To use a term that many in the military are fond of, Nagl "gets it." His understanding of counterinsurgency operations is both broad and deep, and his writing is smooth enough for the lay reader to comprehend without any difficulty.

Nagl's departure from the US Army will be a loss for this country's armed forces. However, since he will be taking a position at the Center for a New American Security, hopefully we can look forward to fresh work from this great military mind.

Very cool book for operators (armed forces and civilian) and regular people. It shows us what we should be trying to do in the whole world. Make people safer, and they'll help you find the really bad guys (not the everyday ones). Really worth reading.

Good read. Great knowledge. I wish the authore had stayed in the army becasue he knows what he is talking about.

As the war in Iraq slides into it's fifth year I am sure most Americans are perplexed on why things remain so screwed up over there. Why can't American's just handle it and come home. This book sort of explains the why. This book is excellent. It really defines what an insurgency is. It isn't like the traditional war like WWII which we see on the history channel. Anyone who wants to get perspective on events needs to read this book.

The book has a second point too which anyone can apply. This book shows how the organizational culture can effect the ability to solve problems. The author does that in studying the British experience in Malay vs. the American experience in Vietnam. He shows how the British were adapt and could learn then apply as they go along. The LTC then shows how the American's were not flexible and paid the consequences. LTC Nagel shows how the American's were so preprogrammed in fighting a WWII type battle they couldn't grasp any other solution. The Generals were preprogrammed in Vietnam to such a degree they threw out any fact that upset the model in their mind. They may have changed the buzz words but the core way of doing business was the same throughout Vietnam for the Americans, search and destroy. While the British had a way to listen and apply the lessons learned from the bottom up. The result of such innovation was that they won their war and we didn't. Insurgencies tend to be as much of a political fight as anything else. LTC Nagel shows that in the book.

Any manager of any large organization needs to read this book because it shows how organizational culture can choke a team to death.

LTC Nagel does identify what an insurgency is but doesn't offer much remedy to fighting that war directly. He does talk about how the British did it and how some American's had theories in handling that type of war. It would be interesting to hear of his insight in the context of Iraq. However I feel that the planners in this surge probably read this book. It has a lot of similarities with the British Malay model.

Overall it is an easy read. He does get lost in the military terms a little. The material he talks about is the same concepts you read about in the newspapers. It will help the reader understand what is going on.

A very interesting analysis of two contrasting counterinsurgency
methodologies. Not exact parallel circumstances but shows well enough that military muscle is in itself not the answer to such problems.

Haven't read the book quite yet. I plan to get it done by the time I am to attend CCC though.

For this reader, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife's value centers on two main premises: 1) those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them; and, 2) a large, monolithic organization such as the U.S. Army will struggle to adapt unless it adopts a learning culture. Both relate to the U.S. Army's experience in Viet Nam. It is clear that the U.S. Army has only recently begun to learn from its earlier failures fighting a stubborn insurgency in 2004-06 and to implement strategy and tactics appropriate to the situation.

Eminently readable for an Oxford PhD thesis, what sets Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife apart from many other books attempting to explain the failures in Viet Nam is the degree to which the author supports his arguments. He combines exceedingly thorough research befitting a PhD thesis with fully developed and clearly articulated arguments. By examining the British Army of the Malay Campaign and the U.S. Army fighting in Viet Nam in terms of their organizational cultures - that is, the degree to which they promoted learning, flexibility, and adaptability - the author does a superb job of explaining why the British were successful in defeating the communist insurgency on the Malay Peninsula and why the Americans failed in South Viet Nam.

Of course, Nagl has his detractors. There are those who would suggest that the conflict in Malaya in the 1950s differed markedly from the conflict in Viet Nam in the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, the Viet Cong were able to leverage a well-funded, well-organized, and well-trained North Vietnamese army against the U.S. Army in South Viet Nam. By contrast, the British really only had to confront a communist insurgency in Malaya. However, those readers who point to the dissimilarities in the two conflicts are really missing Nagl's point.

The author's contention that the British Army eventually succeeded in defeating a thinking, adaptive enemy is instructive. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, we are told that for any institution to be successful when faced with new and decidedly different operational challenges, it must be capable of learning and adapting. This includes everything from changing strategy and tactics to completely reorganizing. In fact, it may even need to develop a whole new set of core competencies. In the context of armed warfare, this may mean viewing victory through a different lens. As members of the Bush Administration have readily pointed out, the war in Iraq will not end with a formal surrender aboard a U.S. battleship. More to the point perhaps, Nagl's work compels us to think differently about how we define success in a counterinsurgency.

For the U.S. Army currently operating in Iraq, adapting really means moving away from war fighting strategy and tactics appropriate to a linear battlefield and more toward an approach that better recognizes the nature of the threat we face. The current threat in Iraq is more socio-political than military. In fact, it is now an article of faith that for our counterinsurgency efforts to be successful, U.S. war fighters must win the hearts and minds of the local populace. If the local Iraqi citizens believe they are more secure and hence can live productive lives, they will be more willing to cooperate with the "occupying" Army. That cooperation will take the form of alerting nearby ground troops to the presence of Al Qaeda fighters and Sunni insurgents.

For any large military organization, adapting to an entirely different threat characterized by a highly complex and dynamic situation involving ethnosectarian conflict, religious persecution, and violent criminal activity such as we see in Iraq today requires tremendous innovation and agility. As Nagl points out, the British were able to eventually embrace change and pursue an effective counterinsurgency strategy while facing a similar set of conditions. He argues persuasively that British and Malay counterinsurgency forces eventually were structured to respond quickly to the communist insurgent threat precisely because they were quite flexible. In large part, the Brits' success can be traced to their approach to counterinsurgency warfare in that era - centralized command with decentralized control. This approach recognizes that the fight is really very different in each province and therefore strategy and tactics will need to be different to attain success.

As Nagl points out, to enjoy the kind of success the Brits had in Malaya, the U.S. Army "will have to make the ability to learn to deal with messy, uncomfortable situations an integral part" of its organizational culture. It must, per T.E. Lawrence, be comfortable "eating soup with a knife." Additionally, as a previous reviewer states quite clearly, "it must be ready to work with outside resources as well, such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and various religious institutions."

Overall, Nagl offers terrific analysis. This work should be required reading for all officers of all branches of the U.S. military.

For this reader, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife's value centers on two main premises: 1) those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them; and, 2) a large, monolithic organization such as the U.S. Army will struggle to adapt unless it adopts a learning culture. Both relate to the U.S. Army's experience in Viet Nam. It is clear that the U.S. Army has only recently begun to learn from its earlier failures fighting a stubborn insurgency in 2004-06 and to implement strategy and tactics appropriate to the situation.

