Past failures and future problems: the psychology of irregular war

Phil Reynolds

Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2015, vol. 26, issue 3, 446-458

Abstract: Personal cognitive processes inform how individuals understand their environment. Cultural variation, fundamental attribution error, causal attribution, and durability bias create obstacles to Western understanding of irregular war and have created a significant institutional bias in how the US military perceives its enemies- a perception only somewhat softened after a decade of irregular war. United Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is in a better position to overcome these problems through persistent engagement. In the event of major conflict, environmentally sensitized military planners will be better able to achieve military and policy objectives.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2013.866426 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:26:y:2015:i:3:p:446-458

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fswi20

DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2013.866426

Access Statistics for this article

Small Wars and Insurgencies is currently edited by Paul Rich

More articles in Small Wars and Insurgencies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().