The U S Army Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual

“Just in time for the renewal of the war debate in Congress, the University of Chicago Press has released The U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. . . . It’s a nifty volume, not only because it gives you a sense of what our most highly regarded military theorists are thinking but because sometimes what they’re thinking is the last thing you’d expect. Especially interesting is a section called ”Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations,” which tells us: ”Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction” and ”Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.””-David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times (David L. Ulin Los Angeles Times )

“The military doctrine set forth in our field manual matters, but because it is usually only available to those in the military, it is not widely known or available outside that small audience. . . . By publishing the new Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, the U. of C. is correcting that situation with this, probably the most important piece of doctrine written in the past 20 years. . . . It is also, probably, the single most important document one can read to make sense out of what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.”–Robert Bateman, Chicago Tribune (Robert Bateman Chicago Tribune )

“An attempt by our military to redefine itself in the aftermath of 9/11 and the new world of international terrorism, [the Manual] will play a vital role in American military campaigns for years to come.” (Freshfiction.com )

“[This] book has helped make counterinsurgency part of the zeitgeist. It has become a coffee-table staple in Washington. . . . In short, this is not your parents” military field manual.”-Colin H. Kahl, Foreign Affairs (Colin H. Kahl Foreign Affairs )

“The book to begin with in looking for a revised 21st-century strategy [in our war on terror] is, unexpectedly, the landmark U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. It was released as a government document in December 2006, but owing to its enormous popularity . . . it has now been published by a university press, with a provocative, highly readable new foreword and introduction that testify to the manual’s `paradigm-shattering’ content. . . . Sarah Sewall, a former Pentagon official who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard . . . has contributed an introduction that should be required reading for anybody who wants to understand the huge demands effective counterinsurgency will place on the military and the voting public.”-Samantha Power, New York Times (Samantha Power New York Times )

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Factually On Target…Excruciating Detail
I am a former US Army Special Forces “Green Beret” who worked counterinsurgency in Latin America during the early 1990’s White Passage: Red Sun. I can tell you that this manual is technically correct and on target, but unfortunately…as frequently happens with military manuals…it dives into the weeds quickly and goes into excruciating detail. It is a dry read for even the most enthusiastic counterinsurgents in us. However, the multiple forwards in the civilian version are worth the read and distill up the really important principles of counterinsurgency for those readers looking for a higher level introduction to counterinsurgency.

5 Stars Had a shipping problem, but Amazon fixed it!
This review is more about the product return service than the book itself, though it is excellent. The book was first shipped to me damaged, but amazon had a very easy to use and straightforward return policy, and they replaced the book with no charge. Other than the wait, there was very little inconvenence. Well done Amazon.

5 Stars Best in Class MILITARY Manual–Need Civilian Peace SOP
The publisher should load the table of contents and nominate this important book for “Inside the Book” digitization.

Since the publisher has failed to do that, for now (pending my substantive summative review) I will just list the top level table of contents.

Chapter 1. Insurgency & Counterinsurgency

Chapter 2. Unity of Effort: Integrating Civilian and Military Activities

[This is fine for a military cursory glance, but what we really need are two other volumes: a civilian counterpart to this military manual; and a strategic planning mannual that includes both resources we control and resources we can influence with unclassified multinational decision support]

Chapter 3. Intelligence in Counterinsurgency

[This chapter is deep and broad--someone tried very hard to get it right and at first glance, it appears vastly superior to the tripe that has been published before.]

Chapter 4. Designing Counterinsurgency Campaigns and Operations

[This is new thinking and demands careful reading]

Chapter 5. Executing Counterinsurgency Operations

Chapter 6. Developing Host-Nation Security Forces

[This will need development, perhaps in the strategic manual. Apart from the obvious that the professionals knew but the political lightweights refused: go in strong enough to keep the peace, do not disband the armed forces and police, pay them first, it seems to me we need to do much much more with Ambassador Bob Oakley's original thinking on Policing the New World Disorder, and invest heavily in REGIONAL stability forces and REGIONAL gendarme reserve forces.]