Eminently readable for an Oxford PhD thesis, what sets Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife apart from many other books attempting to explain the failures in Viet Nam is the degree to which the author supports his arguments. He combines exceedingly thorough research befitting a PhD thesis with fully developed and clearly articulated arguments. By examining the British Army of the Malay Campaign and the U.S. Army fighting in Viet Nam in terms of their organizational cultures - that is, the degree to which they promoted learning, flexibility, and adaptability - the author does a superb job of explaining why the British were successful in defeating the communist insurgency on the Malay Peninsula and why the Americans failed in South Viet Nam.

Of course, Nagl has his detractors. There are those who would suggest that the conflict in Malaya in the 1950s differed markedly from the conflict in Viet Nam in the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, the Viet Cong were able to leverage a well-funded, well-organized, and well-trained North Vietnamese army against the U.S. Army in South Viet Nam. By contrast, the British really only had to confront a communist insurgency in Malaya. However, those readers who point to the dissimilarities in the two conflicts are really missing Nagl's point.

The author's contention that the British Army eventually succeeded in defeating a thinking, adaptive enemy is instructive. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, we are told that for any institution to be successful when faced with new and decidedly different operational challenges, it must be capable of learning and adapting. This includes everything from changing strategy and tactics to completely reorganizing. In fact, it may even need to develop a whole new set of core competencies. In the context of armed warfare, this may mean viewing victory through a different lens. As members of the Bush Administration have readily pointed out, the war in Iraq will not end with a formal surrender aboard a U.S. battleship. More to the point perhaps, Nagl's work compels us to think differently about how we define success in a counterinsurgency.

For the U.S. Army currently operating in Iraq, adapting really means moving away from war fighting strategy and tactics appropriate to a linear battlefield and more toward an approach that better recognizes the nature of the threat. The current threat in Iraq is more socio-political than military. In fact, it is now an article of faith that for our counterinsurgency efforts to be successful, U.S. war fighters must win the hearts and minds of the local populace. If the local Iraqi citizens believe they are more secure and hence can live productive lives, they will be more willing to cooperate with the "occupying" Army. That cooperation will take the form of alerting nearby ground troops to the presence of Al Qaeda fighters and Sunni insurgents.

For any large military organization, adapting to an entirely different threat characterized by a highly complex and dynamic situation involving ethnosectarian conflict, religious persecution, and violent criminal activity such as we see in Iraq today requires tremendous innovation and agility. As Nagl points out, the British were able to eventually embrace change and pursue an effective counterinsurgency strategy while facing a similar set of conditions. He argues persuasively that British and Malay counterinsurgency forces eventually were structured to respond quickly to the communist insurgent threat precisely because they were quite flexible. In large part, the Brits' success can be traced to their approach to counterinsurgency warfare in that era - centralized command with decentralized control. This approach recognizes that the fight is really very different in each province and therefore strategy and tactics will need to be different to attain success.

As Nagl points out, to enjoy the kind of success the Brits had in Malaya, the U.S. Army "will have to make the ability to learn to deal with messy, uncomfortable situations an integral part" of its organizational culture. It must, per T.E. Lawrence, be comfortable "eating soup with a knife." Additionally, as a previous reviewer states quite clearly, "it must be ready to work with outside resources as well, such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and various religious institutions."

Overall, Nagl offers terrific analysis. This work should be required reading for all officers of all branches of the U.S. military.

Since the Iraq War effort collapsed into something other than a simple liberation of oppressed people, I have tried to gain insight into our problems there by studying books on Iraq's current situation, on US foreign relationships, ancient and recent Mesopotamian history, Israeli and Palestinian Middle East history, and historic counterinsurgency successes and failures in various parts of the World.

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife is the most illuminating that I have encountered. Col. John A. Nagl very meticulously converts knowledge obtained in writing his Masters and Doctorate theses into a readable analysis of military success in Malaya and non-success in Vietnam.

You must read his preface to the paperback edition both before and after reading the book; this in fairness to our gallant folks serving in the Middle East. You must also abandon any hopes you may have for a blood-and-guts exposé of battleground behavior.

This is science, not sensationalism.

I wish that our military AND our civilian leaders had been able to study this book and to do serious, long-term advanced planning for Iraq based upon it. I am convinced that such luxury would have placed us in a vastly different position than our current one.

This book is an excellent review of the successful British counterinsurgency war in Malaysia and the unsuccessful US counterinsurgency in Vietnam. The author draws the correct conclusion that it is necessary to win the support of the people. The author misses the important lesson that the British war cost Britain probably 100 dead vs. the Vietnam cost to the US of 50,000. The second lesson that the author should have learned is that it is critical to keep our casualties low. It is better to take a long time (like the British did - 12 years) that to suffer higher casualties.

I bought a copy of this book for my boyfriend, serving in the US Army. He enjoys it, recommended it to his fellow officers.

Although some may say that reviewing an already widely acclaimed book is a waste of time, I decided to do just that. Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl's book Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam is a work of inspiration and despair. The inspiration is easiest to accept and digest because it seeps through this work at many levels. Nagl as a serving officer and a scholar is inspiring because this book pulls no punches. His examination of the British experience in Malaya inspires simply because he shows a military can indeed learn and adapt to meet and defeat an equally adaptive threat if its leaders allow it to do so.

So why do I offer despair as a companion to Nagl's inspiration? Well to begin with I lived the Army that came out Vietnam; my leaders in rebuilding that Army all were Vietnam veterans. I remember well General DePuy's role as commander of Training and Doctrine Command; a comrade of mine, Paul Herbert, wrote a great monograph on that subject . I also vividly recall a parody of a debate between Colonel (ret) Harry Summers and Major Andrew Krepinevich over what happened in Vietnam, what could have happened in Vietnam, and what should have happened in Vietnam. As a stage hog, Harry Summers won by overwhelming Andy Krepinevich's scholarly delivery with bluster and bravado. Neither Summers nor Summers' admirers did cared a whit about the message Krepinevich offered; they cared about preserving the Army's capacity to wage Jomini's battle of annihilation. They were seemingly validated in 1991 and again in March 2003. The big battalion Army marched on.

It did so with blinders worn proudly. But some in the Army of the 80s and the 90s lived in another world. I was one of those as a Foreign Area Officer for the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. I served in Turkey, Sudan, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Zaire, and Rwanda. Those experiences put me on the ground in two wars and a genocide. But as a staff college classmate in 1988 remarked to me, I as a FAO "was not in the real Army." The same classmate also stated that he could not imagine the U.S. ever getting involved in another counter insurgency war like Vietnam. When I asked him what he thought we were doing at that very moment in central America, he looked at me like the proverbial pig studying a wrist watch. Seven years later, I greeted him in Goma, Zaire with the rebuttal of "welcome to my world," meaning the mega-Death of the Rwandan Civil War. He was still mesmerized by the wristwatch.

