Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response PDF Download

Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428910352
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 51

View

Book Description
Insurgency has existed throughout history but ebbed and flowed in strategic significance. Today the world has entered another period when insurgency is common and strategically significant. This is likely to continue for at least a decade, perhaps longer. As the United States confronts this threat, extrapolating old ideas, strategies, doctrine, and operational concepts is a recipe for ineffectiveness. Reconceptualization is needed. The strategic salience of insurgency for the United States is higher than it has been since the height of the Cold War. But insurgency remains challenging for the United States because two of its dominant characteristics--protractedness and ambiguity-- mitigate the effectiveness of the American military. Furthermore, the broader U.S. national security organization is not optimized for counterinsurgency support. Ultimately, a nation is only as good at counterinsurgency support as its weakest link, not its strongest. Existing American strategy and doctrine focus on national insurgencies rather than liberation ones. As a result, the strategy stresses selective engagement; formation of a support coalition if possible; keeping the American presence to a minimum level to attain strategic objectives; augmenting the regime's military, intelligence, political, informational, and economic capabilities; and, encouraging and shaping reform by the regime designed to address shortcomings and the root causes of the insurgency. The key to success is not for the U.S. military to become better at counterinsurgency, but for the U.S. military (and other elements of the government) to be skilled at helping local security and intelligence forces become effective at it.

Author: Scott Nicholas Romaniuk
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1482247666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

View

Book Description
A collection of original works covering all aspects of insurgency and counterinsurgency through a multinational lens, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Modern War addresses the need to look beyond the United States and other prominent counterinsurgency actors in the contemporary world. It also reassesses some of the latent and burgeoning insurgent organizations and networks around the globe and suggests alternative approaches to understanding insurgency, counterinsurgency, and conventional and asymmetric warfare as they relate to insurgency and counterinsurgency. This book makes significant contributions to international and interdisciplinary discussions regarding the seminal features of insurgency and counterinsurgency in modern warfare. It also relates topics with terrorism in the post-9/11 era, including the historical roots of insurgency, radicalism in Europe, and regional radical groups like al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba. It emphasizes how issues around insurgency, counterinsurgency, and terrorism permeate or evolve into particular forms of warfare, military operations, and related governmental activities. Using a diversified lens of analysis, the chapters illustrate key elements that spawn insurgency such as insurgents’ beliefs, motivations, aims, leadership characteristics, recruitment methods, operations planning, and responses to state and non-state efforts to contain insurgency. The book also examines how certain terrorist and insurgent operations can remain in the shadows and become secret wars beneath the growing surface threats they pose to the societies in which they breed activity. Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Modern War takes a unique look at a subject that has become widely studied and written about in reaction to modern terrorism and insurgency. It analyzes conditions under which insurgency and counterinsurgency occur from nuanced perspectives that have not previously received full consideration.

Author: Celeste Ward Gventer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137336943
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

View

Book Description
The notion of counter-insurgency has become a dominant paradigm in American and British thinking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This volume brings together international academics and practitioners to evaluate the broader theoretical and historical factors that underpin COIN, providing a critical reappraisal of counter-insurgency thinking.

Author: Walt L. Perry
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833044567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 85

View

Book Description
"Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that U.S. forces need more-effective techniques and procedures to conduct counterinsurgency. It is likely that U.S. forces will face similar, irregular warfare tactics from future enemies that are unwilling to engage in conventional combat with U.S. forces. This monograph examines the nature of the contemporary insurgent threat and provides insights on using operational analysis techniques to support intelligence operations in counterinsurgencies. The authors examine the stages of an insurgency and discuss the kinds of intelligence that are needed at each stage. A number of techniques -- pattern discernment and predictive analysis, for example -- appear to show promise of being useful to intelligence analysis. The authors also explore two closely connected methods in depth to examine the interactions between friendly and enemy forces: game theory and change detection." -- p. [4] of cover.

