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Prominent among those interpreting the significance of the surge was John Nagl, former soldier, counterinsurgency expert, and sometime Petraeus adviser. According to Nagl, although population security might well constitute “the first requirement of success in counterinsurgency,” it was by no means the only requirement. Indeed, it was only the beginning.

Economic development, good governance, and the provision of essential services, all occurring within a matrix of effective information operations, must all improve simultaneously and steadily over a long period of time if America’s determined insurgent enemies are to be defeated.

The key, according to COIN advocates like Nagl, was for the United States to mount a “global counterinsurgency campaign.”31 With the world besieged by ideologically driven insurgents, and with events in Iraq having supposedly demonstrated the efficacy of FM 3-24, Nagl was among those promoting counterinsurgency as perhaps the only plausible response to the threat posed by violent anti-Western jihadism.

As Obama entered the White House in January 2009, global counterinsurgency—GCOIN some were already calling it—showed every sign of emerging as an Idea Whose Time Had Come. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts went on record calling for the conversion of the global war on terror into “the global counterinsurgency campaign it always should have been—namely, a battle for hearts and minds.”32 In the month of Obama’s inauguration, Bruce Hoffman, a well-known terrorism expert, was promoting GCOIN as the basis for “the development and execution of long-term ‘hearts and minds’ programs.”33

Army Brig. Gen. Bennet Sacolick concurred. A career special operations officer, Sacolick opined that “eradicating terrorists alone will not win the war on terror; frankly, it won’t even put a dent in” the problem. The United States needed to send troops into countries that served as “the breeding ground for terrorism” in order to address head-on the conditions giving rise to anti-American violence. The key task was now “nation-building.”34 Meanwhile, the journal of the U.S. Army War College published an article with the imposing title “Global Counterinsurgency: Strategic Clarity for the Long War.” GCOIN, wrote its author, Col. Daniel S. Roper, provided the correct “intellectual framework” to repair the strategic confusion that had prevailed during much of the Bush era.35

Proponents of GCOIN, in other words, did not view Iraq as a one-off event. Facing the prospect of defeat, President Bush launched the surge in an act of desperation. In the eyes of Nagl and other members of the Petraeus lobby, Iraq in 2007–2008 had served as a feasibility study. In the broken quarters of the world, many more Iraqs waited.

Across the Greater Middle East hundreds of millions of people were in dire need of “economic development, good governance, and the provision of essential services.” GCOIN offered the way to meet those needs and thereby nip terrorism in the bud.

Yet any GCOIN campaign worthy of the name would necessarily require the pacification of Afghanistan (population 28.4 million, in an area approximately the size of Texas) and of Pakistan (176.2 million, roughly twice the size of California), both facing imminent insurgent threats. Then there was Somalia (9.8 million, slightly smaller than Texas) and Yemen (23.8 million, more than twice as large as Wyoming), both known as countries in which the recruitment and training of violent jihadists were commonplace. Lurking in the wings were Iran (66.4 million, slightly smaller than Alaska), widely condemned for underwriting terrorist activity, and perhaps even Egypt (83.1 million, three times larger than New Mexico), a simmering caldron of radical Islamist sentiment.36 Only counterinsurgency on an epic scale could possibly satisfy the needs of all these people.

The road ahead promised to be long and arduous. Yet for American soldiers, relieved to put Iraq in their rearview mirror, the immediate requirement was