The Accidental Guerrilla (Book Review)
Thursday, December 30th, 2010
David Kilcullen’s The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One came onto my radar as a must read when he spoke at the National Press Club in August 2009. He has a PhD in political anthropology and is an expert on guerilla warfare…
He has served in every theatre of the ‘War on Terror’ since 9/11 as special advisor for counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, and chief counterterrorism strategist for the US State Department. He is a former Australian army officer with combat experience in South-East Asia and the Middle East.The Accidental Guerrilla (dustcover)
In other words, if you want an informative post-9/11 rundown of why we’re involved in fighting specific insurgencies throughout the world then this is the book that goes a long way to explaining things. Kilcullen drills down to tribal and ethnic allegiances to explain the roots to the multifaceted difficulties we face in these theatres of operation… but also how to undermine the minority of internationally motivated fighters who recruit and incite local (accidental) guerillas to fight alongside them. The majority of fighters in any situation are these local fighters who have no international agenda – their agendas are entirely local and specific to their situation.
I won’t lie to you… I found the first half of this book heavy and painstakingly drawn. This is not a light read for the faint-hearted. However, this is a read for the discerning voter in those democracies who don’t understand how we got into this situation… let alone why we can’t ethically extract ourselves and leave the enemy to sort out whatever civil wars that are bubbling within the cauldron.
In the beginning of the book it mentions something that resonated with me… just as we look back at the post World War 2 conflicts of the world and see them as wars against colonisation… we’ll look back at the wars of this era and see them as wars against globalisation. Another point he brings to the fore is also the changing demographic, and therefore political, world in which we live.
The Accidental Guerrilla is a book for people interested in the strategic overview of our military misadventures into the Muslim world… a world I admit that had not been properly defined for me by the politicians I helped to elect. The final facet of this book that makes it important to read is its emphasis on the normalcy of Islam… and the abnormalcy of international terrorism. However, as I already said, this was a long read. I’m neither a soldior nor a political scientist. But I’m more than glad to have taken the information on board as an Australian citizen.
