Center for a New American Security

Here's a test for the readership: read the following quote, from Galula's Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958, and debate whether or not Iraq meets the conditions for victory as outlined. Tomorrow I will share my own thoughts.

...CNAS interns Isadora (aka "The IZA"*) and Steve (aka "Steve") for fixing the links on the Counterinsurgency Reading List, which I am planning to update in the next month with the latest and greatest papers and books.

*For serious, you should see her Wu-Tang Sword Style. I am not even kidding. The other day she came into the office in full fencing gear and went all Kill Bill on Richard Fontaine.

An American friend from the Middle East who has recently spent time covering the war in Afghanistan had the same question I did upon reading this article in the New York Times: "How can my colleagues not understand that COIN involves killing?"

I start my week with diffusion on my mind: why do tactics, techniques, procedures and strategies migrate from conflict to conflict and from military organization to military organization? One of the reasons this subject is on my mind is the publication of my friend Michael Horowitz's new book by Princeton University Press.

David Ucko, as careful a student as anyone of the learning process through which the U.S.

This is from "Cicero" in the comments section of the below post

I am about to board a plane this afternoon that will take me to East Tennessee and a week or so spent with friends and family. I’ll be visiting friends in Memphis and Nashville in addition to doing a little climbing and kayaking. My dissertation, ever-present, will be along for the ride.

My post mourning the death of Marcel Bigeard attracted some lively commentary, so I am going to up the Algeria ante by linking to this fascinating 1970 debate between Roger Trinquier

These past few weeks have brought a fresh torrent of bad news from Afghanistan: a governor in a key district assassinated, U.S. and allied operations in flux, Afghan leadership in question. Policy-makers in Washington and allied capitols are wondering if the U.S. and allied counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan can succeed. These are reasonable concerns. Tony Cordesman, one of the U.S.

Michael Cohen has a great essay in The New Republic on the American Left and Afghanistan. Michael's own policy preferences cloud his essay somewhat, but his diagnosis of the problem and its consequences is spot-on: the American Left has failed to develop and market a coherent policy alternative to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. As a result, the American Left is frozen out of high-level policy discussions on U.S. policy in the region.