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Reveron therein, see the bottom of of the Introduction chapter.)īernard Fall - because he studied revolutionary/transformative war more from a perspective and period of history that is totally different from today (i.e., from the perspective/the period of history of the Cold War and, thus, from the perspective of the “wars of national liberation”) - would not seem to offer us much help to us today. See the 2016 edition of the book “Exporting Security: International Engagement, Security Cooperation, and the Changing Face of the US Military” by U.S. “Since the 1990s the focus of American international security policy has been focused on creating conditions for extending zones of security and prosperity to other states under the theory that ‘political as well as economic globalization would make the world safer - and more profitable - for the United States.’ Consequently, the United States saw expansion, rather than retraction, of American military presence around the world.” (Item in parenthesis above is mine. See David Kilcullen’s “Counterinsurgency Redux.”) But it also echoes colonial campaigns, and includes entirely new elements arising from the effects of globalisation.” (Item in parenthesis above are mine. The problem of weaning these fighters away from extremist sponsors, while simultaneously supporting modernisation, does somewhat resemble pacification in traditional counter-insurgency. The enemy includes al-Qaeda-linked extremists and Taliban, but also local tribesmen fighting to preserve their traditional culture against twenty-first-century encroachment.

Pakistan’s campaign in Waziristan since 2003 exemplifies this. “Politically, in many cases today, the counter-insurgent (the U.S./the West and/or its partner governments) represents revolutionary change, while the insurgent (the native populations) fight to preserve the status quo of ungoverned spaces, or to repel an occupier – a political relationship opposite to that envisaged in classical counter-insurgency. In start contrast, today it would seem, we need to study revolutionary/transformative war more from the perspective of the time before the Old Cold War that is, the period in history when (a) foreign colonial powers (the “pioneers of civilization” - see Callwell below) (b) overthrew and replaced (with their own models) the status quo political, economic, social and/or value systems - developed much earlier - by various native populations.Īs to this such latter suggestion, consider the following: Army Photo, unknown photographer.īernard Fall, it would seem, studied revolutionary/transformative war more from the perspective of the Old Cold War and, thus, more from the perspective of (a) native populations trying to (b) overthrow and replace status quo “colonial” political, economic, social and/or value systems - which were developed and imposed much earlier - by foreign colonial powers. Photo Credit: Top center – Courtesy of Dorothy Fall via National Archives Right – U.S. Photo Description: Top center – Bernard Fall on a Vietnam street in Quang Tri with soldiers, undated Right – Fall on the ramp in Danang, South Vietnam, 1967. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. He is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. John Nagl is an Associate Professor of Warfighting Studies at the U.S. Army Reserve and was formerly an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Kennedy School. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Critical Infrastructure Analyst with New York State’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He is a research associate in the Applied History Project at the John F. Moir, Ph.D., is the author of Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2022).

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