Introduction, Continued
The second reason we have undertaken this project is that the existing scholarly literature on insurgency, for all of its great sweeps of description, analysis, and creativity, has shortcomings. It is dominated by several types of works. One includes "how to" manuals, normally written by a practitioner experienced at either making insurgency or countering it. This genre is extensive. A catalog of it would include such luminaries as T.E. Lawrence, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Vo Nguyen Giap, Carlos Marighella, Richard Taber, and, from the counterinsurgency perspective David Galula, Roger Trinquier, Frank Kitson, Julian Paget, and Robert Thompson. Several U.S. military officers who have developed expertise on insurgency and explained it on the pages of military journals such as Parameters and Military Review would fall into this group, including U.S. Army generals Peter Chiarelli and David Petreaus and retired colonels John D. Waghelstein and Kalev Sepp, British brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, retired British brigadier Gavin Bulloch, and former Australian army officer David Kilcullen. Closely related are writers from within the military, intelligence, or defense analytical communities who, while bringing impressive scholarship to bear, are concerned with what the U.S. government calls "actionable" analysis. They not only provide assessments, but derive strategic and operational recommendations from them, seeking praxis. This group would include John McCuen, Douglas Blaufarb, Bard O'Neill, Thomas X. Hammes, Robert Cassidy, Bruce Hoffman, John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and Max Manwaring among others. A third group would include academic historians or political scientists with an historical bent such as Robert Asprey, Ian Beckett and Anthony Joes.
In the broadest sense, then, the literature consists of "how to" analysis or historical narrative. Without deprecating the importance of either, we seek something different, specifically to unveil and explain the dynamics of insurgency. The first part oif our appraoch will explain and assess the context of insurgency. There are specific political, cultural, and strategic settings in which insurgencies tend to emerge and flourish. We will not pursue the "causes" per se, but will explore the factors which facilitate insurgency. The second will explore the conceptual maps of those who undertake insurgency, who confront it, who support it or those who use it, or who become inadvertent participants. These are composed of discrete decisions. We will, as much as the data allows, explore the key strategic decisions made by participants in insurgency (to include counterinsurgency). For each strategic decision, we know what was decided, but will explore and assess why decisions were made the way they were. What were the expectations of the participants? Their priorities? What other options might they have considered? Why, in other words, did they make the decision they did rather than a different one (which likely would have had a different result)? In a sense, within these pages we will emulate the powerful analytical and teaching tools used by many militaries. The first is the "staff ride." In this, experts take groups to places on battlefields then provide background information to help them understand why, at that place and at a given time, military commanders thought and decided as they did. While we will not take readers to the scene of insurgent conflict, we will attempt to do so in a virtual sense. The second tool is wargaming. Advanced militaries make extensive use of this, having game participants role play, giving them information that those actually involved in warfighting or strategic decisionmaking would have, then seeing how they respond. And why.
Rather than stand alone case studies of past or present insurgencies, we will use a wide range of vignettes to illustrate its dynamics. Our goal will be to integrate vignettes from a wide range of insurgencies. Like any type of armed conflict, insurgency has some cross-cutting characteristics but also a number of regional or cultural peculiarities. Thus we will exploit illustrative examples from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Finally, we will tackle this project from the perspective of four participants in insurgency: insurgents themselves (whom we will call "the desperate"); counterinsurgents ("the beleaguered"); outside states which support either insurgents or counterinsurgents ("the manipulators"); and, other groups, whether armed or unarmed, which affect insurgencies to include militias, organized crime, private military corporations, the international media, international organizations, and humanitarian relief organizations ("the shapers"). Ultimately, our hope is to provide a new perspective, perhaps even a radical one, on an old phenomenon that, after a very brief slumber, is again capturing the attention of scholars and security professionals.
Originally Posted by selil
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