America's Dirty Wars Irregular Warfare from 1776 to the War on Terror

This book examines the long, complex experience of American involvement in irregular warfare. It begins with the American Revolution in 1776 and chronicles big and small irregular wars for the next two and a half centuries. What is readily apparent in dirty wars is that failure is painfully tangible while success is often amorphous. Successfully fighting these wars often entails striking a critical balance between military victory and politics. America's status as a democracy only serves to make fighting - and, to a greater degree, winning - these irregular wars even harder. Rather than futilely insisting that Americans should not or cannot fight this kind of irregular war, Russell Crandall argues that we would be better served by considering how we can do so as cleanly and effectively as possible.

1. Introduction; 2. Irregular warfare 101; Part I. The American Revolution to Chasing Sandino, 1776–1930s: 3. The American Revolution; 4. Confederates and Indians; 5. Intermezzo: the Boer War; 6. America, Aguinaldo, and the Philippines, 1898; 7. Chasing Villa, 1916; 8. A cold winter in Siberia; 9. The Banana Wars, 1898–1930s; 10. Intermezzo: T. E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt, 1916–18; 11. Chasing Sandino, 1927–32; Part II. The Cold War, 1940s–1989: 12. Cold War counterinsurgencies; 13. Intermezzo: Mao Zedong; 14. Fighting communism in Greece; 15. Intermezzo: France in Algeria, 1954–62; 16. Intermezzo: David Galula; 17. Intermezzo: Malaya emergency, 1948–60; 18. Ramón Magsaysay and the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines, 1946–56; 19. Vietnam; Part III. Latin America and the Cold War, 1950s–1980s: 20. From Guatemala, 1954, to Cuba and the Bay of Pigs, 1961; 21. Guatemala, post-1963; 22. Cuba, post-1963; 23. Intermezzo: Che Guevara and guerrilla warfare; 24. Carter, Reagan, and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, 1979–90; 25. El Salvador, 1979–92; Part IV. Post–Cold War, 1990s–2000s: 26. Dirty wars after the Cold War; 27. Colombia; 28. Iraq; 29. Intermezzo: the counterinsurgency field manual and postmodern insurgencies; 30. Post-9/11 COIN in the Philippines; 31. Intermezzo: Afghanistan, graveyard of empires; 32. The longest war: America in Afghanistan; 33. The fall of Muammar Qaddafi, 2011; 34. Intermezzo: JSOC raids and drone strikes; 35. Conclusion.

Russell Crandall is a Professor of International Politics and American Foreign Policy at Davidson College. His previous books include The United States and Latin America after the Cold War (Cambridge, 2008); Gunboat Democracy: US Interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama (2006); and Driven by Drugs: US Policy Toward Colombia (2008). Interwoven with his academic career, Crandall has held high-level foreign policy appointments within several sectors of the US government, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon and the National Security Council at the White House.