As the Services and joint force update their doctrine after nearly a decade and a half of counter–improvised explosive device (IED) operations in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, now is a good time to consider what we have learned about operating in IED-rich environments. At the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, we lacked counter-IED doctrine—as well as counterinsurgency and counterterrorism doctrine—and had to figure things out on the fly. It was a steep learning curve with a high cost in lives lost and equipment destroyed, and the United States spent billions to counter a weapon that costs only a few dollars to make.

Interorganizational Cooperation

John Nagl, the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, offers an intimate portrait of the education, experience, and practice that contributed to his emergence as one of the premier advocates of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine during the past decade. In Knife Fights he provides an unvarnished description of what it is like to advocate doctrinal change to a nation at war.