David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New Delhi: Oxford U... more David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), Pages: 342, Price: Rs. 1,317.12.David Kilcullen is one of the most celebrated and influential counterinsurgency experts today. Based on his academic background in the political anthropology of conflict and his personal experiences in counterinsurgency operations as a light infantry officer and later as a senior counterinsurgency advisor to the United States government in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kilcullen has written extensively on counterinsurgency, strategy and irregular warfare. His previous books, The Accidental Guerrilla (2009) and Counterinsurgency (2010) respectively discuss how, like a contagion, Islamist terrorists/insurgents take advantage of any conflict situation in a society to gain the support of the population and establish themselves, and how counterinsurgency operations should focus on neutralising the networks of terrorists/insurgents through a "strategy of disaggregation". Out of Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla is Kilcullen's latest offering, and this time around he brings his focus to bear on urban insurgency.Kilcullen asserts that future conflicts will not take place in remote, forested, mountainous and rural areas but will occur in densely populated, ungoverned, and digitally connected cities of the low income countries because conflict invariably happens where people are and in future it will be cities where the maximum population will be concentrated. He reinforces his argument by citing various studies in demography and economic geography that have identified four "megatrends" shaping future conflicts: population growth, urbanisation, littoralisation, and connectedness. According to him, a look at the present trends in population growth and urbanisation indicate that rapid urbanisation is taking place along coastal belts in the less developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America where inhabitants have increased access to internet and mobile phones. By 2050, approximately 75 per cent of the world's population will live in urban areas.However, why and how would these cities become centres of conflict and violence? Kilcullen argues that every city has a carrying capacity and overstretching of this capacity results in conflicts. In low income countries, rapid urbanisation is accompanied by increased rural to urban migration, which puts enormous population pressure on a city's resources such as housing, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, etc. As the pressure increases, the city administration fails to provide its inhabitants with basic amenities and security, thus creating pockets of poverty, unemployment, pollution, lawlessness and organised crime. He refers to these cities as "feral cities", a term borrowed from Richard Norton. A feral city is where governance has collapsed at the local level, especially in the slums and periurban areas, and criminal gangs, drug lords and extremists swiftly move in to fill the vacuum. These non-state actors take advantage of the sense of alienation and marginalisation among the slum dwellers and exploit the illicit networks such as smuggling, trafficking of drugs, weapons and contraband to establish and consolidate their groups, as well as to fight off external intervention. Mogadishu is a typical feral city.In any insurgency, the support of the local population is vital. Kilcullen explains that non-state actors establish their dominance among the population through "competitive control". He argues that by employing a wide spectrum of tactics such as coercion, administration and persuasion, non-state actors create a normative, predictable and orderly system, thereby lulling the local population into believing that they are in a secure and safe environment. He, however, stresses that it is coercion to which the population responds the most because faced with a powerful authority people will do exactly what is told to them in order to be safe. …
The Australian Army\u27s primary operational environment is becoming increasingly littoral (borde... more The Australian Army\u27s primary operational environment is becoming increasingly littoral (bordering water) and urbanised. Overview As we leave Afghanistan, the urban littoral will rise in importance simply because Australia’s primary operational environment (POE) is overwhelmingly littoral and increasingly urbanised. But we no longer face the littoral of which Ralph Peters or Charles Krulak wrote in the 1990s — in the pre-mobile phone era, before significant penetration of the internet into the developing world. Today we face an urban, networked littoral. The explosion of electronic connectivity changes both the environment and the threats we may encounter within it. This paper explores the urban, networked littoral and proposes concepts for control operations in this setting. The ensuing discussion considers in turn the environment, missions and threats, the operational response, and capability implications
Throughout this book, I use the capitalized term “Western” or “the West” to describe a particular... more Throughout this book, I use the capitalized term “Western” or “the West” to describe a particular military methodology, along with the group of countries whose warfighting style is characterized by that methodology. In essence, it is an approach to war that emphasizes battlefield dominance, achieved through high-tech precision engagement, networked communications, and pervasive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). It is characterized by an obsessive drive to minimize casualties, a reluctance to think about the long-term consequences of war, a narrow focus on combat, and a lack of emphasis on war termination—the set of activities needed in order to translate battlefield success into enduring and favorable political outcomes....
