David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context - Softcover

Marlowe, Ann

3.6

5 ratings by Goodreads

9781249916024: David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context

Softcover

ISBN 10: 124991602X ISBN 13: 9781249916024

Publisher: Bibliogov, 2012

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

This monograph is based on interviews with David Galula's surviving family and friends as well as archival research. It places Galula's two great books in the context of his exposure to Mao's doctrine of revolutionary warfare in China, the French Army's keen interest in counterinsurgency in the second half of the 1950s, and the transmission of French doctrine to the U.S. military in the early 1960s. It also discusses home-grown American counterinsurgency pioneers like General Edward Lansdale, who promoted Galula's American career and encouraged him to write a book. It details the counterinsurgency fever of President John F. Kennedy's administration, a nearly forgotten episode. Galula died in relative obscurity at the age of 49 in 1967. He had the odd historical luck of not having been a part of the counterinsurgency fever of his day, but of ours instead. Both those who think counterinsurgency has been embraced uncritically and those who think it has not been followed enough will find intellectual ammunition in Galula--and food for thought in the relationship of his ideas to his time.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.