By Gian P. Gentile, Thomas Rid, Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn and Jaron Wharton
Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 6, December 2009–January 2010, pp. 189–202
Learning, Adapting and the Perils of the New Counter-insurgency
Gian P. Gentile
Counter-insurgency and the Allies
Thomas Rid
Response
Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn and Jaron Wharton
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Editor’s note
In the August–September 2009 issue of Survival (vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 31–48), Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn and Jaron Wharton argued that the US military’s change to a counter-insurgency posture in the on-going conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq was catalysed by two products of an institutional culture that strove to be self-learning: the response of junior leadership to tactical problems and senior institutional dissidents driving deep, controversial changes in doctrine and culture. In this Survival Exchange two experts offer US and European perspectives on the authors’ argument and recommendations to preserve and advance this dynamic in anticipation of future requirements for rapid change. A response from Rotmann, Tohn and Wharton concludes the debate.
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Gian P. Gentile is a serving US Army Colonel and currently runs the Military History Program at West Point. He commanded a combat battalion in Baghdad in 2006.
Thomas Rid is a Fritz Thyssen Fellow at the Shalem Center and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Philipp Rotmann is a McCloy Scholar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin and Geneva. He is a co-author of the forthcoming Learning to Build Peace? UN Peace Operations and Organizational Learning. Colonel David Tohn, a veteran of operations in Iraq, Haiti and Somalia, is an active-duty Military Intelligence Officer in the United States Army and a National Security Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is a co-author of On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Captain Jaron Wharton currently serves as a Public Service Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is an active-duty infantry officer in the US Army and served in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003–06). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or positions of Harvard University, the US Government, the Department of Defense or the United States Army.
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