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The Accidental Guerrilla
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The Accidental Guerrilla (edit title/settings)

Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

by David Kilcullen (Author) (edit contributors)

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David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the... read more

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  • “in essence, enemy-centric approaches that focus on the enemy, assuming that killing insurgents is the key task, rarely succeed”
  • “people who fight us not because they hate the West and seek our overthrow but because we have invaded their space to deal with a small extremist element that has manipulated and exploited local grievances to gain power in their societies”
  • “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden”
  • “we should avoid any future large-scale, unilateral military intervention in the Islamic world”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • The four models are the Globalization Backlash thesis, the Globalized Insurgency model, the Islamic Civil War theory, and the Asymmetric Warfare model.
    Highlighted by 159 Kindle customers
  • First, traditional societies across the world have experienced the corrosive effects of globalization on deeply held social, cultural, and religious identities—sparking violent antagonism to Western-led modernization and its preeminent symbol: perceived U.S. cultural and economic imperialism.
    Highlighted by 135 Kindle customers
  • Second, globalization, by its very openness, affords its opponents unprecedented access to its tools: the Internet, cellphones, and satellite communications, electronic funds transfer, ease of international movement and trade.
    Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
  • Fundamental to counterinsurgency is an ability to undercut the insurgents’ appeal by discrediting their propaganda, exposing their motives, and convincing at-risk populations to voluntarily reject insurgent co-option and intimidation.
    Highlighted by 122 Kindle customers
  • Fourth, the diversity and diffusion of globalized media makes what public relations specialists call “message unity”—a single consistent message across multiple audiences—impossible for democratic governments and open societies.
    Highlighted by 122 Kindle customers
  • AQ applies the same standard four tactics (provocation, intimidation, protraction, and exhaustion) used by all insurgents in history, though with far greater scope and ambition.
    Highlighted by 121 Kindle customers
  • I theorize that the accidental guerrilla emerges from a cyclical process that takes place in four stages: infection, contagion, intervention, and rejection.
    Highlighted by 120 Kindle customers
  • AQ moves into remote areas, creates alliances with local traditional communities, exports violence that prompts a Western intervention, and then exploits the backlash against that intervention in order to generate support for its takfiri agenda. Al Qa’ida’s ideology tends to lack intrinsic appeal for traditional societies, and so it draws the majority of its strength from this backlash rather than from genuine popular support.
    Highlighted by 117 Kindle customers
  • The final, obvious implication is that globalization is inherently a phenomenon over which governments have little control.
    Highlighted by 115 Kindle customers
  • American power must be matched by American virtue,51 or it will ultimately harm both the United States and the global system.
    Highlighted by 112 Kindle customers
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Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. David Kilcullen (Author)

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Page Count: 384

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