Counterinsurgency Warfare As Military Malpractice

Counterinsurgency Warfare As Military Malpractice
By Edward N. Luttwack – Harper’s Magazine, February 2007
Modern armed forces continue to be structured for large-scale war, but advanced societies whose small families
lack expendable children have a very low tolerance for casualties…Fortunately, this refusal to sell blood needed to
fuel battles diminishes the likelihood that advanced societies will deliberately set out to fight one another unless
they are somehow able to convince themselves that a war could be entirely or very largely aerial and naval. Such
wars, however, are difficult to imagine … air and naval forces can certainly be employed advantageously against
any less advanced enemies incautious enough to rely on a conventional defense, but …there must be severe doubts
about the continued usefulness of the ground forces of advanced countries that are intolerant of casualties…