Insurrezioni e controinsurrezione da Callwell a Petraeus

In early 2012, Charles Edward Callwell’s book Small Wars has been translated for its first time into Italian. At the same time, the world assisted to the downfall of David Petraeus, the general who made possible the recent rise of counterinsurgency in the US strategic narrative and military doctrine. Moving from the analysis of the first “classic” book on if irregular warfare this article focuses on four major issues. First, it assesses how and why Callwell’s theses are still useful to understand insurgencies in the Twenty-First Century. Second, it looks at how a minimalist approach to counterinsurgency compares and contrasts with current doctrine in the United States. Third, it deals with how domestic constraints can affect some the practice of counterinsurgency. Finally, it places counterinsurgency doctrine fits into the debate of the Westphalian state and its military policy. The article aims to provide the foundations to revisit a classic and stimulate a debate on counterinsurgency, which has been a major undertaking of contemporary armed forces but not yet the object of rigorous academic and public debate in Italy.

L'articolo analizza l'evoluzione della tattica e strategica COIN (counter-insurgency) negli scritti da Charles Callwell a David Petraeus, passando per Carl von Clausewitz.