Download or read book Why Counterinsurgency Fails written by Dennis de Tray and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines why the U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed and presents a solution for future counterinsurgency campaigns that was developed and tested in Afghanistan in the hope that it will spark a conversation that will shape the next counterinsurgency war to U.S. advantage. The author argues that both development assistance and counterinsurgency campaigns - which often go hand in hand - overwhelm weak states with too much money, too many projects, and too many consultants, leading to weaker rather than stronger governments. The solution proposed, was initially developed by David Petraeus but never effectively implemented. Using an insider's perspective, this volume explains the details of this solution and the problem with its mis-implementation in Afghanistan.
Download or read book Bad Strategies written by James S. Corum and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2008-08-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the new way of war: Everywhere our military tries to make inroads, insurgents flout us—and seem to get the better of the strategists making policy and battle plans. In this book, an expert with both scholarly and military experience in the field looks at cases of counterinsurgency gone wrong. By examining the failures of strategies against insurgents in Algeria, Cyprus, Vietnam, and Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel James S. Corum offers rare and much-needed insight into what can go wrong in such situations—and how these mistakes might be avoided. In each case, Corum shows how the conflict could have been won by the major power if its strategy had addressed the underlying causes of the insurgency it faced; not doing so wastes lives and weakens the power’s position in the world. Failures in counterinsurgency often proceed from common mistakes. Bad Strategies explores these at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Above all, Corum identifies poor civilian and military leadership as the primary cause for failure in successfully combating insurgencies. His book, with clear and practical prescriptions for success, shows how the lessons of the past might apply to our present disastrous confrontations with insurgents in Iraq.
Download or read book Deadly Paradigms written by D. Michael Shafer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Shafer argues that American policymakers have fundamentally misperceived the political context of revolutionary wars directed against American clients and that because American attempts at counterinsurgency were based on faulty premises, these efforts have failed in virtually every instance. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Pathological Counterinsurgency written by Samuel R. Greene and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pathological Counterinsurgency critically examines the relationship between elections and counterinsurgency success in third party campaigns supported by the United States. From Vietnam to El Salvador to Iraq and Afghanistan, many policymakers and academics believed that democratization would drive increased legitimacy and improved performance in governments waging a counterinsurgency campaign. Elections were expected to help overcome existing deficiencies, thus allowing governments supported by the United States to win the “hearts and minds” of its populace, undermining the appeal of insurgency. However, in each of these cases, campaigning in and winning elections did not increase the legitimacy of the counterinsurgent government or alter conditions of entrenched rent seeking and weak institutions that made states allied to the United States vulnerable to insurgency. Ultimately, elections played a limited role in creating the conditions needed for counterinsurgency success. Instead, decisions of key actors in government and elites to prioritize either short term personal and political advantage or respect for political institutions held a central role in counterinsurgency success or failure. In each of the four cases in this study, elected governments pursued policies that benefited members of the government and elites at the expense of boarder legitimacy and improved performance. Expectations that democratization could serve as a key instrument of change led to unwarranted optimism about the likely of success and ultimately to flawed strategy. The United States continued to support regimes that continued to lack the legitimacy and government performance needed for victory in counterinsurgency.
Download or read book The Failure of Counterinsurgency written by Ivan Eland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the implications of counterinsurgency warfare for U.S. defense policy and makes the compelling argument that the United States' default position on counterinsurgency wars should be to avoid them. Given the unsatisfactory outcomes of the counterinsurgency (COIN) wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military is now in a heated debate over whether wars involving COIN operations are worth fighting. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of COIN through key historic episodes and concludes that the answer is an emphatic "no," based on a dominant record of U.S. military or political failure, and inconsistency in the reasons for the rare cases of success. The author also examines the implications of his findings for U.S. foreign policy, defense policy, and future weapons procurement.
Download or read book The Salvadoran Crucible written by Brian D'Haeseleer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1979, with El Salvador growing ever more unstable and ripe for revolution, the United States undertook a counterinsurgency intervention that over the following decade would become Washington’s largest nation-building effort since Vietnam. In 2003, policymakers looked to this “successful” undertaking as a model for US intervention in Iraq. In fact, Brian D’Haeseleer argues in The Salvadoran Crucible, the US counterinsurgency in El Salvador produced no more than a stalemate, and in the process inflicted tremendous suffering on Salvadorans for a limited amount of foreign policy gains. D’Haeseleer’s book is a deeply informed, dispassionate account of how the Salvadoran venture took shape, what it actually accomplished, and what lessons it holds. A historical analysis of the origins of US counterinsurgency policy provides context for understanding how precedents informed US intervention in El Salvador. What follows is a detailed, in-depth view of how the counterinsurgency unfolded—the nature, logic, and effectiveness of the policies, initiatives, and operations promoted by American strategists. D’Haeseleer’s account disputes the “success” narrative by showing that El Salvador’s achievements, mainly the spread of democracy, occurred as a result not of the American intervention but of the insurgents’ war against the state. Most significantly, The Salvadoran Crucible contends that the reforms enacted during the war failed to address the underlying causes of the conflict, which today continue to reverberate in El Salvador. The book thus suggests a reassessment of the history of American counterinsurgency, and a course-correction for the future.
