The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Fred Kaplan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 2, 2013

The Insurgents is the inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars, led by General David Petraeus, who plotted to revolutionize one of the largest, oldest, and most hidebound institutions—the United States military. Their aim was to build a new Army that could fight the new kind of war in the post–Cold War age: not massive wars on vast battlefields, but “small wars” in cities and villages, against insurgents and terrorists. These would be wars not only of fighting but of “nation building,” often not of necessity but of choice.

Based on secret documents, private emails, and interviews with more than one hundred key characters, including Petraeus, the tale unfolds against the backdrop of the wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main insurgency is the one mounted at home by ambitious, self-consciously intellectual officers—Petraeus, John Nagl, H. R. McMaster, and others—many of them classmates or colleagues in West Point’s Social Science Department who rose through the ranks, seized with an idea of how to fight these wars better. Amid the crisis, they forged a community (some of them called it a cabal or mafia) and adapted their enemies’ techniques to overhaul the culture and institutions of their own Army.

Fred Kaplan describes how these men and women maneuvered the idea through the bureaucracy and made it official policy. This is a story of power, politics, ideas, and personalities—and how they converged to reshape the twenty-first-century American military. But it is also a cautionary tale about how creative doctrine can harden into dogma, how smart strategists—today’s “best and brightest”—can win the battles at home but not the wars abroad. Petraeus and his fellow insurgents made the US military more adaptive to the conflicts of the modern era, but they also created the tools—and made it more tempting—for political leaders to wade into wars that they would be wise to avoid.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Thrilling reading. ... There is no one better equipped to tell the story. ... Kaplan, a rare combination of defense intellectual and pugnacious reporter … knows the military world inside and out. ... An authoritative, gripping and somewhat terrifying account of how the American military approached two major wars in the combustible Islamic world." (Thanassis Cambaniss The New York Times Book Review)

"One of the very best books ever written about the American military in the era of small wars. ... Fred Kaplan brings a formidable talent for writing intellectual history." (Thomas Powers The New York Review of Books)

“Serious and insightful. … The Insurgents seems destined to be one of the more significant looks at how the US pursued the war in Iraq and at the complex mind of the general in charge when the tide turned.” (Tony Perry Los Angeles Times)

"Compelling" (Dexter Filkins The New Yorker)

"The Insurgents is a tremendously clear and informative guide to the strengths and weaknesses of the military we have today and to the decisions we are about to make. … Anyone who reads The Insurgents will be better prepared to understand what America has done right and wrong with its military over the past generation." (James Fallows, The American Prospect)

"Excellent ... An intellectual thriller." (Joe Klein Time)

"Riveting...essential reading... Kaplan's meticulous account of the ways Petraeus found to bring together and nurture the counterinsurgency 'cabal' might profitably be read by anyone interested in bringing change to a giant bureaucracy." (John Barry The Daily Beast)

"A very readable, thoroughly reported account of how, in American military circles, 'counterinsurgency' became a policy instead of a dirty word." (Janet Maslin The New York Times)

“Fred Kaplan has written a dazzling, compulsively readable book. Let's start with the fact that it is so well written, a quality so often lacking in books describing counterinsurgency. Let's also throw in the facts that it is both deeply researched and also devoid of cheerleading for the military or indeed any other kind of political bias. This book will join a small shelf of the most important accounts of the wars America has fought and will likely continue to fight in the 21st century.” (Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: the Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad)

“Excellent … Poignant and timely. … A good read, rich in texture and never less than wise.” (Rosa Brooks Foreign Policy)

About the Author

Fred Kaplan writes the “War Stories” column in Slate and has also written many articles on politics and culture in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. A former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Boston Globe, he is also the author of 1959, Daydream Believers, and The Wizards of Armageddon. He graduated from Oberlin College and has a PhD from MIT. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Brooke Gladstone.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (January 2, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451642636
• ISBN-13: 978-1451642636
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > History > Middle East > Iraq
  • #28 in Books > History > Military > Iraq War
  • #32 in Books > History > Military > Strategy

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 59 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars searchlight on warriors January 11, 2013

By Ron2

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Let there be light. Fred Kaplan has turned a searchlight on the politicians and generals who have led thousands of men and women into two continuing wars. Those lucky enough to come back may wonder why they were ever there. They were following leaders who had a deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance. The names are familiar----Rumsfeld, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Negroponte. The list is long. And then there were the generals---concerned with prestige and promotion---who did not dare challenge their political masters. For those of us who have spent time over the decades in Iraq or Afghanistan, the possibilities of failure were frightening.