This chapter discusses China’s evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the evolution... more This chapter discusses China’s evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the evolution of Chinese forces, offers case studies of the Sino-Vietnamese War and the South China Sea, introduces and analyzes the concept of conceptual envelopment as it relates to China, discusses the transformative effect of China’s emergence as a global oceanic and maritime power, and explores the concept of unrestricted warfare and China’s Three Warfares doctrine. It argues that, in the quarter century since 1993, China has learned by watching the West struggle in the post-Cold War era, and has taken advantage of Western preoccupation with terrorism since 2001. The 1991 Gulf War, the 1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, and the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade prompted strategists in Beijing to shift from a peacetime, concept-led adaptation process to a wartime, reactive approach that treats the United States as a “pacing threat.”
Until the late twentieth century, Australian strategy was defined by the 1987 Defence of Australi... more Until the late twentieth century, Australian strategy was defined by the 1987 Defence of Australia (DOA) doctrine in which Australia’s strategic environment was defined by the continent’s geography and regional spatiality. DOA limited geography to its spatial, that is locational, aspect which led to a focus on a ‘sea-air gap’. From 1986 until 1999, though resourced only for a close-in layered defence of the sea-air gap, Australian joint expeditionary forces deployed numerous times outside its “area of direct military interest” for warfare, peacekeeping and other operations—reflecting Australia’s global strategic interests rather than its narrowly territorial defence requirements. The 9/11 attacks turned Australian thinking on strategic geography (then DOA) on its head. This chapter discusses the implications and some outcomes of this change, and poses some key questions for strategic thinkers in military geography, and defence and security more broadly.
The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 2022
On November 23, 2021, Dr. David Kilcullen, President and CEO of Cordillera Applications Group, pr... more On November 23, 2021, Dr. David Kilcullen, President and CEO of Cordillera Applications Group, presented The Importance of Warning Intelligence When Dealing with Dragons and Snakes at the 2021 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question and answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed in this presentation included strategic warning times, gray zone attacks, Russian and Chinese strategic deterrence, and the consequences of misunderstanding or underestimating adversaries.
<p>This chapter discusses Russian evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the ... more <p>This chapter discusses Russian evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the post-Soviet military evolution of Russian forces, offers case studies of the Norwegian-Russian border and the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, introduces and analyzes the concept of liminal warfare as practiced by Russia, and discusses the "Gerasimov doctrine,", reflexive control, and Russian political warfare methods, including those allegedly used during the 2016 US presidential election. It argues that, in recovering from its post-Cold War eclipse of the 1990s, the Russian Federation engaged in a process of adaptation under pressure, developing significantly more capable conventional and nuclear forces (especially after the Five-Day War of 2008 in Georgia) but also evolving a form of warfare, liminal maneuver, designed to offset US conventional dominance.</p>
<p>This chapter draws on key concepts from evolutionary theory, anthropology, and social sc... more <p>This chapter draws on key concepts from evolutionary theory, anthropology, and social science to explore how adaptive enemies evolve and adapt under conditions of conflict. It identifies four key mechanisms of evolution in irregular warfare—social learning, natural selection, artificial selection (including both unconscious artificial selection and predator effects), and institutional adaptation—and gives examples of each. It also examines forms of conscious military innovation by states, and draws a distinction between peacetime (concept led) and wartime (reactive) modes of innovation. The chapter argues that domination of the operational environment by Western armed forces since the end of the Cold War has created evolutionary pressure to which all adversaries—state and non-state—have responded, and that this response is shaping new approaches to war.</p>
This chapter applies the evolutionary concepts explained in Chapter 2 to a series of case studies... more This chapter applies the evolutionary concepts explained in Chapter 2 to a series of case studies of nonstate adversaries. It explores how specific nonstate adversaries have adapted and evolved since 1993; these include Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and the Lebanese Shi’a group Hezbollah. The chapter shows that each of these irregular armed groups, despite differences of ideology, origin, operating environment and structure, are all responding in their own ways to a fitness landscape created by Western dominance of a particular, narrow, technology-centric form of warfare. Their patterns of adaptation indicate the ways in which evolutionary processes identified in the previous chapter have played out in practice.
