A Military Review Special Edition (October 2006) - Counterinsurgency Reading:
A Military Review Special Edition (October 2006) - Counterinsurgency Reading:
RAND, 4 Sep 07: Money in the Bank: Lessons Learned from Past Counterinsurgency Operations
This paper is a product of one of several RAND Corporation research projects examining U.S. political and military capabilities for fighting a spectrum of current and future insurgency threats. It should be of interest to academics, policymakers, military science specialists, intelligence analysts, and laypersons within the United States and elsewhere who may be interested in learning the applicability of lessons from past counterinsurgency (COIN) operations to the insurgencies the United States faces today and may face in the future. The six cases profiled in this paper include the Philippines (1899–1902), Algeria (1954–1962), Vietnam (1959–1972), El Salvador (1980–1992), Jammu and Kashmir (1947–present), and Colombia (1963–present). They were selected to explore COIN operations in regions with varied characteristics relating to geography, historical era, outcome, type of insurgency, and the level of U.S. or foreign involvement, among others. The issues addressed in this paper pertain to the success or failure of several counterinsurgency operations, the counterinsurgents’ ability to innovate and adapt, and the need for a way to recognize the threat and determine what is needed to confront it.....
RAND, 11 Sep 07: Understanding Proto-Insurgencies
Small bands of fighters and terrorist groups usually seek to become full-blown insurgencies as part of their strategy for victory. But their task is difficult. The groups often start out with few members, little funding, and limited recognition, while the governments they oppose enjoy coercive and financial advantages and are seen as legitimate by most domestic and international audiences. Despite these difficulties, some groups do make the successful transition to full-blown insurgency. That transition is the focus of this paper.....
SWJ members,
While attending the AUSA Convention I ran into an old friend, John Antal. He represents EFW (publishes articles pertaining to the Warfighter). For 2008 EFW is looking to publish articles on COIN in SWA. Fom the many and varied posts here at SWJ there are those who deserve to be read. Here is the link: http://www.efw1.com.
Good luck.
Best regards--
Kreker
Last edited by jcustis; 10-22-2007 at 08:38 PM. Reason: fixed link
Hi Cavguy,
John was signing copies of the 2007 Forests of Steel, Modern City Combat From the War in Vietnam to the Battle for Iraq. That book is a collection of articles written by current Soldiers and retired Soldiers. He's trying to get more interest from the Army in providing articles to the 2008 book.
John is a good guy and is doing his part to maintain currency with the Army at war.
Best regards,
Kreker.
I've read a number of his books, being an Armor Officer and such. I remember at Knox he always walked around carrying a saber. The reason I asked was your post jogged my memory about his tactical decision book about NTC, and I just realized that something like that would be useful for COIN.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
COIN Academy Reading List
Small Wars Journal and Abu Muqawama recently commented on the formation of the new U.S. Army Counterinsurgency (COIN) Academy in Afghanistan. We were particularly interested in the Academy’s pursuit of building a first-class COIN library.
So… SWJ and AM have decided to aid in building the library with a little help from our friends. We e-mailed the COIN Academy requesting their reading list. They responded with titles of books and movies that once in hand would go a long way in establishing a world-class COIN library.
To streamline our effort we have set up the Afghanistan COIN Library page on Amazon.
The books and movies you purchase there and send on to Afghanistan will seed the COIN Academy’s library with a few titles that will allow the staff to better appreciate history, culture, and insurgency in Afghanistan. Eventually the titles will make their way to the library of the Afghan Defense University of which the COIN Academy will become a part. The shipping address (while hidden at Amazon) is direct to the Academy and we will track to ensure your book or movie makes it way to Afghanistan.
A tip of the hat to Small Wars Council member Carl (currently a private sector pilot in Iraq and blogger at Because We're Here Boy, No One Else; But Us) who started the ball rolling by e-mailing us an offer to send multiple copies of FM 3-24 to the Academy.
Thanks much for helping us out on this project. What do we get out of this? A pretty darn good COIN reading list!
If you'll PM or email me the mailing address for the academy I'll make sure they're on the distribution list for Strategic Studies Institute publications.
Coupla questions to clarify. What do you do? Just go to that wish list link and purchase it normally, then everything's all automatic?
