This field manual establishes doctrine for military operations in a counterinsurgency (COIN) environment. It is based on lessons learned from previous counterinsurgencies and contemporary operations. It is also based on existing interim doctrine and doctrine recently developed. Counterinsurgency operations generally have been neglected in broader American military doctrine and national security policies since the end of the Vietnam War over 40 years ago. This manual is designed to reverse that trend. It is also designed to merge traditional approaches to COIN with the realities of a new international arena shaped by technological advances, globalization, and the spread of extremist ideologies--some of them claiming the authority of a religious faith. This is a comprehensive manual that details every aspect of a successful COIN operation from intelligence to leadership to diplomacy. It also includes several useful appendices that provide important supplementary material.

A counterinsurgency (CI) campaign is a mix of offensive, defensive, & stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations. It requires Soldiers & Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks & skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies. Achieving the balance between them is not easy & depends on the local situation. Contents: Insurgency & CI; Integrating Civilian & Military Activities; Intelligence in CI; Designing CI Campaigns & Operations; Executing CI Operations; Developing Host-Nation Security Forces: Leadership & Ethics for CI; Sustainment; A Guide for Action; Social Network Analysis & Other Analytical Tools; Linguist Support; Legal Considerations; & Airpower in CI. Glossary. Charts & tables.

Moyar presents a wide-ranging history of counterinsurgency which draws on the historical record and interviews with hundreds of counterinsurgency veterans. He identifies the ten critical attributes of counterinsurgency leadership and reveals why these attributes have been more prevalent in some organizations than others.

Keith B. Bickel challenges a host of military and strategic theories that treat particular bureaucratic structures, large organizations, and elites as the progenitors of doctrine. This timely study of how the military draws lessons from interventions focuses on the overlooked role that mid-level combat officers play in creating military doctrine. Mars Learning closely evaluates Marine civil and military pacification operations in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, and illuminates the debates surrounding the development of Marine Corps' small wars doctrine between 1915 and 1940. The result is compelling evidence of how field experience obtained before 1940 played a role in shaping the Marine Corps' Small Wars Manual and elements of doctrine that exist today. How the Marines organized lessons at that time provides important insights into how doctrine is likely to be generated today in response to post-Cold War interventions around the globe.

U.S. Marines in Irregular Warfare: Training and Education is a brief history that recounts how the U.S. Marine Corps adapted to fight the Global War on Terrorism during 2000-10. The Marine Corps has a long history of fighting irregular wars, including the Banana Wars in Central America during the 1920s and the Vietnam War during the 1960s. To battle the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Corps drew upon this experience while also implementing new plans and programs to better prepare Marines to carry out counterinsurgency operations. The Marine Corps updated the curriculum at the Command and Staff College and transformed the annual Combined Arms Exercise into Exercise Mojave Viper: an immersive training program that simulated the urban environments in which Marines would be operating in Southwest Asia. Most importantly, Marines adjusted in the field, as battalion and company commanders drew on their basic training and education to devise innovative tactics to better combat the new threats they now faced. ?us, as this story shows, the Marine Corps did not undergo a radical transformation to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead drew on principles that had defined it as a warfighting organization throughout most of its history. Keywords: United States Marine Corps; United States Marines; U.S. Marine Corps; U.S. Marines; Marines; Marine Corps; Global War on Terrorism; global war on terrorism; irregular warfare; military strategy; counterinsurgency; combat; iraq war; Iraq War; Afghanistan; military education; soldier training; combat training and tactics; Southwest Asia

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.