British COIN (merged thread)

[William F. Owen]

To me the key is, as always, proper context. The Northern Ireland policing/stability ops did not prepare the British Army as well for Basra or Helmand as they thought. But one needn't look very hard to see the influence of Robert Thompson types in US doctrine, nor even British influence in how we've handled sectarian relations in Iraq. . .

You are so right. The first 3-5 years of Northern where chaotic and counter productive. It was only 30 years of hard knocks, that made us any good, and the colonial experience was mostly irrelevant. Basra ran less than 5 years.

- but some Northern Ireland stuff has been very successfully applied in Helmand.

...if you know anything that Thompson said that was either original, insightful and useful, please point me at it.