Hearts and Minds
A People's History of Counterinsurgency
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The first book of its kind, Hearts and Minds is a scathing response to the grand narrative of U.S. counterinsurgency, in which warfare is defined not by military might alone but by winning the "hearts and minds" of civilians. Dormant as a tactic since the days of the Vietnam War, in 2006 the U.S. Army drafted a new field manual heralding the resurrection of counterinsurgency as a primary military engagement strategy; counterinsurgency campaigns followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that counterinsurgency had utterly failed to account for the actual lived experiences of the people whose hearts and minds America had sought to win.
Drawing on leading thinkers in the field and using key examples from Malaya, the Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Hearts and Minds brings a long-overdue focus on the many civilians caught up in these conflicts. Both urgent and timely, this important book challenges the idea of a neat divide between insurgents and the populations from which they emerge—and should be required reading for anyone engaged in the most important contemporary debates over U.S. military policy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
N.Y.U. Professor Gurman compiles essays on counterinsurgency (COIN), defined as efforts to "eliminate an uprising against a government" and whose chief aim is "to separate the insurgents from the population." COIN is traced from the Kennedy administration all the way back to Lawrence of Arabia. Contributing authors appraise COIN in countries from Malaya (Malaysia), the Philippines, and Vietnam, to El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and discuss various intimidating and punitive COIN tactics, including psychological warfare, night raids, police sweeps, targeted assassinations, scorched-earth campaigns, and softer techniques like the use of state-of-the-art technologies and close cooperation between military and civilian intelligence agencies. Emphasis is placed on the fact that, historically, COIN operations often worsen the "climate of misery" in war-torn nations, yet their effects are sometimes downplayed to conceal "the grisly reality on the ground." Less attention, notably, is given to COIN successes, leading one to wonder if there have been any. Overall, the book leaves readers with a distinct impression of the difficulties of quelling insurrection when rebels, in Mao's words, "move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."