And about the amazon search: Do you just have to use the search feature here, then buy it as you regularly would, or does something else need to be done? (Does SWJ gets something for any purchase at Amazon by using this method)
Gets shipped direct to the Academy. Just make sure you check the wish list shipping address before you check out. And no, we do not get a referral fee as this list is not linked to our normal SWJ / SWC Amazon account. We tried to link it and planned on using the fee to buy even more books but using that method would not allow us and potential buyers to track which books were already purchased.
Any other purchases through our normal Amazon account - or a donation of course would be most appreciated. Lots or work goes on here at no cost to the members and site visitors...
For those interested, in addition to the FM on the list, another volume on the list, Mao's Basic Tactics, is available on the web ( http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...6/mswv6_28.htm ). In fact, this site has also published Long Live the Victory of People’s War ( http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...9/peoples_war/ ), etc. Another good volume in that genre is, 'The Chinese Army Its Organization and Military Efficiency' by Evans Carlson (of USMC Raider fame).
Last edited by Schuld; 12-13-2007 at 07:02 PM. Reason: clarity
CORRECTION.
Just in the interest of full disclosure. We have subsequently managed to adjust the linkage on the COIN Academy's reading list, and it does now generate an explicitly tagged referral fee within our account at Amazon. Small Wars Journal is reinvesting the referral fees from this effort to purchase additional books on the reading list.
Thanks also to Abu Muqawama, who has made the same modification and is similarly committed to passing on those referral fees to reinvest in the cause.
Note - you get the same low Amazon price no matter how you buy. The referral fee is effectively a slice out of Amazon profits, back to the little guys. Like us. And the COIN Academy. So thanks, Jeff Bezos. And thanks to those of you who choose to modify your Amazon purchasing behavior ever so slightly (i.e. click into Amazon through our site) and thereby help us out. It's a big boost to our tiny coffers.
Note 2 - to any of our coalition partners in this effort (see list at end of entry here), if we haven't gotten the how-to on this fee-generating re-linking to you, let me know. Contact by PM or webmaster@smallwarsjournal.com.
What happened to the list? On Christmas Day, there were plenty of titles left. When I went back this morning to actually purchase/contribute one, it said that all of the titles have been purchased!
Did some grand benefactor swoop in and buy them all for you?
Charlie Foxtrot
... it does seem that all the remaining titles were purchased.
COIN Library by Dave Dilegge, SWJ Blog
This morning I stumbled across (actually it appeared in the left sidebar under Google Ads) what looks like a pretty good resource for students and practitioners of COIN – The Counterinsurgency Library. The site is pretty well organized and contains a lot of historical and recent content. Reminds me of what I had (and still have) planned for our own SWJ library. Until we get there take a look around the COIN library.
Here’s the library’s about statement:
The site is divided into two sections - Hot Topics and What's New. The hot topics include posts by country, other categories, Iraq, COIN tactics and theorists.Counterinsurgency has become a subject of great interest in the last few years, and this website is intended to bring together the literature on this vitally important subject in a single location. This is a collaborative website, in which anyone can enter bibliographical references. A user can – and is indeed encouraged to – annotate the entries. Visitors can also search by topic to find a list of articles about specific insurgencies or issues in counterinsurgency.
Counterinsurgency is a complex subject, as it rests at the intersection of history, economics, military strategy, and even political theory. This site attempts to collect articles on all of these aspects of counterinsurgency. In this respect it is different than other reading lists on, or bibliographies of, counterinsurgency. Some reading lists focus on military issues; others look at specific historical examples.
What makes this site unique is that it is both collaborative and dedicated to both the practical and deeply philosophical issues surrounding counterinsurgency. Many of the articles included here deal with specific counterinsurgencies, ranging from Iraq to Malaysia to Vietnam; other articles address practical questions such as the role of indigenous police forces in counterinsurgency. Still others deal with the theoretical foundations of the state, a subject that, even while largely unacknowledged, underlies all counterinsurgency efforts. At all times, this site is interested in a holistic view of success in counterinsurgency.
Please help us create a resource that can be of use to both scholars and soldiers, to those who are paid to think about counterinsurgency and to merely concerned citizens, and to all who hope for success in the difficult art of counterinsurgency.
Thanks for posting this! The paper by Lawrence Cline on Pseudo Operations is worth it alone.
