Beautiful Piece of Work, October 15, 2008
Friedrich August Heydte
I ended up buying this book without much to go on *other than* the not inconsequential fact that at least one War College student relied very heavily on it for their paper on irregular warfare. The book is dedicated to Maxwell Taylor and Jacques Massu, and has a foreword from Lyndon LaRouche that slams Zbigniew Brzezinski as an appeaser and compromiser with respect to Middle Eastern terrorism, so right away my appetite is whetted.
The publisher or seller should have done this, but to encourage others to add this book to their reflections, here are the *top-level* divisions in the table of contents:
I Foundations
1. The Essence of Irregular Warfare
2. Irregular Warfare and Revolution
3. Irregular Warfare and International Law
II Irregular Warfare and Grand Strategy
1. General Strategic-Political Problems
2. Nuclear War and Irregular War as Alternatives in the Unconventional Conduct of War
3. The Threat of Nuclear and Irregular War in the Process of War Prevention
III War of Blurred Contours
1. The Problem of Space
2. The Problem of Time
3. Movement, Terrain, and Population
IV Preparation of Irregular Warfare
1. The Conspiracy
2. Subversion
3. Armament
V Covert Combat
1. The Nature of Covert Combat
2. Leadership Problems
3. Terrorism and Sabotage in Covert Combatg
4. Assassinations and Raids in Covert Combat
VI Transition to Open Combat
1. Covert Combat and Open Combat
2. Unsolved Problems of the Transition to Open Combat
This book was published in 1986. The bibliography is very deep. There is no index.
I suspect it will be reprinted now that the adults are paying attention to Irregular Warfare. My impression continues to be confirmed that we need a completely new craft of intelligence for irregular warfare, and that we need to more clearly understand the spectrum of irregular warfare from black assassinations to white peace operations “one cell call at a time.”
Other books I recommend with this one:
Asymmetric Warfare: Threat and Response in the 21st Century
Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (Stanford Security Studies)
Guerrilla Warfare: Irregular Warfare in the Twentieth Century (Stackpole Military History Series)
The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual
Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
Uncomfortable Wars Revisited
