Petraeus: We Must Be Coldly Realistic Over The Use Of Force
David Petraeus: We Must Be Coldly Realistic Over The Use Of Force – Many of the lessons we have learnt post-9/11 have been paid for and written in blood – The Telegraph.
Since leaving the US government, I have had an opportunity to think about some of the missions in which I was privileged to engage while in uniform and then as director of the CIA. Reflecting on what some term the “counter-insurgency era” – or occasionally even “the Petraeus era” – I want to argue that this era is far from over, for the simple reason that the era of insurgency is not over.
Insurgencies, or so-called small wars, are among the oldest forms of warfare, and remain the most prevalent. Whether they are triggered by domestic struggles for power and influence, ideology, ethno-sectarian differences or subversion from outside a country’s borders, their outcomes will shape the world in which we live – as the upheavals associated with the Arab Spring and the extremist challenges in Mali and the Maghreb remind us…