Download or read book Insurgency and Counterinsurgency written by Jeremy Black and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, arguing that it is crucial to ground contemporary experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in a global framework. Unlike other studies that begin with the American and French revolutions, this book reaches back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. Interweaving thematic and chronological narratives, Black probes the enduring linkages between beliefs, events, and people on the one hand and changes over time on the other hand. He shows the extent to which power politics, technologies, and ideologies have evolved, creating new parameters and paradigms that have framed both governmental and public views. Tracing insurgencies ranging from China to Africa to Latin America, Black highlights the widely differing military and political dimensions of each conflict. He weighs how, and why, lessons were “learned” or, rather, asserted, in both insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. At every stage, he considers lessons learned by contemporaries, the ways in which norms developed within militaries and societies, and their impact on doctrine and policy. His sweeping study of insurrectionary warfare and its counterinsurgency counterpart will be essential reading for all students of military history.
Download or read book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam written by John Nagl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-10-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances. Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.
Download or read book Why We Lost written by Daniel P. Bolger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A high-ranking general's gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of military command, Bolger offers a unique assessment of these wars, from 9/11 to the final withdrawal from the region. Writing with hard-won experience and unflinching honesty, Bolger makes the firm case that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we lost -- but we didn't have to. Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And, at the root of our failure, we never really understood our enemy. Why We Lost is a timely, forceful, and compulsively readable account of these wars from a fresh and authoritative perspective.
Download or read book Deadly Paradigms the Failure of U S Counterinsurgency Policy written by Michael D. Shafer and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Michael Collins and the Anglo Irish War written by J. B. E. Hittle and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the British Secret Service failed to neutralize Sinn Fein and the IRA
Download or read book The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency written by M.L.R. Smith and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The counterinsurgency (COIN) paradigm dominates military and political conduct in contemporary Western strategic thought. It assumes future wars will unfold as "low intensity" conflicts within rather than between states, requiring specialized military training and techniques. COIN is understood as a logical, effective, and democratically palatable method for confronting insurgency—a discrete set of practices that, through the actions of knowledgeable soldiers and under the guidance of an expert elite, creates lasting results. Through an extensive investigation into COIN's theories, methods, and outcomes, this book undermines enduring claims about COIN's success while revealing its hidden meanings and effects. Interrogating the relationship between counterinsurgency and war, the authors question the supposed uniqueness of COIN's attributes and try to resolve the puzzle of its intellectual identity. Is COIN a strategy, a doctrine, a theory, a military practice, or something else? Their analysis ultimately exposes a critical paradox within COIN: while it ignores the vital political dimensions of war, it is nevertheless the product of a misplaced ideological faith in modernization.
Download or read book Counterinsurgency in Iraq 2003 2006 written by Bruce R. Pirnie and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2008-01-25 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the deleterious effects of the U.S. failure to focus on protecting the Iraqi population for most of the military campaign in Iraq and analyzes the failure of a technologically driven counterinsurgency (COIN) approach. It outlines strategic considerations relative to COIN; presents an overview of the conflict in Iraq; describes implications for future operations; and offers recommendations to improve the U.S. capability to conduct COIN.
Download or read book Counterinsurgency written by Douglas Porch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversial new history of counterinsurgency which challenges its claims as an effective strategy of waging war.
Download or read book Shooting Up written by Vanda Felbab-Brown and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most policymakers see counterinsurgency and counternarcotics policy as two sides of the same coin. Stop the flow of drug money, the logic goes, and the insurgency will wither away. But the conventional wisdom is dangerously wrongheaded, as Vanda Felbab-Brown argues in Shooting Up. Counternarcotics campaigns, particularly those focused on eradication, typically fail to bankrupt belligerent groups that rely on the drug trade for financing. Worse, they actually strengthen insurgents by increasing their legitimacy and popular support. Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on drug interdiction efforts and counterinsurgency, draws on interviews and fieldwork in some of the world's most dangerous regions to explain how belligerent groups have become involved in drug trafficking and related activities, including kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling. Shooting Up shows vividly how powerful guerrilla and terrorist organizations — including Peru's Shining Path, the FARC and the paramilitaries in Colombia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan — have learned to exploit illicit markets. In addition, the author explores the interaction between insurgent groups and illicit economies in frequently overlooked settings, such as Northern Ireland, Turkey, and Burma. While aggressive efforts to suppress the drug trade typically backfire, Shooting Up shows that a laissez-faire policy toward illicit crop cultivation can reduce support for the belligerents and, critically, increase cooperation with government intelligence gathering. When combined with interdiction targeting major traffickers, this strategy gives policymakers a better chance of winning both the war against the insurgents and the war on drugs.
Download or read book Fail written by Jonathan Owen and published by . This book was released on 2017-12 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a military insider's look at why the US counterinsurgency strategy was doomed to failure and details a truly viable strategy for Afghanistan, which promises actual decisive effects in short order. Rewrites how the US military should conduct counterinsurgency operations.
Download or read book The Essence of Desperation written by Bryan Riddle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-01-05 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counterinsurgency is a doctrine premised on winning the population of a nation-state over to the government’s side. Counterinsurgency is also associated with a continuing presence of military forces for long periods and significant aid expenditures. As such, it is a curious strategy to employ in the midst of wars seen as failing and when the population has turned against the conflict. This book examines counterinsurgency’s emergence in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan in order to understand how it is employed in the midst of these perceived war fighting failures. In doing so, it thinks of strategy as narrative that describes how actions will result in better future effects. In so doing, this book traces the ways in which the strategy making process overcomes fragmentation to produce consensus. It concludes that through the examination of how actors, analogies, and narratives are produced and deployed into strategy debates, the reasons for counterinsurgency’s emergence in crisis periods can be determined. This approach enables a better understanding of the dynamics of policy-making and how geostrategic change occurs.