Military Review Special Edition, August 2008: Counterinsurgency Reader II
Although most of these articles have been previously posted individually, in their respective focused topic areas on the board, this collection is being posted in the specific context as noted below:
Combined Arms Center Special Edition—Counterinsurgency Reader IIIn October 2006, the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center published a volume of selected articles in conjunction with the release and distribution of the Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Subsequently, numerous articles have been written exploring other dimensions of counterinsurgency not treated, or not well understood, when the first volume was published. These articles reflect both the vastly expanded range of knowledge and experience that U.S. land forces have obtained as well as the painful cost of such lessons with regard to fighting and defeating insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Many outline the first-hand lessons learned in the current operational environment. As the Intellectual Center of the Army, the Combined Arms Center recognizes the importance of sharing these first-hand documents. The Counterinsurgency Center (COIN Center) and editors of Military Review have designed this second collection to complement the recently released FM 3-0, Operations and the soon to be released Counterinsurgency Handbook (produced by the COIN Center); FM 3-24.2, Counterinsurgency Tactics; FM 3-07, Stability Operations; and FM 3-28, Civil Support. While doctrinal field manuals lay out principles and supporting theory for dealing with the asymmetric aspects of warfare inherent in insurgency conflicts, these articles are intended to provide specific lessons and observations drawn from operations in the field.
America’s Frontier Wars: Lessons for Asymmetric Conflicts
Congressman Ike Skelton
Developing a National Counterinsurgency Capability for the War on Terror
John Hillen, Ph.D.
Phase IV Operations: Where Wars are Really Won
Lieutenant Colonel Conrad C. Crane, U.S. Army, Retired, Ph.D
Linking Doctrine to Action: A New COIN Center-of-Gravity Analysis
Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, U.S. Army, and Major Mark S. Ulrich, U.S. Army
Using Occam’s Razor to Connect the Dots: The Ba’ath Party and the Insurgency in Tal Afar
Captain Travis Patriquin, U.S. Army
Anatomy of a Successful COIN Operation: OEF-Philippines and the Indirect Approach
Colonel Gregory Wilson, U.S. Army
A Model Counterinsurgency: Uribe’s Colombia (2002–2006) versus FARC
Thomas A. Marks, Ph.D
Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point
Major Niel Smith, U.S. Army, and Colonel Sean MacFarland, U.S. Army
Addendum: Anbar Awakens
Colonel Sean MacFarland, U.S. Army
Commander’s Assessment: South Baghdad
Lieutenant Colonel Ross A. Brown, U.S. Army
Fighting “The Other War”: Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan, 2003–2005
Lieutenant General David W. Barno, U.S. Army, Retired
Combating a Modern Insurgency: Combined Task Force Devil in Afghanistan
Colonel (P) Patrick Donahue, U.S. Army, and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Fenzel, U.S. Army
HUMINT-Centric Operations: Developing Actionable Intelligence in the Urban Counterinsurgency Environment
Colonel Ralph O. Baker, U.S. Army
Human Terrain Mapping: A Critical First Step to Winning the COIN Fight
Lieutenant Colonel Jack Marr, U.S. Army; Major John Cushing, U.S. Army; Major Brandon Garner, U.S. Army; and Captain Richard Thompson, U.S. Army
Paper and COIN: Exploiting the Enemy’s Documents
Major Vernie Liebl, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired
Everything Old is New Again: Task Force Phantom in the Iraq War
Lieutenant Colonel Robert P. Whalen Jr., U.S. Army
A Synchronized Approach to Population Control
Brigadier General Joseph Anderson, U.S. Army, and Colonel Gary Volesky, U.S. Army
The Art and Aggravation of Vetting in Post-Conflict Environments
Sean McFate
Iraq: The Social Context of IEDs
Montgomery McFate, J.D., Ph.D
Iraq: Tribal Engagement Lessons Learned
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Eisenstadt, U.S. Army Reserve
Money as a Force Multiplier in COIN
Lieutenant Colonel Leonard J. DeFrancisci, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
Stabilizing Influence: Micro-Financial Services Capability
James E. Shircliffe Jr.
From Enduring Strife to Enduring Peace in the Philippines
Major Gary J. Morea, U.S. Army
Protection of Arts and Antiquities during Wartime: Examining the Past and Preparing for the Future
Major James B. Cogbill, U.S. Army
Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance
General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army
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