Into this mess came a small group of officers----The Insurgents---Dr. Kaplan so clearly discusses. These were men who knew the politicians and generals were not just fighting yesterday's wars----they seemed to be looking back at ancient battles. These Insurgents were the intellectuals of the army. And no on likes a wise ass---not in the by-the-book military system. It is a complicated story and Kaplan tells it with clarity and style.

David Petraeus is the cover boy of this book (he really is on the cover). He knew how to find the spotlight and sometimes deserved to be in it. But light fads. Counter Insurgency Warfare worked in Iraq as long a certain structure was in place. And then it wasn't.

Then there was Afghanistan where a national structure has never been in place---unless you count corruption as structure.

This book can make you angry. You should be.

A damn good read.

80 of 99 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed messages January 5, 2013

By Mark bennett

Format:Hardcover

This is a book in three parts. The first part traces the post-Vietnam intellectual evolution of "counterinsurgency" (COIN) warfare thinking within the US military from several different perspectives. The second part describes the history of counterinsurgency on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq while also dealing with its politics in Washington. The final part asks some really tough questions as to what these people accomplished, what the value of the strategy is and what the future of the American military should be.

The book presents counterinsurgency strategy as something that grew out of a "social sciences" subculture at West Point in the aftermath of Vietnam. These people were academics and intellectuals. They studied non-traditional subjects and often held advanced degrees such as PhDs. At one point in the book there is a rather disturbing comment where John Nagl actually describes himself as a "social scientist" and soldier.

The first portion of the book is interesting at first but becomes rather tedious. It's interesting to know all the various people, their social networks and how they influenced change in the military. But at a certain point is a tough read and more like reference material than anything else.

The early part of the book does not challenge COIN enough. In particular, the view that COIN was the answer to victory in Vietnam is utterly foolish. The Vietnam War was not won by the Viet Cong or an insurgency. It was won by the army of North Vietnam launching a conventional invasion of the south. While the war might have been an insurgency in 1963, but 1965 it was a very conventional conflict with the Viet Cong operating in battalion sized units. The US sent the Special Forces to open jungle camps near the border at places like Lang Vei and they were overrun by heavy tanks. The views of COIN advocates on the Vietnam War are quite frankly utterly wrong. So are their views of lessons to be learned from the British in Malaya.

The book also fails to see a very obvious point. If the US has a military larger than is justified to face any possible conventional threat, that is probably an argument for a smaller US military. It should not be an argument that we should keep the same size military and find it new tasks like nation building. The idea that we have to have an army of a certain size & cost and that its size & cost provides itself the justification for doing things like Somalia or Iraq is just crazy.

The definition of COIN employed in the book by its promoters is too broad. It's used to cover both operations to prevent insurgencies and operations to fight established insurgencies. But those are in practice two very different things. The book oddly shows both being successful and both failing. The book claims that COIN was practiced by the US early on in Afghanistan with some success but that it has failed in the last few years. The opposite is true in Iraq where there was no COIN at first and then COIN was used to bring about a conclusion to the war.

The book's coverage of the war in Iraq is rather spotty and one-sided. The author accepts the Patraeus fantasy story spun to the press about his first tour in Iraq while openly insulting Tommy Franks and saying little more about events during the term of Ricardo Sanchez than to call him incompetent. The thing about after the first few months in Iraq is that all the military "superstars" seemed to go home with their combat "credibility" to write field manuals, hang out in Florida, or to do postgraduate studies. Constantly sniping after at those who ended up in Iraq in their place.

