Counterinsurgency: The Graduate Level of War or Pure Hokum?
Counterinsurgency: The Graduate Level of War or Pure Hokum? By COL Gian Gentile, e-International Relations.
… This notion of counterinsurgency warfare requiring a special martial skill set because of its so-called difficulty that conventional armies by nature do not have is nothing new in modern history. Starting in the 19th century, the French and British armies began to treat small wars (an earlier moniker for counterinsurgency) as a special form of war requiring officers with unconventional skills who can transform the hidebound conventional armies that were resistant to change…
Unfortunately, counterinsurgency is not the graduate level of war, it is simply war. Moreover, the notion that counterinsurgency wars require the soldiers who fight them to possess special skills is not supported by historical evidence. And contrary to what writers like Krepinevich and Cassidy say, counterinsurgency wars have not been won or lost by the tactical methods of the armies that have fought them. Instead, as historian Douglas Porch argues, they were won or lost “because the strategic context in which the wars were fought defied a tactical remedy.” …
