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COIN Quote of the Week (European Edition)
March 6, 2009 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 7:10am | 24 Comments
This blog has a fantastic network of spies who monitor the effect COIN doctrine is having on countries outside the United States. Our friend Stephanie Pezard sent along this speech that French defense minister Hervé Morin gave at the CSIS. (Another friend, Thomas Rid, aparently managed to even swing himself an invitation. He's cool like that.) A translation of the speech is available here on .mp3.
Now, one must remember that David Galula -- whose writings have been so influential on the development of U.S. COIN doctrine -- was first published in English and not his native French. It was not until just last year that Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice was published in French for the first time. (And with an introduction written by David Petraeus! Amazon.fr reports it is en stock. Which is more than you can say for my book.) During the speech, though, Morin referred to Galula's book as "the latest Bible," claimed he read the book over the course of a weekend, and said:
These are happy days -- though it bears keeping in mind that France is not exactly hurting for living Frenchmen in the first ranks of theorist-practitioners.
Now, one must remember that David Galula -- whose writings have been so influential on the development of U.S. COIN doctrine -- was first published in English and not his native French. It was not until just last year that Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice was published in French for the first time. (And with an introduction written by David Petraeus! Amazon.fr reports it is en stock. Which is more than you can say for my book.) During the speech, though, Morin referred to Galula's book as "the latest Bible," claimed he read the book over the course of a weekend, and said:
[This] writing should inspire, in depth, our action toward the Afghan population. This goes also through a strong respect for for the Afghan people -- for their traditions, for their faith -- and we must do everything we can to avoid side effects -- collateral damage -- which of course is giving strength to the recruiting for the Taliban...Obviously, that sounded a lot better in French. But leaving out the fact that Gian Gentile is now deep in the basement of West Point's library, furiously translating his articles into French, this represents a milestone for population-centric COIN theory. For much of the 20th Century (and even the later years of the 19th Century), French small wars theorists have heavily influenced the way in which we in the English-speaking world have thought about countering insurrections. Now things have come full circle in the most ironic of ways, with Americans popularizing and interpreting a French thinker for the French themselves.
These are happy days -- though it bears keeping in mind that France is not exactly hurting for living Frenchmen in the first ranks of theorist-practitioners.
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