And there is where John Nagl prompts despair. Reading his chapters on Vietnam provides a stark backdrop to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling's recent article on generalship. Nagl is especially brilliant in allowing the key leaders of the Vietnam era to demonstrate their own incapacity to see anything but what they wanted to see. Our efforts to date in OIF and OEF suggest we still have the same problem. Yingling seemingly confirms it.

My hope in writing this somewhat redundant review of John Nagl's book is to inspire, prod, and push those of you who have not read it to do so. If you have read FM 3-24 Counter Insurgency but have not read Nagl's book, you have not truly read FM 3-24.

This is a good study of the military institutions in Britian and the U.S. The weakness of the study lies in the cases, Malaya and Vietnam. Malaya was an insurgency that had its base in a foriegn population, were the insurgents in vietnam were of local nationals. this difference could play a large part in why the british were successful. besides this the book has great insight into how militaries learn and adapt to their situations.

I'm not going to address the specific counter-insurgency tactics discussed in this book. There are plenty of other books that address such things. (David Galula's book "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice" is a good one)

This book shines because it addresses how armies adapt to new combat situations. Armies that can adapt and encourage creativity tend to do well in unfamiliar combat zones. Armies that are hidebound and dogmatic tend to do poorly.

Nagl wrote an excellent book on contrasting the success in Malaysia with the failure in Vietnam.

The jacket mentions that he's currently serving in Iraq, so it will be interesting to see what his take on that conflict will be in a couple of years.

Nagl's work on counterinsurgent organizational learning is perhaps one of the most misleading pieces of scholarship. It also illustrates the tendency for governments and individuals to dangerously learn from selective incidents and misapply them to future situations that have different contexts.
The British did not learn in Malaya, despite what Nagl says. The British, even after the first year of the insurgency, began work on the resettlement of Chinese (which was a major success), as well as a later institution of a registration system for all citizens to discriminate the insurgents. These happened even before 1952 which Nagl claims there was a major shift. The only problem for the British was actually that their High Comissioner was assassinated and took long to replace because of inertia, and that allowed the Communists to regroup. After 1952, all that was done in the Emergency was a consolidation of a good strategy -- by more effective intelligence, a centralization of various organizations etc. There was no learning, only the oiling of an already working machine.
If you do your research, you will find out that the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) had to drag out hundreds of comrades to fight because that was how unpopular they were. They violated Mao's dictum about educating the masses by throwing grenades at crowds and alienating a lot of civilian support -- speaking of which, they did not have much to begin with since the Malays and Indians were not involved. Also, the domestic political condition in the UK was apathetic to the war because everyone knew that British power was going to decline -- the question was only how.
In contrast, Vietnam DID UNDERGO some learning but it failed due to the strength of the Viet Cong and domestic political pressure. There was a concerted effort to introduce pacification efforts by the Marines, the military under the former deputy of Westmoreland, as well as several diplomats and even the CIA. These were very effective but they had to be withdrawn due to domestic opposition to the war, and also because the VC was too strong. By focusing on the army only, Nagl is unable to appreciate the learning done by other organizations. His contention that the army's stubbornness prevented learning is also hollow. When Westmoreland was asked why he did not want to endorse pacification, he said he would receive a funding cut from the President if he did so. The problem was domestic politics, not the army.
Malaya and Vietnam were two different conflicts -- the Malayan Communists were the worst possible insurgents possible, while the Viet Cong were among the best encountered by any counterinsurgent army. Also, the British apathetic public was a HUGE contrast to a revolting and upset American domestic audience. Vietnam received considerable outside support, Malaya did not. Vietnam was unfamiliar to the Americans, the British had been in Malaya for decades. Even so, Nagl's argument about learning itself is inaccurate -- the British only improved an existing strategy, and did not "learn" in Malaya, while in Vietnam, there was some learning but it was thwarted by initial conditions. Nagl's ignorance and neglect of initial conditions and placement of blame on organizational culture makes his argument hollow and unconvincing.
Hopefully, military thinkers WILL NOT be convinced by this sham.

"What does Nagl propose that is any different than Galula, Trinquier, or any of the other classic authors of counterinsurgency warfare?" was the question a recent graduate of the Command and General Staff College posed to me after I had spent an evening reading this book whose title, quoted from T.E. Lawrence, describes the slow and messy nature of counterinsurgency operations.

That was a fair question because as many students of counterinsurgency are aware, these works often present overarching concepts (legitimacy, commitment, intelligence, etc) and then leave the reader struggling to draw his own conclusions on how they may be applied to a given contemporary military operation.

However, I found an answer to the question in Nagl's premise that it is in the processes, not the concepts where one finds the key to defeating insurgencies. Nagl supports this premise by offering the reader a process used throughout the book to examine the decisions and actions taken or not taken by militaries in their effort to become counterinsurgency learning organizations.

If the use of a systemic, iterative, organizational learning process like the one Nagl employs sounds familiar, it should. Two recent Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth Commanding Generals have forwarded a similar construct called "The Engine of Change," that is being put to use throughout our Army to support coalition counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Specifically, military engineers may find Nagl's work particularly familiar because it allows for structured thought while examining emerging counterinsurgency doctrine. After introducing the reader with his methodology in the early chapters, Nagl demonstrates how it can be applied to analyze the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice during the British Malayan Emergency from 1948 to 1960, and again with the doctrine the United States developed in the Vietnam War from 1950 to 1975.

At the conclusion of the Malayan Emergency and Vietnam War analyses, Nagl leaves the reader well positioned to personalize and apply this approach for immediate use in military transition teams, provincial reconstruction teams, and full spectrum operations.

A cogent comparison of the British in Malaya and the US in Viet Nam. Why they won and we lost. Explore the cultural differences asn how they express themselfs in the military. A good guide for any asymmeterical war.

While Nagl raises some interesting points and (I believe) is largely "correct" in his conclusions, his research is terribly superficial, all the less excusably since so much new material is now available. He relies on hackneyed secondary and tertiary sources like Karnow and Sheehan with very little discrimination. His limited historical background is evidenced by his carping on the US Army's tendency to see Vietnam as a repeat of Korea. This is due to the fact that is was, to a large extent. We had created a conterinsurgency constabulary in South Korea that was annihilated by a conventional North Korean invasion. Had we followed Nagl's formula exclusively in Vietnam, the same would have occurred there. Also, the Malayan example is barely relevant. The British took 12 years to eliminate a miniscule guerrilla force with no real foreign support and composed largely of an ethnic minority in a country they controlled absolutely. There were North Malayan mechanized divisions waiting across the border to overrun the country. It's not that the British learned that "less is more" in accomplishing government policy. They realized that they did not have the means of accomplishing anything, so there was little point in trying, hence the largely peaceful abandonment of the Empire in less than a decade. Malaya was a situation so limited in scope that they were embarrassed not to try to solve it. That said, Nagl's ultimate conclusion that security for the population is the key element is exactly what Abrams successfully accomplished despite dwindling resources. It was not until Congress undercut the Saigon regime after the US withdrawal that South Vietnam fell, not to insurgency, but to a massive conventional invasion a la Korea.

