AS THE insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan fester and grow, we need to face facts. Americans are only prepared to support major counterinsurgency operations for about three years. Yet, when the United States enters a war, it doesn't base its strategy on this inevitability. Instead, we tell ourselves that we're in for as long as it takes. That may be morally satisfying, but it's politically unrealistic. With this certain wane in public and congressional backing, we need to choose our confrontations wisely and rethink our tactics.
Multinational peacekeeping missions dominated at the close of the Cold War, and counterinsurgency began to look like a strategic relic. Yet after September 11, strategists correctly assumed that "irregular warfare" would be America's most pressing challenge in the coming years. But as the security community pulled the old playbook off the shelf, it turned out that much of what we thought we knew about insurgency was wrong, or at least desperately in need of revision. So there was a scramble to develop the first new counterinsurgency doctrine since the 1980s.
