Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya And Vietnam

Author : John Nagl
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313077037
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam written by John Nagl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-10-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances. Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.

Author : John Nagl
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam written by John Nagl and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2002-10-30 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares performances of the British and U.S. Armies in Southeast Asia to isolate key variables that allowed or prevented successful adaptation to events on the ground.

Author : Gian Gentile
Publisher : New Press, The
ISBN 13 : 1595588965
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wrong Turn written by Gian Gentile and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing indictment of US strategy in Afghanistan from a distinguished military leader and West Point military historian—“A remarkable book” (National Review). In 2008, Col. Gian Gentile exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals with an article titled “Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities,” that appeared in World Politics Review. While the years of US strategy in Afghanistan had been dominated by the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN), Gentile and a small group of dissident officers and defense analysts began to question the necessity and efficacy of COIN—essentially armed nation-building—in achieving the United States’ limited core policy objective in Afghanistan: the destruction of Al Qaeda. Drawing both on the author’s experiences as a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War and his research into the application of counterinsurgency in a variety of historical contexts, Wrong Turn is a brilliant summation of Gentile’s views of the failures of COIN, as well as a trenchant reevaluation of US operations in Afghanistan. “Gentile is convinced that Obama’s ‘surge’ in Afghanistan can’t work. . . . And, if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats . . . who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare . . . may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board.” —The New Republic

Author : John A. Nagl
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0698176359
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Knife Fights written by John A. Nagl and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington When John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl was an early convert to the view that America’s greatest future threats would come from asymmetric warfare—guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents. But that made him an outsider within the army; and as if to double down on his dissidence, he scorned the conventional path to a general’s stars and got the military to send him back to Oxford to study the history of counterinsurgency in earnest, searching for guideposts for America. The result would become the bible of the counterinsurgency movement, a book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. But it would take the events of 9/11 and the botched aftermath of the Iraq invasion to give counterinsurgency urgent contemporary relevance. John Nagl’s ideas finally met their war. But even as his book began ricocheting around the Pentagon, Nagl, now operations officer of a tank battalion of the 1st Infantry Division, deployed to a particularly unsettled quadrant of Iraq. Here theory met practice, violently. No one knew how messy even the most successful counterinsurgency campaign is better than Nagl, and his experience in Anbar Province cemented his view. After a year’s hard fighting, Nagl was sent to the Pentagon to work for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, where he was tapped by General David Petraeus to coauthor the new army and marine counterinsurgency field manual, rewriting core army doctrine in the middle of two bloody land wars and helping the new ideas win acceptance in one of the planet’s most conservative bureaucracies. That doctrine changed the course of two wars and the thinking of an army. Nagl is not blind to the costs or consequences of counterinsurgency, a policy he compared to “eating soup with a knife.” The men who died under his command in Iraq will haunt him to his grave. When it comes to war, there are only bad choices; the question is only which ones are better and which worse. Nagl’s memoir is a profound education in modern war—in theory, in practice, and in the often tortured relationship between the two. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of America’s soldiers and the purposes for which their lives are put at risk.

Author : Mark Moyar
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300156014
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Question of Command written by Mark Moyar and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moyar presents a wide-ranging history of counterinsurgency which draws on the historical record and interviews with hundreds of counterinsurgency veterans. He identifies the ten critical attributes of counterinsurgency leadership and reveals why these attributes have been more prevalent in some organizations than others.

Author : Jeremy Black
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442256338
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Insurgency and Counterinsurgency written by Jeremy Black and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, arguing that it is crucial to ground contemporary experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in a global framework. Unlike other studies that begin with the American and French revolutions, this book reaches back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. Interweaving thematic and chronological narratives, Black probes the enduring linkages between beliefs, events, and people on the one hand and changes over time on the other hand. He shows the extent to which power politics, technologies, and ideologies have evolved, creating new parameters and paradigms that have framed both governmental and public views. Tracing insurgencies ranging from China to Africa to Latin America, Black highlights the widely differing military and political dimensions of each conflict. He weighs how, and why, lessons were “learned” or, rather, asserted, in both insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. At every stage, he considers lessons learned by contemporaries, the ways in which norms developed within militaries and societies, and their impact on doctrine and policy. His sweeping study of insurrectionary warfare and its counterinsurgency counterpart will be essential reading for all students of military history.

Author : John A. Nagl
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780226567709
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife written by John A. Nagl and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nagl considers the crucial question of how armies adapt to changing circumstances during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared. This book is a timely examination of the lessons of previous counterinsurgency campaigns that will be hailed by both military leaders and interested civilians.

Author : Karl Hack
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110708010X
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Malayan Emergency written by Karl Hack and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth and multi-perspective study of anti-colonial resistance and counterinsurgency in the Malayan Emergency and its impact on Malaysia.

Author : Hannah Gurman
Publisher : New Press, The
ISBN 13 : 1595588256
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hearts and Minds written by Hannah Gurman and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book of its kind, Hearts and Minds is a scathing response to the grand narrative of U.S. counterinsurgency, in which warfare is defined not by military might alone but by winning the "hearts and minds" of civilians. Dormant as a tactic since the days of the Vietnam War, in 2006 the U.S. Army drafted a new field manual heralding the resurrection of counterinsurgency as a primary military engagement strategy; counterinsurgency campaigns followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that counterinsurgency had utterly failed to account for the actual lived experiences of the people whose hearts and minds America had sought to win. Drawing on leading thinkers in the field and using key examples from Malaya, the Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Hearts and Minds brings a long-overdue focus on the many civilians caught up in these conflicts. Both urgent and timely, this important book challenges the idea of a neat divide between insurgents and the populations from which they emerge—and should be required reading for anyone engaged in the most important contemporary debates over U.S. military policy.

Author : Ganesh Sitaraman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199930317
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Counterinsurgent's Constitution written by Ganesh Sitaraman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the "surge" in Iraq in 2006, counterinsurgency effectively became America's dominant approach for fighting wars. Yet many of the major controversies and debates surrounding counterinsurgency have turned not on military questions but on legal ones: Who can the military attack with drones? Is the occupation of Iraq legitimate? What tradeoffs should the military make between self-protection and civilian casualties? What is the right framework for negotiating with the Taliban? How can we build the rule of law in Afghanistan? The Counterinsurgent's Constitution tackles this wide range of legal issues from the vantage point of counterinsurgency strategy. Ganesh Sitaraman explains why law matters in counterinsurgency: how it operates on the ground and how law and counterinsurgency strategy can be better integrated. Counterinsurgency, Sitaraman notes, focuses on winning over the population, providing essential services, building political and legal institutions, and fostering economic development. So, unlike in conventional war, where law places humanitarian restraints on combat, law and counterinsurgency are well aligned and reinforce one another. Indeed, following the law and building the rule of law is not just the right thing to do, it is strategically beneficial. Moreover, reconciliation with enemies can both help to end the conflict and preserve the possibility of justice for war crimes. Following the rule of law is an important element of success. The first book on law and counterinsurgency strategy, The Counterinsurgent's Constitution seamlessly integrates law and military strategy to illuminate some of the most pressing issues in warfare and the transition from war to peace. Its lessons also apply to conflicts in Libya and other hot-spots in the Middle East.