The Insurgents

by Fred Kaplan

published 2013

rating: 3.9

This book traces the history U.S. military strategy regarding insurgencies, and in many cases, most notably Vietnam, the military’s lack of strategy.  The United States by the 1960’s had the most powerful military machine on earth and an ingrained culture of conventional warfare involving large numbers of soldiers and massive firepower.

This military strategy was a disaster in Vietnam, where the enemy played by very different rules.  After the failure in Vietnam, the very word ‘insurgency’ was forbidden in the U.S. military.  Non-conventional wars were frowned upon as something that real soldiers don’t bother with.   Yet a small but growing number of people both inside and outside the Pentagon were beginning to question this approach and to push for realistic policies to deal with the new world of warfare.  

The story is told with General David Petraeus as the central character.  Kaplan traces Petraeus’s career from West Point through all of his military accomplishments and finally his resignation as director of the CIA.  Petraeus was an exceptional student and officer, usually at or near the top of his class in everything, and very early discovered that the U.S. failure in Vietnam was really a failure to recognize the nature of their enemy.  

The U.S. military, having gained world dominance through its superior air and ground firepower, was strongly biased toward fighting conventional wars - the type where the side with the best and fastest weapons wins.  As a comedian once joked when Bush was president, ‘they just discovered oil on the moon, so Bush has ordered troops to invade.’

Through the study of history, citing books by Jean Larteguy, T.E. Lawrence and others who detailed successful strategies of counter-insurgency, Petraeus realized that if the U.S. had employed those strategies in Vietnam they might well have achieved a different outcome.  

The basic premises of fighting insurgents is that the point of fighting them is to protect the ordinary citizens of that country.  By assisting those people with various aid and infrastructure and by separating them from the insurgents, the military can make allies of the locals.  In some cases insurgents also can be converted away from their cause and the act of nation building can occur.  Killing bad guys is not a way to win such wars.  It is more about winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local people.

The book lists many people, both military and academic, who shared Petraeus’ beliefs.  It is a bit frustrating that Kaplan lists so many names and gives more background than seems necessary about each character, their credentials, how they met each other and so on.  Yet this is not a novel where characters are developed.  Without developing these characters, the story becomes a monotonous, disconnected string of meetings and encounters spread over 40 years.

It is a painful struggle, with plenty of very bright, determined and talented people, many of whom were in high positions of authority.  Yet continually their cause of fighting wars appropriately is thwarted by the highest reaches of power within the Pentagon and White House.  There is very little information about those who resist change.  Most of the effort is by a small but growing number of players who see that you cannot do nation building with tanks and bombs, and that you must adjust your battle plans according to the nature of your enemy.

The good news is that after a 40-year struggle to achieve this change, Petraeus and others finally succeeded, under President Obama in 2012.  So presumably now the U.S. military will embrace a doctrine of applying appropriate actions based on goals and the nature of an enemy.  In other words, they will add to their toolbox and train soldiers to use either carrot or stick appropriately.  We’ll see.

Overall an interesting topic, though quite tedious at times.  I actually skipped the middle third of the book because I felt I was not learning from it and that the endless lists of people and encounters did not make a compelling story.  In the end though, after enough old-timers had retired and enough new players had risen to prominence, and after two more failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon finally agreed to acknowledge the new world and attempt to adapt.