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Outstanding Academic Title for 2002 From South Carolina to South
Vietnam, America's two hundred-year involvement in guerrilla
warfare has been extensive and varied. America and Guerrilla
Warfare analyzes conflicts in which Americans have participated in
the role of, on the side of, or in opposition to guerrilla forces,
providing a broad comparative and historical perspective on these
types of engagements. Anthony James Joes examines nine case
studies, ranging from the role of Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, in
driving Cornwallis to Yorktown and eventual surrender to the U.S.
support of Afghan rebels that hastened the collapse of the Soviet
Empire. He analyzes the origins of each conflict, traces American
involvement, and seeks patterns and deviations. Studying numerous
campaigns, including ones staged by Confederate units during the
Civil War, Joes reveals the combination of elements that can lead a
nation to success in guerrilla warfare or doom it to failure. In a
controversial interpretation, he suggests that valuable lessons
were forgotten or ignored in Southeast Asia. The American
experience in Vietnam was a debacle but, according to Joes,
profoundly atypical of the country's overall experience with
guerrilla warfare. He examines several twentieth-century conflicts
that should have better prepared the country for Vietnam: the
Philippines after 1898, Nicaragua in the 1920s, Greece in the late
1940s, and the Philippines again during the Huk War of 1946-1954.
Later, during the long Salvadoran conflict of the 1980s, American
leaders seemed to recall what they had learned from their
experiences with this type of warfare. Guerrilla insurgencies did
not end with the Cold War. As America faces recurring crises in the
Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and possibly Asia, a
comprehensive analysis of past guerrilla engagements is essential
for today's policymakers.
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