Winning a war is not the same as winning a country

25th June 2007
By Chris Tuck

In his article on counter-insurgency in May’s edition of Parliamentary Brief David Lonsdale argued that the problems experienced by western democracies in counter-insurgency are partly to do with the inherent complexity of counter-insurgency, but that they are mainly about a lack of understanding of how strategy functions. Successful counter-insurgency requires the defeat of the enemy forces. Military victory is the foundation of this success.

My argument is largely the revers…