Over at Small Wars Journal, I sat down with Peter Godwin — author, war correspondent, and veteran of the Rhodesian Bush War– for a discussion on counterinsurgency tactics and strategy. Godwin’s experiences with the British South Africa Police — a Rhodesian police/paramilitary outfit — were strikingly similar to the challenges faced by coalition forces in 21st century Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, Godwin rejects the minimal footprint strategy (advocated by Vice-President Biden) and offers a sound reiteration of General McChrystal’s population-centric approach to winning in the Hindu Kush. An excerpt:
Clear-and-hold worked for a time in Vietnam, it worked for the British in Malaya, and it worked in Iraq. It should be noted that the Rhodesians — lacking the manpower to control their countryside and obsessed with the Biden concept of operations (kinetic ops and kill-ratios) — ultimately lost their war. Should the Obama administration adopt a Rhodesian-style COIN strategy in Afghanistan, we’re likely to suffer a similar fate. Read the whole thing here.
