Center for a New American Security: The Center for a New American Security was honored to host the launch event for CNAS Senior Fellow and counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen on his new book The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, a book that takes an infinitely complicated situation like global terrorism and localized guerrilla warfare within the larger framework of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and makes them both understandable and interesting. The discussion and subsequent reception was Wednesday, April 1, 2009, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, in the Willard's Crystal Room.
From one week before the CNAS talk, here's Kilcullen: We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state. The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.
From that long-ago era we may one day know as B.S. (Before Surge): After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It's about human social networks and the way that they operate.
From the book jacket: Kilcullen sees today's conflicts as a complex pairing of contrasting trends: local social networks and worldwide movements; traditional and postmodern culture; local insurgencies seeking autonomy and a broader pan-Islamic campaign. He warns that America's actions in the war on terrorism have tended to conflate these trends, blurring the distinction between local and global struggles and thus enormously complicating our challenges.
A Discussion with David Kilcullen on His New Book, "The Accidental Guerrilla" | 
