Despite trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of deaths, the West has nothing to show for the counterinsurgency campaigns it has waged. Despite the enormous industry and vast intellectual and historical apologetics combine, the wasteland is evident to all who take the time to examine the details. The emperor of COIN is naked.

References:

Nassim Taleb: The Black Swan, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Douglas Porch: Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War

Robert Asprey War in the Shadows

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at [email protected].

The Irish Rebellion in 1916-1922 is what I characterize as in the era of "Peak Guerrilla" in concert with the exploits of TE Lawrence and GEN Paul Emil von Letter-Vorbeck that set the stage for the modern irregular warfare era in the twentieth century. I will examine the exploits of Collins and the curious currents of history on a global basis that came to have great impacts on what appear to be local and regional conflicts and their final resolution.

References:

Tim Pat Coogan Michael Collins

James Gleeson Bloody Sunday

Tom Barry Guerrilla Days in Ireland

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at [email protected].

In this episode, I make the case that insurgencies are antifragile and that counterinsurgencies are fragile for the most part; we discuss the concepts, examine historical and contemporary examples and set the stage for practitioners and scholars to leverage this model to gain a more true understanding of how IW works.

References:

Nassim Taleb: The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Douglas Porch: Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at [email protected].

This charter episode will discuss the intent of the podcast and get started with the basics to create a framework of common understanding. This episode will discuss the National Defense Strategy, generations of warfare, civil war and the regional conflict complexes that emerge from larger wars and conflicts. Irregular warfare (IW) is rather complex and tends to be muddier, more nuanced and subject to interpretative misconceptions and we'll lay the groundwork for understanding these in both the larger and smaller contexts.

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at [email protected].