Thread: Recommendations on COIN literature?

SORO, Dec 62: Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: 23 Summary Accounts

This casebook provides summary descriptive accounts of 23 revolutions that have occurred in seven geographic areas of the world, mostly since World War 2. Each revolution is described in terms of the environment in which it occurred, the form of the revolutionary movements it self, and the results which were accomplished. The casebook is designed: (1) to present a comprehensive introduction to the subject of revolutions; (2) to illustrate the types of political, military, cultural, social, and economic conditions under which revolutions have occurred; and (3) to examine the general characteristics of prior revolutionary movements and some operational problems experienced in waging, or countering, revolutionary warfare.

Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16-20, 1962

This report is based on the Symposium on Counterinsurgency held at RAND’s Washington Office during the week of 16 April 1962. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together those with first-hand experience of guerrilla and counterguerrilla warfare for informal exchanges of information that might lead to fresh insights and a detailed body of expert knowledge. The subjects discussed include patterns and techniques of counterinsurgency, effective organizational and operational approaches, political action, psychological warfare, intelligence and counterintelligence, and requirements for victory. This new release of the report includes a new foreword by Stephen T. Hosmer that elucidates the relevance of this symposium to contemporary guerrilla and counterguerrilla operations.

Formal Participants
Charles T.R. Bohannan, Lieutenant Colonel, AUS-Ret.
Wendell W. Fertig, Colonel, USA-Ret.
David Galula, Lieutenant Colonel (French Marine Corps)
Anthony S. Jeapes, Captain (British Army)
Frank E. Kitson, MBE, MC, Lieutenant Colonel (British Army)
Edward Geary Lansdale, Brigadier General, USAF
Rufus C. Phillips, III
David Leonard Powell-Jones, DSO, OBEY Brigadier General (British Army)
John R. Shirley, OBE, Colonel (British Army-Ret.)
Napoleon D. Valeriano, Colonel (formerly with the Armed Forces of the Philippines)
John F. White, Colonel (Royal Australian Army)
Samuel V. Wilson, Lieutenant Colonel, USA

On “Other War”: Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research

...The body of work generated from this study covers many aspects of COIN, from the most abstract theories of why insurgency takes place to tactical operations. It also covers a wide array of cases, varied in both geography and time, from the British experience in Malaya to the French in Algeria to the United States in El Salvador. However, the research is limited in that almost all of it is based on cases that occurred in the context of the Cold War. Some might question the continuing relevance of studies centered on conflicts that took place in such a radically different geopolitical context.

This study is based on the premise that, while many specific details do indeed vary greatly, insurgency and counterinsurgency is a more general phenomenon that is not a product of Cold War peculiarities. Further, many of the alleged differences between past and current COIN are overstated. For example, the fragmented nature of the insurgency in Iraq is often remarked on as almost without precedent. Yet many insurgencies during the Cold War were highly fragmented, with elements fighting each other as well as the counterinsurgent...

Below are links to several good studies listed in the bibliography of the RAND pub above that are still available on-line:

Insurgent Organization and Operations: A Case Study of the Viet Cong in the Delta, 1964-1966

Viet Cong Motivation and Morale: The Special Case of Chieu Hoi

Pacification and the Viet Cong System in Dinh Tuong 1966-1967

Inducements and Deterrents to Defection: An Analysis of the Motives of 125 Defectors

Some Findings of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study June-December 1965

Seminar on Development and Security in Thailand: Part I, The Insurgency

The Army's Role in Counterinsurgency and Insurgency

Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16-20 1962

Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts

Notes on Non-Military Measures in Control of Insurgency

Government Responses to Armed Insurgency in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Examination of Failures and Successes and Their Likely Implications for the Future

American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and El Salvador: The Frustrations of Reform and the Illusions of Nation Building

Item Analysis of the HES (Hamlet Evaluation System)

Comments on the Wolf-Leites Manuscript: "Rebellion and Authority"

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: New Myths and Old Realities