Small Wars Journal

The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare

Sat, 04/03/2010 - 8:01am
Find linked the Center for Military History's online book The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare, 1775-2007 edited by Richard G. Davis.

This book contains selected papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians. The fifteen papers selected for this publication are not only the best of those presented, but they also examine irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras.

Together, they demonstrate how extremism was intimately connected to this type of warfare and how Americans have, at different times in their history, found themselves acting as insurgents, counterinsurgents, or both. The titles of the papers themselves reflect how often the U.S. Army has engaged in such irregular operations despite a formal focus on conventional warfare. Using imperial British and Italian examples, several presentations also underline how the ease of conquering lands is often no indication of the level of effort required to pacify them and integrate them into a larger whole.

H/T Carl Prine via FB. Thanks ink slinger.