history
Vietnam War History: Orthodox Versus Revisionist
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Beware the Lesson of the Caudine Forks
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Look Who Has Been Entrusted With Vietnam Military History
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Who is to be Trusted with Military History?
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History & The Military Professional
Studying military history affords military professionals the opportunity to identify lessons that apply to operational environments and develop a deeper understanding of their profession.
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A Review: Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present
Guerilla warfare is not an “Eastern Way of War,” it is the universal war of the weak.
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“In the Service of Humanity and Civilization”? The Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Bosnia and Hercegovina (1878)
During the second half of the 19th century, stability in southeastern Europe was challenged by newly emerging nation-states as well as the decay of the Ottoman Empire.
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Casebooks on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare
US Army Special Operations Command and Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory National Security Analysis Department have put together a useful reference for small wars students and practitioners entitled "Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare Volume II: 1962-2009." The resource is available for download in PDF format here. If you are wondering where Volume I is, that government document covers post-World War I insurgencies and revolutions up to 1962 and can be downloaded in PDF here. The original was published by the Special Operations Research Office at The American University in 1962.
Volume II is broken down by conceptual categories as can be seen by the table of contents:
I. REVOLUTION TO MODIFY THE TYPE OF GOVERNMENT........... 1
1. New People’s Army (NPA).............................................................5
2. Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC)..........39
3. Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)............................................71
4. 1979 Iranian Revolution............................................................113
5. Frente Farabundo Martí Para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN)...151
6. Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)................................195
II. REVOLUTION BASED ON IDENTITY OR ETHNIC ISSUES........ 229
7. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)...............................233
8. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): 1964–2009............277
9. Hutu–Tutsi Genocides...............................................................307
10. Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA): 1996–1999............................343
11. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA): 1969–2001...379
III. REVOLUTION TO DRIVE OUT A FOREIGN POWER.................. 423
12. Afghan Mujahidin: 1979–1989..................................................427
13. Viet Cong: 1954–1976................................................................459
14. Chechen Revolution: 1991–2002..............................................489
15. Hizbollah: 1982–2009................................................................525
16. Hizbul Mujahideen....................................................................569
IV. REVOLUTION BASED ON RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM.... 605
17. Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)......................................................609
18. Taliban: 1994–2009....................................................................651
19. Al Qaeda: 1988–2001.................................................................685
V. REVOLUTION FOR MODERNIZATION OR REFORM................. 725
20. Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)....729
21. Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—Sierra Leone.................763
22. Orange Revolution of Ukraine: 2004–2005..............................801
23. Solidarity.....................................................................................825
The original was broken down regionally and included chapters on Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaya, Guatemala, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Tunisia, Algeria, French Cameroon, Congo, Iraq x 2, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Korea, China, Germany, Spain, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
"In a rare spare moment during a training exercise, the Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA) Team Sergeant took an old book down from the shelf and tossed it into the young Green Beret’s lap. “Read and learn.” The book on human factors considerations in insurgencies was already more than twenty years old and very out of vogue. But the younger sergeant soon became engrossed and took other forgotten revolution-related texts off the shelf, including the 1962 Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, which described the organization of undergrounds and the motivations and behaviors of revolutionaries. He became a student of the history of unconventional warfare and soon championed its revival as a teaching subject for the US Army Special Forces. When his country faced pop-up resistance in Iraq and tenacious guerrilla bands in Afghanistan during the mid-2000s, his vision of modernizing the research and reintroducing it into standard education and training took hold.
This second volume owes its creation to the vision of that young Green Beret, Paul Tompkins, and to the challenge that his sergeant, Ed Brody, threw into his lap."
H/T to Dave Maxwell