This textbook offers an accessible introduction to counterinsurgency operations, a key aspect of modern warfare. Featuring essays by some of the world’s leading experts on unconventional conflict, both scholars and practitioners, the book discusses how modern regular armed forces react, and should react, to irregular warfare. The volume is divided into three main sections: Doctrinal Origins: analysing the intellectual and historical roots of modern Western theory and practice Operational Aspects: examining the specific role of various military services in counterinsurgency, but also special forces, intelligence, and local security forces Challenges: looking at wider issues, such as governance, culture, ethics, civil-military cooperation, information operations, and time. Understanding Counterinsurgency is the first comprehensive textbook on counterinsurgency, and will be essential reading for all students of small wars, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, strategic studies and security studies, both in graduate and undergraduate courses as well as in professional military schools.

In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and makes military victory possible. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

An analysis of insurgent warfare, looking at factors that contribute to insurgency.

this is the full color edition.Marine Corps Operating Concepts for a Changing Security Environment describes Marine Corps forces that will be organized, based, trained and equipped for forward presence, security cooperation, counterterrorism, crisis response, forcible entry, prolonged operations and counterinsurgency. The Tentative Manual for Countering Irregular Threats: an Updated Approach to Counterinsurgency Operations, and Countering Irregular Threat-A Comprehensive Approach, elaborate on counterinsurgency operations at higher echelons of command. However, counterinsurgency is warfare characterized by small unit action. This handbook provides a guide for the small unit leader.Purpose: This handbook provides the tactics, techniques, and procedures that may be applied by small unit leaders engaged in counterinsurgency. It is principally focused at the company and below. It describes the nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency, common insurgent approaches, preparation for counterinsurgency, mobilizing the populace, information and intelligence operations, and operations in a counterinsurgency environment. The handbook is not prescriptive but meant to inform. The specific aspects of each conflict combined with small unit leader judgment and initiative will drive how to apply the ideas within the handbook. Understanding Insurgency: Insurgencies date to the earliest forms of government and will continue to exist as long as the governed harbor grievances against authority that they believe cannot be resolved by peaceful means. What is an insurgency? The Department of Defense (DOD) defines insurgency as "an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict." Simply put, an insurgency is a struggle between a non-ruling group and their ruling authority. Insurgents use political resources, to include the increased use of the media and international opinion, as well as violence to destroy the political legitimacy of the ruling authority and build their own political legitimacy and power.1 Examples of this type of warfare range from the American Revolution to the present situation in Iraq. The conflict itself can range from acts of terrorism to the more conventional use of the media to sway public opinion. Whatever form the insurgency takes, it serves an ideology or political goal. What are the root causes of an insurgency? For an insurgency to flourish, a majority of the population must either support or remain indifferent to insurgent ideals and practices. There must be a powerful reason that drives a portion of the populace to armed opposition against the existing government. Grievances may have a number of causes, such the lack of economic opportunity, restrictions on basic liberties, government corruption, ethnic or religious tensions, or the presence of an occupying force. It is through this line of thought or ideal that insurgents attempt to mobilize the population. Understanding Counterinsurgency: What is counterinsurgency?-DOD defines counterinsurgency as "those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency. Also called "COIN." The United States uses a wide breadth of national capabilities to defeat insurgencies through a variety of means. The Department of State (DOS), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) use country teams to generate strategic objectives and assist the host nation government. The military may support those efforts by employing conventional forces, in combination with Special Operations Forces (SOF), in a variety of activities aimed at enhancing security and/or alleviating causes of unrest.

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.

Controversial new history of counterinsurgency which challenges its claims as an effective strategy of waging war.