Armin Krishnan has received a book contract from Palgrave Macmillan for a book titled Why Paramilitary Operations Fail. The book analyzes 25 pro-insurgency paramilitary operations (PMOs) that have been undertaken by the U.S. government from 1948 to the present in view of finding patterns in the way they were approached and the way they turned out.
The main finding is that only eight out of 25 PMOs succeeded in overthrowing a targeted government or carving out a separatist state and that in only three cases a PMO succeeded without direct U.S. military intervention. Furthermore, it is argued that in most cases PMOs have produced severe ‘blowback’ that has undermined U.S. national security or harmed U.S. interests, which suggests that PMOs are not a worthwhile instrument of U.S. foreign policy unless they are approached in a very different manner.
Krishnan is currently editing the manuscript for final submission sometime in October 2017.