Rethinking Western Approaches to Counterinsurgency

Rethinking Western Approaches to Counterinsurgency PDF

Author: Russell W. Glenn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-05-22

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 131759276X

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This book critically examines the Western approach to counter-insurgency in the post-colonial era and offers a series of recommendations to address current shortfalls. The author argues that current approaches to countering insurgency rely too heavily on conflicts from the post-World War II years of waning colonialism. Campaigns conducted over half a century ago – Malaya, Aden, and Kenya among them – remain primary sources on which the United States, British, Australian, and other militaries build their guidance for dealing with insurgent threats, this though both the character of those threats and the conflict environment are significantly different than was the case in those earlier years. This book addresses the resulting inconsistencies by offering insights, analysis, and recommendations drawn from campaigns more applicable to counter-insurgency today. Eight post-colonial conflicts; to include Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Colombia and Iraq; provide the basis for analysis. All are examples in which counterinsurgents attained or continue to demonstrate considerable progress when taking on enterprises better known for disaster and disappointment. Recommendations resulting from these analyses challenge entrenched beliefs to serve as the impetus for essential change. Rethinking Western Approaches to Counterinsurgency will be of much interest to students of counter-insurgencies, military and strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.

Rethinking Counterinsurgency

Rethinking Counterinsurgency PDF

Author: John Mackinlay

Publisher: Rand Corporation

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 0833044753

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"In contrast, the modern jihadist insurgency is characterized by its complex and global nature. Unlike past insurgent forms that aspired to shape national politics, the jihadist movement espouses larger thematic goals, like overthrowing the global order. The modern jihadist insurgency is also more global in terms of its popular support and operational territory. It makes far better use of communications technology and propaganda to reach the minds and hearts of global audiences. The contemporary international security environment has therefore become a frustrating place for Western powers. Despite great technological and military advances, British and U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) operations have been slow to respond and adapt to the rise of the global jihadist insurgency. Operational failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the need for the West to rethink and retool its current COIN strategy.

Rethinking Counterinsurgency

Rethinking Counterinsurgency PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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The contemporary international security environment has become a frustrating place for Western powers. Even with great technological and military advances, British and U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) operations have been slow to respond and adapt to the rise of the global jihadist insurgency. Operational failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the need for the West to rethink and retool its current COIN strategy. By analyzing past British COIN experiences and comparing them to the evolving nature of modern jihadist insurgencies, this document suggests a new outlook for future COIN operations. This strategic framework considers the political, social, and military aspects of an insurgency and likewise looks for a political, social, and military solution. Historically, the United Kingdom has been successful in countering insurgencies faced at home and abroad. During the period of decolonization in Asia and Africa, the British government and military were faced with more insurgent activity than any other Western power. During this time, British forces proved proficient in defeating, or at least controlling, the rebellions rising throughout their empire. Most notable were the British successes in Malaya and Northern Ireland. However, these protoinsurgencies were far less complex and sophisticated than the jihadist insurgency faced today. Past insurgencies were primarily monolithic or national in form. Although the popularity of these past insurgent movements may have spread globally, the insurgencies were working for very specific local goals (like overthrowing a local government), and they derived most of their power from the local.

Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria

Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria PDF

Author: Akali Omeni

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1351597639

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This book offers a detailed examination of the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the Nigerian military against Boko Haram between 2011 and 2017. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with military units in Nigeria, Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria has two main aims. First, it seeks to provide an understanding of the Nigerian military’s internal role – a role that today, as a result of internal threats, pivots towards counter-insurgency. The book illustrates how organizational culture, historical experience, institutions, and doctrine, are critical to understanding the Nigerian military and its attitudes and actions against the threat of civil disobedience, today and in the past. The second aim of the book is to examine the Nigerian military campaign against Boko Haram insurgents – specifically, plans and operations between June 2011 and April 2017. Within this second theme, emphasis is placed on the idea of battlefield innovation and the reorganization within the Nigerian military since 2013, as the Nigerian Army and Air Force recalibrated themselves for COIN warfare. A certain mystique has surrounded the technicalities of COIN operations by the Army against Boko Haram, and this book aims to disperse that veil of secrecy. Furthermore, the work’s analysis of the air force’s role in counter-insurgency is unprecedented within the literature on military warfare in Nigeria. This book will be of great interest to students of military studies, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, African politics and security studies in general.

