The Thai Way of Counterinsurgency at Amazon
The Thai Way of Counterinsurgency at Amazon by Jeff Moore
From the Author: This book was inspired by several issues. First, as America struggled with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it began to seek lessons learned from scores of counterinsurgencies waged throughout history. Curiously, it didn't appear to have investigated Thailand's successes (and failures) in this field, so I began to explore the issue, and eventually, I saw a PhD thesis in it.
(This book, by the way, is not my PhD – I did extra research for this project and polished and improved the language to reach a wider audience. The conclusions are slightly different as well.)
Second, well before the Asia pivot began to acquire "some meat on its bones" in 2014, America seemed to have neglected its engagement with Asia, Southeast Asia in particular. True, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq took incredible national security resources, and naturally, Washington had less to apply in Asia. The small resources that it did apply, however, were indeed high quality. Along with other counties such as Australia and Great Britain, the U.S. helped nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines with their al Qaeda-linked terrorism problems, and partnership with countries like Singapore and Thailand increased as well. But U.S. national security institutional knowledge of SE Asia remained small, so there was indeed a market to produce a worthwhile text on this region for when America would eventually turn back to it.
That time is now.
Third, I was inspired by COIN experts that had published utilitarian works on this subject that, for practical reasons, struck me as exceptional. These include Richard Clutterbuck ("The Long, Long War," concerning Malaya), Jeffrey Race ("War Comes to Long An," concerning Vietnam), and Mark Urban ("Big Boy's Rules," concerning Northern Ireland.)