Bad Strategies: How Major Powers Fail in Counterinsurgency - Hardcover

Corum, James S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0760330808 ISBN 13: 9780760330807

Publisher: Zenith Pr, 2008

Synopsis

It is the new way of war:  Everywhere our military tries to make inroads, insurgents flout us--and seem to get the better of the strategists making policy and battle plans.  In this book, an expert with both scholarly and military experience in the field looks at cases of counterinsurgency gone wrong.  By examining the failures of strategies against insurgents in Algeria, Cyprus,  Vietnam, and Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel James S. Corum offers rare and much-needed insight into what can go wrong in such situations--and how these mistakes might be avoided.  In each case, Corum shows how the conflict could have been won by the major power if its strategy had addressed the underlying causes of the insurgency it faced; not doing so wastes lives and weakens the power’s position in the world.

 

Failures in counterinsurgency often proceed from common mistakes.  Bad Strategies explores these at strategic, operational and tactical levels.  Above all, Corum identifies poor civilian and military leadership as the primary cause for failure in successfully combating insurgencies.  His book, with clear and practical prescriptions for success, shows how the lessons of the past might apply to our present disastrous confrontations with insurgents in Iraq.

About this title

About the Author:

          Retired army officer James S. Corum, PhD, associate professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in the Department of Joint and Multinational Operations at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, was recently a visiting fellow at Oxford University's All Souls College.  While serving as a professor at the Air University Corum developed and taught the course “Terrorism and Small Wars.”  He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Strategic Studies and Airpower Journal and the author of four books and more than fifty articles.  Corum lives near Ft. Leavenworth with his family in Lansing, Kansas.         

Review:

CHOICE
"This volume provides a most useful analysis of the challenges faced by France, Great Britain, and the US in confronting four insurgencies. There is good background material on all four, and consistent thematic probing of the contradictory relationship between military sucess and political failure."

About this edition

• Publisher: Zenith Pr
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0760330808
• ISBN 13: 9780760330807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304