I finally read John Nagl's counterinsurgency book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. I'd heard the book was good, but I had no idea HOW good. It's fantastic. The beauty of the book is that it's not merely about counterinsurgency; it's about building adaptive learning organizations that know how to defeat insurgencies. That's something I'm passionate about, so I devoured the book over my Christmas break, when I should have been busy opening presents and eating pumpkin pie...
Read it all - BP is added to our blogroll.
Comments
I'll second that, COIN was the vehicle he used to illustrate our learning organization gaps. I want to re-read the book, but the first time I read the book I really enjoyed it based on Nagl's learning organization theme, but still think his comparison between the Brits in their colony Malaya and the U.S. intervention in S. Vietnam where the U.S. not only helped fight an insurgency, but also waged conventional operations against NVA regulars is disingenuous.
The part of Reach 364's post that reinforced Nagl's argument is that Reach referred to the recent COIN lessons and so called "new" doctrine as revolutionary? If our young officers think this is revolutionary, then it simply reinforces Nagl's main point that we are not a learning organization. We're only adapting because we have to, then we'll default back to stupid.
We had COIN doctrine when we were in Vietnam (yes it can always be improved upon, I don't believe in living in the past, but we had it), and it was sufficient to allow us to at least get a good toe hold in the COIN fight if the Army and Marines would have simply used it.
It was obvious that many people in our government understood COIN, unfortunately their voices were too frequently drowned out by the more firepower crowd. Even in SF there were two schools of thought, one is that the focus should be on reconnaissance and direct action, and another school focused on CIDG. Both were needed, but CIDG and Marine CAP were not adequately resourced until later in the conflict. Even the enlightened commander, GEN Abrams had a hard time getting his subordinate commanders to practice COIN and fight the NVA with different tactics.
I see the same conflicts today despite all the hype about how we're changing. The majority of our officers believe the fight is about finding HVTs, not focusing on the populace so we can drain the swamp. Too many are still looking for the silver bullet solution. Doctrine is worthless until it becomes part of professional culture.
Reach 364,
You write,"The beauty of the book is that it's not merely about counterinsurgency; it's about building adaptive learning organizations..."
The second part is what the book was always about. Counterinsurgency was just the vehicle that John Nagl used to illuminate his thesis. That is probably the most misunderstood part of the book.