The Accidental Guerrilla:  Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

01 June 2009

Dr David Kilcullen

In the first few years of the post-9/11 era, the established models for fighting ‘small wars' proved distressingly ineffective against resilient insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the insurgents fought Western armies to a stalemate, it was clear that a new approach was necessary. Dr David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer, and one of the world's most influential experts on guerrilla warfare, became a key architect of the West's revamped military strategy. As the senior advisor to General David Patraeus in Iraq, Kilcullen's revolutionary approach to counterinsurgency was an intellectual foundation for ‘the Surge' of 2007.

Kilcullen uncovered the face of modern warfare, illuminating both the global challenge, the ‘War on Terrorism,' and small wars across the world in Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, East Timor, and Pakistan. He will explain that today's conflicts are a complex hybrid of contrasting trends that America has tended to conflate, blurring the distinction between local and global struggles, and thereby enormously complicating our challenges. The West has continually misidentified insurgents with limited aims and legitimate grievances-‘accidental guerrillas'-as members of a unified worldwide terror network. We must learn how to disentangle these strands, develop strategies that deal with global threats, avoid local conflicts where possible, and win them where necessary.

Broad Topics: Arts and Social Sciences

Sub-topics: Law, Justice & Law Enforcement, Policy & Political Science

Areas: ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

David Kilcullen is one of the world's leading experts on guerrilla warfare and, rarely among his kind, has a PhD (UNSW) in political anthropology. He has served in every theatre of the ‘War on Terror' since 9/11 as special advisor for counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, and chief counterterrorism strategist for the US State Department. He is a former Australian army officer with combat experience in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.