Chapter 7. Leadership and Ethics for Counterinsurgency

[Important, but I continue to be shocked at the way we vacuum people into confinement, and by the reality that stupid kids with camaras not-withstanding, we cannot overcome an unethical White House or Secretary of Defense in the field--this section could use discussion of what constitutes an illegal order and what each level of operations can do to refuse an illegal order.]

Chapter 8. Sustainment

[Good start but already out of date. Army is doing some extraordinary things in "eating the tail" by implementing renewable power solutions at the outposts so that ground-based heavy logistics are dramatically reduced. Very positive focus on logistics preparation of the battlefield but misses the larger issue: secret intelligence could care less about logisticians, who have a legitimate need for bridge weights, tunnel clearance, ferry times, pierside outlet specifications, cross-country trafficability, line of sight distances along the supply line, and so on. The fact is that intelligence support to both acquisition and to logistics STINKS, and this needs draconian scorched earth management.]

Appendix A. A Guide for Action

Appendix B. Social Network Analysis and Other Analytical Tools

Appendix C. Linguist Support

Appendix D. Legal Considerations

Appendic E. Airpower in Counterinsurgency

I like this book, very much. It’s is a really good first step, but it is only a UNILATERAL MILITARY first step.

The U.S. Government is still not serious–in the White House or in Congress–about deep sustained interagency and coalition operations.

They have no idea how to create a Global Range of Gifts Table down to the household level, how to call in Peace from the Sea and Peace from Above, how to use decision support to influence $500 billion a year in investments by others, how to encourage call centers in China and India (each of which have 1.5 billion for a total of 3 billion of the 5 billion poor) that can both provide instant translation support to operators and free education to the poor, in their own language, “one cell call at a time.”

Bottom line: General Al Gray nailed it in 1989, in his article “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990’s.” Key words: “peaceful preventive measures, non-state actors, and open source intelligence.” No one wanted to listen then, and most are still conceptually-challenged now.

See also:

Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security

Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict

The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

Uncomfortable Wars Revisited

Modern irregular warfare: In defense policy and as a military phenomenon

Guerrilla Warfare: Irregular Warfare in the Twentieth Century (Stackpole Military History Series)

Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (Stanford Security Studies)

Asymmetric Warfare: Threat and Response in the 21st Century

Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

5 Stars A good place to begin learning about counterinsurgency warfare
This US Army / Marine Corps manual reads far more like a book than a dry piece of doctrine. This recent manual draws heavily on US experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as lessons from US and British experience in the Philippines, Malaya, El Salvador and Vietnam. I have read several other COIN manuals and papers before (Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife and Resisting Rebelion) and this manual contains a good summary of these books and other papers. It would be a good place for anyone looking to study insurgencies and counterinsurgencies to begin their study.

The book begins by cover basic aspects of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. The book then goes in to integrating military and civilian agencies, the role of intelligence, designing and executing campaigns and training host nation forces.

One area that the book does not focus on is in depth case studies. Numerous examples are cited to illustrate points, but to really look at a conflict one will need to go to one of the numerous books listed in reading lists provided at the end.

4 Stars for soldiers or graduate students?
I’ve long nutured a private grievance against FM 3-24, which suddenly broke surface when I read this delicious comment by Steve Cole in The New Yorker this week: “Its reception reflected … the appeal of counter-insurgency among sections of the country’s liberal-minded intelligentsia. This was warfare for northeastern graduate students–complex, blended with politics, designed to build countries rather than destroy them, and fashioned to minimize violence. It was a doctrine with particular appeal to people who would never own a gun.”

A more scholarly analysis of FM 3-24’s failings, by Andrew Salamone, appears in the August edition of the online Small Wars Journal. He thinks that the historical examples in the manual are too selective, and warns: “While the current application of the new doctrine appears to be showing signs of success in Iraq, at least in terms of metrics measuring levels of violence and U.S. casualties, our enemy’s well documented strategic, operational, and tactical adaptability all but guarantees that current doctrine will be out of date for the next conflict and result in the well known axiom of trying to ‘fight the last war again’.”

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