Book Review - The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen

The Accidental Guerrilla

Written by: David Kilcullen, 

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, 

ISBN: 9780199754090, 346 pp.

Reviewed by: Peter Mansoor

The War on Terrorism since 11 September 2001 has defied precise analysis, in large measure because it is not clear who or what we are fighting and because our vocabulary concerning war is limited in its scope to largely state-based conflict. In The Accidental Guerrilla, David Kilcullen succeeds in explaining the diverse phenomenon that constitute the wars of the early twenty-first century, and why at present the West is having such difficulty in dealing with them.

Civilian and military policy-makers disagree that we are even in a war—or if we are, what kind of war we are in. Some view the current struggle as a global insurgency or an Islamic civil war, others as a reaction to globalisation. Still others view the conflict functionally, as a shift from the state-on-state violence of the Westphalian era to an asymmetric struggle involving non-state actors and transnational terrorists. Regardless of the categorisation of the conflict, al-Qaeda clearly seeks to avoid Western conventional military capabilities by engaging the United States and its allies on its terms.

Al-Qaeda’s strategy aims to exhaust the West in a continual series of protracted interventions around the world. Kilcullen’s premise is that military responses to terrorist provocations have created ‘accidental guerrillas’, local forces that are pulled into the transnational struggle by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but which fight for the most part merely to repel foreigners invading their space. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which early on focused too heavily on killing and capturing terrorist and insurgent operatives, have created tens of thousands of accidental guerrillas, and have thereby given al-Qaeda immense political capital and credibility within the Islamic world that it does not deserve.

Kilcullen uses a medical metaphor to describe the accidental guerrilla syndrome— infection, contagion, intervention and rejection. In a typical conflict such as Afghanistan, transnational terrorists infect a society and then spread their network to control it. Their presence at some point may trigger military intervention by outside forces, which then causes the local population to come together to reject the foreign presence in their territory, thereby further increasing al-Qaeda’s power. These accidental guerrillas provide the bulk of the foot soldiers al-Qaeda needs to battle the West, and it is these combatants that the author believes we need to avoid fighting if at all possible in the future.

The vast majority of accidental guerrillas are not motivated by ideology or religious dogma. Indeed, Kilcullen usefully explains that in many insurgencies today, religion plays a role as a nationalist identity marker more so than as a deeply felt belief. One of the primary means to further the growth of a pan-Islamic consciousness is to treat all local conflicts as part of a broader al-Qaeda plot to rule the Islamic world. Such attitudes—and the policies that derive from them—play right into al-Qaeda’s hands.

Through his examination of case studies including Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor, Thailand and Pakistan, Kilcullen argues that the West needs to be much more subtle in its strategic approach to prevent the creation of accidental guerrillas. Indeed, Kilcullen has not only observed many of these conflicts first-hand, he has helped to design some of the methods used to prosecute them. The book includes a thorough discussion of the best practices in counterinsurgency warfare—particularly the overriding importance of an effective political strategy to build the legitimacy of the local governing authority, the synchronisation of civilian and military efforts, the criticality of organising and training local security forces, and the need to protect the population to insulate the people from insurgent intimidation and violence.

Despite Kilcullen’s expertise in counterinsurgency warfare, he argues that the West would be ill-advised to engage in direct military interventions across the Islamic world. Rather, he believes that the United States needs to rethink the Powell Doctrine, with its preference for short, high-tech wars with clear end states and exit strategies. He posits an alternative doctrine for dealing with the messy wars of the early twenty-first century, one that would work to achieve national security objectives largely through indirect means, via partnerships with local governments and security forces, and which would emphasise low-profile engagement with a whole-of-government approach rather than exhausting resources through large-scale, conventional military interventions.

The Accidental Guerrilla is solidly grounded in social science and anthropological theory, which can make the book heavy going at times. But it is worth wading through the theory to understand the dynamics at play in the world today. Kilcullen’s call at the end of the book for a new grand strategy for the twenty-first century is timely and on the mark. The defeat of al-Qaeda and its affiliates will be a multi-generational struggle, but it is crucial to get the strategy correct up front—much like the creation of the ‘Germany first’ policy after Pearl Harbor, or the containment doctrine early in the Cold War. The United States stumbled out of the gate after 11 September 2001, but there is no time like the present to rethink the basis for the struggle and set coalition strategy on a sounder footing. The Accidental Guerrilla provides an excellent start to the discussion.