COIN: A Symposium, April 16-20, 1962
Another classic reprint from RAND: Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16-20, 1962
Quote:
This report is based on the Symposium on Counterinsurgency held at RAND’s Washington Office during the week of 16 April 1962. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together those with first-hand experience of guerrilla and counterguerrilla warfare for informal exchanges of information that might lead to fresh insights and a detailed body of expert knowledge. The subjects discussed include patterns and techniques of counterinsurgency, effective organizational and operational approaches, political action, psychological warfare, intelligence and counterintelligence, and requirements for victory. This new release of the report includes a new foreword by Stephen T. Hosmer that elucidates the relevance of this symposium to contemporary guerrilla and counterguerrilla operations.
Formal Participants
Charles T.R. Bohannan, Lieutenant Colonel, AUS-Ret.
Wendell W. Fertig, Colonel, USA-Ret.
David Galula, Lieutenant Colonel (French Marine Corps)
Anthony S. Jeapes, Captain (British Army)
Frank E. Kitson, MBE, MC, Lieutenant Colonel (British Army)
Edward Geary Lansdale, Brigadier General, USAF
Rufus C. Phillips, III
David Leonard Powell-Jones, DSO, OBEY Brigadier General (British Army)
John R. Shirley, OBE, Colonel (British Army-Ret.)
Napoleon D. Valeriano, Colonel (formerly with the Armed Forces of the Philippines)
John F. White, Colonel (Royal Australian Army)
Samuel V. Wilson, Lieutenant Colonel, USA
Meeting Lt. Col. David Galula - April 1962
Meeting Lt. Col. David Galula - April 1962
by Rufus Phillips, Small Wars Journal Retrospective
Meeting Lt. Col. David Galula - April 1962 (Full PDF Article)
Quote:
In April 1962, I participated in a RAND Symposium on Counterinsurgency held in Washington, D.C, along with my old boss from the 1954–56 days in South Vietnam, General Edward G. Lansdale, and a number of others. Lansdale had been the key advisor to Ramon Magsaysay in the successful campaign against the communist Huks in the Philippines and then in the successful birth of the Republic of South Vietnam in 1954–56. I had worked under him advising the Vietnamese Army in its occupation and pacification of large areas in South Vietnam previously controlled by the communist controlled Vietminh (predecessors to the Vietcong), and I had moved on to Laos to try to help that government counter Pathet Lao subversion in the villages through civic action.
I did not participate in the first few symposium sessions, but heard from Lansdale that there was a very unusual French officer named David Galula present, who had a lot of good ideas that sounded very much like our own. As I got involved in discussions with Col. Galula, I discovered he wasn’t anything like the vast majority of the French officers I had tried to work with as part of a joint American-French military advisory mission (called TRIM) in the 1954–55 days in Vietnam. Most had a colonial attitude toward the Vietnamese and saw them as lesser beings. Col. Galula, however, was different. He didn’t maintain an attitude of superiority. Rather, his mission involved trying to help the local Algerian population as their friend, and he imbued his troops with that attitude...
