The British Approach To Counter-Insurgency
 

Reading a USAWC CLASS OF 2008 Strategic Research Paper by British Col. I.A. Rigden on the British record in counterinsurgency campaigns. Rigden has an interesting bio - he commanded a Gurkha battalion in Afghanistan and spent seven years in company command.

THE BRITISH APPROACH TO COUNTER-INSURGENCY: MYTHS, REALITIES, AND STRATEGIC CHALLENGES

Here's the post-1945 scorecard, by his accounting:

• Wins: 7
• Losses: 5
• Ties: 1
• Incompletes: 2 (Iraq and Afghanistan)

"What delineates a successful campaign is how quickly the security forces learned from their mistakes. Adaptability is an essential component of success."

"...politics is the focal point. Politics and war are social phenomena. One key to countering insurgency is therefore to understand the context and nature of the social environment. It is essential to understand what the people’s issues are and what can make them better. What is it that attracts people to the insurgents and how can this be ameliorated or discredited? As Sun Tzu describes it, it is not enough just to know ourselves; we must also know our adversary and what it is that has shaped them."

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...c=GetTRDoc.pdf

Interesting read.

Richard's $.02 :munchin