US Coin Doctrine and Practice

U ntil very recently, the four and a half years of military operations in Iraq appeared to have created an obstacle in people's minds. Rightly or wrongly, reality has subsumed theory, and because of the media coverage Iraq has received, counterinsurgency is now seen as nothing but an indescribably bloody, draining, protracted, and arduous business which makes tremendous demands on popular support, political resolve, and the resources required to sustain the fight. History shows this has always been the case, but perhaps the initial incidences of rapid, decisive, conventional operations misled the public. The fact remains: The cost of counterinsurgency is high. It always has been, depressingly so, and it is largely unrefundable. There is now more than a glimmer of hope, a detectable, increasingly palpable feeling that something may be changing, that there is now what can be best described as "a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground." 1 Leadership, more troops, focused training during preparation for deployment, and the application of hard-learned lessons from four and a half years at war are playing their part. A new factor is present, one that is fundamental to overcoming many of the initial obstacles and a factor that was absent when the insurgencies started to emerge from the shadows to so bedevil the stabilization efforts in Iraq. That factor is doctrine, and the publication of US Army Field Manual 3-24 and US Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 provides American participants with a counterinsurgency doctrine applicable, as the authors intended, to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for similar operations well into the second decade of this century

Doctrine · Law and economics · Military doctrine · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Military History and Strategy

• Article Index, Vol. XXXVII, 2007

  Parameters Editors•The US Army War College Quarterly…•2007

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• Escaping the iron cage

  Benjamin Jensen•Journal of Strategic Studies•2015

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• Counterinsurgency Principles for the Diplomat

  Open Access•Kurt Amend•Orbis•2010

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• Coin flips

  Kurt Jacobsen•Cambridge Review of International…•2014

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• Neo-Classical Counterinsurgency

  Frank G Hoffman•The US Army War College Quarterly…•2007

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• Military Science in an Age of Peace

  M T Howard, Michael Howard et al.•The RUSI Journal•1974

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