Missionaries of modernity. Advisory missions and the struggle for hegemony in Afghanistan and beyond

摘要

The'great turn'in new studies of Western counter-insurgency policies and practices first inaugurated by the US troop surge to Iraq in 2007, accompanied as it was at the time by the publication of new US and UK military doctrine, continues to produce some of its most fruitful academic consequences in the field of historical studies. The book under current review certainly now forms one of the richest and most detailed current contributions to this recent wave, not least because it is able to incorporate a dazzling cross-comparative perspective on both Soviet and US military and civilian advisory missions to partners and client states at the height of the Cold War. Although the predominant focus in the current volume is on Soviet and NATO advisory missions in Afghanistan in comparative perspective, the appendix includes a valuable memoir by Bob Spencer on his own service as a District Adviser in the Republic of Vietnam between 1966 and 1970. This short memoir account offers valuable reflections that provide a useful further aside on the wider conclusions of the book as a whole; in particular when, as Spencer ruefully notes; My job was to be adviser to the Vietnamese, but what really happened was that the Vietnamese tolerated many frustrating hours teaching me about their culture, social complexities, and about the many parts of their daily political intrigue. (355).