David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New Delhi: Oxford U... more David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), Pages: 342, Price: Rs. 1,317.12.David Kilcullen is one of the most celebrated and influential counterinsurgency experts today. Based on his academic background in the political anthropology of conflict and his personal experiences in counterinsurgency operations as a light infantry officer and later as a senior counterinsurgency advisor to the United States government in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kilcullen has written extensively on counterinsurgency, strategy and irregular warfare. His previous books, The Accidental Guerrilla (2009) and Counterinsurgency (2010) respectively discuss how, like a contagion, Islamist terrorists/insurgents take advantage of any conflict situation in a society to gain the support of the population and establish themselves, and how counterinsurgency operations should focus on neutralising the networks of terrorists/insurgents through a "strategy of disaggregation". Out of Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla is Kilcullen's latest offering, and this time around he brings his focus to bear on urban insurgency.Kilcullen asserts that future conflicts will not take place in remote, forested, mountainous and rural areas but will occur in densely populated, ungoverned, and digitally connected cities of the low income countries because conflict invariably happens where people are and in future it will be cities where the maximum population will be concentrated. He reinforces his argument by citing various studies in demography and economic geography that have identified four "megatrends" shaping future conflicts: population growth, urbanisation, littoralisation, and connectedness. According to him, a look at the present trends in population growth and urbanisation indicate that rapid urbanisation is taking place along coastal belts in the less developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America where inhabitants have increased access to internet and mobile phones. By 2050, approximately 75 per cent of the world's population will live in urban areas.However, why and how would these cities become centres of conflict and violence? Kilcullen argues that every city has a carrying capacity and overstretching of this capacity results in conflicts. In low income countries, rapid urbanisation is accompanied by increased rural to urban migration, which puts enormous population pressure on a city's resources such as housing, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, etc. As the pressure increases, the city administration fails to provide its inhabitants with basic amenities and security, thus creating pockets of poverty, unemployment, pollution, lawlessness and organised crime. He refers to these cities as "feral cities", a term borrowed from Richard Norton. A feral city is where governance has collapsed at the local level, especially in the slums and periurban areas, and criminal gangs, drug lords and extremists swiftly move in to fill the vacuum. These non-state actors take advantage of the sense of alienation and marginalisation among the slum dwellers and exploit the illicit networks such as smuggling, trafficking of drugs, weapons and contraband to establish and consolidate their groups, as well as to fight off external intervention. Mogadishu is a typical feral city.In any insurgency, the support of the local population is vital. Kilcullen explains that non-state actors establish their dominance among the population through "competitive control". He argues that by employing a wide spectrum of tactics such as coercion, administration and persuasion, non-state actors create a normative, predictable and orderly system, thereby lulling the local population into believing that they are in a secure and safe environment. He, however, stresses that it is coercion to which the population responds the most because faced with a powerful authority people will do exactly what is told to them in order to be safe. …
The Australian Army\u27s primary operational environment is becoming increasingly littoral (borde... more The Australian Army\u27s primary operational environment is becoming increasingly littoral (bordering water) and urbanised. Overview As we leave Afghanistan, the urban littoral will rise in importance simply because Australia’s primary operational environment (POE) is overwhelmingly littoral and increasingly urbanised. But we no longer face the littoral of which Ralph Peters or Charles Krulak wrote in the 1990s — in the pre-mobile phone era, before significant penetration of the internet into the developing world. Today we face an urban, networked littoral. The explosion of electronic connectivity changes both the environment and the threats we may encounter within it. This paper explores the urban, networked littoral and proposes concepts for control operations in this setting. The ensuing discussion considers in turn the environment, missions and threats, the operational response, and capability implications
Throughout this book, I use the capitalized term “Western” or “the West” to describe a particular... more Throughout this book, I use the capitalized term “Western” or “the West” to describe a particular military methodology, along with the group of countries whose warfighting style is characterized by that methodology. In essence, it is an approach to war that emphasizes battlefield dominance, achieved through high-tech precision engagement, networked communications, and pervasive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). It is characterized by an obsessive drive to minimize casualties, a reluctance to think about the long-term consequences of war, a narrow focus on combat, and a lack of emphasis on war termination—the set of activities needed in order to translate battlefield success into enduring and favorable political outcomes....
