
Effective counterinsurgency always entails a protracted and sometimes painful period of institutional learning. The campaigns in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) are shaping an entire generation of military leaders. Today, the US armed forces are occupied with counterinsurgency to a degree unseen since the 1960s. During the 1990s, civilian leaders, academic specialists, and the officer corps convinced themselves that insurgency was essentially a Cold War phenomenon. Harvard International Review 31 (1): 52–56.īefore the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the subsequent outbreak of insurgencies in those countries, counterinsurgency was a badly neglected part of the US defense establishment's security repertoire. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, US defence policy and US politics in general.īy: Rosenau, William. An important contribution to military innovation studies, the book also presents an innovation framework applicable to current defence transformation efforts. He details an innovation process that began in the shadow of Vietnam, matured in the 1980s as Pentagon planners sought an integrated nuclear-conventional deterrent, and culminated with battles fought during blinding sandstorms on the road to Baghdad in 2003. Tomes tells for the first time the story of how innovative approaches to solving battlefield challenges gave rise to non-nuclear strategic strike, the quest to apply information technology to offset Soviet military advantages, and the rise of 'decisive operations' in American military strategy. During these three decades, new technology and operational practices helped form what observers dubbed a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' in the 1990s and a 'New American Way of War' in the 2000s. US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedomexamines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003. Stewart, Chief Historian, 30 September 2011 I commend this monograph to today's Army to read, gain insight into such combined operations, and reflect on how much support our allies can provide in future military endeavors. The United States cannot fight alone in the current operational environment, and improving the quantity and quality of our interaction with our international partners should continue to be a high priority. Similar issues of working together in a complex military environment will doubtless reoccur in future operations, but the benefits of assembling such coalitions will almost certainly outweigh the problems. Army planners faced in Iraqi Freedom in integrating a host of different military partners into U.S. This short study also underscores the significant challenges that U.S. Allied support played an important role in stabilizing the situation in Iraq. These combined operations also strengthened the ties between countries and improved the quality of interoperability between U.S. This division of labor served American ends while still ensuring that our partners performed vital work that fully justified their commitment to Iraq's security. combat forces to focus their generally superior capabilities in more contested sections of the country. The presence of ground forces from so many coalition partners allowed U.S. Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response (HA/DR)Īllied Participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom highlights a number of key aspects of allied support to the U.S.-led operation.World War II: Operation Watchtower (Guadalcanal).World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein.Operation Enduring Freedom: Task Force 58.American Revolution: Battle of Moores Creek Bridge.