This book was required for a class. Turned out to be very interesting and intelligent look at a very, very important topic. I recommend this book to anyone, especially those who feel baffled about what to think about Unconventional Conflict.

Since at least the early 1960s people have been misunderstanding and misinterpreting what the British did in Malaya and how what they did can be applied to other conflicts. The old example used to be Vietnam. Now its Iraq and Afghanistan.

The "emergency" in Malaya was as much a political fight between Chinese and Malays as it was anything to do about communism. The fighting in Malaya unlike Vietnam and unlike Iraq involved an insurgency that was salted through the country. It did not have sympathic uniform regions where almost the entire population were on the side of the insurgents. In particular the removal of population from unsecure villages worked because invariably the targets were chinese.

The other thing that is missed is that military victory in Malaya was as much or more due to skillful political manuvering than it was to helicopters and village relocations. The British undercut the movement by promising to leave Malaya and grant it independence.

The analysis of the British experience with counterinsurgency last century could at best be said to be willfully ignorant. Malaya was not by any means the only british counsterinsurgency operation. There is the disaster of Ireland after World War I. There was Palestine. There was Burma in the 1930s. There was Cyprus, Kenya, Aden and IRAQ(!). In every case, the insurgency that the british faced was eventually dealt with by political concessions (usually independence or more self-government) rather than by force. The British colonial model is not one to emulate because it failed far more often than it was successful in fighting insurgency.

The sad truth is that the record of countries battling an insurgency which has broad local support and friendly bordering states does not suggest any easy strategy for victory. The Malaya strategy would only work in Iraq if the Sunni population were evenly distributed as a minority across the whole country. But it isn't. It has an entire geographic section of Iraq as a base and because of that, the lessons of Malaya just don't apply.

Equally, Vietnam doesn't apply either. Vietnam was a civil war between political groups who were culturally the same. Unlike Malaya, there were no identifiable Chinese villages among Malay villages that could be uprooted as a pacification technique.

In addition, the colonial experience was of less use to the British in the Malaya Empergency than a large base of officers created by the second world war (Force 136 among others) who understood insurgency from the inside out and further had been at times the patrons of the rebel movements when they fought against the Japanese.

As far as Vietnam, I'm at a loss to understand what the author is even thinking. Vietnam in the first couple years was kind of a counterinsurgency war but by 1968, it was a war primarly against a conventional army that crossed the South Vietnamese borders at will. Counterinsurgency in Vietnam could only work (and would have worked) had it been possible to secure the borders of the country. Vietnam was in reality a big army kind of war fought with an army too small for the task. We couldn't even close the relatively short northern border of vietnam.

If the author wanted to learn lessons useful about fighting in Iraq from the British, he would have done better to examine the long counterinsurgency war of the British in Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s. But nobody wants to do that because the lessons of that war directly contradict the entire broad strategy of what the US has been trying to do in Iraq.

And if in future anyone in the US military wants to suggest reorganizations of the forces to meet future war threats, the conflict to analyze is not Iraq. Its the conflict last year in Lebannon between Hezbelloah and Israel. The question is not how the US is going to beat an insurgency in Iraq with second-rate equipment, its how a US army would fight the next insurgency equipped with large quantities of modern anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-air weapons.

The book goes into some length about how to win a counterinsurgency war. It postulates that there are 2 main methods:

a) Pull out all the stops, kill all the rebels and don't hesitate to "hold the civilian population accountable", by reprisals if necessary.

Nagl says that these methods _can_ be successful. He cites the German response to WW2 partisan operations. He very quickly dismisses this approach however and does not cover it, due to disgust, basically.

Solely in terms of effectiveness, Russia's been doing exactly that in Chechnya (and Afghanistan), with limited success. Israel doesn't seem to be making all that much headway either, though it is more restrained. Algeria's pacification has been more successful, but at an abominable cost. I would argue that any Western nation using this approach will lose its soul.

b) Isolate the rebels from the population.

For this approach, Nagl makes it quite clear that the military needs to minimize the use of force. And that it needs to pay much more attention to the political dimension of the insurgency. In his view, Britain won in Malaysia, despite a rather disheartening start, because it came around to understanding that its army would never "fix and annihilate" the rebels.

Instead, it helped the population defend itself, built up civilian infrastructure and governance. "Nation-building", in other words. It emphasized intelligence gathering. And it cut sweet deals with defecting rebels to encourage them to rat on their buddies. It concentrated on consolidating regions, quite slowly, rather than search & destroy operations. And it gradually came to rely on small unit tactics.

The book's main interest is in allowing us to contrast what worked in Malaysia with what we see of the US military tactics nowadays. The US military is not stupid and clearly knows of these precedents. Indeed Nagl cites the Marines as having a good understanding of insurgencies. So, is the US military high command really still stuck in its Vietnam body count mindset? Or are its tactics being dictated from the top, by the administration? Certainly the administration is on the record about its views on nation-building and unlawful combatants. Guantanamo is hardly ideal propaganda to lure rebels to switch sides. At the same time, the over-reliance on airpower is, presumably, driven by the military. Not sure who is in the driver seat however when emphasizing intelligence means spending more and more on electronic means to spy on goat herders.

These speculations are not in the book. But when you read it and you contrast successful methods with current policy, the reader can't help wondering what is going on.

Politically, I think the US administration, due to its ideology and dogmatism, is all spin & sticks and no carrots. I support the Afghanistan mission and I agree that the terrorists need to be stopped. That support turns to anger however, when the methods used to fight these wars are so unproductive. Most of the US administration spin is useful only to sell the war to the part of the US electorate that supported it in the first place and has no value in winning world or Muslim opinion. Increasingly, it has less and less value in winning US public opinion as well. Being against terrorism does not mean you have to support losing strategies, quite the reverse.

Interestingly, Nagl uses "frequency of incidents" metrics throughout to measure success in fighting the insurgency. Look at Iraq's. And he also does not seem to equate quantity (of troops) with quality (of effort).

Last, but not least, one lesson I do hope we have learned from Vietnam is not to take our anger out on the troops themselves, who are just carrying out policy in a very very difficult and stressful situation.

The book goes into some length about how to win a counterinsurgency war. It postulates that there are 2 main methods:

a) Pull out all the stops, kill all the rebels and don't hesitate to "hold the civilian population accountable", by reprisals if necessary.

