Puncturing the Counterinsurgency Myth

The British "way" of counterinsurgency warfight¬ing has often been held up by academics and military practitioners alike as a model worthy of replication by other national militaries, including the United States. In this insightful and provocative monograph, Dr. Andrew Mumford posits that the popular perception of British counterinsurgency efficacy from Malaya onwards has certainly not been supported by the his¬torical record of consistent tactical errors in the early phases of...
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The British "way" of counterinsurgency warfight¬ing has often been held up by academics and military practitioners alike as a model worthy of replication by other national militaries, including the United States. In this insightful and provocative monograph, Dr. Andrew Mumford posits that the popular perception of British counterinsurgency efficacy from Malaya onwards has certainly not been supported by the his¬torical record of consistent tactical errors in the early phases of campaigns and long-term strategic obfusca¬tion. Mumford takes the body of experience accumu¬lated by the British in the past 60 years and uses it as a rich empirical base from which to rethink issues of immense strategic salience, such as the state of coun¬terinsurgency education in the British military sys¬tem; the utility of a "hearts and minds" strategy; and the nature of coalition-based irregular warfare. Slug¬gish British military lesson-learning, as seen through Mumford's "10 myths of British counterinsurgency," provides today's strategists the opportunity to under¬stand the value of lesson transferral and the problems of strategic inertia. From the standpoint of the questionable British performance in Iraq, this monograph fundamentally assesses the arguable myth that surrounds British competency at counterinsurgency warfare, hopefully sparking a debate about the "mythology" of recent British counterinsurgency warfighting.