Counterinsurgency & the Armed Forces

Counterinsurgency is now the greatest challenge facing the armed forces of the US and NATO countries today. Although that challenge is faced daily in Afghanistan and Iraq, the assault is also on the liberal democratic institutions of all these countries. this book will fill a crucial gap in explaining how insurgents think, and how this is different from how the armed forces think. Given these differences, this book answers questions not only about how armed forces should design their counterinsurgency operations, but also about how governments should design programs to prevent the development of insurgent populations. This book includes a chapter exploring the type of thinking that insurgents use, and several case studies that can be used to train the military and civilian policy professional. Underdog strategy is the ancient ''way of thinking of women and the vanquished,'' the form of strategy which was excluded by Aristotle from philosophical discourse, but did not disappear from practice.