04-15-2007
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Member
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Stafford, VA
Posts: 51
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Edward Luttwak’s “Counterinsurgency Malpractice”
On the SWJ Blog - Edward Luttwak’s “Counterinsurgency Malpractice” by Dave Kilcullen.
Quote:
I spent a few hours recently, reading Edward N. Luttwak’s article in Harper’s Magazine, “Dead End: Counter-Insurgency as Military Malpractice”, and carefully thinking over his argument. It was a pleasant holiday from the reality of war here in Baghdad, and a reassuring reminder that there are still havens of calm (like CSIS, where Dr Luttwak is a Senior Fellow) where one can consider issues thoroughly and arrive at firm conclusions. From my viewpoint, here in Iraq, things somehow never seem quite so black-and-white.
Professor Luttwak is a famous defense policy expert, with publications on the Roman Empire, nuclear strategy, coups d’état and globalization, among others. He is not a specialist in counterinsurgency or the Middle East, but his opinions carry much weight and we should all welcome his recent foray into the field. I hope he will forgive this précis, but in essence he argues that “insurgents do not always win, actually they usually lose. But their defeats can rarely be attributed to counterinsurgency warfare, as we shall see”. The means he argues are most effective are wholesale reprisals and “out-terrorizing” the insurgents...
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