Recommended Reading

This is the key strategic issue of the decade, the Sino-American relationship.

FLAME ON! For those readers who lack the time to follow COIN inside baseball, here goes a quick summary…..

Paula Broadwell, a Petraeus-ite COINdinista doing her PhD at King’s College, had a guest post at Thomas Rick’s Best Defense entitled Travels with Paula (I): A time to build on the destruction of Tarok Kolache, a Taliban held village in Afghanistan by Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th under the command of LTC. David Flynn. Boadwell’s post caused the head of Josh Foust to explode and Josh responded en fuego at Registan.net with The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing. Broadwell responded to Foust’s accusations on Facebook (!) – yes, it is getting weird now – prompting Josh to write Revisiting the Village Razing Policies of ISAF in Kandahar. That sat poorly with Andrew Exum, who had a joint post thingy with Josh at Abu Muqawama/CNAS-Registan called Exum and Foust on Tactics in Afghanistan, though not before arguing about it first on twitter. Meanwhile, Tom Ricks gave LTC. Flynn a chance to weigh in defense of his troops and himself The battalion commander debates the blogger (II): Foust responds to Flynn and also at Registan, Josh added Responding to Lt. Col. Flynn.

Whew! I think that is where it stands now, though if anyone has links to posts from other COIN blogs, leave them in the comments and I will add the kibbitzers here later. I think we should acknowledge though that this may have been the first extended, acrimonious debate over COIN without being graced by the presence of Col. Gian Gentile. 🙂

 Dr. Thomas Rid – Kings of War The Origins of Counterinsurgency

Superb post. Highly recommended.

Jason Fritz – Inkspots Is a clear and equal enemy necessary to develop a valid grand strategy? and Grand enemies and grand strategy – Part II

Well worth the time to read. The first post spawned responses from Adam Elkus as well as myself, but Jason has called attention to a critical theme thast I wish was a topic of national discussion.

Dave Anderson, Steve Hynd – Newshoggers  On a progressive grand strategy and Progressive Grand Strategy And Nuremberg

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