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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Rethinking Victory In Counterinsurgency

Rethinking Victory In Counterinsurgency

U. S. Army War College Press

Paperback

Military Strategy

ISBN10: 1505772354
ISBN13: 9781505772357
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Dec 27 2014
Pages: 40
Weight: 0.15
Height: 0.08 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Americans are averse to war and easily frustrated with wars of limited objectives. As such, Americans have a cultural aversion to counterinsurgency (COIN). Moreover, Americans have grown to expect total victory in the form of unconditional surrender as the termination of any conflict. We consider anything less as a loss or stalemate. The nature of COIN is inherently political, eighty percent political and twenty percent military. It has been said that there cannot be a purely military solution to an insurgency because insurgency is not a primarily military activity. As such, the use of the term victory as a description of the termination of conflict when the U.S. involves itself in COIN is problematic. The political nature of COIN and the American way of viewing war and termination of conflict require that we adopt a new definition of victory in a COIN operation. The term victory, as the term is classically defined and as viewed by Americans, does not fit in COIN planning or execution owing to the nature of the objective in a COIN operation. In any conflict, the definition of what constitutes victory and who defines victory can remain fluid and this is especially true in COIN. A comparison of the British experience in Northern Ireland, which many consider victory, to the U.S. experience in Iraq, which many consider a loss, demonstrates the need for a better definition for the termination of a COIN operation. Based on analysis of the outcomes of historical case studies of COIN operations and what portends to be the future of warfare, this book argues that we create a definition of success for the termination of a COIN operation and replace the term victory in COIN in the military's vocabulary.

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