Nagl says that these methods _can_ be successful. He cites the German response to WW2 partisan operations. He very quickly dismisses this approach however, due to disgust, basically. Solely in terms of effectiveness, Russia's been doing exactly that in Chechnya (and Afghanistan), with limited success. Israel doesn't seem to be making all that much headway either, though it is more restrained. Algeria's pacification has been more successful, but at an abominable cost. I would also argue that any Western nation using this approach will lose its soul and its government will face increasing voter backlash.

b) Isolate the rebels from the population.

For this approach, Nagl makes it quite clear that the military needs to minimize the use of force. And that it needs to pay much more attention to the political dimension of the insurgency. In his view, Britain won in Malaysia, despite a rather disheartening start, because it came around to understanding that its army would never "fix and annihilate" the rebels.

Instead, it helped the population defend itself, built up civilian infrastructure and governance. "Nation-building", in other words. It emphasized intelligence gathering. And it cut sweet deals with defecting rebels to encourage them to rat on their buddies. It concentrated on consolidating regions, quite slowly, rather than search & destroy operations. And it gradually came to rely on small unit tactics.

Militarily, it is interesting to contrast what worked in Malaysia with what we see of the US military tactics nowadays. The US military is not stupid and clearly knows of these precedents. Indeed Nagl cites the Marines as having a good understanding of insurgencies. So, is the US military high command really still stuck in its Vietnam body count mindset? Or are its tactics being dictated from the top, by the administration? Certainly the administration is on the record about its view on nation-building. And Guantanamo is hardly an propaganda success to lure rebels to switch sides. At the same time, the over-reliance on airpower is, presumably, the policy of the military, rather than the administration. Not sure who is in the driver seat however when emphasizing intelligence means spending more and more on electronic means to spy on goat herders.

These speculations are not in the book. But when you read it and you contrast successful methods with current policy, the reader can't help wondering what is going on.

Politically, I think the US administration, due to its ideology and dogmatism, is all spin & sticks and no carrots. I support the Afghanistan mission and I agree that the terrorists need to be stopped. That support turns to anger however, when the methods used to do fight these wars are so unproductive and distateful. Most of the administration spin is useful only to sell the war to the part of the US electorate that supported it in the first place and has no value in winning world or Muslim opinion. Increasingly, it has less and less value in winning US public opinion as well.

Interestingly, Nagl uses "frequency of incidents" metrics throughout to measure success in fighting the insurgency. Look at Iraq's. And he also does not seem to equate quantity (of troops) with quality (of effort).

This is a flawed and boring dissertation comparing how armies learn. This institutional view uses the Malaysian Emergency and the British Army in comparison to the Vietnam War and the US Army. This is a well-researched thesis by a rising star in our Army, but he draws the wrong conclusions from Malaya and terms Vietnam a defeat. He seems to believe that our army did not adapt its tactics in Vietnam. That is incorrect.

The real question is why do we forget our lessons so quickly? Why do our leaders cling to major weapons systems when this type of conflict is one of dismounted infantry, civil affairs and psyops troops?

I loved this book, but I don't know why wise authors of this caliber write such powerful words for an audience who will never heed it? Exercise in wishful thinking. Yes. I loved it. I beleive it. I would practice it. I know, I was there in Tay Ninh 1971. But I am not the one who needs to read it and heed it. Too bad...someone in power who can make a difference needs to read this book.

This book should be mandatory reading for any Commander and Staff officer Battalion and above prior to deploying to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. We have the ability to learn from lessons of the past and LTC Nagl has spelled it out for us.

If you are or have a BN S5/S9, it is a MUST to read, understand, and implement the lessons of this book.

Excellent book that can't be read without thinking of what's going on in Iraq. The lessons are clear. Why don't we learn them? Democracy at the point of a gun isn't very effective, even if its in our national interests. This book gives a much better recipe for success than the one we're using now.

Excellent. Some of the early chapters suffer from an overly academic style, but overall it is well written and incisive.

Nagl analyzes the very different counter-insurgency approaches of the British in Malaya and the US in Vietnam.

In Malaya, Britain had a rocky start, but then installed military leaders who were willing to learn. Central to this was placing a primacy on winning the political war and treating the physical war as secondary. So rather than focusing on large scale search and destroy missions, the emphasis was on "people control" by creating local combined military/police units to secure villages and deny the insurgents access to food and recruits. (Some of this reads as rather draconian by 21st century ideals, such as denying villagers access to uncooked rice and only providing food at central kitchens.)

In Vietnam, the US was locked in a conventional war doctrine that focused on destroying the enemy forces. This led to a continual focus on large scale operations with massive firepower to defeat enemy combatants. What Nagl sees as the real war, of securing the population and winning their loyalty, was seen as (at best) a secondary issue. This failure wasn't universal: many junior officers and even a later American commander argued for the primary importance of the political war. But they were unable to change the style of an army that was locked into an offensive doctrine.

Nagl offers conclusions at two levels:

First, in defeating insurgents, he argues that the true war is to secure the population and win their loyalty (or at least acquiescence). This is best done by small scale local units, embedded in the population. Large firepower-focused search-and-destroy missions are a distraction.

Second, he argues that it is essential that an army be a "learning organization" which adapts to what is actually happening in the field. In reading Nagl one is left with the impression that the US Army went to considerable efforts to create a combat doctrine and to infuse it into officers, but the very success of that exercise made it hard for the army to adapt to a situation which was utterly different from the one expected by the doctrine. By comparison the British army had very little formal doctrine and (rather to my surprise!) a much greater expectation of people inventing solutions as needed for the local situation.

Served in Malaya 1949 to 1952 and went through the whole learning exercise of large formations down to Platoon level. Although by 1951 we had in fact become small silent units , before the time the author gives us credit for.
Great deal of good background research, which pulled many events together for me.Felt he did not really understand the full value of close regimental units nor the fact that we had the National Servicemen for a full 18 months, giving us 6 months to train a acclimatize them and 1 year of fully trained first class men with a great spirit.
A Fine book for anybody interested in this period of military history

Colonel Nagl, quite simply, determines realistic and time-proven measures of success in counter-insurgency campaigns, then applies them in a comparative analysis of the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War.

While not a tactical handbook, it clearly benefits the senior soldier, NCO and officer in understanding insurgency in all its manifestations (and the means to counter it), beyond the base concept of 'military effects'.

Moreover, it affords an appreciation for the necessity of civil-military cooperation and coordination, and the crucial role of civil servants (as opposed to military administrators) in the insurgency theatre.

this book before spouting off about something they know little or nothing about.

Hey, I know it is a long book but it is "kinda, sort of" your job to know about this stuff since you all claim to know everything.

Has Jack Murtha read this book?

Has Sen. Chuck Hagel (Rino-NE) read this book by his fellow Nebraskan? Has Senator Hagel even meet Lt. Col Nagl? I know Hagel has all sorts of sources in the Pentagon, but I'd bet money he doesn't even know who Nagl is.

