of prosperity. Many shops and houses were freshly painted, and signs on many street corners advertised auto parts, courses in business and English, banks, money changers and remittance services, cellphones, processed food, powdered milk, cigarettes, drinks, clothes, and shoes. The Bakara market in the center of town had a monetary exchange, where the Somali shilling—a currency that has survived without a state or a central bank for more than twenty years—floated freely on market rates that were set and updated twice daily. There were restaurants, hotels, and a gelato shop, and many intersections had busy produce markets. The coffee shops were crowded with men watching soccer on satellite television and good-naturedly arguing about scores and penalties. Traffic flowed freely, with occasional blue-uniformed, unarmed Somali National Police officers (male and female) controlling intersections. Besides motorcycles, scooters, and cars, there were horse-drawn carts sharing the roads with trucks loaded above the gunwales with bananas, charcoal, or firewood. Offshore, fishing boats and coastal freighters moved about the harbor, and near the docks several flocks of goats and sheep were awaiting export to cities around the Red Sea and farther afield. Power lines festooned telegraph poles along the roads, many with complex nests of telephone wires connecting them to surrounding buildings. Most Somalis on the street seemed to prefer cellphones, though, and many traders kept up a constant chatter on their mobiles. Mogadishu was a fully functioning city. "
― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
30
" Since irregular combatants don’t have the combat power to stand up to government forces in a direct fight, they tend to hide, and thus to rely on cover and concealment. The concealment and protection afforded by complex environments help them avoid detection by security forces, letting them move freely and fight only when and where they choose. For this reason, guerrillas, bandits, and pirates have always flourished in areas where cover was good and government presence was weak. For most of human history, this meant remote, forested, mountainous areas such as the Afghan mountains discussed in the preface. But with the unprecedented level of global urbanization, this pattern is changing, prompting a major shift in the character of conflict. In the future environment of overcrowded, undergoverned, urban, coastal areas—combined with increasingly excellent remote surveillance capabilities (including drones, satellites, and signals intelligence) in remote rural areas—the cover is going to be in the cities. "
― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
37
" The gang leader in each area, known as a “don,” maintained a group of armed followers or “shooters” who acted as enforcers, kept down petty crime, and enforced a strict normative system of punishment and reward upon the population. The don acted as a mediator and resolver of disputes, liaised with police and city authorities to manage violence and crime, and became an intermediary for the distribution of government handouts—jobs, housing, welfare benefits, contracts—to the population. "
― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
