Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror
Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror

Author: Robert M. Cassidy

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2006-04-30

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0313070466

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Since September 2001, the United States has waged what the government initially called the global war on terrorism (GWOT). Beginning in late 2005 and early 2006, the term Long War began to appear in U.S. security documents such as the National Security Council's National Strategy for Victory in Iraq and in statements by the U.S. Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the JCS. The description Long War—unlimited in time and space and continuing for decades—is closer to reality and more useful than GWOT. Colonel Robert Cassidy argues that this protracted struggle is more correctly viewed as a global insurgency and counterinsurgency. Al Qaeda and its affiliates, he maintains, comprise a novel and evolving form of networked insurgents who operate globally, harnessing the advantages of globalization and the information age. They employ terrorism as a tactic, subsuming terror within their overarching aim of undermining the Western-dominated system of states. Placing the war against al Qaeda and its allied groups and organizations in the context of a global insurgency has vital implications for doctrine, interagency coordination, and military cultural change-all reviewed in this important work. Cassidy combines the foremost maxims of the most prominent Western philosopher of war and the most renowned Eastern philosopher of war to arrive at a threefold theme: know the enemy, know yourself, and know what kind of war you are embarking upon. To help readers arrive at that understanding, he first offers a distilled analysis of al Qaeda and its associated networks, with a particular focus on ideology and culture. In subsequent chapters, he elucidates the challenges big powers face when they prosecute counterinsurgencies, using historical examples from Russian, American, British, and French counterinsurgent wars before 2001. The book concludes with recommendations for the integration and command and control of indigenous forces and other agencies.

Fish Out of Water: Applying Counter Insurgency Doctrine in the War on Terrorism
Fish Out of Water: Applying Counter Insurgency Doctrine in the War on Terrorism

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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As the United States wages its global war on terrorism, it would be wise to apply lessons learned in earlier counterinsurgency operations. In common with many guerrilla forces, terrorist organizations require sanctuary to train, plan, and carry out attacks. A common goal of both counterinsurgency and counterterrorism is to break the link between the insurgents/terrorists and the local population so as to deny the enemy sanctuary. While there is a military component to any counterterrorist operation, a commander also must take advantage of diplomatic, information, and economic tools developed for a counterinsurgency context when planning operations in the war on terrorism. As a starting point, this paper looks at the basic outline of counterinsurgency operations developed by the United States over the past decades. It then considers how to apply lessons from counterinsurgency to the current war on terrorism, with a particular focus on how the United States should act toward friendly countries that have unwillingly provided (or might provide) sanctuary to terrorists. Finally, it seeks to examine the success of earlier counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines (notably against the Huks in the early l95Os) and evaluate whether these can be applied to the current operations against Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic terrorist/guerrilla organizations. Of particular note in the Huk counterinsurgency effort is the influential role played by the United States, in particular Col. Edward Lansdale. Fundamental to the victory were reforms instituted by Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay, including professionalizing the army, instituting land reform, and facilitating greater popular participation in government. This underscores the importance of local involvement, since success cannot only come from outside intervention. (26 refs.).

Strategic Challenges for Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terrorism
Strategic Challenges for Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terrorism

Author: Williamson Murray

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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"In March 2006, President George W. Bush signed a new National Security Strategy that he refers to as a "wartime national security strategy." He also states in the introduction that to follow the path the United States has chosen, we must "maintain and expand our national strength." One way to do this is to study and propose solutions to the complex challenges the United States faces in the 21st century. At the U.S. Army War College, the students have embraced this challenge and spend a year developing their intellectual strength in areas that extend well beyond the familiar operational and tactical realm to which they are accustomed. This collection of essays written by students enrolled in the U.S. Army War College Advanced Strategic Art Program (ASAP) reflects the development of their strategic thought applied to a wide range of contemporary issues. The ASAP is a unique program that offers selected students a rigorous course of instruction in theater strategy. Solidly based in theory, doctrine, and history, the program provides these students a wide range of experts both in and out of the military, staff rides, and exercises to develop them as superb theater strategists. ASAP graduates continue to make their mark throughout the military to include in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the Combatant Commands."--STINET web site.

COIN of the Realm
COIN of the Realm

Author: Ralph Wipfli

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 4

ISBN-13:

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Participants at the seminar developed these key insights: Regardless of whether counterinsurgency (COIN) will be the dominant form of military activity in the future or simply one of several, the United States needs an effective national strategy which explains when, why, and how the nation should undertake it. The basic assumptions of the current approach need revisited, especially those dealing with the role of the state, the strategic framework for American involvement, and the whole-of-government approach. Given the demands placed upon the armed forces by the current campaigns, most of the effort has been on tactics, training, and doctrine. Ultimately strategic transformation is at least as important, if not more so. Rather than thinking of counterinsurgency and warfighting as competing tasks, the military and other government agencies must pursue ways to integrate them, thus assuring that the United States can address the multidimensional threats which characterize the contemporary security environment.

Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the 'war on Terror'
Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the 'war on Terror'

Author: Tyler E. Boudreau

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13:

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The U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) was published in 2006 and used by the military to consolidate counterinsurgency strategies and tactics and correct the growing military problems in Iraq. However, rather unusually, this military doctrinal publication was also heavily publicized through a wide array of media to the American public giving it an important role in political discourse and the rhetorical history of the U.S. 'war on terror'. Beyond its military application, the FM 3-24 can be understood as a rhetorical device used by the Bush Administration to repair a collapsing 'war on terror' narrative and shore up plummeting public support for the war in Iraq, which had reached its lowest levels at the time of the manual's publication. Still more important is the language in the text itself, which bears a conspicuous tone of benevolence, historically uncharacteristic to military doctrine. Despite this 'spirit of goodwill, ' the FM 3-24, in fact, functions as a segment of the 'war on terror' narrative and an ideological vehicle for American global hegemony directed primarily toward American audiences. This view is justified by three main trends in the text: One, the manual omits mention of, or minimizes, the moral and political impact of military invasions on foreign countries that necessarily precede counterinsurgency operations; two, it relies fundamentally on legal arrangements with occupied countries that favor American prerogatives; and three, it reduces counterinsurgencies to a simple dichotomy between good and evil, the latter role being assigned to anyone who opposes the United States, which therefore denies the political complexities of that opposition. The FM 3-24 is a prescriptive document that has been 1) designed to militarily extend or reinforce American global power through counterinsurgency operations and 2) used politically to reproduce or justify particular attitudes in the American public that will foster support for those operations.

Learning to Forget
Learning to Forget

Author: David Fitzgerald

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-06-26

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0804786429

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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.

State Terrorism and the United States
State Terrorism and the United States

Author: Frederick H. Gareau

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2004-08

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13:

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This is a chilling analysis of the immediate predecessor of the US war on terrorism: its counter-insurgency policy during the Cold War. The US promised a low level response uniquely tailored to assisting third world states to respond to local insurgencies seeking social change. Drawing on the reports of Truth Commissions from six countries, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and Indonesia, Frederick Gareau examines a harrowing array of human rights abuses by US-supported dictators, governments and paramilitary groups against their own peoples. He shows that state and para-statal forces committed by far the greatest proportion of violence, and that these state repressions were perpetrated with Washington's full awareness, complicity, and military and politico-diplomatic support, if not at its instigation.

Hearts and Minds
Hearts and Minds

Author: Hannah Gurman

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1595588256

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The first book of its kind, Hearts and Minds is a scathing response to the grand narrative of U.S. counterinsurgency, in which warfare is defined not by military might alone but by winning the "hearts and minds" of civilians. Dormant as a tactic since the days of the Vietnam War, in 2006 the U.S. Army drafted a new field manual heralding the resurrection of counterinsurgency as a primary military engagement strategy; counterinsurgency campaigns followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that counterinsurgency had utterly failed to account for the actual lived experiences of the people whose hearts and minds America had sought to win. Drawing on leading thinkers in the field and using key examples from Malaya, the Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Hearts and Minds brings a long-overdue focus on the many civilians caught up in these conflicts. Both urgent and timely, this important book challenges the idea of a neat divide between insurgents and the populations from which they emerge—and should be required reading for anyone engaged in the most important contemporary debates over U.S. military policy.

Fighting the War on Terror
Fighting the War on Terror

Author: James S. Corum

Publisher: Zenith Imprint

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780760328682

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A clear-headed, historically grounded strategy for fighting and defeating the greatest threat facing America today: “non-state” enemies such as insurgents and terrorists.

fighting the war on terror
fighting the war on terror

Author: Michael Howard, James Corum

Publisher:

Published:

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9781616739607

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Front flap copy: Terrorists and insurgents, not foreign governments, now pose the greatest threat to America--and how to fight and defeat such "non-state" enemies is the single most urgent and vexing question confronting our military today. This timely book has some answers. Drawing on decades of experience with counterinsurgency--as a scholar, a strategist, and a military officer--James S. Corum brings unique insight to the problems we face. His book offers a deeply informed, closely reasoned and--most valuably--eminently sensible account of how circumstances and our actions (or inaction) have contributed to our present dilemma. With the lessons of recent history in clear view, Corum "lays out a workable strategy for meeting the often-overlapping threat raised by terrorist groups and insurgents. Critical to understanding the nature of modern-day warfare, Fighting the War on Terror" has broad implications for the future course of military, intelligence, and foreign policymaking. No one with an interest in the nation's security can afford to overlook it. Back flap copy: James S. Corum, PhD, is an associate professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in the Department of Joint and Multinational Operations at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was recently a visiting fellow at Oxford University's All Souls College. While serving as a professor at the Air University, Corum developed and taught the course Terrorism and Small Wars. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Strategic Studies and Airpower Journal and the author of four books. A Lieutenant Colonel, Corum recently retired from the U.S. Army Reserve after six years of active duty and twenty-two years of reserve service, including duty in Iraq in 2004.