COIN of the Realm: U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy

Abstract

The "Future Defense Dilemmas" seminar series is a new partnership between the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. Its goal is to bring together defense experts and policy leaders from academia, the military and defense community, other governmental organizations, and nongovernmental institutions for discussions on looming defense questions and dilemmas. On October, 22, 2007, the 21st Century Defense Initiative and the Strategic Studies Institute launched the Future Defense Dilemma series with a day-long seminar entitled "COIN of the Realm: U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy." This was inspired by the recent U.S. military experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent renewed interest in COIN. This has far-reaching effects on military doctrine, education, training, knowledge management, force structure planning, and personnel management, as research, development, and acquisition priorities. In a very real sense, the U.S. military of the future will be shaped by efforts to become more effective at counterinsurgency. Given this wide-ranging and deep impact, the seminar explored two key questions: (1) Is the United States pursuing and executing the right strategy?, and (2) Does the military's focus on counterinsurgency detract from other defense and security needs? To address these issues, the seminar organizers assembled experts from the military, government, and academia to present their assessment of the current effort, lay out the challenges, and offer options for further increasing U.S. effectiveness at counterinsurgency. This brief summarizes the presentations, arguments, and discussions at the general level without attribution to any particular speaker or participant.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA475709

Entities

People

  • Ralph Wipfli
  • Steven Metz

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Counterinsurgency
  • Department Of Defense
  • Department Of State
  • Doctrine
  • Education
  • Government Procurement
  • Governments
  • Insurgency
  • Knowledge Management
  • Military Doctrine
  • National Governments
  • National Security
  • Personnel Management
  • Security
  • Training
  • United States
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Academic Conference Management
  • Defense Technology Research and Development.
  • Strategic Security Studies