Counterinsurgency Field Manual

Counterinsurgency Field Manual PDF

Author: The U.S. Army Marine Corps

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 0226841529

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When the U.S. military invaded Iraq, it lacked a common understanding of the problems inherent in counterinsurgency campaigns. It had neither studied them, nor developed doctrine and tactics to deal with them. It is fair to say that in 2003, most Army officers knew more about the U.S. Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency. The U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual was written to fill that void. The result of unprecedented collaboration among top U.S. military experts, scholars, and practitioners in the field, the manual espouses an approach to combat that emphasizes constant adaptation and learning, the importance of decentralized decision-making, the need to understand local politics and customs, and the key role of intelligence in winning the support of the population. The manual also emphasizes the paradoxical and often counterintuitive nature of counterinsurgency operations: sometimes the more you protect your forces, the less secure you are; sometimes the more force you use, the less effective it is; sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. An new introduction by Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, places the manual in critical and historical perspective, explaining the significance and potential impact of this revolutionary challenge to conventional U.S. military doctrine. An attempt by our military to redefine itself in the aftermath of 9/11 and the new world of international terrorism, The U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual will play a vital role in American military campaigns for years to come. The University of Chicago Press will donate a portion of the proceeds from this book to the Fisher House Foundation, a private-public partnership that supports the families of America’s injured servicemen. To learn more about the Fisher House Foundation, visit www.fisherhouse.org.

Paths to Victory

Paths to Victory PDF

Author: Christopher Paul

Publisher: Rand Corporation

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780833080547

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When a country is threatened by an insurgency, what efforts give its government the best chance of prevailing? Contemporary discourse on this subject is voluminous and often contentious. Advice for the counterinsurgent is often based on little more than common sense, a general understanding of history, or a handful of detailed examples, instead of a solid, systematically collected body of historical evidence. A 2010 RAND study challenged this trend with rigorous analyses of all 30 insurgencies that started and ended between 1978 and 2008. This update to that original study expanded the data set, adding 41 new cases and comparing all 71 insurgencies begun and completed worldwide since World War II. With many more cases to compare, the study was able to more rigorously test the previous findings and address critical questions that the earlier study could not. For example, it could examine the approaches that led counterinsurgency forces to prevail when an external actor was involved in the conflict. It was also able to address questions about timing and duration, such as which factors affect the duration of insurgencies and the durability of the resulting peace, as well as how long historical counterinsurgency forces had to engage in effective practices before they won.

Rethinking Insurgency

Rethinking Insurgency PDF

Author: Strategic Studies Institute

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2014-06-22

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 9781312298620

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The U.S. military and national security community lost interest in insurgency after the end of the Cold War. Other defense issues such as multinational peacekeeping and transformation seemed more pressing and thus attracted the most attention. But with the onset of the Global War on Terror in 2001 and the ensuing involvement of the U.S. military in counterinsurgency support in Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgency experienced renewed concern in both the defense and intelligence communities. In this monograph, Dr. Steven Metz, who has been writing on insurgency and counterinsurgency for more than 2 decades, argues that this relearning process, while exceptionally important, emphasized the wrong thing, focusing on Cold War era nationalistic insurgencies rather than the complex conflicts which characterized the post-Cold War security environment. To be successful at counterinsurgency, he contends, the U.S. military and defense community must rethink insurgency.

