The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen
Former Australia army officer, anthropologist and all-round sharp mind David Kilcullen is an interesting fellow.
Bestride the worlds of government, military and academia and equally at home in each, he is one of the world’s foremost experts on counter-insurgency, was a rare dissenting voice within the 2nd Bush administration, one of the architects of The Surge, and is still dispensing his considerable wisdom to bare in the Obama Whitehouse.
In this wide ranging interview he talks about his decision to join General Petraeus and the US effort in an Iraqi war with which he profoundly disagreed. He talks about the kind of ideas that The West will have to come to terms with if they are to have any realistic hope of “success” by any metric in dealing with Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Insurgency in the middle east and around the world.
His first and much anticipated book “The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
David Kilcullen’s long and varied experience in a broad range of battle fronts across the world gives rise to some radically modern ways of looking at war and conflict resolution, and, as the official blurb says, promises to change the way we look at war, if not the way war is fought in the contemporary world.
While he’ll concede that lives will still need to be lost, his message is essentially one of subtler alliances and nuanced interactions with moderate local majorities as a far more effective and lasting strategy for peace.
He argues the need to place greater emphasis and funding cultural & environmental understanding rather than conventional military capability, but sees that the dependence on the jobs provided by the defence industry is a major stumbling block here, especially in the US.
There is also some very interesting coverage of how the worlds’ current media environment is making the spread of propaganda and “hearts & minds” campaigns an ever less effective tool for the west, partly because it is so broadly monitored and criticised.
The full interview can be heard here (54 minutes):
Accidental-Guerrilla-David-Kilcullen-LNL.mp3
Or you can download it (mp3 – 25mb): 
If you are REALLY keen there is also a video of David Kilcullen discussing “The Accidental Guerrilla” with David Ignatius at the dauntingly official sounding Center for a New American Security, conducted on April 1st 2009:
Read this and be sure to impress a very particular type of chick at parties…