For me, it comes down to this: Do you trust the expert and learned military and have the PATIENCE to let them do the job or do we allow a bunch of know-nothing amateur politicians and the leftwing media stampede us into a surrender to the Islamofascists?

Here's my answer: What do you think Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Churchill would do?

John Nagl WON a Rhodes scholarship and this book is the result. Check out the footnotes and bibliography. Slightly more impressive than the Iraq Study Group "report" that a high school junior could have written over a long weekend.

As an aside, John Nagl is a graduate of Omaha's Jesuit high school, Creighton Prep; my alma mater. I'd venture to say Prep gave him the right start in how to think and write. This is one impressive book and John Nagl is one impressive guy.

Glad he's on our side and has the ear of the top Army/Pentagon brass and maybe even the President.

I found this book to be interesting and very timely. It is not a quick read however. It compares the British experience in Maylasia with the US one in Vietnam. I find the comparison a bit stretched as the insurgents in Maylasia were mostly of an ethnic group different from the general population and were isolated by geography. In the Vietnam insurgency, the insurgents were indistinguishable from the populace and they had sanctuaries in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam for retreat and resupply. However, I think the point that the US Army has not been successful at learning how to fight insurgencies is very well taken. I Iraq, our troops are still thrashing around trying to find, fix and annihilate the insurgents without good intelligence. We also have been unable to provide any kind of security to the locals and are not even able to protect US personnel in all cases.

Vietnam redefined the American military. Unfortunately, the myths rather than the facts of Vietnam survive. These myths still warp American use of military force. This 2005 edition includes Nagl's Iraqi experience as a preface titled "Spilling Soup on Myself." Many people will find this to be dry reading, but the lessons on organizational behavior have applicability in business and government. The same things that led to American defeat in Vietnam are creating a failing K-12 school system in the United States.

Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" examines what worked in the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960 and what failed in Vietnam from 1965-1972. Nagl organized his book into four parts: Setting the Stage, Malaya, Vietnam, and Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.

Setting the Stage is three chapters: How Armies Learn, the Hard Lessons of Insurgency, and the British and American Armies. Counterinsurgency requires stubborn patience, flexibility, and other un-American attributes.

Part II has two chapters: British Army Counterinsurgency Learning During the Malayan Emergency and The Empire Strikes Back.

Vietnam is also organized as two chapters on the "advisory years 1950-1964" and the "fighting years 1965-1972."

Hard Lessons is Chapter 8. The final chapter is titled Organizational Culture and Learning Institutions. All that precedes these two chapters is merely setting the stage. The meat of "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife" is in these last two chapters. Malay was totally different than Vietnam. The Malay insurgency was based upon an ethnic minority, and the Republic of Vietnam's insurgency was both based on the majority ethnic group and featured forces both internal and external to South Vietnam--North Vietnam was "independent" by international agreement even as it was seeking to re-unify with South Vietnam. More differences existed--enough for several books--plus the institutional differences between the political and military structures of the United Kingdom and the United States made Malaya and Vietnam different worlds! There's more: Britain acted unilaterally in Malaya and the United States lead a multi-national coalition in Vietnam. It is the American thing to do: get world approval before blundering about.

Nagl didn't point out this multi-national versus unilateral approach. It is one of the enduring myths of the Vietnam War that the United States acted alone. How this affected the outcome is beyond the scope of this book review--except to note that American operations in Iraq, the subject of Nagl's preface, is a multinational effort requiring approval from several score governments as well as "world opinion" and United Nations support. There is no unified command in Iraq, which may be either a solution or part of the problem. The Iraqi insurgency has similar divided command problems.

I think "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife" is a valuable addition to my library because John Nagl addresses how institutions learn and adapt. These lessons are applicable to non-military organizations, too. American schools have the same institutional structure as the U.S. Army--and the same biases and mindsets. Multinational corporations are mostly based upon the American model and have the same top-down prejudices as the American military. I shouldn't even mention that institution that created and maintains the American military--the U.S. Congress. Nagl focuses on the U.S. military even though America's military doesn't run America's wars--which is the major weakness of "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife." In the United States, the military is controlled by politicians and subject to civilian control. There is no purely military operation involving American forces, nor has there been since at least the 1805 war against the Barbary Pirates. American foreign policy--and its shortcomings--drives American military policy. American foreign policy is driven by domestic politics.

Highly recommended. If you don't know what the job is, it's pretty hard to choose which tools you need or how to employ them. This book should be read by every government official, elected or appointed, with any responsibility for the conduct of the War on Terror. It should be read twice by anyone tempted to criticize the ones on the ground actually doing the fighting. This from a former Marine and father of Marine sons that have been fighting since Desert Shield.

John Nagl, an active duty Army LtCol, is a rare breed of warrior-academic. He has the unique ability to produce first rate military analysis with the benefit of real operational experience. This book was written for a PhD thesis years before Iraq, but as Nagl states in the new paperback introduction after a tour in Iraq, the thesis still rings true.

To be 100% honest there is little that is revolutionary in its analysis. The great majority of the counter-insurgency theory is based on the "standard" works. The chapters on the U.S. Army's failure to learn as an organization as a root cause behind loss of Vietnam was first proposed in Andrew Krepinevich's groundbreaking "The Army in Vietnam" back in the late 1980s. Nagl rightly gives Krepinevich ample credit.

What makes this book so vital is its timing and readability. It became popular at the exact time it needed to be. It showed the world the continuing value of the study of history. While Nagl borrows heavily from previous academics, most of those academics are barley known outside small groups of military historians, academics, well-read military officers, and think tank circles. Nagl's book makes you want to read it, and its writting style is a primary cause for its success. It is one of the best books about Iraq, without having to mention Iraq or even be about Iraq. You do not need to have a PhD in military history or Middle Eastern Studies to see the how this book is so important today. Too many "experts" believed "technology" changed the very basis of warfare. Nagl's work reminds us yet again that there is little new in current affairs, only old mistakes forgotten.

I do not believe that if U.S. policymakers simply read this book, Iraq would be any different, but if books like this were used in military staff colleges and upper level graduate programs throughout the 1990s, the thousands of brave Americans would not have had to learn its lessons the hard way, in the mountains of Afghanistan and the back-alleys of Iraq.

Military and political pundits often advocate John A. Nagl's excellent book, "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam", as the definitive source for understanding an insurgency and how to defeat it. It is often quoted and some have implied that if the US were only to follow the British example in Malaya for our current war on terror--especially in Iraq--we could expect a better outcome.

An interesting historical point is that the British did not manage the insurgency in Cyprus, which occurred at about the same time, in the same manner as Malaya. As a result, the outcome in Cyprus was completely different from what they had originally envisioned.

James S. Corum's March 2006 monograph for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, "Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies", contrasts the Malaya and Cyprus insurgencies in detail.

