When Military Theories Meet Practice

This is a rebroadcast of a conversation on October 30, 2014.

John Nagl, retired lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army, was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, and he realized that America’s greatest future threats would come from guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents. When he returned to Iraq after 9/11, his theories of counterinsurgency met practice. When he left the battlefield he was tapped by General David Petraeus to help draft a new counterinsurgency guide. In his new book, Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice, he describes his new army and marine counterinsurgency field manual, how it changed the course of two wars, and how the army thinks about war.

Knife Fights by John Nagl

(Penguin Press/Courtesy of the publisher)