The past of guerilla warfare and insurgency represents both the shadow of things that have been and of those that will be. - Ian F W Beckett 1 Insurgencies will continue to define the character of future war, just as they have defined countless wars throughout history. Today, ‘the global routinisation of violence has spawned entire generations for whom protracted conflict is normal ... youth see violence not as an aberration, but part an [sic] intrinsic aspect of life’. 2 Coupled with the unprecedented …

Introduction As warfare—the practice of war—changes through the ages, so it can be expected to change the demands it places on its practitioners. Where these changes in practice are dramatic—for example, the advent of mechanized warfare—the changing demands will be easy to spot. But where the changes are more evolutionary or gradual, over a period of time, it is less easy to identify the impact on military professionals. It is also possible to be living through a period of such change without being aware …

This article is based upon one produced for the Royal Air Force’s ‘Air Power Review’ journal, which was written with the aim of exploring some particular aspects of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) campaign in the Lebanon last year—namely those specifically related to the use of air power. The focus on air power should very definitely not be seen as indicative of a belief that this was the only important area of the campaign—although it is the author’s contention that the way in which Israeli air power was …

By deploying tanks and armoured engineers to Afghanistan in October 2006 and supporting the acquisition of the Leopard 2, the leadership of the Canadian Forces (CF) has acknowledged the importance of maintaining heavy armour in a balanced force. While the continued development of sensors and technology will be extremely important to achieving improved situational awareness (SA) on the battlefield, the hard-earned experiences of the Canadian Army and our allies in sustained combat in Afghanistan and Iraq …

On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah fighters, possibly led or directed by Imad Mughniyeh, once the world’s most wanted terrorist, began a diversionary rocket attack on military targets in Northern Israel before launching a lightning attack across the border against Israeli soldiers in armored HMMWVs. The attack resulted in killing three soldiers, wounding two others, and capturing two prisoners. Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) dispatched a quick-reaction force, led by one of the world’s most advanced tanks, the …

Whatever else you do, keep the initiative. In counterinsurgency, the initiative is everything. If the enemy is reacting to you, you control the environment. Provided you mobilize the population, you will win. If you are reacting to the enemy, even if you are killing or capturing him in large numbers, then he is controlling the environment and you will eventually lose ... Focus on the population, further your game plan, and fight the enemy only when he gets in the way. This gains and keeps the initiative. - …

Hard is not hopeless. - General David Petraeus, testimony to Congress, September 2007 The stunning security improvements in Al Anbar province during 2007 fundamentally changed the military and political landscape of Iraq. Many, both in and outside the military (and as late as November 2006), had assessed the situation in Anbar as a lost cause. The “Anbar Awakening” of Sunni tribal leaders and their supporters that began in September 2006 near Ramadi seemed to come out of nowhere. But the change that led to …

The Army has learned a great deal in Iraq and Afghanistan about the conduct of counterinsurgency operations, and we must continue to learn all that we can from our experiences in those countries. The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not, in truth, the wars for which we were best prepared in 2001; however, they are the wars we are fighting and they clearly are the kind of wars we must master. America’s overwhelming conventional military superiority makes it unlikely that future enemies will …

These problems (of guerrilla warfare) are of a very long standing, yet manifestly far from understood—especially in those countries where everything that can be called ‘guerrilla warfare’ has become a new military fashion or craze. - B H Liddell Hart 1 Introduction Liddell Hart’s words seem as relevant today as when first published in his book Strategy . Since the terrorist attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, a tsunami of ideas about the …

From the 1960s to the 1980s stopping Communist-backed insurgents was an important part of American strategy, so counterinsurgency was an important mission for the US military, particularly the Army. Even when most of the Army turned its attention to large-scale warfighting and the operational art following Vietnam, special operation forces preserved some degree of capability. In the 1980s American involvement in El Salvador and a spate of insurgencies around the world linked to the Soviets and Chinese …