Armies in Low-Level Conflict (1989) By David Charters & Maurice Tugwell
 
"Armies In Low-Intensity Conflict", edited by David Charters and Maurice Tugwell and published in 1989 as the Cold War began to wind down, addresses a very old military conundrum: How do conventional armies adapt to low-intensity conflict? Their answers have continued relevance as the West wrestles with insurgents and Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Charters and Tugwell examined five case studies in low-intensity conflict: The United States in Vietnam, the Israelis in Palestine, The French in Algeria, the Canadians in a variety of peacekeeping missions, and the British in Palestine and Northern Ireland. In each case, the army in question had a responsibility to be prepared for or to conduct major conventional warfare while prosecuting a lesser but necessary contingency.

The conclusions that Charters and Tugwell draw are instructive. Armies do best in low-intensity conflict when they learn from experience and adapt their existing force structure and doctrine to the particular demands of the low-intensity conflict, emphasizing small unit operations and initiative pushed to the lowest levels. Highly professional and disciplined armes do this without creating additional problems by the application of disproportionate force.

This adaptation carries costs. If expertise in low-intensity conflict is concentrated in certain specialized units, those units tend to end up outside the mainstream of those armies. Application of a disproportionate amount of effort to low-intensity conflict can sap the ability of an army to conduct conventional warfare, as the editors suggest happened to the Canadian Army. Finally, when an army is asked to fill both a political as well as a military vacuum, it can end up as badly politicized as the French Army became in Algeria, in the process posing a real danger to the democracy it served.
 
Hard Cover
272 pages
In Good Condition