CT or COIN? - Fred Kaplan, Slate
With just a week until President Barack Obama flies to Strasbourg, France, for his first NATO conference, his top advisers are still divided over what U.S. policy should be on the summit's No. 1 issue: how to fight the war in Afghanistan.
It's a debate that the Bush administration never seriously had in the seven years following the post-9/11 invasion. Now, by contrast, in the wake of three major strategic reviews, Obama is extending and deepening the discussion of Afghanistan, because the outcome of this debate may set the course of American foreign policy for the remainder of his presidency...
More at Slate and a H/T to Fred for the shoutout:
"For the best summaries of COIN doctrine and strategy, spelled out by officers, consultants, and private scholars, see the Web site Abu Muqawama, the Small Wars Journal, Gen. David Petraeus' Army and Marine Corps field manual on counterinsurgency (or my summary of it), David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla, and John Nagl's Learning To Eat Soup With a Knife."