This chapter discusses China’s evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the evolution... more This chapter discusses China’s evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the evolution of Chinese forces, offers case studies of the Sino-Vietnamese War and the South China Sea, introduces and analyzes the concept of conceptual envelopment as it relates to China, discusses the transformative effect of China’s emergence as a global oceanic and maritime power, and explores the concept of unrestricted warfare and China’s Three Warfares doctrine. It argues that, in the quarter century since 1993, China has learned by watching the West struggle in the post-Cold War era, and has taken advantage of Western preoccupation with terrorism since 2001. The 1991 Gulf War, the 1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, and the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade prompted strategists in Beijing to shift from a peacetime, concept-led adaptation process to a wartime, reactive approach that treats the United States as a “pacing threat.”
Until the late twentieth century, Australian strategy was defined by the 1987 Defence of Australi... more Until the late twentieth century, Australian strategy was defined by the 1987 Defence of Australia (DOA) doctrine in which Australia’s strategic environment was defined by the continent’s geography and regional spatiality. DOA limited geography to its spatial, that is locational, aspect which led to a focus on a ‘sea-air gap’. From 1986 until 1999, though resourced only for a close-in layered defence of the sea-air gap, Australian joint expeditionary forces deployed numerous times outside its “area of direct military interest” for warfare, peacekeeping and other operations—reflecting Australia’s global strategic interests rather than its narrowly territorial defence requirements. The 9/11 attacks turned Australian thinking on strategic geography (then DOA) on its head. This chapter discusses the implications and some outcomes of this change, and poses some key questions for strategic thinkers in military geography, and defence and security more broadly.
The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 2022
On November 23, 2021, Dr. David Kilcullen, President and CEO of Cordillera Applications Group, pr... more On November 23, 2021, Dr. David Kilcullen, President and CEO of Cordillera Applications Group, presented The Importance of Warning Intelligence When Dealing with Dragons and Snakes at the 2021 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question and answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed in this presentation included strategic warning times, gray zone attacks, Russian and Chinese strategic deterrence, and the consequences of misunderstanding or underestimating adversaries.
<p>This chapter discusses Russian evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the ... more <p>This chapter discusses Russian evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the post-Soviet military evolution of Russian forces, offers case studies of the Norwegian-Russian border and the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, introduces and analyzes the concept of liminal warfare as practiced by Russia, and discusses the "Gerasimov doctrine,", reflexive control, and Russian political warfare methods, including those allegedly used during the 2016 US presidential election. It argues that, in recovering from its post-Cold War eclipse of the 1990s, the Russian Federation engaged in a process of adaptation under pressure, developing significantly more capable conventional and nuclear forces (especially after the Five-Day War of 2008 in Georgia) but also evolving a form of warfare, liminal maneuver, designed to offset US conventional dominance.</p>
<p>This chapter draws on key concepts from evolutionary theory, anthropology, and social sc... more <p>This chapter draws on key concepts from evolutionary theory, anthropology, and social science to explore how adaptive enemies evolve and adapt under conditions of conflict. It identifies four key mechanisms of evolution in irregular warfare—social learning, natural selection, artificial selection (including both unconscious artificial selection and predator effects), and institutional adaptation—and gives examples of each. It also examines forms of conscious military innovation by states, and draws a distinction between peacetime (concept led) and wartime (reactive) modes of innovation. The chapter argues that domination of the operational environment by Western armed forces since the end of the Cold War has created evolutionary pressure to which all adversaries—state and non-state—have responded, and that this response is shaping new approaches to war.</p>
This chapter applies the evolutionary concepts explained in Chapter 2 to a series of case studies... more This chapter applies the evolutionary concepts explained in Chapter 2 to a series of case studies of nonstate adversaries. It explores how specific nonstate adversaries have adapted and evolved since 1993; these include Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and the Lebanese Shi’a group Hezbollah. The chapter shows that each of these irregular armed groups, despite differences of ideology, origin, operating environment and structure, are all responding in their own ways to a fitness landscape created by Western dominance of a particular, narrow, technology-centric form of warfare. Their patterns of adaptation indicate the ways in which evolutionary processes identified in the previous chapter have played out in practice.
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