The book seems to indirectly suggest that we "won" the Iraq war when Petraeus was allowed to finally stack the promotion board in Washington and push his minions up to the top. A quote from Nagl in the book says it all: "Why haven't I been promoted. We've got idiots running this place."

The book presents a very selective picture of events in Iraq during the surge. It tends to give more credit to military COIN operations and far less credit to changes in political policy at the same time. The softening of policy toward Sunnis in particular is not presented in a comprehensive way.

The author is hostile to McCrystal in Afghanistan. As much as the book tries to make COIN look more successful than it was in Iraq, it goes out of its way to say all the things McChrystal supposedly did wrong. It's almost as if the book intended to present at one point the idea that COIN would have worked if McCrystal had only done in right. It also pushes at the crowd around McChrystal for being arrogant and insular ironically without fully seeing the arrogant/insular nature of the crowd around Petraeus. The impression is given that McChrystal was a little bit too blue collar and not enough Ivy League intellectual for the author's taste in Generals.

In the last ten or so pages of the book, the author seems to completely swing around in his opinions. He offers a rather devastating critique of COIN, COIN wars and the lasting impact of those involved. It's strange because it's so at odds with how the book builds up to that point. I completely agree with his critique to the effect that fighting these large counterinsurgency wars (Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan) is a choice the country makes and it's often the wrong choice to be making. That COIN is designed to fight wars the country should generally be avoiding in the first place. That the history of COIN wars is not necessarily all that positive a legacy. But I still find it strange that he says almost none of this until the very end of the book.

I somewhat wonder if there were changes made to the ending of the book over the last few months. That this book might have been a whole lot more positive toward its subjects originally. There is no way to really know.

My personal belief is that the sort of preventative countinsurgency strategies Petraeus used in his first tour in Iraq were good things and normal things the military should do. But his later counterinsurgency efforts convinced me once again that the tactics can't win wars, they can only create a breathing space to allow country to exit a war in a graceful manner. But what is a graceful exit really worth in terms of money and lives?

As well, the doomsday stories that were used to say that the US had no choice but to stay in Iraq have mostly been proven false now by the civil war in Syria. Syria has been able to totally self-destruct without the entire region falling into all-out war or interventions by its neighbors. Certainly the civil war in Syria is not a good thing, but it does somewhat validate a view that the US could have left an unstable Iraq much earlier without triggering doomsday.

The book is a somewhat useful reference for the rise and fall of the counterinsurgency movement within the military. It can possibly be of use in terms of understanding how a small group of intellectuals can accomplish a great deal of influence in a large organization. Its coverage of the actual wars is at best average with a tendency toward bias in any number of ways. I absolutely agree however with most of the author's conclusions at the end of the book about the usefulness and limitations of counterinsurgency warfare.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read on the American Way of War January 11, 2013

By KCD

Format:Hardcover

A must read for serious students of the American way of war and the evolution of military doctrine - and an enjoyable read as well. Kaplan opens by describing a tank battle from the `91 Gulf War. It wasn't much of a battle and demonstrated the folly of the American Army's ceaseless preparation for big wars. An emphasis on counterinsurgency grew out of the realization by a cadre of military thinkers that preponderance of conflicts in the future would be `small wars'. These wars would be long and messy, and the American Army was ill-prepared for them. This stood in sharp contrast to the type of conflicts that the Department of Defense was forecasting, namely network-centric warfare that could swiftly defeat threats wherever they might arise. As Iraq and Afghanistan devolved from decisive victories into protracted quagmires, translating COIN thinking into doctrine took on a sense of urgency. Its application, however, produced mixed results. The problems arose less from the doctrine itself, and more from how the very nature of counterinsurgencies contrasts with the preferred American way of war - quick and decisive. The COINdistas arguably saved the American military from failure in Iraq but the cost in blood and treasure was too high to repeat on the same scale in Afghanistan. In neither conflict was COIN able to resolve the fundamental political tensions driving the instability. As this decade of conflict draws to a close, the American military again faces a dichotomy between how it wants to fight wars and the nature of future wars.