Exporting General Petraeus’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine: An Assessment of the Adequacy of Field Manual 3‐24 and the U.S. Government’s Implementation

The authors review the U.S. Army’s field manual on counterinsurgency, consider the doctrine and tactics that it espouses, and survey its current critics. They present specific examples of its application and conclude that while counterinsurgency does achieve results, the U.S. government lacks a strategic doctrinal framework for implementing counterinsurgency elsewhere. This shortcoming urgently needs to be addressed in a meaningful way by political leaders.