Author: Paul B. Rich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136477659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569

View

Book Description
This new handbook provides a wide-ranging overview of the current state of academic analysis and debate on insurgency and counterinsurgency, as well as an-up-to date survey of contemporary insurgent movements and counter-insurgencies. In recent years, and more specifically since the insurgency in Iraq from 2003, academic interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency has substantially increased. These topics have become dominant themes on the security agenda, replacing peacekeeping, humanitarian operations and terrorism as key concepts. The aim of this volume is to showcase the rich thinking that is available in the area of insurgency and counterinsurgency studies and act as a further guide for study and research. In order to contain this wide-ranging topic within an accessible and informative framework, the Editors have divided the text into three key parts: Part I: Theoretical and Analytical Issues Part II: Insurgent Movements Part III: Counterinsurgency Cases The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency will be of great interest to all students of insurgency and small wars, terrorism/counter-terrorism, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general, as well as professional military colleges and policymakers.

Author: Steven Metz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781584871798
Category : Counterinsurgency
Languages : en
Pages : 43

View

Book Description
Modern insurgency warfare presents fresh challenges for the United States, which must re-conceptualize its approach to fighting such conflicts. Because the dominant characteristics of insurgency--protractedness and ambiguity--effectively stymie the American military's approach to war, the United States needs to reorient its strategic thinking. The key to success is not for the U.S. military to become better at counterinsurgency, but for the U.S. military (and other elements of the government) to be skilled at helping local security and intelligence forces become effective at it. Adapting tactics and strategies to the realities on the ground is not only pragmatic, but also crucial to success.

Author: Ben Connable
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833049526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

View

Book Description
Insurgencies have dominated the focus of the U.S. military for the past seven years, but they have a much longer history than that and are likely to figure prominently in future U.S. military operations. Thus, the general characteristics of insurgencies and, more important, how they end are of great interest to U.S. policymakers. This study constitutes the unclassified portion of a two-part study that examines insurgencies in great detail. The research documented in this monograph focuses on insurgency endings generally. Its findings are based on a quantitative examination of 89 cases.

Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442256338
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

View

Book Description
This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, reaching back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. His sweeping study will be essential reading for all students of military history.

Author: Ian F. W. Beckett
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473813379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

View

Book Description
An international study of counter-insurgency strategies, tactics, and techniques developed in warzones from Vietnam to Latin America and beyond. Insurgencies account for most of the modern world’s armed conflicts. Leading armies across the globe are constantly developing and adjusting counter-insurgency strategies based on experience in the field. Learning from this experience is essential to ongoing peacekeeping effort. Editors Ian Beckett and John Pimlott brought together a team of expert contributors who provided an international overview of counter-insurgency strategies and techniques as they were perceived and put into practice a generation ago. Each chapter considers a different army and describes its reaction to insurgency, its operations in the field and the thinking behind its counter-insurgency strategy. Changes made in strategy and tactics in response to shifting circumstances and new threats are given particular attention.

Author: Ahmed S. Hashim
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801459982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513

View

Book Description
Years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a loosely organized insurgency continues to target American and Coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqi security forces and civilians, with devastating results. In this sobering account of the ongoing violence, Ahmed Hashim, a specialist on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare, reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt, their motives, and their tactics. The insurgency, he shows, is not a united movement directed by a leadership with a single ideological vision. Instead, it involves former regime loyalists, Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation, foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and elements of organized crime. These groups have cooperated with one another in the past and coordinated their attacks; but the alliance between nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious extremists has frayed considerably. The U.S.-led offensive to retake Fallujah in November 2004 and the success of the elections for the Iraqi National Assembly in January 2005 have led more "mainstream" insurgent groups to begin thinking of reinforcing the political arm of their opposition movement and to seek political guarantees for the Sunni Arab community in the new Iraq. Hashim begins by placing the Iraqi revolt in its historical context. He next profiles the various insurgent groups, detailing their origins, aims, and operational and tactical modi operandi. He concludes with an unusually candid assessment of the successes and failures of the Coalition's counter-insurgency campaign. Looking ahead, Hashim warns that ethnic and sectarian groups may soon be pitted against one another in what will be a fiercely contested fight over who gets what in the new Iraq. Evidence that such a conflict is already developing does not augur well for Iraq's future stability. Both Iraq and the United States must work hard to ensure that slow but steady success over the insurgency is not overshadowed by growing ethno-sectarian animosities as various groups fight one another for the biggest slice of the political and economic pie. In place of sensational headlines, official triumphalism, and hand-wringing, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq offers a clear-eyed analysis of the increasingly complex violence that threatens the very future of Iraq.