Notes
- ↑ Kilcullen, David. Dinosaurs versus Mammals: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Adaptation in Iraq, 2007; An unforgiving environment that punishes error . Rand Insurgency Board Presentation, 8 May 2008.
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Steven Kent Metz (born June 30, 1956 in Charleston, West Virginia) is an American author and former professor of national security and strategy at the U.S. Army War College specializing in insurgency and counterinsurgency, American defense policy, strategic theory, the African security environment, and future warfare.
From 1993 to 2020 he was with the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) serving as Senior Research Professor, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military Studies, Director of Research, Chairman of the Regional Strategy Department,Research Director for the Joint Strategic Landpower Task Force; Director of the Future of American Strategy Project; Project Director for the Army Iraq Stabilization Strategic Assessment; Director of the Strategic Studies Institute and Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Future Landpower Environment Project; and Co-Organizer of the Harvard-U.S. Army War College Symposia on Security Transformation.
Metz has also been on the faculty of the U.S. Air War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and several universities. He has been an advisor to government agencies, political organizations, campaigns and commissions; served on many national security policy task forces; testified in both houses of Congress; and spoken on military and security issues around the world. He is the author of more than 400 publications and is frequently interviewed by print, television and radio media. He was a member of the blue ribbon advisory panel for the Secretary of Defense Strategic Portfolio Review for Close Combat Capabilities; the RAND Insurgency Board; the Board of Advisors for the U.S. Army history of Operation Iraqi Freedom; the Senior Advisory Panel on Special Forces—Conventional Forces Interdependence; the Atlantic Council's Defense Austerity Task Force; the Central Intelligence Agency's External Advisory Panel for the Iraq Working Group; the Board of Advisers for the American Enterprise Institute's Defense Review; the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Defense Reform For a New Era Task Force; and the Lexington Institute's Grading Government Performance on Homeland Security Task Force. He is currently a Nonresident Scholar at the Quincy Institute For Responsible Statecraft and formerly Adjunct Scholar at the U.S. Military Academy's Modern War Institute. From 2012 to 2019 he wrote a weekly column on defense and security issues for World Politics Review .
Metz's articles have appeared in journals such as Washington Quarterly , Joint Force Quarterly , The National Interest , and Current History as well as a number of edited books. His major publications include:
Metz is the author of Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.
Metz has proposed several new concepts for the analysis of military strategy and national security policy:
Metz graduated from Myrtle Beach High School, Myrtle Beach, SC and holds a BA in philosophy and MA in International Studies from the University of South Carolina; and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University
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Asymmetric warfare is a type of war between belligerents whose relative military power, strategy or tactics differ significantly. This type of warfare often, but not necessarily, involves insurgents, terrorist groups or resistance militias who may have the status of unlawful combatants against a standing army.
The National Security Strategy (NSS) is a document prepared periodically by the executive branch of the United States that lists the national security concerns and how the administration plans to deal with them. The legal foundation for the document is spelled out in the Goldwater–Nichols Act. The document is purposely general in content, and its implementation relies on elaborating guidance provided in supporting documents such as the National Military Strategy.
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare against a larger authority. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irregular forces face a large, well-equipped, regular military force state adversary. Due to this asymmetry, insurgents avoid large-scale direct battles, opting instead to blend in with the civilian population where they gradually expand territorial control and military forces. Insurgency frequently hinges on control of and collaboration with local populations.
Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson (1916–1992) was a British military officer and counter-insurgency expert who "was widely regarded on both sides of the Atlantic as the world's leading expert on countering the Mao Tse-tung technique of rural guerrilla insurgency". His 1966 book Defeating Communist Insurgency played an important role in popularizing the "hearts and minds" approach to counterinsurgency.
Counterinsurgency is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries" and can be considered war by a state against a non-state adversary. Insurgency and counterinsurgency campaigns have been waged since ancient history. However, modern thinking on counterinsurgency was developed during decolonization.
Herbert Raymond McMaster is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is also known for his roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
David John Kilcullen FRGS is an Australian author, strategist, and counterinsurgency expert who is currently the non-executive chairman of Caerus Associates, a strategy and design consulting firm that he founded. He is a professor at Arizona State University and at University of New South Wales, Canberra.
Paul Yingling is a retired United States Army colonel, best known for a 2007 article in Armed Forces Journal that criticized senior military leadership for failures during the occupation of Iraq. Yingling served three tours in the Iraq War, then retired from the Army in late 2011 to teach high school social studies.
John Albert Nagl is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He is a former president of the Center for a New American Security and former headmaster of The Haverford School. Nagl is an expert in counterinsurgency and has published two books on military strategy.
Foreign internal defense (FID) is a term used by the military in several countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, to describe an integrated or multi-country approach to combating actual or threatened insurgency in a foreign state. This foreign state is known as the Host Nation (HN) under the US doctrine. The term counter-insurgency is commonly used for FID.
Irregular warfare (IW) is defined in United States joint doctrine as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations." In practice, control of institutions and infrastructure is also important. Concepts associated with irregular warfare are older than the term itself.
Sherifa D. Zuhur is an academic and national security scholar of the Middle East and Islamic world. She was most recently a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies, University of California, Berkeley and is the director of the Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies.
David William Barno is a retired lieutenant general of the United States Army. He was commander of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.
Gian P. Gentile is a retired US Army colonel, who served for many years as a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Gentile has also been a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior historian at the RAND Corporation. He is a leading critic of U.S. military counter-insurgency doctrine.
De-Ba'athification refers to a policy undertaken in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and subsequent Iraqi governments to remove the Ba'ath Party's influence in the new Iraqi political system after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It was considered by the CPA to be Iraq's equivalent to Germany's denazification after World War II. It was first outlined in CPA Order 1 which entered into force on 16 May 2003. The order declared that all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba'ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is an American nonprofit research group and advocacy think tank founded in 2007 by military historian Kimberly Kagan and headquartered in Washington, D.C. ISW provides research and analysis regarding issues of defense and foreign affairs. It has produced reports on the Syrian civil war, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War, "focusing on military operations, enemy threats, and political trends in diverse conflict zones". ISW currently publishes daily updates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas War. ISW also published daily updates on Mahsa Amini protests in Iran.
The Fletcher School's International Security Studies Program is a center for the study of international security studies and security policy development. It was established in 1971 at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. ISSP conducts its academic activity through courses, simulations, conferences, and research. It also has a military fellows program for midcareer U.S. officers.
Richard H. Shultz, Jr. is an American scholar of international security studies. He is a Professor International Politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he is also the director of the International Security Studies Program (ISSP).
Security Force Assistance (SFA) a term originating in the United States Armed Forces for military adviser assistance with "training, equipping and advising allied or 'partner' militaries to enable them to defend themselves without 100,000 Americans on the ground to do it for them." SFA is used when improving the security of the host country aligns with the national interests of the donor country. It may be used alongside or instead of larger commitments of the donor country's military personnel and matériel. This means SFA can provide an alternative to large-scale operations if a war becomes controversial or politically difficult. Given the ending of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with US-led multinational missions to train and equip the militaries of weak states for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism purposes, the US have increasingly shifted towards SFA programs that make host-nation security force more capable of conducting Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO).