Stopping the Panzers

Stopping the Panzers PDF

Author: Marc Milner

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2017-05-26

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0700625240

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In the narrative of D-Day the Canadians figure chiefly—if at all—as an ineffective force bungling their part in the early phase of Operation Overlord. The reality is quite another story. As both the Allies and the Germans knew, only Germany’s Panzers could crush Overlord in its tracks. The Canadians’ job was to stop the Panzers—which, as this book finally makes clear, is precisely what they did. Rescuing from obscurity one of the least understood and most important chapters in the history of D-Day, Stopping the Panzers is the first full account of how the Allies planned for and met the Panzer threat to Operation Overlord. As such, this book marks nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of the Normandy campaign. Beginning with the Allied planning for Operation Overlord in 1943, historian Marc Milner tracks changing and expanding assessments of the Panzer threat, and the preparations of the men and units tasked with handling that threat. Featured in this was the 3rd Canadian Division, which, treated so dismissively by history, was actually the most powerful Allied formation to land on D-Day, with a full armored brigade and nearly 300 artillery and antitank guns under command. Milner describes how, over four days of intense and often brutal battle, the Canadians fought to a literal standstill the 1st SS Panzer Corps—which included the Wehrmacht’s 21st Panzer Division; its vaunted elite Panzer Lehr Division; and the rabidly zealous 12th SS Hitler Youth Panzer Division, whose murder of 157 Canadian POWs accounted for nearly a quarter of Canadian fatalities during the fighting. Stopping the Panzers sets this murderous battle within the wider context of the Overlord assault, offering a perspective that challenges the conventional wisdom about Allied and German combat efficiency, and leads to one of the freshest assessments of the D-Day landings and their pre-attack planning in more than a decade.

In the Warlords' Shadow

In the Warlords' Shadow PDF

Author: Daniel R Green

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2017-07-15

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1612518168

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In 2010, U.S. special operations forces (SOF) in Afghanistan began a new and innovative program to fight the Taliban insurgency using the movement's structure and strategy against it. The Village Stability Operations/Afghan Local Police initiative consisted of U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEAL teams embedding with villagers to fight the Taliban holistically. By enlisting Afghans in their own defense, organizing the local populace, and addressing their grievances with the Afghan government, SOF was able to defeat the Taliban’s military as well as its political arm. Combining the traditions of U.S. Army Special Forces with the lessons learned in the broader SOF community from years of counterinsurgency work in Iraq and Afghanistan, this new approach fundamentally changed the terms of the conflict with the Taliban. However, little has been written about this initiative outside of the special operations community until now. In this first-hand account of how the Village Stability Operations program functioned, Daniel R. Green provides a long-term perspective on how SOF stabilized the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, the site of the Pashtun uprising against the Taliban in 2001 led by Hamid Karzai, future president of Afghanistan. In the Warlords’ Shadow offers a comprehensive overview of how SOF adapted to the unique demands of the local insurgency and is a rare, inside look at how special operations confronted the Taliban by fighting a “better war” and in so doing fundamentally changed the course of the war in Afghanistan.

Counterinsurgency Warfare and Brutalisation

Counterinsurgency Warfare and Brutalisation PDF

Author: Roberto Colombo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-21

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1000456072

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This book offers the first analysis of the brutalisation paradigm in counter-insurgency warfare. Minimising the use of force and winning over the population’s opinion is said to be the cornerstone of success in modern counterinsurgency (COIN). Yet, this tells only one side of the story. Drawing upon primary data collected during interviews with eyewitnesses of the Second Russian-Chechen War, as well as from secondary sources, this book is the first to offer a detailed analysis of the long-neglected logic underpinning brutalisation-centred COIN campaigns. It offers a comprehensive systematisation of the brutalisation paradigm and challenges the widespread assumption of brutalisation as an underperforming paradigm of COIN warfare. It shows that, although appalling, brutalisation-centred measures can deliver success. The book also outlines a stigmatised yet widely deployed set of COIN measures and provides critical insights into how Western military blueprints can be improved without compromising important moral and ethical requirements. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, military and strategic studies, Russian politics, and International Relations.