In essence, it took an extremely long time for the United States to adopt the current COIN strategy first implemented wholesale by General Stanley McChrystal. The United States and ISAF according to Brand (2011) initiated the first major shift, which significantly improved upon the Soviet experience. ISAF looked inward and developed a population-centric COIN effort rather than the insurgent-centric strategy employed by the Red Army. Simply put, “…the insurgency can afford to lose fighters and leaders; it cannot afford to lose control of the population” (p. 2-11). This leads to the second major improvement the United States learned from the Soviet
In essence, it took an extremely long time for the United States to adopt the current COIN strategy first implemented wholesale by General Stanley McChrystal. The United States and ISAF according to Brand (2011) initiated the first major shift, which significantly improved upon the Soviet experience. ISAF looked inward and developed a population-centric COIN effort rather than the insurgent-centric strategy employed by the Red Army. Simply put, “…the insurgency can afford to lose fighters and leaders; it cannot afford to lose control of the population” (p. 2-11). This leads to the second major improvement the United States learned from the Soviet