Counterinsurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American Capability

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DIANE Publishing, 1995 - Counterinsurgency - 39 pages
Dr. Steven Metz argues that the way the Department of Defense and U.S. military spend the time when counterinsurgency support is not an important part of American national security strategy determines how quickly and easily they react when policymakers commit the nation to such activity. If analysis and debate continues, at least at a low level, the military is better prepared for the reconstitution of capabilities. If it ignores global developments in insurgency and counterinsurgency, the reconstitution of capabilities would be more difficult.
 

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Page 16 - West Africa and much of the underdeveloped world: the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease, and the growing pervasiveness of war.
Page 24 - To this end, the study is sponsored jointly by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (OASD/SO/LIC) and the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (DOS/R).
Page 25 - Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957.
Page 25 - Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), p.
Page 28 - Supporting US Strategy for Third World Conflict," Report by the Regional Conflict Working Group submitted to the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, June 1988. 15. BG Edward G. Lansdale,, "Civic Action Helps Counter the Guerrilla Threat," Army Information Digest, June 1962, p.
Page 22 - What gives today's civil wars a new and terrifying slant is the fact that they are waged without stakes on either side, that they are wars about nothing at all ... there is no longer any need to legitimise your actions.
Page iv - Reconciling the Irreconcilable: The Troubled Outlook for US Policy Toward Haiti and The United States, Honduras and the Crisis in Central America and coeditor of Revolution and Counterrevolution in Central America and the Caribbean; Cuba and the Future; Political Participation...
Page 12 - our problem with El Salvador is external intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation in this hemisphere, nothing more, nothing...
Page 28 - Max G. Manwaring, ed., Uncomfortable Wars: Toward a New Paradigm of Low Intensity Conflict, Boulder...
Page 8 - ... come into being. History is a better guide than good intentions. A realistic policy which aims at protecting our own interest and assisting the capacities for self-determination of less developed nations will need to face the unpleasant fact that, if victorious, violent insurgency headed by Marxist revolutionaries is unlikely to lead to anything but totalitarian tyranny.

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