The important point that comes to mind is that in Malaya the leadership made early mistakes too. However, Nagl points out that they eventually learned from them and put leaders in place who genuinely understood that the conflict was not primarily a military war, but a socio-political conflict. The Malaya Emergency was managed as a large-scale policing operation, and their military operations were subordinate to the greater political aims of providing security and justice at the local levels where the insurgents operated. In the end, the communist terrorists were utterly defeated.

Nagle reminds us that in South Vietnam, the flawed US strategy was ultimately about firepower and technology and implies a hugely significant question for the Bush Administration.

Have they learned these important deeper lessons about insurgency?

The administration and Department of Defense are now talking about their soon to be released field manual on counterinsurgency. This may be a significant advance as far as the military's role is concerned, but the US government as a whole must apply all of its resources and agencies in a coordinated manner in order to defeat the insurgents. It must be ready to work with outside resources as well, like the United Nations, non-governmental aid organizations, and religious institutions.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration, the Secretary of Defense, and the other key leaders have not demonstrated much in the way of flexibility or adaptability. This ability to learn, along with understanding that insurgency is a war of ideas that relies upon the military being subordinate to local political needs are the key points implied by Nagl's research.

Due to the intensity of the internal conflicts in Iraq that have resulted from US occupation, it appears that a counterinsurgency model by itself may no longer be effective there. However, the principles of counterinsurgency as described above always apply in any war and it is not too late to apply these lessons in Afghanistan.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone studying the nature of unconventional warfare.

Matt Rowe, [...]

This book is an excellent building block for those militaries that expect to be sent by their political masters into harms' way "in every clime and place."

Blessed with a Foreword from General Peter Schoomaker, formerly Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command and today the Chief of Staff of the severely beleaguered U.S. Army, this revised edition integrates the reality check that the author received under combat in Iraq, the book's first edition having been an academic reflection. The improvements are pointed out in an author's preface, and require that this edition be the one to be studied in war colleges.

The most important point in the book for me is that organizational culture--a willingness to learn and innovate or not--is an independent relevant variable for determining success under ambiguous conditions.

The author excels at documenting two facts for the future: 1) it is civil war inside of states, rather than inter-state conflict, that will be the primary military challenge; and 2) the U.S. military is not yet ready to learn and innovate, exceptions not-with-standing.

The comparison of British and US organizational cultures on page 51 is alone worth the price of the book, and can be summed up as the British excelling at long-term presence, regimental memory, bottom-up learning, emphasis on civil solutions and a minimalist use of force. The Americans are naturally the opposite, substituting technology for thinking, quantity for quality, and "shock and awe" force for reasoned instrumentalism. More tellingly, the British will go for the very long haul built on a century worth of localized presence and individualized relationships that built trust, settling for an independent country that gives England a 51% win, while the Americans demand dominance now, and 100%.

The author notes that a major contribution to British success in Malaya was the idea of a junior policeman, to offer channels for anonymous tips. The US has implemented this in Iraq, but typically relies on cell phones that most Iraqis do not possess.

The author credits Mao with having been the logical successor to Sun Tzu, Jomeni, and Clausewitz, and I would add Ho Chi Minh and today Bin Laden. Ho Chi Minh mastered tunnels; Bin Laden has leveraged suicide as a common means that changes everything about war and peace. Interestingly, the author of FIASCO was on television as I read this book, and pointed out that Paul Bremmer single-handedly gave the Iraqi insurgency the leadership (de-Bathification), the guns and volunteers (dismissing the Iraqi army), and the financing (opening the door for Iran) that would not have existed without his incredibly arrogant and ignorant decisions. It was Paul Bremmer who created the Iraqi insurgency and gave Bin Laden enormous international prestige and an increased following. See my reviews of "Blood Money" and "Squandered Victory."

I was interested to learn from this author that the original view of the Viet-Nam war at the national level was as a replay of Korea, with the Chinese as the actual threat. Our ignorance of Viet-Nam's independence, and our deliberate refusal to allow elections, are as shocking are the ignorance of the White House regarding the Sunni-Shiite split, and its willingness to occupy Iraq rather than liberate it, to use torture and humiliation as a tactical measure without regard to its strategic cost.

The author does a good job of focusing on the importance of "the man." History will show that Tony Zinni had it right, and Tommy Franks had it completely wrong.

I found the author's passing discussion of how the U.S. military is increasingly being charged with being an executive agent for non-military sources of national power to be especially interesting. The U.S. Central Command has 90 foreign military liaison teams co-located at its Headquarters, and a mere handful of people representing the varied agencies and departments of the U.S. Government. Inter-agency strategy and inter-agency campaign planning today are as non-existent as inter-agency tactical cooperation.

The author points out that an organizational learning model is virtually the opposition of the bureaucratic politics/budget share model that now prevails in the Department of Defense. In combination with the importance of inter-agency operations, I can anticipate the U.S. Army both replicating diplomatic, information, and economic capabilities to make up for the deficiencies of those departments, and simultaneously creating a new breed of military officer, one with the power to persuade, to be dedicated over the course of a career to herding cats--the autonomous and largely oblivious elements of the U.S. Government that are not pulling their weight in Iraq or anywhere else.

Since the early 1990's several of us have been independently proposing "four forces after next" that would cut the big war force in half, while redirecting the savings to taking small war/gendarme special forces up to $75B a year (a tripling), peace forces from zero to $100B a year, and homeland security from $15B (then) or $36B (now) to $75B a year. This author not only gets it, he helps make the case for doing precisely that. Goggling for "The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate," no. 20 (Autumn/Winter 98-99), pp. 78-84, available online, is a good way to prepare to read this book.

I liked this book so much that I am creating a list of 13 books, none having to do with Iraq, that I recommend be read by anyone who wishes to learn not only how to eat soup with a knife at the tactical level, but how to avoid being part of someone else's soup in this new world disorder. Here is that list by title--I have reviewed all of them"

"Deliver Us From Evil"
"Imperial Hubris"
"Policing the New World Disorder"
"Shake Hands with the Devil"
"Tactics of the Crescent Moon"
"The Coming Anarchy"
"The Dynamics of Military Revolution"
"The Fifty-Year Wound"
"The Sling and the Stone"
"The Sorrow's of Empire"
"The Unconquerable World"
"Transformation Under Fire"
"Wilson's Ghost"
World's Most Dangerous Places"

See also my list of serious DVD's.

This officer has the mind-set that I want to see more of in our civilian as well as our military seniors.

This book is an excellent building block for those militaries that expect to be sent by their political masters into harms' way "in every clime and place."

Blessed with a Foreword from General Peter Schoomaker, formerly Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command and today the Chief of Staff of the severely beleaguered U.S. Army, this revised edition integrates the reality check that the author received under combat in Iraq, the book's first edition having been an academic reflection. The improvements are pointed out in an author's preface, and require that this edition be the one to be studied in war colleges.

