Special Operations, Insurgency & UW Reading List [Archive]

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Airbornelawyer

02-18-2005, 21:55

I'm trying to put various links I've pulled together in one place. This is not too well-organized at this point, but getting them in one place is a start. As a start, all of the links below are from official sources (CGSC's Combined Arms Research Library, the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, National Defense University, U.S. Army Center of Military History, etc.). I will add more as I have time, and feel free to add your own.

General: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceputalizing Threat and Response (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm/hurl/PubID=586)
Shadows of Things Past and Images of the Future: Lessons for the Insurgencies in Our Midst (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm/hurl/PubID=587)
Insurgency: Modern Warfare Evolves into a Fourth Generation (http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/SF214/SF214.pdf) - PDF
Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/trinquier/trinquier.asp)
Sharp Corners: Urban Operations at Century's End (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/content.asp#sharp)
Block by Block: The Challenges of Urban Operations (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/content.asp#block)
World War Two: U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/70-42/70-42c.htm)
Jedburgh Team Operations in Support of the 12th Army Group, August 1944 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Lewis/Lewis.asp)
Merrill's Marauders: Combined Operations in Northern Burma in 1944 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Bjorge/BJORGE.asp)
Rangers: Selected Combat Operations in World War II (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/King/King.asp)
Other conflicts/contingencies: My Clan Against the World: U.S. and Coalition Forces in Somalia, 1972-1994 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/clan.pdf) - PDF
Invasion, Intervention, "Intervasion": A Concise History of the U.S. Army in Operation Uphold Democracy (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Kretchik/kretchik.asp)
Not War, But Like War. The American Intervention in Lebanon (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Spiller2/spiller2.asp)
Shaba II: The French and Belgian Intervention in Zaire in 1978 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/odom2/odom2.asp)
Dragon Operations: Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964 - 1965 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/odom/odom.asp)
Power Pack: U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965 - 1966 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/yates/yates.asp)
The U.S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958: A Commander’s Reminiscence (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/gray/gray.asp)
Scenes From an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict-Korea, 1966-1969 (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Bolger/bolger.asp)
Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/content.asp#russ)
The Ute Campaign of 1879: A Study in the Use of the Military Instrument (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/santala/santala.asp)

NousDefionsDoc

02-18-2005, 22:07

Good gouge AL. Thanks

Roguish Lawyer

02-18-2005, 22:12

Thank you for starting this. Have you read any of this stuff? If so, what do you recommend? Also interested in the thoughts of others.

Airbornelawyer

02-18-2005, 22:48

Thank you for starting this. Have you read any of this stuff? If so, what do you recommend? Also interested in the thoughts of others.
Most of these are straightforward general histories or case studies.

Col. Trinquier's book (Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency) has been discussed in another thread. He purported to write a general study, but while not a prisoner of his particular experiences (the FFI, Indochina and Algeria), he was definitely influenced by them.

lksteve

02-18-2005, 23:42

Roguish Lawyer

02-18-2005, 23:50

What the hell is going on here? Is Guy like an SF light bulb? Or maybe I am? LMAO

LKsteve:

There is free alcohol in LA if you can get here. :) And next week is a particularly good week, I think.

Jimbo

02-19-2005, 07:36

Trends in Outside Support ofr Insurgent Movements (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1405/)
Internal Wars: Rethinking Problem and Response (http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm/hurl/PubID=220)
Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04spring/tomes.pdf)
Back to the Street Without Joy:Counterinsurgency Lessons From Vietnam and Other Small Wars (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04summer/cassidy.pdf)
Stretching the Network: Using Transformed Forces in Demanding Contingencies Other Than War (http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2005/RAND_OP109.pdf)

DDilegge

02-19-2005, 07:59

I maintain a directory that might be of use here at the Small Wars Journal (http://www.smallwarsjournal.com) - go to the Reference Library.

Every Sunday I post (on the blog) an updated word document suitable for downloading as a desktop reference or e-mailing other researchers / operators. This document contains links to all the material on research and reference pages.

Hope this is of use here.

As an introduction, I am a retired Marine who now works urban ops and Small Wars issues for the Corps at Quantico. I found this site by back tracing a link - have placed Professional Soldiers as a Military Community of Interest link on my site.

lksteve

02-19-2005, 10:21

LKsteve:

There is free alcohol in LA if you can get here. :) And next week is a particularly good week, I think.

mother in law lives in Orange County...toooooo close...i'll be in Big Pine tommorrow...that's more or less in the middle...and i'll be in Vegas the middle of next month for a conference...

next time my wife threatens to go to LA, i might tag along, though... ;)

Roguish Lawyer

02-19-2005, 15:34

Hope this is of use here.

Absolutely. Thank you and welcome to the Board.

NousDefionsDoc

02-20-2005, 18:16

DDilegge

02-21-2005, 02:28

Welcome aboard. Good job. ;)

Thanks for putting our link up as well.

Thanks much and my pleasure linking to this site. From what I have seen so far it is indeed a "professional soldier" community... Of course I say oorah while many here probably say hooah;-)

lksteve

02-21-2005, 10:46

... Of course I say oorah while many here probably say hooah

speech impediment, huh?

