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Uncomfortable Wars Revisited (Volume 2) (International and Security Affairs Series) Hardcover – February 1, 2006
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Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since September 11, 2001, the United States has faced daunting challenges in the areas of foreign policy and national security. Threatened by failing states, insurgencies, civil wars, and terrorism, the nation has been compelled to re-evaluate its traditional responses to global conflict. In this timely book, John T. Fishel and Max G. Manwaring present a much-needed strategy for conducting unconventional warfare in an increasingly violent world.
In the early 1990s, Manwaring introduced a new paradigm for addressing low-intensity conflicts, or conflicts other than major wars. Termed the Manwaring Paradigm or SWORD (Small Wars Operations Research Directorate) model, it has been tested successfully by scholars and practitioners and refined in the wake of new and significant “uncomfortable wars” around the world, most notably the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Uncomfortable Wars Revisited broadens the definition of the original paradigm and applies it to specific confrontations
- Print length360 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of Oklahoma Press
- Publication dateFebruary 1, 2006
- Dimensions6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100806137118
- ISBN-13978-0806137117
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2017Took a course from John Fishel. Well informed. Well written.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2014The SWORD model was developed in the late 1990 to explain success and failure in counterinsurgency (COIN) (p254).
The date and context is assumed to also to support US involvement in Latin American and South American insurgencies, counter-terrorism and COIN efforts.
SWORD is based on a multi-factor analysis of a sample of primarily, Latin American (small wars) insurgencies’ in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s, then analyzes US/Vietnam conflict – 1964-1973 (p8 – p254)
SWORD Model created as result of several US Generals concerns about US military response’s to small wars… “which had been conducted by the US on an ad-hoc, case-by-case, situation-by-situation and crisis-control basis” (p5)
Authors’ assert that SWORD Model builds on Clausewitz’s military strategy as a combined political-economic-social-psychological-security effort (p7) (Explicit linkages were not apparent)
The initial step in the SWORD project was to define the research parameters. What constituted an insurgency? Were all insurgencies relevant or only some? If the latter, which ones?
The authors defined an insurgency as an effort to overthrow a “de-jure” government. The authors also decided to limit the task to insurgencies that had taken place since 1945 to an indeterminate date.
The authors consulted with a number of experts with experience in dealing with insurgencies. (What is their definition of COIN or insurgent experts?)
The researchers stated…examined available literature on (which was selected?) insurgencies, to help to identify possible causal variables for a win/lose outcome of an insurgency. (questionable assertion)
They further defined a COIN win as the constitutional government still in place when the fighting ended and a COIN loss as the government having been replaced by the insurgents. This was posed as the one – dependent variable – the win/lose outcome from the counter-insurgent perspective. (What about the insurgents and mass population perspectives?)
The SWORD process yielded 71 hypothesized independent variables.
Ordinal scales and questionnaires were administered to experts experienced in COIN. (The precise number of experts is indeterminate)
Statistical analysis using both correlation and regression techniques, were used to reduce the variable set to 7 factors.
The model was then framed in the context of 7 of these were variously described terms in the book as “Factors, Concepts or Dimensions”
Support Actions of the Intervening Power” (SAIP)
Military Actions of the Intervening Power (MAIP)
Host Government Legitimacy (HGL)
External Support to the Insurgents (ESI)
Actions Versus Subversion (AvS)
Host Government Military Actions (HGMA)
Unity of Effort (UE)
The idea was to treat the insurgencies as if they were ongoing - rather than completed and thus predict their win/lose outcomes based on the way in which the factors interacted. (some confusion between description and predication capacities of the SWORD Model)
The results derived in this study relied on the use of the Probit tool. Probit allows the researchers to produce a coefficient of multiple determination, called R-square. R-square of .8 means that the outcome varies with the independent variables 80% of the time. Researchers state that an R-square of .8 explains 80% of the variation in outcomes; they can also say that it predicts the outcome, correctly, 80% of the time. Probit is generally conceived as a useful basis for measuring statistical significance.
The research also attempted to compare the SWORD Model, and its dimensions, with competing counterinsurgency models. These models were developed by a number of different entities. These models were subjected to probit analysis to produce comparable R-square statistics.
The SWORD Model, clearly, performed better than any of the others. Its R-square of .900 explained 90% of the variation in the win/loss outcomes of the 43 insurgencies considered.
The reviewer asserts that this is not a fully transparent or rigorously sound social research study. There are substantive methodological concerns that are not presented or adequately described in the SWORD research. Evidence to support this critical observations and assessment follow:
Sample Data Set: The sample set composed of the 43 insurgencies is never adequately described. The focus appears to be primarily Latin America. The precise description of the belligerents, loci of conflicts and dates of insurgencies are again, indeterminate.
