| ||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
History of the development of U. S. Counterinsurgency Operations,
This review is from: U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942-1976 (Clothbound) (Hardcover)
This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of American military affairs. Andrew Birtle's book U.S. Army Counterinsurgency And Contingency Operations And Doctrine 1860-1941, is an impressive and astute analysis of the critical mission of counterinsurgency and contingency operations the U.S. Army conducted during the Civil War, the American Frontier War, in its military actions with Cuba, the Philippines, China, Mexico, Panama, Germany, and Russia from 1860 to 1941. To help Birtle in this daunting task, his book benefited from his extensive research in unpublished papers and military lectures, official government reports, and excellent secondary sources. Birtle's thesis was that although the Army spent most of its resources and time in training for conventional warfare, it actually spent most of its time during the period he studied, engaged in operations other than war. Birtle's comprehensive study noted that little effort was made to codify doctrine for counterinsurgency or contingency mission for most of the period he researched. "The old Army believed that soldiers learned their trade best through experience, and prior to the twentieth century its publications rarely related more than the technicalities of drill, formation, and administration" (271). For example, during the Civil War, General Order No. 100 was the first official document that outlined the laws of warfare against enemy insurgents and civilians. For the rest of the nineteenth century, it also as the only official document used to instruct Army leaders on conducting unconventional warfare. Birtle adeptly realized that since the Army promotion system was so slow after the Civil War, that when it was ordered to perform unconventional warfare operations and its first occupation mission overseas in Cuba and the Philippines, it could always rely on its "institutional memory" of experienced officers to perform these operations and to train junior officers who had little prior training and experience. "Faced with the task of conquering and civilizing a `savage' foe, the Army's senior leadership naturally turned to those principles that had long guided the old frontier constabulary" (112).
Throughout Birtle's book, he noted that experienced officers wrote articles in military journals, textbooks, and memoirs, relaying their experiences in counterinsurgency operations, nation-building efforts, and constabulary operations. It was these writings that served as the basis for training and doctrine for counterinsurgency and contingency operations until the Army published its doctrine in its Field Service Regulations of 1905. After reading Birtle's book, it seemed incomprehensible that the Army would spend so much time and effort in unconventional warfare and nation building missions between the Civil War and World War I, without conducting any formal training for those missions. Yet it was not until the 1920's, as Birtle's research proved, that there was any real substantive formal education or war gaming conducted in unconventional warfare operations at the Army's Command and Staff, and at the War College. Birtle's book is a must read for historians who want to understand the challenges the Army faced in America's "little wars." Recommended reading for anyone interested in military history, and American history.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