DDilegge

02-21-2005, 16:22

speech impediment, huh?

Touche, good one...

lksteve

02-21-2005, 17:33

is that they read like something written by a major bored out of his gourd...but never the less, i have read and reread the article about the Ute uprising of 1879...my sysnopsis? the more things change, the more things don't...

the never-ending predicament of the US Army seems summed up in the prologue...
"The study chronicles the Army's role in the struggle between two cultures...it serves to illuminate the problems of utilizing the military instrument in an environment of transitory national policies and competing national and local interests..." when the politicians can't get it right, the Army does make a convenient scapegoat...and if military force isn't the right approach...well, there you go...

not a bad read, but it seemed like Deja Vu all over again...constraining the Army to forts (or was that strategic hamlets), appointing indian agents who knew nothing of the culture (or was that Bob Gosende?) and commentary that post Civil War (or was that Cold War) politics played a clear role in defining the military strategy followed (did i hear someone say 'our enemy is instability' or am i just having bad memories)...

what the article told me is that before the post Vietnam draw down, before the post Cold War draw down, before there were sky marshals and border observation posts in Texas, the Army has had to adapt to missions other than war for political expediency and self-preservation...

Airbornelawyer

02-21-2005, 19:31

i was going to read the article on Somalia, figured i might be able to provide a bit of perspective as i was the PSYOP detachment commander there from December 1992 into March 1993 (when i got pulled to go back to Saudi)...but alas and alack, i cannot get the PDF file to download...Download difficulties are probably because it isn't an article. It is a 233-page case study. Here is the foreword:
"My Clan Against the World": US and Coalition Operations in Somalia, 1992-94 represents another in a series of military case studies published by the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The impetus for this project came from the commanding general, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia, who directed CSI to examine the American military’s experience with urban operations in Somalia, particularly in the capital city of Mogadishu. That original focus can be found in the following pages, but the authors address other, broader issues as well, to include planning for a multinational intervention; workable and unworkable command and control arrangements; the advantages and problems inherent in coalition operations; the need for cultural awareness in a clan-based society whose status as a nation-state is problematic; the continuous adjustments required by a dynamic, often unpredictable situation; the political dimension of military activities at the operational and tactical levels; and the ability to match military power and capabilities to the mission at hand.

This case study also cautions against the misuse and overuse of “lessons” learned from any given military undertaking. As with the lessons of Vietnam, one of which dictated that conventional units should not engage in unconventional warfare, the US experience in Somalia left many military analysts and policymakers convinced that the United States should eschew any undertaking that smacked of nation building. Yet, as this book is published, just ten years after the US exit from Somalia, American forces are engaged in several locations against an unconventional foe and are involved in nation building in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps the first lesson to be learned about extracting lessons is, in the words of a once-popular motion picture, “Never Say Never Again.”

Another principal aim of the authors was to provide an analytical narrative of each phase of the US military involvement in Somalia. For many Americans, the mention of that African country conjures up one memory, that of the fierce firefight between US troops and Somali militia on 3-4 October 1993. As this overview seeks to remind the reader, the United States had a military presence in Somalia from December 1992 to the end of March 1994. During that period, much was accomplished of a positive nature. Starving and mistreated Somalis were provided food and a modicum of security, while some progress was made toward peace in the country. That the broader goals of political reconciliation and stability ultimately were not achieved was in part a consequence of the intractability of the contending factions and the complexities of a country that defies Western definitions of “modern.” Yet, US involvement in countries that have much in common with Somalia is a current reality and a future likelihood. For the professional officer, then, as well as the American public at large, it would be instructive to revisit the US experience in Somalia.

lksteve

02-21-2005, 19:47

Download difficulties are probably because it isn't an article. It is a 233-page case study. Here is the foreword:

i'll probably scan the article tommorrow at work...gotta love that T1 line...

some comments on the forward...

the marines are great troops...they are not capable of supporting a JTF...they are not UW capable, although the expeditionary brigade deployed to Mogoville was allegedly SO capable...that sobriquet was attached by the USMC, as they were trying to avoid irrelevance in the post Cold War era (my comment) and not based on any independent confirmation...

nation-building has to be done in the context of a long-term committment...when we went to Somalia, we were to be there six-twelve weeks...long enough to apply overwhelming force (but the Air Farce grounded damn near all the C5As over the time of deployment, being the Christmas holidays) and let the UN marshal enough troops to get the job done...any OPLAN that relies on the UN for anything is flawed...and, of course, there was that minor detail of an internal transition in power with a draft dodging pacifist replacing a real American in the White House...

peacekeeping does not work in zero sum societies...in Somalia, we would have had to back someone to be relevant...fence sitting doubles the numbers of enemies you have...neutrality is not an African concept, particularly as it pertains to clan warfare...we should have checked our Eurocentric balance-of-power politics at the door....but majors who mentioned this were told, diplomatically, to shut the fuck up....

i hope to have more after i've read the paperwork...i'll be interested to see who the contributors are and if any of them had a PSYOP or SF background...

