Right-Sizing Intervention: The Philippines, El Salvador, and the Future of American Foreign Internal Defense

Abstract

Popular interpretations of recent defense strategic guidance suggest that America is turning away from messy interventions in foreign irregular wars and toward great-power conflict with China. Actual guidance, however, urges something much different: the acknowledgement that both irregular threats and a rising China are relevant to American national security. The current global security environment coupled with looming fiscal austerity demand that strategists think seriously about affordable and effective ways to deal with a wide spectrum of threats. Numerous irregular warfare practitioners and scholars have offered a method for engaging irregular threats as an alternative to expensive large-scale counterinsurgency. That alternative is small-scale foreign internal defense (FID).

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA615001

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