[.ca] Insurgency & Terrorism (ISBN 1574883356)

Excellent piece of work.:
In "Insurgency and Terrorism", Bard O'Neill has provided his audience (whether a fighting man or a student) with a framework through which to analyse insurgencies, past, present and future. O'Neill states that he believes that insurgencies are likely to remain a key level of conflict in the future. I agree with him. This is an important area and one which receives all too little attention, especially, in my experience, among the armed forces of the United States. Hopefully Dr O'Neill will redress the balance a little. The book is split into 9 sections; - Insurgency in the Contemporary World - The Nature of Insurgency - Insurgent Strategies - The Environment - Popular Support - Organisation and Unity - External Support - Government Response - Conclusions In each case, O'Neill splits the areas up into smaller sub-sections for easy reference. He deals with different types of insurgent groups, different ways insurgents operate, the effects of terrain and outside support, the coverage is fairly comprehensive. He also, usefully, uses historical examples to illustrate his points. As O'Neill himself points out, no framework for analysis can be infallible or perfect, but this is a pretty good start, whether you are in a counter-insurgency situation or in a seminar room. Good stuff. It should, of course, be supplemented with further reading (a bibliography would have been useful) but all in all this is an excellent piece of work in a field that has been somewhat neglected in recent times (it isn't fashionable in America at the best of times and many of the classic texts are now out of print). A good piece of follow-up reading to this book (especially for a student) would be Ian Beckett's "Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies".