James F Amos

This counterinsurgency field manual is designed to fill a gap within the doctrine of how the U. S. Military fights its wars. It has been 20 years since the Army published a field manual devoted exclusively to counterinsurgency operations. For the Marine Corps it has been 25 years. With U. S. Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that they are given a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also mustbe informed by contemporary experiences. This is an important document that is now available for the layman and the student of military strategy in addition to the professional U. S. Soldier and Marine.

When the U. S. military invaded Iraq, it lacked a common understanding of the problems inherent in counterinsurgency campaigns. It had neither studied them, nor developed doctrine and tactics to deal with them. It is fair to say that in 2003, most Army officers knew more about the U. S. Civil War than about counterinsurgency. This volume was written to fill that void. The result of unprecedented collaboration among top U. S. military experts, scholars, and practitioners in the field, the manual espouses an approach to combat that emphasizes constant adaptation and learning, the importance of decentralized decision making, the need to understand local politics and customs, and the key role of intelligence in winning the support of the population. The manual also emphasizes the paradoxical and often counterintuitive nature of counterinsurgency operations: sometimes the more you protect your forces, the less secure you are; sometimes the more force you use, the less effective it is; sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. A new introduction by Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, places the manual in critical and historical perspective, explaining the significance and potential impact of this revolutionary challenge to conventional U. S. military doctrine. An attempt by our military to redefine itself in the aftermath of 9/11 and the new world of international terrorism, "The U. S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual" will play a vital role in American military campaigns for years to come.