Week 8: The State Fights Back

David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, Insurgency Praeger Security International 2006.(Kavanaugh)

David Kilcullen, Counter Insurgency REDUX

Nagl, Learning as we go

Compare the responses of Western powers to develop counter-insurgency tactics and the forces to carry them out. The focus will be on the French suppression of resistance in Algeria and the United States counter-insurgency methods. The texts themselves will represent very different ways to relate to this question. The first is a short, practical handbook written for military personnel by a participant in the French Army during the war for independence in Algeria. The other two articles are by advisors to the U.S. Military who helped developed our contemporary counter-insurgency doctrine.