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**Shek** · 04-14-2007, 13:51 PM

An article from RUSI that was just republished in Military Review

Quote:

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview...07/Kiszely.pdf

Learning about Counterinsurgency

Insurgency, it seems, is with us to stay—for a while, anyway. There are a number of reasons why insurgency—the use of subversion and armed conflict by an organized movement to overthrow a constitutional government—has become a form of conflict much in evidence at the start of the twenty-first century, and why it is unlikely to become less so in the years immediately ahead.1 Among the most obvious reasons are the erosion of the sovereignty of nation-states, the increase in the number of failed or failing states, the rise in intra-state conflict, the advent of transnational insurgency, and the perceived ability of terrorists to achieve their aims—“to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives.”2 Equally obvious—to insurgents, at least—is the technological battle-field superiority of the world’s most powerful armed forces, and the resultant folly of taking on such armed forces on the conventional battlefield. Even if general Sir Rupert Smith may be overstating the case by declaring that “war no longer exists,” he is surely right that war off the conventional battlefield, or “war amongst the people,” is by far the more likely activity.3 There is, of course, nothing new about insurgency—the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide plenty of examples of this type of warfare—and, therefore, no shortage of opportunities to learn lessons. But how well do militaries, in general, learn the lessons of counterinsurgency? What factors affect this learning process? And what might the answer to these questions tell us about how armed forces should approach the subject of learning about counterinsurgency in future? This article sets out to answer these questions.

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In summary, therefore, while it is easy to see the solution to improved learning about counterinsurgency purely in terms of improved training, this study concludes that this would be fallacious, and that at the root of the challenge lie questions of culture and education.

Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely is the director of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. In 2002, he served in Iraq as the deputy commanding general of the Multi-National Force-Iraq. Previous assignments include service in Bosnia as the Commander, Multi-National Division South West, and later as the deputy commander of the NATO force. LTG Kiszely has also served in Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus, and the Falkland Islands. He received his commission from Sandhurst in 1969.