"Can the US Win the Next War? The Return of the Third World"

Lecture delivered on 10 November 2008 at Colgate University. Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies.

A debate divides the Pentagon: should the US military prepare for a future of messy, low-intensity conflicts in the Third World, of which Iraq and Afghanistan are merely the first campaigns in a long war, or should it focus its efforts on deterring war with an emerging peer competitor such as China or Russia? Ian Roxborough will describe the ways in which military planners have constructed future scenarios that make sense to them; paradoxically, the professional experiences and organizational locations of members of a military, Roxborough argues, help to define the strategic situations to which soldiers respond. Focusing on Army-Marine Corps manual: FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, entitled Counterinsurgency, he examines how debates within the U.S. defense establishment concerning future wars bring to light the military's own sociology of knowledge.