McFarland Publishers has just put out a new book on Counterinsurgency. It is titled, Counterinsurgency: What the United States Learned in Vietnam, Chose to Forget, and Needs to Know Now by David Donovan. Donovan addresses the key issues relevant to counterinsurgency and provides discussions based on personal experiences with decades of thought given to them afterward. Personal vignettes from his own experiences and from the experiences of others are placed throughout the book to illustrate points being discussed with real-life examples. The book will be useful to both the counterinsurgency planner and the advisor in the field, but it is also a book for the general reader who wants to understand the complexities of counterinsurgency and the implications that come with it.
Donovan focuses a lot of attention on those counterinsurgency advisors. They are the key players in any counterinsurgency effort because they transmit both knowledge and values to their counterparts. He also enumerates “Donovan Dozens," four lists of a dozen "rules" each that are pertinent to different aspects of counterinsurgency.
Donovan is no Pollyanna. He is quite clear about the too-common failure of counterinsurgency programs and the key factors that cause it. Relatedly, he uses the metaphor of the Potemkin village, i.e. facades put up to make things look better than they are, when discussing critically the tendency for over-optimism when considering and implementing counterinsurgency campaigns.