Tuppence for your COIN Thoughts
Tuppence for your COIN Thoughts – War on the Rocks Book Review by Frank Hoffman.
David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of Modern Warfare (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013)
This is not a comfortable book to read for members or friends of the British armed forces. And it should generate equally discomforting questions for its American readers. Counterinsurgency in Crisis is a dispassionate and objectively critical evaluation of UK strategic performance in its last two conflicts-Iraq and then Afghanistan. Both authors have relevant scholarly credentials and prior works on civil conflicts and counterinsurgency. Ucko (who is a colleague of mine at the National Defense University) and Egnell begin slowly, but end up with an eviscerating indictment of British preparation, strategic direction, and operational practice. “There is no fig leaf large enough here to cover the deep flaws in the British government’s own approach and conduct in their counterinsurgency campaigns,” they conclude…
