Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Modern Wars – A Reply to Jones and Smith

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Notes

¹See Frank G. Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Counterinsurgency?’Parameters 37/2 (Summer 2007), 71–87; David Kilcullen, ‘Counter-insurgency Redux’, Survival 48/4 (Winter 2006–07), 111–30. Steven Metz makes related points in Rethinking Insurgency (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute June 2007).

³Bing West, ‘A Quick Note on Religion and Insurgency’, Small Wars Journal blog, 12 May 2007, <http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/05/a-quick-note-on-religion-and-i/>.

²See David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith, ‘Whose Hearts and Whose Minds? The Curious Case of Global Counter–Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/1 (Feb. 2010), 103–5, 110–14. Hoffman raises a related, but far more limited, point about the salience of religion in insurgency in ‘Neo-Classical Counterinsurgency?’

⁴James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’, American Political Science Review 97/1 (Feb. 2003), 79–80.

⁵David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (New York: OUP 2009), 146.

⁶Mao Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung (Beijing: Foreign Language Press 1966), 260–1.

⁷Bard O'Neill derives a larger set of categories of violence, notably ‘terrorism’, ‘coercion’, and ‘demonstrations of potency’. All, however, relate to this general framework. See Bard E. O'Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: From Revolution to Apocalypse, 2nd ed. (Washington DC: Potomac Books 2005), 103–10.

⁸Sir Robert G.K. Thompson, ‘Basic Principles and Operational Concepts of Counterinsurgency’, in Mark E. Smith and Claude J. Johns (eds.), American Defense Policy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press 1968), 261.

⁹David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006, first published 1964), 14–16.

¹⁰Ibid., 16.

¹¹For a more thorough explanation of ‘classical’ counterinsurgency principles, see Thompson, ‘Basic Principles and Operational Concepts of Counterinsurgency’, 266–71; Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 49–94.

¹²Bruce Hoffman, ‘Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq’, RAND, OP-127-IPC/CMEPP, June 2004, 16.

¹³Kilcullen, ‘Counter-insurgency Redux’.

¹⁴See Ahmed S. Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2006), 99–104.

¹⁵See Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2007), 271–9; Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 259.

¹⁶See Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 188–200.

¹⁷International Crisis Group, ‘In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency’, Middle East Report No. 50, 15 Feb. 2006, 23–4.

¹⁸Ibid., i. See also 5–14.

¹⁹Allawi, Occupation of Iraq, 444–7.

²⁰Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 141–2.

²¹David H. Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the US Military for Modern Wars (Washington DC: Georgetown UP 2009), 104.

²⁴National Security Council, ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq’, Nov. 2005, 8, <http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_national_strategy_20 051130.pdf>.

²²See Scott Wilson, ‘A Mix of “President … and Pope”', Washington Post, 16 May 2003; Michael R. Gordon, ‘101st Airborne Scores Success in Northern Iraq’, New York Times, 4 Sept. 2003; Peter W. Chiarelli and Patrick R. Michaelis, ‘Winning the Peace The Requirement for Full-Spectrum Operations’, Military Review (July–Aug. 2005), 4–17; Thomas E. Ricks, ‘The Lessons of Counterinsurgency’, Washington Post, 16 Feb. 2006; George Packer, ‘The Lesson of Tal Afar’, New Yorker, 10 April 2006.

²³See, most notably, Kalev I. Sepp, ‘Best Practices in Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (May–June 2005), 8–12.

²⁵See Brian Burton and John Nagl, ‘Learning as We Go: The US Army Adapts to Counterinsurgency in Iraq, July 2004–December 2006’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 19/3 (Sept. 2008), 303–27. Examples of the military's adaptations during this period of the war include the incorporation of counterinsurgency training at Army and Marine training centers and Gen. George Casey's establishment of a ‘counterinsurgency academy’ for Coalition forces in Iraq.

²⁶See, for example, Bing West, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq (New York: Random House 2008), 69–71, 108–12, 197–205; Linda Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way out of Iraq (New York: PublicAffairs 2008), 25–45.

²⁷The account of the 187th Infantry Regiment ‘Rakkasans’ tour in Iraq in 2005–06 under Col. Michael Steele provides an instructive example. See Raffi Khatchadourian, ‘The Kill Company’, New Yorker, 6 July 2009.

²⁸See Gen. David Petraeus, ‘Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance’, Military Review (Sept.–Oct. 2008), 2–4.

²⁹Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 145.

³⁰See John A. McCary, ‘The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives’, Washington Quarterly 32/1 (Jan. 2009), 43–59; Niel Smith and Sean MacFarland, ‘Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point’, Military Review (March–April 2008), 41–52; Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 158–76.

³¹See Robinson, Tell Me How this Ends, 217–70; West, Strongest Tribe, 295–300.

³²See Seth G. Jones, ‘The Rise of Afghanistan's Insurgency’, International Security 33/1 (Spring 2008), 26–33.

³³Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (New York: Columbia UP 2008), 42.

³⁴Ibid., 43.

³⁵International Crisis Group, ‘Countering Afghanistan's Insurgency: No Quick Fixes’, Asia Report No. 123, 2 Nov. 2006, 11–12.

³⁶Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, ‘Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan’, Orbis 51/1 (Winter 2007), 88.

³⁷See, for example, Miles Amoore, ‘US Air Strikes in Afghanistan “Kill Dozens of Women and Children’”, Daily Telegraph (UK), 6 May 2009; Abdul Waheed Wafa and John F. Burns, ‘US Airstrike Reported to Hit Afghan Wedding,’New York Times, 5 Nov. 2008.

³⁸See, for example, Peter Graff, ‘Afghans Turn to Taliban in Fear of Own Police’, Reuters, 12 July 2009.

³⁹See Jones, ‘The Rise of Afghanistan's Insurgency’, 19–26.

⁴⁰Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 99–113.

⁴¹Ibid., 52–72, 118–19.

⁴²For a thorough assessment of the Afghan insurgency's information operations, see International Crisis Group, ‘Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?’ Asia Report No. 158, 24 July 2008.

⁴³Jones and Smith, ‘Whose Hearts and Whose Minds?’, 116.

⁴⁴See Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 244–61.

⁴⁵See Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press 2004).

⁴⁶Jones and Smith, ‘Whose Hearts and Whose Minds?’, 97.

⁴⁷David Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/4 (Aug. 2005), 608–11.

⁴⁸Ibid., 610.