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Forfatteren behandler generelt og i en række eksempler amerikansk intervention i nationale opstande, befrielseskampe m.v. Analyserer endvidere årsager og resultater af denne - i det store og hele - fejlslagne politik.
Confronting insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has recognized the need to “re-learn” counterinsurgency. But how has the Department of Defense with its mixed efforts responded to this new strategic environment? Has it learned anything from past failures? In The New Counterinsurgency Era, David Ucko examines DoD’s institutional obstacles and initially slow response to a changing strategic reality. Ucko also suggests how the military can better prepare for the unique challenges of modern warfare, where it is charged with everything from providing security to supporting reconstruction to establishing basic governance—all while stabilizing conquered territory and engaging with local populations. After briefly surveying the history of American counterinsurgency operations, Ucko focuses on measures the military has taken since 2001 to relearn old lessons about counterinsurgency, to improve its ability to conduct stability operations, to change the institutional bias against counterinsurgency, and to account for successes gained from the learning process. Given the effectiveness of insurgent tactics, the frequency of operations aimed at building local capacity, and the danger of ungoverned spaces acting as havens for hostile groups, the military must acquire new skills to confront irregular threats in future wars. Ucko clearly shows that the opportunity to come to grips with counterinsurgency is matched in magnitude only by the cost of failing to do so.
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, Harvard University, language: English, abstract: The present thesis examines the factors that led to the development of counterinsurgency doctrine in the United States Army and Marine Corps, focusing on the period from 1898-1940, and why the two organizations had strikingly different approaches and beliefs about the importance of this doctrine. When the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz described war as “simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means,” he was writing primarily with reference to conventional warfare between the national armies fighting for the achievement of a specific set of political objectives. However, Clausewitz's understanding of war is equally applicable to a different kind of warfare: revolutionary warfare, defined by John Shy and Thomas Collier as “the seizure of political power by the use of armed force.” In this type of warfare, the insurgent force attempts to gain political power (usually the power of the state) while the counterinsurgent force—usually the state, although sometimes supported by outside actors—attempts to retain its hold on political power. Revolutionary war is at its heart a struggle for the support of the people, an explicitly political kind of warfare. The problems of waging a successful counterinsurgency have plagued military experts for centuries. In a counterinsurgency, the strengths of a conventional military power are turned into weaknesses, as applying overwhelming force is generally counterproductive to the goal of winning popular support. For most conventional military forces, fighting a counterinsurgency means changing the organization's very way of thinking about warfare. Military organizations known for their technological and conventional warfare prowess are forced to adopt new strategies and ideas when faced with the harassing tactics of insurgents who need only strike when it suits them, while the counterinsurgent force must defend everything, everywhere, at all times. Isolating the insurgents from the population becomes the foremost goal of the counterinsurgency, requiring a delicate and shifting balance of offensive, defensive, and political operations often quite separate from the normal scope of military training and preparation.
For both the United States and United Kingdom counterinsurgency was a serious component of security policy during the Cold War and, along with counterterrorism, has been the greatest security challenge after September 11, 2001. In The Soul of Armies Austin Long compares and contrasts counterinsurgency operations during the Cold War and in recent years by three organizations: the US Army, the US Marine Corps, and the British Army.Long argues that the formative experiences of these three organizations as they professionalized in the nineteenth century has produced distinctive organizational cultures that shape operations. Combining archival research on counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Kenya with the author's personal experience as a civilian advisor to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Soul of Armies demonstrates that the US Army has persistently conducted counterinsurgency operations in a very different way from either the US Marine Corps or the British Army. These differences in conduct have serious consequences, affecting the likelihood of success, the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, and the ability to effectively support host nation governments. Long concludes counterinsurgency operations are at best only a partial explanation for success or failure.
Learning to Forget analyzes the evolution of US counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine over the last five decades. Beginning with an extensive section on the lessons of Vietnam, it traces the decline of COIN in the 1970s, then the rebirth of low intensity conflict through the Reagan years, in the conflict in Bosnia, and finally in the campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately it closes the loop by explaining how, by confronting the lessons of Vietnam, the US Army found a way out of those most recent wars. In the process it provides an illustration of how military leaders make use of history and demonstrates the difficulties of drawing lessons from the past that can usefully be applied to contemporary circumstances. The book outlines how the construction of lessons is tied to the construction of historical memory and demonstrates how histories are constructed to serve the needs of the present. In so doing, it creates a new theory of doctrinal development.
This textbook offers an accessible introduction to counterinsurgency operations, a key aspect of modern warfare. Featuring essays by some of the world’s leading experts on unconventional conflict, both scholars and practitioners, the book discusses how modern regular armed forces react, and should react, to irregular warfare. The volume is divided into three main sections: Doctrinal Origins: analysing the intellectual and historical roots of modern Western theory and practice Operational Aspects: examining the specific role of various military services in counterinsurgency, but also special forces, intelligence, and local security forces Challenges: looking at wider issues, such as governance, culture, ethics, civil-military cooperation, information operations, and time. Understanding Counterinsurgency is the first comprehensive textbook on counterinsurgency, and will be essential reading for all students of small wars, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, strategic studies and security studies, both in graduate and undergraduate courses as well as in professional military schools.
Counterinsurgency is seemingly not of great concern to the U.S. Army today. This may represent a period of remission rather than the apparent abandonment of the mission. It is possible that the U.S. military may again become engaged in counterinsurgency support in the future. In this study, Steven Metz argues that the way the Department of Defense and U.S. military spend the time when counterinsurgency support is not an important part of American national security strategy determines how quickly and easily they react when policymakers commit the nation to such activity. If analysis and debate continues, at least at a low level, the military is better prepared for the reconstitution of capabilities. If it ignores global developments in insurgency and counterinsurgency, the reconstitution of capabilities would be more difficult. Today, there is no pressing strategic rationale for U.S. engagement in counterinsurgency but history suggests that if the United States remains involved in the Global South, one may emerge. American counterinsurgency strategy has unfolded in a distinct pattern over the past 50 years. At times, policymakers saw a strategic rationale for engagement in counterinsurgency. When they did, the military and Department of Defense formed or reconstituted counterinsurgency doctrine, concepts, and organizations. When the strategic rationale faded, these capabilities atrophied. This pattern may be repeated in the future. During the last decade of the Cold War, the U.S. military developed an effective approach to insurgency and implemented it in El Salvador, but this focused on one particular type of insurgency: Maoist "people's war." The El Salvador model may not apply to post-Cold War forms of insurgency. Moreover, many of the basic assumptions of American counterinsurgency strategy appear obsolete. Trends such as ungovernability, the routinization of violence, and the mutation of insurgency change the costs/benefits calculus that undergirded Cold War-era strategy and doctrine. During the current period of remission in insurgency, the Army should use its intellectual resources to analyze ongoing mutations in insurgency and to open a debate on the nature of a cogent post-Cold War counterinsurgency strategy. This strategy should expand its conceptual framework and stress three principles: selectivity, multilateralism, and concentration on secondary support functions including indirect or second-tier engagement. Such efforts will pave the way for the reconstitution of American counterinsurgency should it be required.
"Richard W. Rubright addresses the limits and constraints of technology in enhancing American military capability. Analyzing the confines and self-imposed restrictions on the use of technology as well as current military doctrine, he develops a new rubric for guiding the military in modern warfare... This book is the first to address the role of technology in counterinsurgency operations within operational, tactical and strategic contexts"--Dust jacket.