David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context
Authored by Ms. Ann Marlowe.
August 2010
74 Pages
Brief Synopsis
This monograph is based on interviews with David Galula’s surviving family and friends as well as archival research. It places Galula’s two great books in the context of his exposure to Mao’s doctrine of revolutionary warfare in China, the French Army’s keen interest in counterinsurgency in the second half of the 1950s, and the transmission of French doctrine to the U.S. military in the early 1960s. It also discusses home-grown American counterinsurgency pioneers like General Edward Lansdale, who promoted Galula’s American career and encouraged him to write a book. It details the counterinsurgency fever of President John F. Kennedy’s administration, a nearly forgotten episode. Galula died in relative obscurity at the age of 49 in 1967. He had the odd historical luck of not having been a part of the counterinsurgency fever of his day, but of ours instead. Both those who think counterinsurgency has been embraced uncritically and those who think it has not been followed enough will find intellectual ammunition in Galula--and food for thought in the relationship of his ideas to his time.
Summary
This monograph attempts to place David Galula’s intellectual achievement in relation to both his life experiences and his time. It is not an assessment of the worth of his ideas, though it may be useful for those who wish to make such an evaluation.
The beginning of this monograph is comprised of 3 sections that discuss the history of Galula’s two books, Counterinsurgency Warfare and Pacification in Algeria.The first section outlines the less–than–straightforward publication history of the books and their initial reception. The second section looks at the context in which they appeared, the early 1960s flourishing of writing on counterinsurgency. In the third section, Generals Charles Krulak (Marine Combined Action Platoons [CAP]) and Edward Lansdale are presented as the ancestors of today’s population-centric COIN.
The remainder of the monograph has 6 sections that outline in chronological order what is known about Galula’s life. This account is based mainly on the author’s interviews, along with some archival research and a recently published French master’s thesis. The first section covers Galula’s birth to his service in World War II. The second section follows him through his “journey to the East,” his years in revolutionary China where he forged his thoughts on COIN. The third section, “Countering Mao,” discusses how Galula and his contemporary counterinsurgency theorists consciously aimed at defeating Mao’s doctrine of revolutionary war. In the fourth section, Galula’s time in Greece and Hong Kong is discussed. The fifth section concerns the rise of guerre revolutionnaire theory among senior officers in the French Army and the relationship of Galula’s thought to this body of work. The sixth section follows Galula during his 2-year command in Algeria, and the last section discusses his final years, including his work in the United States, his publication of a novel, and his untimely death.
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