lksteve

02-22-2005, 14:42

i recommend it...read the first part, as that was the period of time i was in Somalia...i would take issue with a couple of points, but my perspective, even as the Pol-Mil officer for the JPOTF, saw more of the grass than the lawn...

one thing i was a bit taken back by....we (the JTF and the JPOTF in particular) received alot of our cultural intel from 2/5 SF...the role SF played was really marginalized, while the role PSYOP played was documented nicely...my suspicions are that whoever the authors interviewed about the role of SO troops had a bias against SF or towards PSYOP...

there were alot of minor subplots in play at the time...there were problems with the understanding levels of conventional commanders regarding the use of PSYOP that while a nuisance, did not affect what we tried to do...one commander complained that we 'edited' the unit history out of an article about security around a relief supply point...my reply was that the Somali people didn't give a rat's ass if his units were Gimlets or giblets, what they needed to know was where supplies were being handed out, how to approach the feeding station in a manner that would insure their safety and the safety of the troops and NGO personnel running the point and that 'Rajo', the broadside we printed daily was not the Somali language version of the Paraglide...this sort of incident played out with every American unit we provided PSYOP support for...while PSYOP approval rests with the theater or JTF commander, LTG Johnstone felt it necessary for each subordinate commander to have a chance to review what was being sent out in his AOR...we wound up editing alot of products so that the American commanders had their units portrayed favorably...the truth be known, because Somali linguists were in scarce supply, we would include the Paraglide stuff in the English language version and delete it or at least diminish the unit history stuff in the stuff that was sent out to the folks who mattered (being the 11% of the Somali people who could read)...

one item i would take exception to...Ambassador Oakley put Somali casualties at 50-150 during the early phases of the operation...i'd say that number was somewhat conservative...we were not to keep a count (no body count math allowed) but as the guy who reviewed what was broadcast and printed on a near daily basis (when i wasn't out pre and post testing stuff, travelling the country side to get imput from supported commanders, etc), the number i seem to recall, at the time of my departure was 250-300...

Airbornelawyer

03-08-2005, 19:32

UN Partisan Warfare in Korea, 1951-1954:

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usamhi/DL/docs/45.pdf

This is a 209-page PDF file and is a fairly slow download. Whoever formatted it for PDF did a bad job reducing the file size (he or she probably did not change it to B&W), so it measures about 19 mB in size.

Miscellaneous other links relating to partisan/guerrilla warfare in the Korean War: http://www.kimsoft.com/kr-ccrak.htm

Martin

03-19-2005, 11:01

Unrestricted Warfare, by COL Qiao Liang and COL Wang Xiangsui, published in February 1999 by PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing (http://www.terrorism.com/documents/TRC-Analysis/unrestricted.pdf)

Translated by FBIS, Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the CIA.

This book has received a lot of applause in China.

It is anti-American and is akin to a modified modern Clausewitzian Total War theory. It differs significantly in that it doesn't require violence to be part of the war effort. They don't give a distinct new definition of war. Rather, they draw a picture of how war has become defused in appearance.

This is both the starting point that they explain and use as motivation, in combination with and after which they fit in how war appears today and how they think it can be fought.
Some of the main features that they recognize are the following:

Effects of networking and technology, traditional military speaking.
Hackers' possibilities, citing examples of both military application and severe effects to civilian institutions and economic activity.
Connectivity and media, social and political possibilities.
Economic environment's effect on development, integrity and ability of a country to act, financial speculators role in affecting change.
Energy demand of countries, and exploitation possibility thereof.
Diplomatic pressure and maneuvering.
Acts of violence that can, depending on method, affect specific factors in a struggle. Assassination of financial speculators cited multiple times.

It goes on, but one of the things they deduce from this, while citing real world examples, is that not only can results be obtained faster, more resolutely and in more fashions in combination with and even in absence of traditional military actions of war (=violence). They also point out that many of the arenas needed in these sorts of war are not occupied mainly by soldiers, but by businessmen, software developers, lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, etc etc.

What they mean is that all these people are toting weapons. This appears as a threat against societal and state security. The Colonels want to make use of the, in their words, combative attitude of the other arenas and bring them to their side and mobilize them in their cause.

The authors, who are addicted to the word revolution in the first part of the book, speak of the need for various technologies and levels thereof. One of their points is that warring needs to be driven by methods and tactics of war, and that technology should be embraced to enhance and enable them. They speak of combining methods and ideas to create new capabilities, but while moving away from technology centrism of thought.

I've left out multiple main and minor features.

This is war as they see it, target oriententation according to strategy with tactics taken from any area and combining it with appropriate other efforts. They see interoperability between different levels of assets - tactical, operational, strategical and war policy, with actions on different levels that can have affect on actions, targets, the environment of others.

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 15:32

Every Sunday I post (on the blog) an updated word document suitable for downloading as a desktop reference or e-mailing other researchers / operators. This document contains links to all the material on research and reference pages.

I don't see this.

DDilegge

03-22-2005, 03:26

I don't see this.

I posted it this morning. Was going to stop this weekly update because all of the docs are on the two pages I mentioned - but several people like the stand-alone pub so I will continue the updates.