"Military strategists have frequently struggled to determine what conditions lead to the success or failure during counter-insurgency operations. Military history focuses a significant amount of effort on military tactics and weaponry used to achieve the results in warfare, but intelligence operations are sometimes only given cursory consideration. In reality, intelligence operations can be key contributors to success or failure of counter-insurgency operations as was the case in both the Malayan Emergency and Vietnam War. Both the British and US intelligence operations were not successful at the beginning of the Malayan Emergency and Vietnam War respectively but, weaknesses in operations were identified by leadership and rectified to enable defeat of the guerrilla forces encountered. However, the British were successful at achieving unity of effort in their intelligence operations whereas the US operated using several discrete intelligence efforts which were less efficient."--Introduction.

Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances. Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.

A senior expert in national security matters provides the first comparative analysis of unconventional conflicts, using Malaya and Vietnam as lessons for devising new U.S. strategie to counter Third World strife and "drug wars" in the future. This is a provocative text for classes in U.S. foreign policy and military studies.

PRINT FORMAT ONLY NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE-- Significantly reduced list price while supplies last Presents fifteen papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians. Examines irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras. The papers selected for this publication are not only the best of those presented, but they also examine irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras. Together, they demonstrate how extremism was intimately connected to this type of warfare and how Americans have, at different times in their history, found themselves acting as insurgents, counterinsurgents, or both. The titles of the papers themselves reflect how often the U.S. Army has engaged in such irregular operations despite a formal focus on conventional warfare. Using imperial British and Italian examples, several presentations also underline how the ease of conquering lands is often no indication of the level of effort required to pacify them and integrate them into a larger whole. Historians, especially military historians, strategic military analysts, and students pursuing introduction to defense history or military science classes may be interested in this volume.

From U. S. Government Bookstore Website: Presents fifteen papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians. Examines irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras.

"Covers the Navy intelligence establishment's support to the war effort in Southeast Asia from 1965 to 1975. It describes the contribution of naval intelligence to key strategic, operational, and tactical aspects of the war including the involvement of intelligence in the seminal Tonkin Gulf Crisis of 1964 and the Rolling Thunder and Linebacker bombing campaigns; the monitoring of Sino-Soviet bloc military assistance to Hanoi; the operation of the Seventh Fleet's reconnaissance aircraft; the enemy's use of the "neutral" Cambodian port of Sihanoukville; and the support to U.S. Navy riverine operations during the Tet Offensive and the SEALORDS campaign in South Vietnam. Special features elaborate on the experiences of reconnaissance plane pilots navigating the dangerous skies of Indochina; intelligence professionals who braved enemy attacks at shore bases in South Vietnam; the perilous mission in Laos of Observation Squadron 67 (VO-67); the secret voyage of nuclear attack submarine Sculpin (SSN-590); and the leadership and heroism of Captain Earl F. Rectanus, Lieutenant Commander Jack Graf, and other naval intelligence professionals who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives in the service of their country during the war"--