HARDCOVER EDITION

How Major Powers Fail in Counterinsurgency

It is the new way of war: everywhere our military tries to make inroads, insurgents flout us--and seem to get the better of the strategists making policy and battle plans. In this book, an expert with both scholarly and military experience in the field looks at cases of counterinsurgency gone wrong. By examining the failures of strategies against insurgents in Algeria, Cyprus, Vietnam, and Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel James S. Corum offers rare and much-needed insight into what can go wrong in such situations--and how these mistakes might be avoided.

In each case, Corum shows how the conflict could have been won by the major power if its strategy had addressed the underlying causes of the insurgency it faced; not doing so wastes lives and weakens the power's position in the world. Failures in counterinsurgency often proceed from common mistakes. Bad Strategies explores these at strategic, operational and tactical levels.

Above all, Corum identifies poor civilian and military leadership as the primary cause for failure in successfully combating insurgencies. His book, with clear and practical prescriptions for success, shows how the lessons of the past might apply to our present disastrous confrontations with insurgents in Iraq.

About the Author
James S. Corum is professor of military history in the Department of Joint and Multinational Operations at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He is the author of Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists, and The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940.

We carry some of James Corum's books, but the following titles are available through Amazon.com:

• Wolfram von Richthofen: Master of the German Air War (Modern War Studies)
• The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940
• Fighting the War on Terror: A Counterinsurgency Strategy
• Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies