Winning Hearts and Minds in the Congo: Assessing the Limitations of the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) has received near-universal praise for stabilizing Iraq. Yet few have examined whether FM 3-24 is generalizable to other conflicts. This paper explores this question, assessing its applicability to the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's North and South Kivu provinces. Although FM 3-24 offers useful historical insights on counterinsurgency that are largely applicable to the Kivu Conflict, both the Congolese government and the UN peacekeeping mission face notable political constraints that would undermine their ability to operationalize its prescriptions.