BOOKS: ‘The Accidental Guerrilla’

THE ACCIDENTAL GUERRILLA: FIGHTING SMALL WARS IN THE MIDST OF A BIG ONE
By David Kilcullen
Oxford University Press, $27.95, 301 pages
REVIEWED BY RICHARD BENNET

In late 2001, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, a sweeping military response to the attacks of September 11. Both post-Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and post-Saddam Iraq then came to constitute primary battlefields for the Bush Administration’s “Global War on Terror.” Less well documented, however, are the U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts in a variety of “small wars” since 2001, campaigns that have taken American soldiers from the Horn of Africa to the southern archipelago of the Philippines.

In proactively addressing the threat of global terror networks, the United States has often found itself as a participant with other countries in a set of smaller insurgencies. By denying extremists the sanctuaries they often find in these remote corners of the globe, Western forces have threatened the traditionalist norms that characterize many of these premodern societies. This has had the potential to bring democratic reform and — perhaps most critically — Western aid, but it has also repositioned the center of gravity from the transnational terrorist to the local population.

Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, a 20-year veteran of the Royal Australian Regiment and one of the world’s foremost experts in counterinsurgency doctrine, sets out to describe US-engagement in these “hybrid wars.” In a transformed amalgamation of traditional counter-terror and counterinsurgency efforts, wars are now being fought against two “discrete but often interconnected and loosely cooperating classes of nonstate opponent — terrorist and guerrilla, postmodern and premodern, nihilist and traditionalist, deliberate and accidental.” By taking the fight to the often intransigent terrorists, the US-led forces have also disrupted the local guerrillas who have granted the extremists safe haven. These “accidental guerrillas” fight in small wars and face not only their own governments’ response, but Western response as well.

If there is an expert to tell this story, it is Col. Kilcullen. From commanding military advisory teams in Indonesia to serving as a consultant in Iraq to Gen. David Petraeus during the Surge, Col. Kilcullen has consistently been on the front lines of counterinsurgency. “The Accidental Guerrilla” charts important trends in warfighting, drawing on Col. Kilcullen’s theoretical analysis as well as his ground-level experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. The book then looks to other, smaller conflicts in East Timor, Southern Thailand and Pakistan, along with Islamic radicalization in European cities, examining the accidental guerrilla syndrome in practice.

It is Col. Kilcullen’s eye for detail regarding these smaller conflicts, and his ability to place them in the greater context of US efforts since Sept. 11, that separates this work from the host of other books on the US ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. His case studies are carefully chosen, though others might be included in a more comprehensive account, most notably Somalia, North Africa, and the Philippines. The key strategic logic underlying these smaller wars is the indirect approach, limiting US involvement to training and supporting local forces in a largely advisory role.

The indirect approach is also heavily dependent on the political viability and integrity of the partners we choose to support. Finding local solutions to local problems is essential to the future viability of Operation Enduring Freedom and corollary efforts around the globe.

With ambiguous terms like “terrorist,” “insurgent,” “guerrilla,” and “resistance” being thrown about haphazardly by many in the mainstream media, there has been an acute need for a timely, incisive work such as Mr. Kilcullen’s. However, the author frames the discussion almost entirely within the context of our post Sept. 11 world, a choice that may leave military historians unsatisfied. Col. Kilcullen’s act of providing a workable framework for discussions of terrorism and insurgency, especially in terms of the counter-terror and counterinsurgency strategies adopted to combat these local threats, is a most welcome addition to the discussion.

One hopes Col. Kilcullen’s critical distinction between terrorist and accidental guerrilla will help the United States disaggregate and distinguish between its enemies in the future wars it fights, both large and small.

• Richard Bennet is a research associate in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.