Learning, Adapting, Applying: US Counter-Insurgency Doctrine and Practice

Dec 2007, Vol. 152, No. 6
By Alexander Alderson

Writing doctrine for countering insurgency faces two major problems. The first is that governments, their institutions and their people have changed since the last time they considered the problem. What is feasible today is different from that which was feasible for El Salvador, Vietnam, Algeria, Northern Ireland or Malaya. The interdepartmental and international gearing, a key feature of some past campaigns, is rusty and the organizational understanding across and between governments is a work in progress. Nevertheless, we are at a historic turning point in the evolution of counterinsurgency doctrine, something which is reasonably well known and increasingly better understood. John Mackinlay, David Kilcullen and Steven Metz1 are but three who have pointed out that the warning signs, which have been there for some time, say ‘Things have changed.’ Whilst insurgency remains a highly political form of warfare, it is its character, not its nature, which has changed.






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