The most important point in the book for me is that organizational culture--a willingness to learn and innovate or not--is an independent relevant variable for determining success under ambiguous conditions.

The author excels at documenting two facts for the future: 1) it is civil war inside of states, rather than inter-state conflict, that will be the primary military challenge; and 2) the U.S. military is not yet ready to learn and innovate, exceptions not-with-standing.

The comparison of British and US organizational cultures on page 51 is alone worth the price of the book, and can be summed up as the British excelling at long-term presence, regimental memory, bottom-up learning, emphasis on civil solutions and a minimalist use of force. The Americans are naturally the opposite, substituting technology for thinking, quantity for quality, and "shock and awe" force for reasoned instrumentalism. More tellingly, the British will go for the very long haul built on a century worth of localized presence and individualized relationships that built trust, settling for an independent country that gives England a 51% win, while the Americans demand dominance now, and 100%.

The author notes that a major contribution to British success in Malaya was the idea of a junior policeman, to offer channels for anonymous tips. The US has implemented this in Iraq, but typically relies on cell phones that most Iraqis do not possess.

The author credits Mao with having been the logical successor to Sun Tzu, Jomeni, and Clausewitz, and I would add Ho Chi Minh and today Bin Laden. Ho Chi Minh mastered tunnels; Bin Laden has leveraged suicide as a common means that changes everything about war and peace. Interestingly, the author of FIASCO was on television as I read this book, and pointed out that Paul Bremmer single-handedly gave the Iraqi insurgency the leadership (de-Bathification), the guns and volunteers (dismissing the Iraqi army), and the financing (opening the door for Iran) that would not have existed without his incredibly arrogant and ignorant decisions. It was Paul Bremmer who created the Iraqi insurgency and gave Bin Laden enormous international prestige and an increased following. See my reviews of "Blood Money" and "Squandered Victory."

I was interested to learn from this author that the original view of the Viet-Nam war at the national level was as a replay of Korea, with the Chinese as the actual threat. Our ignorance of Viet-Nam's independence, and our deliberate refusal to allow elections, are as shocking are the ignorance of the White House regarding the Sunni-Shiite split, and its willingness to occupy Iraq rather than liberate it, to use torture and humiliation as a tactical measure without regard to its strategic cost.

The author does a good job of focusing on the importance of "the man." History will show that Tony Zinni had it right, and Tommy Franks had it completely wrong.

I found the author's passing discussion of how the U.S. military is increasingly being charged with being an executive agent for non-military sources of national power to be especially interesting. The U.S. Central Command has 90 foreign military liaison teams co-located at its Headquarters, and a mere handful of people representing the varied agencies and departments of the U.S. Government. Inter-agency strategy and inter-agency campaign planning today are as non-existent as inter-agency tactical cooperation.

The author points out that an organizational learning model is virtually the opposition of the bureaucratic politics/budget share model that now prevails in the Department of Defense. In combination with the importance of inter-agency operations, I can anticipate the U.S. Army both replicating diplomatic, information, and economic capabilities to make up for the deficiencies of those departments, and simultaneously creating a new breed of military officer, one with the power to persuade, to be dedicated over the course of a career to herding cats--the autonomous and largely oblivious elements of the U.S. Government that are not pulling their weight in Iraq or anywhere else.

Since the early 1990's I have been proposing "four forces after next" that would cut the big war force in half, while redirecting the savings to taking small war/gendarme special forces up to $75B a year (a tripling), peace forces from zero to $100B a year, and homeland security from $15B (then) or $36B (now) to $75B a year. This author not only gets it, he helps make the case for doing precisely that. Goggling for "The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate," no. 20 (Autumn/Winter 98-99), pp. 78-84, available online, is a good way to prepare to read this book.

I liked this book so much that I am creating a list of 13 books, none having to do with Iraq, that I recommend be read by anyone who wishes to learn not only how to eat soup with a knife at the tactical level, but how to avoid being part of someone else's soup in this new world disorder. Here is that list by title--I have reviewed all of them"

"Deliver Us From Evil"
"Imperial Hubris"
"Policing the New World Disorder"
"Shake Hands with the Devil"
"Tactics of the Crescent Moon"
"The Coming Anarchy"
"The Dynamics of Military Revolution"
"The Fifty-Year Wound"
"The Sling and the Stone"
"The Sorrow's of Empire"
"The Unconquerable World"
"Transformation Under Fire"
"Wilson's Ghost"
World's Most Dangerous Places"

See also my list of serious DVD's.

I pray this officer makes flag rank on the fast track. He gets it.

This book - the title of which was inspired by Lawrence of Arabia's famous quip "To make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife" - is compelling for a variety of reasons, but three are especially noteworthy.

First and foremost is the fact that no other topic is more pressing in the world of defense policy today than how to successfully wage a counterinsurgency. Even if the author of such a book as this were of limited ability and narrow experience, many policy-wonks and decisionmakers would read the case studies and conclusions closely.

Which leads to the second reason this book is worthwhile: the author's impressive academic credentials and recent real-world brush with counterinsurgency operations. Paul Nagl is a West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar who spent the better part of a decade studying counterinsurgency operations. It was only after this book was first published that he was sent to the Sunni Triangle as operations officer for an Armor unit thrust into a counterinsurgency mission for which it was totally untrained and unprepared. Nagl calls his year in Iraq the "most searing educational experience of his life" - and this from a man who survived Plebe Summer at West Point and years at Oxford. Unfortunately, there is precious little insight into his personal experience in counterinsurgency operations in the new foreword to the paperback edition. He notes that fighting an insurgency was even more difficult than he had imagined and confirms his earlier conclusion that accurate field-level intelligence is the sine qua non for success, but offers little more than that.

Last but certainly not least is the core message in Nagl's study, which is highly persuasive, although it provides little reason to believe that the US will "prevail" in any meaningful sense in Iraq. The irony is that the most convincing aspects of this book have little to do with the main thesis the author puts forward.

Nagl's central argument is that in order to be successful in counterinsurgency operations military forces need to be "learning organizations." To demonstrate this, he relies heavily on an organizational learning model developed by Richard Downie in his book "Learning from Conflict: The U.S. Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War."

In the end, there are two significant problems with Nagl's chosen approach. First, the Downie model does not add much substance to his argument. Is it really a surprise that an Army that embraces a closed loop learning process will be more effective than those that do not? Indeed, that is difficult to argue against and, in fact, is something of a tautology. Second, Nagl makes a credible case that each Army develops a unique ethos - an organizational genetic code, if you will - that is based on a number of fundamental group characteristics, such as its age, size, historical mission and the specific national culture from which the officers and soldiers are drawn.

At a high level, Nagl argues that counterinsurgency operations need to be viewed holistically - as an inseparable combination of political, economic, administrative, police and mil