U.S. Marines and Irregular Warfare, 1898-2007: Anthology and Selected Bibliography (review)

The purpose of this volume of 27 articles is to provide Marine officers and national security professionals with "a general overview and introduction to the topic of counterinsurgency" (p. iii). In this it succeeds. Unfortunately, the volume suffers from far too much attention to the present to be of much use to historians. The work's greatest flaw is the lack of an introduction. A number of themes resonate throughout the anthology which should have been summarized and highlighted at the outset. The importance and challenges of winning public support, the tendency to ignore the factions within insurgent movements, and the blowback of violent attempts to assert an occupier's authority are just three issues appearing throughout the anthology in different historical contexts. Had Dr. Evans highlighted these or other themes in an introductory article, they would only appear more resonant throughout the collection. This is the volume's greatest weakness.

The anthology contains three sections. A first (and misnamed) section on counterinsurgency theory has three articles, of which only the first is theoretical. In it, Thomas X. Hammes draws on the work of Air Force strategist John Boyd to describe the distinguishing features of "Fourth Generation Warfare" at a level appropriate for company-grade officers or college students. The second article by Robert M. Cassidy provides a fine comparative overview to American small wars, which if modified, might have served as the much needed introduction that Evans fails to provide. The final contribution—a four-page Marine Corps Combat Development Command overview to counterinsurgency—is an interesting primary source but makes obvious points.

A second section of 11 articles examines twentieth century counterinsurgencies from the Philippines to Vietnam. These are the volume's best works. Brian McAllister Linn gives an engrossing account of Marine Corps incompetence and brutality on the Island of Samar. David C. Brooks shows how Merritt A. Edson won the cooperation of Miskito Indians during the 1928 Rio Coco Patrol in Nicaragua. Both articles are thoroughly researched, well-written, and ideal both for Marines or college students studying the Marine Corps or counterinsurgency. The three articles on Haiti—two of which date from the 1970s—are slightly less satisfying. Richard Millett's and G. Dale Gaddy's comparative piece on the administration of Haiti and the Dominican Republic is the best of the three and makes astute observations of how military cultures and bureaucracies seek to expand their control over competing institutions and often undermine the ends they are created to achieve. (Robert W. Komer makes this point in Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict [Westview: 1986]) but it is still worth repeating.) A more recent comparative piece on Haiti and Nicaragua by Graham A. Cosmas contains the best research and gives the most attention to the Marines' counter-insurgency tactics in Hispaniola (sadly misspelled as Hispanolia in the Table of Contents). Two articles on Vietnam complete the section—one on the Combined Action Program (CAP) and another on the CORDS program. The CAP article is the weaker of the two, providing only a superficial account of the program and relying far too much on secondary sources.

Articles on the "Global War on Terror" make up almost half of the volume and are less interesting and useful to a historian than the earlier articles. Lieutenant General David W. Barno's strategic overview is well-written and informative but would have served better in the theory section at the beginning of the volume. The remaining articles, taken almost entirely from military service journals, are mostly of high quality but lack useful footnotes. Many are written by intelligence officers and analysts. Thankfully, the volume gives more attention to the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan than to Iraq. A fourteen-page bibliography provides some useful directions for further reading. This volume is appropriate for university...