From Kathleen Hicks, The Cipher Brief: “The arcane art of measuring the health of civil-military relations is experiencing a renaissance. Although it is welcomed by those who practice it, the reasons for the renewed focus are less so. Contributing factors include 15 years of continuous wartime deployments and the lack of a shared experience between the general public and the small percentage of Americans who have served or whose family members have served. Add on to that more recent tension over the obligation of military personnel to obey presidential orders regardless of legality, as well as the role of retired senior military officers in the electoral process, presidential transition, and in populating the Trump administration, and you have the makings of a potential civil-military crisis.”
From Brian C. Darling, Strategy Bridge: “There have been a great many books published on the subjects of insurgency and counterinsurgency since the inception of the Global War on Terror (or “current, ongoing overseas contingency operations”, if you prefer); a number of these have focused on the U.S. Army’s mistakes in Vietnam or on the efforts on the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jeremy Black’s recent contribution, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A Global History, offers more insight; it is a comprehensive history of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare that is not limited in scope to the efforts of Western powers.”
From Megan Anderson, Modern War Institute: "Counterinsurgency operations have been infamously described as “armed social work; an attempt to redress basic social and political problems while being shot at.” The foundations of COIN rest entirely on the population—the objective is to win over the hearts and minds of the people. The major literature concerning counterinsurgency places a significant emphasis on the need to engage local populations; however, most work neglects to acknowledge gender as a factor that can influence an operation’s success. Drawing from experiences in Indochina, Greece, and Algeria, French military officer David Galula concluded that in counterinsurgency, the aim of war is to gain support of the population rather than to gain territory. It was Galula’s observations that ultimately inspired then-Lt. Gen. David Petraeus to lead a workshop that would result in the US Army’s counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24). Drawing upon the fundamental concepts laid out by Galula, FM 3-24 firmly establishes population-centric operations at the center of the Army’s COIN doctrine. Among the manual’s key principles, securing the population and establishing government legitimacy are the most prioritized objectives. To this day, Galula’s work serves as the primary foundation for contemporary COIN theory and remains largely unchallenged."