Given the growing salience of counter-insurgency precipitated by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars - perhaps boosted by the Sri Lankan government's victory in 2009 over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam after a 25-year guerrilla war - and its new prominence in American military doctrine and strategy, this well-calibrated and focused RAND study is timely and useful. Of the 89 cases RAND researchers examined, the government under attack clearly prevailed in 28 and the insurgents in 26, leaving 19 cases of mixed results and 16 insurgencies that have yet to conclude. In light of insurgents' relatively high prospects for success, the study could be all the more important in providing guidance (assuming the United States continues to regard counter-insurgency as a counter-terrorism tool) on what insurgencies it makes sense to try to counter.
展开▼
