Fourth generation warfare on the Jon Stewart Show. No, really…

by | Aug 26, 2007


Unreal. On Thursday night’s Jon Stewart show in the US, one of the guests was Lt. Col. John Nagl – one of the leading US military experts on counter-insurgency and fourth generation warfare (link here). Following his appearance, the Counterinsurgency Field Manual – of which he’s a co-author – leapt into the top 100 books on Amazon. As John Robb on Global Guerrillas put it:

Wow, the Petraeus information operations media machine is amazing (and this is a great example). Nod of respect to the masterful way in which the Petraeus team has been able to influence the public’s perception of this war — the essence of which was a shift towards marketing the Iraq leadership as both competent and brilliant.

C.f. David Kilcullen doing the rounds of the blogosphere engaging the commentariat directly…

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.

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