The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen

The initiative is seized and control of the battleground is determined. Most readers in this corner of the blogosphere will find The Accidental Guerrilla an intellectually stimulating book from an author well grounded in the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan, who is the leading theorist of counterinsurgency today.Ībstractly, Kilcullen's 'persistent-presence' has superior strategic qualities - it isolates and demoralizes the enemy and daunts the latently hostile while connecting our side to the population and 'pumping up' the morale of allies and sympathizers. Kilcullen has written a seminal, if idiosyncratic, work on the theory and practice of counterinsurgency - no doubt why some reviewers found The Accidental Guerrilla be difficult book to read, one that '.could be like a junior high school student's attempting 'Ulysses.' Or were aggravated by Kilcullen's format through which he enunciated a more nuanced understanding of the war and COIN than they found politically tolerable. I am not finished yet but I can say that Col. I purchased a copy of The Accidental Guerrilla, intending to read it last summer but, being buried under my own academic course work, I was forced to put it aside until recently. Go to for 20% off.Review of Dave Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One by Mark Safranski at Chicago Boyz. Today's show is also brought to you by Organifi. On this episode, Jack and David discuss writing, warfare, the realities of counterinsurgency, and more. As the President and CEO of the research and development firm Cordillera Applications Group, he continues to advise private companies and governments around the globe. He was a counterinsurgency adviser to NATO and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. He also served as the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and as an advisor to General David Petraeus.

David Kilcullen is one of the world’s foremost counterinsurgency experts and is the author of the books The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency.ĭavid Kilcullen served in the Australian military for more than 20 years before being recruited as the Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism for the U.S.

The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen