David Kilcullen

Kilcullen on the Charlie Rose show in 2007

David J. Kilcullen is an adviser to the US government and a counterinsurgency writer.

Background

Kilcullen grew up on Sydney's north shore, the son of academics. He studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Duntroon, served for more than 20 years in the Australian Army. He has been a military adviser to the Indonesian Special Forces in counterinsurgency, taught counterinsurgency tactics at the British School of Infantry, and served in peacekeeping operations in Cyprus and Bougainville. Kilcullen also commanded an Australian infantry company in counterinsurgency operations in East Timor and trained and led East Timorese forces after the independence vote in 1999.

During this time Kilcullen studied a PhD at the University of South Wales. Kilcullen served in Australia’s Office of National Assessments and on the writing team for Australia’s 2004 Terrorism White Paper.

US Advisor

In 2004, according to The New Yorker, Kilcullen’s writings and lectures brought him to the attention of an official working for Paul Wolfowitz, then the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Kilcullen then took leave from Australia's Defence Department in 2004 to help the Pentagon with the drafting of the 2005 Quadrennial Defence Review, which determines the US's global defence strategy. Working inside the Pentagon in 2004, Kilcullen founded and led the US Government's inter-agency Irregular Warfare Working Group.

In July 2005, Kilcullen, as a result of his work on the Pentagon document, received an invitation to attend a conference on defense policy, in Vermont. There he met Henry Crumpton, who had supervised the CIA’s covert activities in Afghanistan during the 2001 invasion. The two men spent much of the conference talking privately. Soon afterward, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, hired Crumpton as the department’s co-ordinator for counterterrorism, and Crumpton, in turn, offered Kilcullen a job. Kilcullen left the Australian Army as a lieutenant-colonel, and returned to Washington to work as the chief strategist for Crumpton.

He was helping Petraeus to write his now-famous text on counter-insurgency when the General was put in charge of the occupation, and he became senior adviser to the force. Kilcullen then became a senior counter-insurgency advisor to David Petraeus, and was part of the small team that designed “the surge”. In promoting Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla, Oxford University Press describe Kilcullen as having been 'part of General David Petraeus' brain trust in Baghdad'. He was awarded the US Army Superior Civilian Service Medal “for exceptionally meritorious service to the United States as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor, Multi-National Force-Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Other roles

Kilcullen is a Senior Fellow at the East West Institute. He is also a partner at the Crumpton Group, a strategic advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. by Henry Crumpton, the CIA man who brought Kilcullen to the Pentagon.

Views

Because he is seen as presenting a more nuanced and subtle view, Kilcullen, like other counterinsurgency theorists is often praised by the media. However, whilst he has criticised the use of brute military force, Kilcullen does not object to conquest and occupation. His objections and criticisms are purely tactical. The New Yorker explains that:

In his view, winning hearts and minds is not a matter of making local people like you—as some American initiates to counterinsurgency whom I met in Iraq seemed to believe—but of getting them to accept that supporting your side is in their interest, which requires an element of coercion...a willingness to show local people that supporting the enemy risks harm and hardship...[B]ecause he talks about war with an analyst’s rationalism and a practitioner’s matter-of-factness, Kilcullen can appear deceptively detached from its consequences.

Writings

Kilcullen's 2009 book Accidental Guerilla

His thesis was presented in 2000 and titled Political Consequences of Military Operations in Indonesia 1945 – 99. The thesis explored the history of counterinsurgency in Indonesia and drew on Kilcullen's personal experences.

In his short paper on counterinsurgency Twenty-Eight Articles, Kilcullen writes that, 'Rob Greenway, Bruce Hoffman, Olivier Roy and Marc Sageman influenced my thinking over several months.' He also credits a 'current serving officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and two other members of the intelligence community, also made major contributions but cannot be named.

Influence in media and politics

In promoting Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla, Oxford University Press describe Kilcullen as 'the "go-to guy" for journalists when it comes to counterinsurgency'. Kilcullen has a substantial media presence. The Lexis Nexis newspaper database lists 440 articles mentioning Kilcullen between 2005 and 2008 and 104 in its Major World Newspapers group.

According to briefings given in the US by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has 'been impressed by the work of' Kilcullen.

He has worked with the US commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, on a handbook for the military on the ground to use as their guide. It has become "the equivalent of the Lonely Planet guide for an infantry fighting asymmetrical battles: a pragmatic, blunt and at times blackly humorous tract that has revolutionised the way the so-called war on terror is being fought." His recipe for success in the Iraq morass seems to owe a debt to Lawrence of Arabia: "building local allies and forging partnerships and trusted networks with at-risk communities seems to be one of the keys to success – perhaps this is what T.E. Lawrence had in mind when he wrote that the art of guerrilla warfare with Arab tribes rests on 'building a ladder of tribes to the objective'."

References

Resources

• Wikipedia David Kilcullen
• Karina Marczuk, 'A Visionary and a Practitioner: the Bernard Kouchner vs. David Kilcullen', Defence and Strategy, Volume 2/2007
• George Packer, 'Knowing the Enemy:Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?' The New Yorker, 18 December 2006