Data Quality: The data quality is indeterminate, the reviewer is led to wonder, if the data sources were collected accurately, given the issues of data collection during conflict can be suspect in terms of quality as bias between COIN and insurgents is probable.
Expert Sample Size, Survey Instruments and Quality: The sample of COIN experts is never adequately described in terms of selection, development of the survey instruments or the use of validity of survey results.
Data Representations: There is apparent bias in ignoring different perspectives and data not being derived from (1) the insurgents perspective and (2) the mass population perspective.
Dependent Variable Conceptualization: The dependent variable is poorly conceptualized, as we have some historical evidence that insurgents or perhaps better termed anti-government belligerents goals may not be working for the wholesale replacement of the nation-state government. Rather, the belligerents may be articulating for changes in the way the present regimes allocates resources. The violence may have locus in resolving economic redistributions, tribal/clan issues, ethnicity, religious aspirations or irredentist disputes.
Conceptual Terminology: The readings make confusing use of the 7 terms - variously described terms in the book as “Factors, Concepts or Dimensions”
Objectivity: The overarching and most fundamental primary concern is research objectivity. Can any social science professional, actually replicate this study and derive generally the same set of findings. The analytic propositions are simply not well conceptualized, data sources are indeterminate, the basic model formulation is suspect. The posed SWORD framework and model is not sufficiently grounded in either social-science theory or field-based observations.
Generalizability: The secondary concern is the aggregate level of generalizability in this particular social-science research. The overarching issue is can this work be applied to across other political entities with use of the framework is questionable.
It is important to recognize that the primary utility in the SWORD work is necessarily descriptive not prescriptive.
The reviewer would posit that good research should always present some attention to the problem of generalizability in descriptive social-science research.
The SWORD study should avoid any confusion relative to notions of descriptive or prescriptive utility.
The important conclusion is that the whole of the SWORD Model is greater than the sum of its parts. If those parts are the individual dimensions, then what gives the model greater descriptive power than the compared competing descriptive models.
Moreover, three SWORD dimensions are heavily military and kinetic. Only the MAIP dimension, among those that are statistically significant, is kinetic. The exception to this statement is that if IP force must be used, then it should be done as early as possible and overwhelmingly.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2017For any novice wanting to understand insurgency and factors that contribute to successful operation.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2006Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, John T. Fishel and Max G. Manwaring, foreword and afterword by Edwin G. Corr, University of Oklahoma Press: Norman
When the time came to take a stand, I stood to Bob Dylan's Masters of War. I was twenty-one. My closest friend in the earliest years of my life, John Fishel, had heard a different music and had fallen into formation and marched off, or so it seemed to me. We lost contact and forty years passed before nostalgia set in. And back through the speakers came Dylan's 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, not Master's of War this time, but Bob Dylan's Dream -- "As easy it was to tell black from white, it was all that easy to tell wrong from right" - "How many a year has passed and gone, and many a gamble has been lost and won, and many a road taken by many a friend, and each one I've never seen again." Steps can be retraced, and I have connected with John Fishel again, and I've just finished reading the new book Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, which John has co-authored with Max G. Manwaring.
This prelude to a review is intended to serve two purposes - the first a disclosure - I know the author personally - and the second to announce a prejudice. The music has not faded and so I come to a book like this with skepticism, with preconceptions.
Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, at a glance, seems perfect for the bookstore shelves at the National Defense University or at the U.S. Army War College. Indeed, the reader will occasionally struggle with "archeo-Trotskyite groupescules" and other obscurities, and it may be appropriate to keep a dictionary handy, but with just as few occasional exceptions, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited is, for the interested layman, an eminently readable book. More than that, it is an important book, written in a perilous time, a time when opinions are slow to change in a world where the pace of change is extraordinarily rapid.
The authors trace the back story of war over the last forty years, the story of the conflicts that don't make the front pages of the newspaper, the insurgencies, rebellions, border wars, terrorist strikes around the world. This is not a new effort for these authors, but the product of long and thoughtful analysis, of long careers. And from this analysis comes the conclusion that conflict resolution cannot obtain from firepower alone, but must be based upon moral legitimacy, and must deal with issues of political, economic and social justice -- nuanced thinking in a time of slogans and platitudes.
There is no reference to George W. Bush in this book. Don Rumsfeld appears in note 50 on page 304 and nowhere else. There are six references to Carl Von Clausewitz, who has been dead for one hundred and seventy-five years and seven references to Sun Tzu, who predates us by more than two thousand years. So readers who are looking to arm up for the near-term U.S. elections may want to look elsewhere. But for those who want historical context, a framework for understanding the environment in which we find ourselves and a considered, conscionable basis for U.S. actions in a changed world, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited is a very good place to start.
Charles M. Spear, Venice, California

