Wrong turn : America's deadly embrace of counterinsurgency / Colonel Gian Gentile.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gentile, Gian P.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Counterinsurgency--Government policy--United States.

Counterinsurgency.

Counterinsurgency--Case studies.

Counterinsurgency--Malaysia--Malaya--History--20th century.

Counterinsurgency--Vietnam--History--20th century.

Counterinsurgency--Iraq--History--21st century.

Counterinsurgency--Afghanistan--History--21st century.

History.

Counterinsurgency--Government policy.

Afghanistan.

Iraq.

Vietnam.

Malaysia.

Malaya.

United States.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xviii, 189 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : The New Press, 2013.

Summary:

"Colonel Gian Gentile's 2008 article "Misreading the Surge" in World Politics Review first exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals that has since been playing out in strategy sessions at the Pentagon, in classrooms at military academies, and on the pages of the New York Times. While the past years of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan have been dominated by the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN), Gentile and a small group of dissident officers and defense analysts have questioned the necessity and efficacy of COIN--essentially armed nation-building--in achieving the United States' limited core policy objective in Afghanistan: the destruction of Al Qaeda. Drawing both on the author's experiences as a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War and his research into the application of counterinsurgency in a variety of historical contexts, Wrong Turn is a brilliant summation of Gentile's views of the failures of COIN, as well as a searing reevaluation of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan. As the issue of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan inevitably rises to the top of the national agenda, Wrong Turn will be a major new touchstone for what went wrong and a vital new guide to the way forward. Note: the ideas in this book are the author's alone, not the Department of Defense's."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The conceit of American counterinsurgency

The construction of the counterinsurgency narrative

Malaya : the foundation of the counterinsurgency narrative

Vietnam : the first better war that wasn't

Iraq : a better war, version 2

Afghanistan : another better war that wasn't.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781595588746

1595588744

OCLC:

807025091