Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventio

by Hy S. Rothstein

Book Overview

A Naval Postgraduate School professor and former career Special Forces officer looks at why the U.S. military cannot conduct unconventional warfare despite a significant effort to create and maintain... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159114745X
• ISBN13: 9781591147459
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Enlightening and disturbing, A must read

This book should the handbook to the powers that be, military and civilian, on why they should consider UW as the first option when conducting future wars. Reading this book you will also truly understand why UW and possibly Special Forces is in trouble, period. And ultimately why we as a military are F'd up in Afghanistan. I would HIGHLY recommend this book to all Special Forces soldiers and believers in UW. Having read this book in lieu with Major Jim Gant's "One Tribe At A Time" the UW mission makes even more sense for Afghanistan. These 2 readings complement each other very well. I was a student of Major Gant's during Robin Sage a few years ago. He even said it himself: Special Forces as we know it will not be the same in 4 or 5 years. This book also explains why. I would also recommend, in lieu of this book, read " The Only Thing Worth Dying For". Excellent book. You will get first hand insight to the ignorance placed on UW as an option in the initial war plan for Afghanistan.

Understanding the Future of War

Hy Rothstein has written one of the great books on modern warfare. It is a well written and thoroughly researched evaluation of the US Military's ability to wage unconventional warfare in the modern age, through the lens of the Afghan campaign in Operation Enduring Freedom. What began as a stunning example of modern unconventional warfare using special forces partnering with local forces and precision air power was replaced with conventional troops conducting major "cordon and sweep" operations. The result can be seen in the news every day, as a resurgent Taliban has swept back in from the Pakistani tribal areas to wreak havoc on Afghanistan. This book is a critical read for modern policy makers, military professionals, and anyone looking to understand warfare in the modern world.

Required Reading for Changing Geostrategic Threats

As a former counterinsurgent who understands the issue from firsthand experience at both the grassroots and strategic levels, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Professor Rothstein intimately understands both COIN and the situation in Afghanistan. The paradigm shift required by our government, military, and citizens in general to successfully understand and deal with COIN is dramatic. If we as a nation decide that the threat requires us to be proficient in this type of warfare, then this book is required reading. The US has the preeminent conventional military force on the planet--the result of our need to mitigate the soviet threat of the past. Today, no force in its right mind would stand toe-to-toe with the US military, so the geostrategic threats we are likely to face will come from unconventional and terrorist action. Professor Rothstein's book explains how to address these changes and even offers relatively quick and cost efficient changes that our military could implement. I have sent copies of this book to various US senators and congressmen, and even a couple of influential university presidents in the hope that they would understand this issue and start taking the right kinds of action. This is a must read.

An analytical study of conventional and unconventional uses of tactics in the mountains and valleys

Afghanistan And The Troubled Future Of Unconventional Warfare by Hy S. Rothstein (Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California) is an analytical study of conventional and unconventional uses of tactics in the "War on Terrorism" as it is currently being waged in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. Arguing that although the operation in Afghanistan was presented as unconventional the Bush administration, but was in actuality, a case of America's military power being employed in a segmented and quite conventional manner, Afghanistan And The Troubled Future Of Unconventional Warfare provides an in-depth overview of the Afghan war and why certain situational intricacies may imply, but not require, unconventional or irregular tactics. An important and seminal contribution to Military Studies reference collections and reading lists, Afghanistan And The Troubled Future Of Unconventional Warfare is very strongly recommended work of impeccable scholarship.

Fixing Special Forces

Generals fight the last war. In the last war they were lower ranking officers in charge of troops actually doing the fighting. This gives them a lesson in how wars are fought. Most United States troops are skilled in the fighting of conventional wars. They well understand what the M-1 tanks did in Gulf War I, they understand about air power, logistics, all kinds of things that enable a heavily mechanized army to fight. They proved this well when a much smaller force quickly overcame the much larger Iraqi army in Gulf War II. Unfortunately winning on the battlefield in Iraq and in Afghanistan didn't mean the end of the war. Instead, as we all know, the real battle was just beginning, and we haven't done very well with it. Dr. Rothstein, a West Point graduate and a thirty year career Special Forces officer uses this book to explain how unconventional warfare has not received the attention it should in the modern military. He uses the experience in Afghanistan to illustrate the points he is describing and makes several recommendations as to how the unconventional forces of the US need to be improved, mostly at the command level.