This book seeks to answer the "why" and "how" questions about the insurgency of the PKK, a militant left-wing group of Turkey's Kurds, in Turkey. The PKK has been inter-locked in an intermittent war against Turkey since 1984 in the name of Kurdish nationalism. The author combines insights of Strategy and IR - from strategy and tactics in irregular warfare to peace negotiations between state authorities and insurgents, with data from qualitative research, to achieve two inter-related objectives: first, assess the current state of affairs and predict the future course of the conflict and, secondly, draw general conclusions on how protracted conflicts can end and how.

This book illuminates on the US strategy of proxy warfare in modern times with the Syrian Civil War as a case study. Spyridon Plakoudas and Wojtek Michnik fuse modern history with international relations and strategic studies in order to offer an up-to-date and critical analysis of this unique partnership between a state (USA) and a non-state actor (Syrian Kurds) against another non-state actor (ISIS) - amidst the wider Syrian civil war. They argue that this partnership ended up as a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it defeated ISIS at a minimum cost in money and blood in comparison to the Iraq War, but, on the other hand, it ensnared the USA into a tangled web of competition and conflict with other powers with no easy way-out. In other words, proxy warfare may prove a not-so-cheap investment in the end.

The Greek Civil War (1946-1949) was one of the few instances in the post-World War II era of a clear-cut and permanent victory by right-wing government forces over an insurgent communist movement. Spyridon Plakoudas here explores the factors which ultimately caused the downfall of the communist insurgency in Greece which had, at some points, seemed undefeatable. He questions whether the guerrilla movement fell victim to the feud between Stalin and Tito or whether the significant British and, above all, American aid in fact rescued the Greek monarchist regime from collapse. Plakoudas explores the strategies adopted by government forces in order to counter the communist insurgency, how external and internal actors influenced these policies and when, how and why these policies achieved success. Featuring previously unseen sources and documents, this book reveals the strategy and tactics of the monarchist regime.