Counterinsurgency study is much more than a checklist
Dr. Christopher Paul at Foreign Policy: On 18 November (There’s no checklist for counterinsurgency) Joshua Rovner and Tim Hoyt posted a critical but incomplete review of Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency, a RAND study for which I am the lead author. I feel compelled to reply. BLUF: “Our report isn’t perfect; little in social science is. I think we are fairly candid about the limitations of our study, candor which Mr. Rovner and Mr. Hoyt exploit in their review while at the same time overlooking the strengths of the work.”