Now that President Biden has ended our combat role in Afghanistan, the search for lessons to be learned from this long misadventure is topic No. 1. For those undertaking this search, there are three books I highly recommend reading.
In 2014, Fred Kaplan wrote a history of Gen. David Petraeus’s attempt to write counterinsurgency doctrine for the U.S. Army. In “The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War,” Kaplan produced a primer on the principles of waging counterinsurgency warfare derived from the writings of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), David Galula, the legendary French paratroop officer, and British field marshal Sir Gerald Templar, who defeated the Malayan insurgency. From these classic studies of insurgent warfare, Kaplan produced useful short summaries of the core principles and tactical guidelines that differentiate counterinsurgency warfare from the firepower-focused American way of war. Read More…
