Wrong Turn: America's Deadly Embrace of Counter-Insurgency

A searing indictment of US strategy in Afghanistan from a distinguished military leader and West Point military historian—“A remarkable book” (National Review).

In 2008, Col. Gian Gentile exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals with an article titled “Misreading the Surge Threatens U. S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities, ” that appeared in World Politics Review. While the years of US strategy in Afghanistan had been dominated by the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN), Gentile and a small group of dissident officers and defense analysts began to question the necessity and efficacy of COIN—essentially armed nation-building—in achieving the United States’ limited core policy objective in Afghanistan: the destruction of Al Qaeda.

Drawing both on the author’s experiences as a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War and his research into the application of counterinsurgency in a variety of historical contexts, Wrong Turn is a brilliant summation of Gentile’s views of the failures of COIN, as well as a trenchant reevaluation of US operations in Afghanistan.

“Gentile is convinced that Obama’s ‘surge’ in Afghanistan can’t work… . And, if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats … who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare … may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board. ” —The New Republic

© 2015 The New Press (E-bog): 9781595588968

Release date

E-bog: 3. marts 2015