David Kilcullen

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[edit] David Kilcullen

Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, Ph.D. (born 1967) is a leading contemporary practitioner and theorist of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. A former Australian Army officer, he is now seconded to the United States State Department and is currently serving as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force - Iraq, under American General David Howell Petraeus.

David Kilcullen graduated at the top of his Army class from the Australian Defence Force Academy in December 1987, then attended the Royal Military College, Duntroon before going on to a career as an infantry officer in the Royal Australian Regiment.

Currently based at the US State Department, Colonel Kilcullen, 39, has a doctorate in the political anthropology of insurgency, and wrote his thesis on the political power-diffusion effects of successful and failed counter-insurgency operations in Indonesia. He has served in several counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare campaigns in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, as well as in peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations. Whilst based at the U.S. State Department he has served as Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, and has worked in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and several other "hot spots". He has also written several very influential papers on the insurgency in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, many of which have been critical of US policy.

He is one of a group of highly educated combat-experienced officers who have been strongly critical of the Iraq war and the way the George W. Bush administration has conducted it. These officers, who include General Petraeus, Colonel H.R. McMaster and others, have (as of early 2007) been appointed to command positions in Iraq, as part of what many observers consider a late recognition by the Bush administration that its earlier policies in Iraq have failed. These war critics, who include some of the world's foremost counterinsurgency experts, including Kilcullen, have been given the opportunity for a last-ditch effort to salvage the campaign.

Colonel Kilcullen is also an advisor to senior Administration officials, including Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency issues. He is reputed to be fearlessly independent, apolitical and outspoken, a trait that has apparently given him significant credibility with senior officials and leaders from both sides of American politics.

[edit] Awards

(United States) Medal for Exceptional Public Service (2006)

Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop Asia Fellowship (1995)

Governor-General's Sword (Australian Command and Staff College) (2001)

[edit] External links

• [1] An Australian Defence document authored by Kilcullen on land warfare.
• [2] "Countering Global Insurgency", October 2004, the long internet version of a paper subsequently published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, which re-defines the war on terrorism as an extremely large-scale counterinsurgency problem.
• [3] published version (August 2005) of "Countering Global Insurgency" (requires subscription)
• [4] New Yorker profile on Colonel Kilcullen, by George Packer
• [5] News article on the appointment of Colonel Kilcullen to advisor of commander of Multinational Force Iraq David Howell Petraeus.
• [6] "Twenty-Eight Articles", a highly influential how-to guide for junior commanders engaged in counterinsurgency
• [7] Arabic-language version of "Twenty-Eight Articles"
• [8] "Counterinsurgency Redux", an article from Survival, the journal of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, contrasting current insurgencies with the "classical" period of the 1950s-1960s.