Refurbishing schools, building roads, digging wells, and treating the sick have long been standard counterinsurgency tactics around the world. The political dimension includes a range of civic initiatives to win over the hearts and minds of the population. In waging counter-guerrilla conflicts, politics has played-and continues to play-a central role in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The importance of political considerations in counterinsurgency operations is nearly impossible to overstate. The Prussian military philosopher understood that political objectives dictate the type of war to be waged, its scope, and its intensity.
If war is the continuation of politics by other means, as Clausewitz suggested, then counterinsurgency warfare is the extension of politics to the battlefield.
National Security Strategy of the United States, September 2002
