The Cultural Revolution in Counter-Insurgency

Abstract

Michael C. Fowler, Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars: Insurgency and Modern Conflict.Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Pp.183. $49.95/£28.99, HB. ISBN 0-275-98136-3.

Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View on Counterinsurgency, first published in France as La Guerre Moderne (1961), trans. by Daniel Lee, foreword by Bernard Fall, introduction by Eliot Cohen. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Pp.95. $74.95/£41.95, HB. ISBN 0-275-99267-5. US$29.95/£16.95, PB. ISBN 0-275-99268-3.

David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice first published 1964, foreword by John A. Nagl. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Pp.107. $74.95/£41.95, HB. ISBN 0-275-99269-1. $0.00/£0.00, PB ISBN 0-275-99303-5.

Richard H. Shultz, Jr. and Andrea J. Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias – The Warriors of Contemporary Combat. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Pp.316. $29.50/£19, HB. ISBN 0-231-12982-3.

Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Pp.211. US$49.95/£28.99, HB. ISBN 0-275-98990-9.

US Army and US Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency FM 3-24, MCWP 3-33.5 of 15 December 2006. Pp.282 <http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/Repository/Materials/COIN-FM3-24.pdf>.

Notes

¹Adam Roberts, ‘The “War on Terror” in Historical Perspective’, Survival 47/2 (Summer 2005), 105.

²US Army Counterinsurgency Operations Field Manual FM 3-07.22 (interim) of 1 Oct. 2004, see <http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-07-22.pdf> accessed on 26 Oct. 2006.

³Dept. of the [US] Army, U.S. Army Counterguerrilla Operations Handbook (Guildford, CT: Lyons Press 2004), 1–5.

⁴Brigadier Nigel R.F. Aylwin-Foster (British Army), ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2005), 2–15.

⁵John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Experiences of Malaya and Vietnam (Univ. of Chicago Press 2002).

⁶Montgomery McFate, ‘Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship’, Military Review (March–April 2005), 24–38.

⁷See for example the increasingly incomprehensible works of Lucien Poirier pertaining to strategic thinking.

⁸See particularly Adda B. Bozeman, The Future of Law in a Multicultural World (Princeton UP 1971) and idem, Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton UP 1960).

⁹See for example Michael MccGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (Washington DC: Brookings 1987), or Theodore Robert Posner, Current French Security Policy: The Gaullist Legacy (New York: Greenwood Press 1991); Philip Gordon, A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (Princeton UP 1993); David Chuter, Humanity's Soldier: France and International Security, 1919–2001 (Oxford: Berghahn 1996); Beatrice Heuser, ‘Beliefs, Cultures, Proliferation and Use of Nuclear Weapons’, Journal of Strategic Studies 23/1 (March 2000), 74–100; Kerry Ann Longhurst, Germany and the Use of Force: the Evolution of German Security Policy, 1990–2003 (Manchester: Manchester UP 2004).

¹⁰See for example, Beatrice Heuser, Nuclear Mentalities? Nuclear Strategies and Beliefs in Britain, France and the FRG (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998).

¹¹ … which in countries like Germany confusingly seems to label also the ‘linguistic turn’ imported from literary criticism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_turn (accessed on 28 Feb. 07).

¹²Its preamble even begins, ‘We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, … ’

¹³<http://fellowships.aaas.org/PDFs/2004_1210_ORIGconf.pdf> accessed 28 Feb. 2007, 1. See also Montgomery McFate, ‘Iraq: The Social Context of I[mprovised] E[xplosive] D[evice]s’, Military Review 85/3 (May–June 2005), and idem: ‘The Military Utility of Understanding the Adversary's Culture’, Joint Forces Quarterly (3rd Quarter 2005).

¹⁴Sun Tzu translated by Yuan Shibing, The Art of War, Part III (Herts: Wordsworth Classics 1998), Ch. 3, 26.

¹⁵Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, ‘Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq’, Military Review (Jan.–Feb. 2006), 2–12; Montgomery McFate and Andrea V. Jackson, ‘The Object beyond War: Counterinsurgency and the Four Tools of Political Competition’, Military Review (Jan.–Feb. 2006), 13–26.

¹⁶Field Circular 100-20 ‘Low Intensity Conflict’ (US Army July 1986), and US Army Counterguerrilla Operations Handbook (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press 2004).

²⁰FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 1.22f.

¹⁷<www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-07-22.pdf>, 4-3 to 4-6 accessed on 26 Oct. 2006.

¹⁸FMI 3-07.22, 6-10 to 6-21.

¹⁹FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Chapter 3 on Intelligence.

²¹Ibid. 3.22.

²²FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 1.26.

²³FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 5.20f., see also John A. Lynn, ‘Patterns of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (July–Aug. 2005), 27.

²⁴Christopher M. Ford, ‘Speak No Evil: Targeting a Population's Neutrality to Defeat Insurgency’, Parameters 35/2 (Summer 2005), 54.

²⁵Thompson remembered:‘Much can be learnt merely from the faces of the population in villages that are subject to clear-and-hold operations, if these are visited at regular intervals. Faces which are at first resigned and apathetic, or even sullen, six months later are full of cheerful welcoming smiles. The people know who is winning.’ From Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (1966), quoted in Draft FM 3-24, 5–24.

²⁶See Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli and Major Patrick R. Michaelis, ‘The Requirements for Full-Spectrum Operations’, Military Review (July–Aug. 2005), 4–17.

²⁷FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 1.26f.

²⁸Aylwin-Foster, ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, 2–15.

²⁹FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Chapter 4 on ‘Designing Counterinsurgency Operations’.

³⁰FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 3.1.

³¹FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 1.22f, and Chapter 7: ‘Leadership and Ethics for Counterinsurgency’, and Appendix D ‘Legal Considerations’.

³²FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, 3.27.