Ok, let me begin by giving a strong caveat to the following recommendation:
I do not agree with everything in Jeffrey Record's report
The American Way of War. In particular, I think some of his conclusions are flawed in that he fails to understand that increasingly, these "insurgencies" are not expressions of what he calls foreign internal wars and certainly not primarily political in their nature, but are actually regional expressions of a world-wide religio/political movement. He also, like most Cato institute commentators, fails to take into consideration that America no longer has the ability to choose to sit out of many of these conflicts, because inevitably the war will be carried to them via terrorism and insurgencies in the west (and terrorism is simply a means of waging that global war, it is not the problem itself - the problem is the ideology that produces
Jihad).
For instance, his conclusions do not deal with the fact that we have active insurgents and support structures with the same global objectives operating not only in places we'd rather not be, like Iraq and Afghanistan, but also within places we cannot ignore, like Britain, Spain, and the United States, and that the insurgents trained in Afghanistan will find ways of carrying that war to us. So while his conclusions were applicable when dealing with Communist insurgents in Vietnam, they are
not a feasible approach to dealing with a worldwide Jihad.
However, where his commentary is invaluable is in showing why militarily and politically, the current approach to dealing with insurgency is doomed from the start. Anyway, here it is:
The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency - SEAGOON
