Abstract
In America’s Modern Wars historian and analyst Christopher Lawrence offers a systematic and very detailed analysis of the correlates of success in counterinsurgency based on data gathered in his capacity as executive director of The Dupuy Institute (TDI), a non-profit organization dedicated to scholarly research and analysis of historical data related to armed conflict. An impressive amount of data is included in this book. It is, in fact, rooted in a number of TDI reports compiled for several military institutions. The introduction and first chapter introduce the reader to the origins and findings of TDI’s Iraq Casualty Estimate. The second chapter provides an outline of the most important theoretical works on insurgency and counterinsurgency. Fourteen chapters are subsequently dedicated to the analysis of quantitative data derived from up to 83 conflicts that occurred since the end of the Second World War in order to empirically identify correlates of success and failure. Chapters 17 and 18 test the findings against the principles distilled by major theorists of revolutionary warfare and counterinsurgency. Chapter 19 is a quantitative analysis of withdrawal from external military interventions. Chapters 20 and 21 focus on the force ratio model developed in America’s recent wars. Finally, chapters 22 to 24 summarize findings and explore avenues for future research.
The book identifies a certain number of key variables upon which to base analysis: indigenous and intervening government typologies, insurgency motivations, insurgency structures, a counterinsurgency typology, rules of engagement, and the outcome of conflict. These are subsequently employed to critically examine the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars and determine the various elements and factors supporting the ultimate outcome of each conflict.
Unfortunately, America’s Modern Wars has considerable problems related to terminology and concepts, operationalization of variables, and the general organization of the book. With regard to terminology, the book is rather unclear. The author fails to problematize basic concepts such as insurgency and counterinsurgency. Conceptual turmoil is not new to this field of inquiry and in recent years there has been considerable debate with regard to what can be defined as an insurgency and what amounts to counterinsurgency. 1 The book’s discussion of basic terms and concepts seems to betray scarce familiarity with these debates, as it provides rather outdated definitions of both. Insurgency is not discussed and defined in relation to the broader category of internal conflict or civil war, to which a considerable number of scholars now relate it. 2 Similarly, it is not clear whether counterinsurgency is used to refer to a specific population-centric operational approach or, in a more general sense, to any set of measures employed in order to suppress insurgency. 3
There are some problems also with regard to variable operationalization. It is often hard for the reader to grasp how the book does so with the variables it identifies in the first chapters. Chapter 5, for instance, deals with the cause of insurgency, but conflates the cause of conflict with its political message (presumably the political message of the major insurgent groups). There is substantial agreement today among scholars over the fact that the original causes of an insurgency, those motivating so-called ‘first-movers’, might not be (and often are not) the same that motivate ‘late joiners’. Second, the cause (or causes) of an insurgency cannot be conflated with the political message under which insurgent groups discursively articulate their armed challenge against the current holder of central power. 4 Semantical confusion apart, the author does not explain how he went on to establish whether an insurgency is (in his typology) limited, central, or overarching. This is the case with many other variables identified by the book, as for example the ‘structure’ of insurgencies.
Concerning the third point, the structure of the book would have benefited from sharper editing and substantial reorganization. The lack of an overarching structure guiding the reader from one chapter to another hardly makes it user-friendly. This is perhaps ascribable to the fact that the book is the result of several different studies and reports. It does, however, seriously undermine its practical and scholarly utility. The findings it generates, especially related to force ratios and boots on the ground, are far from being unimportant, but inferences are scattered throughout the book and they were framed within a narrow perspective. As a consequence, it is not fully clear how, cumulatively, the book’s findings might help in understanding Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan or, even more importantly, what the book’s findings have to say about the understanding of counterinsurgency prevailing in Western armies, as embodied in FM3-24 as well as recent French, British, and NATO counterinsurgency doctrines.
To sum up, America’s Modern Wars can be considered a useful source of data for analysts and scholars but, overall, it does not add much to scholarly and professional debates that have taken place in recent years over Western interventions in foreign civil wars. As such, it could have some value for the community of professional defence and military analysts, but would probably be of limited interest and value for the broader academic public.