Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning (London: Faber & Faber, 1967), p.14.

2. Charles Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), p.9.

3. See William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale, Captain John F. Schmitt, Colonel Joseph W. Sutton, Lieutenant Colonel Gary I. Wilson, ‘The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation’, Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989.

4. Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, p.4. His definition is close to those in official use today. The US Department of Defense and NATO define insurgency as: ‘An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict.’ Counter-insurgency is therefore, ‘Those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.’ US Department of Defense, Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Related Terms (2001). The British Army defines insurgency as ‘the actions of a minority group within a state who are intent on forcing political change by means of a mixture of subversion, propaganda and military pressure, aiming to persuade or intimidate the broad mass of people to accept such a change. It is an organized armed political struggle, the goals of which may be diverse’.Army Field Manual Volume 1: Combined Operations, Part 10 Counter Insurgency Operations (July 2001), p.A-1-1. The manual opens with a quotation from Basil Liddell Hart that is apposite for this collection: ‘If you wish for peace, understand war, particularly the guerrilla and subversive forms of war.’

5. For interesting accounts of the changing nature of conflict, both written by retired military practitioners, see Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005); and Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004).

6. See, for example, John Mackinlay, Defeating Complex Insurgency: Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (London: RUSI, 2005); Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006).

7. For the RMA debate, see Tim Benbow, The Magic Bullet? Understanding the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (London: Brasseys, 2004).

8. Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, p.17.