Magazine Foreign Affairs recommended Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice by John Nagl, a former lieutenant colonel in the US Army who has experience researching, teaching and fighting counter insurgency in Iraq. Nagl writes in an engaging style with humor and emotion, making this an easy-to-read book that covers a deadly serious and important topic.
Nagl covered his earlier theories on counter insurgency, developed via research for his doctorate from Oxford in a prior book, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. In Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice he shows how his theories worked in the real world, in Iraq.
He spent a few chapters in his current book summarizing his experiences and what prompted his interest and led him to proselytize counter insurgency as a mandatory skill for the US military. These early chapters painted Nagl as intelligent, dedicated, very self-aware, excellent at building networks and friends, and thoughtful. He realized that the downside of US military superiority is that few enemies will choose to fight us face to face. Asymmetrical / guerrilla wars will be more common.
Nagl spent time at the Pentagon as a military assistant in the Department of Defense, and time teaching at West Point, and used both opportunities to plant seeds in leaders’ minds of the need to switch focus from wrecking havoc to protecting the population after the military invades a country.
Nagl shared excellent insights into the misery the US ran into immediately after the Iraq invasion: The planning was superficial and did not address what to do with the country once we got there; the decision to disband the Iraq army meant no one was in charge of huge weapons depots and tens of thousands of experienced and angry men were no unemployed; the insufficient number of US troops to simultaneously protect people, secure weapons and deal with the chaos.
Nagl’s primary message is that counterinsurgency is messy, unpleasant, unrewarding and absolutely necessary. He supports what should be obvious, that the US shouldn’t get into fights without careful thought and only when necessary, and if we do, we must have a plan to deal with the aftermath. Further we need to develop and institutionalize the skills to handle post conflict problems and the ability to learn and adapt.
Overall Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice is excellent, well worth reading if you are interested in foreign affairs or understanding the effects politics and military affairs have on each other. I found a few pages annoying but the book overall is illuminating and reflects the author’s experience augmented by his carefully thought out theory of war.
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