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Professor David Kilcullen

Professor David Kilcullen

Professor
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities & Social Sciences

Dr. David Kilcullen is a former soldier and diplomat, and a scholar of guerrilla warfare, terrorism, urbanisation and the future of conflict, who served 25 years for the Australian and United States governments. During the Iraq War, he served in Baghdad as a member of the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, then as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor, Multi-National Force Iraq in 2007, before becoming Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008. He was the U.S. State Department’s representative on the 2008 Lute Review of Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy, and was lead author for the U.S. Government’s Counterinsurgency Handbook. In Afghanistan, he founded the ISAF Counterinsurgency Advisory Assistance Team in 2009, served as advisor to Commander ISAF, and was a senior research scientist on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Afghanistan country program.

Dr. Kilcullen has taught at universities and military colleges in the United States and Europe, making scholarly contributions to the theory of guerrilla warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency, future conflict, human geography, urban studies, and fieldwork methods for conflict ethnography and remote observation. He is a distinguished graduate of the Australian Defence Force Academy, where he was awarded the 1987 Chief of Defence Force Prize for the top Army graduate, and of the Australian Command and Staff College, where won the 2001 Commander-in-Chief’s Sword for the top graduate from all services, and the Commander Australian Theatre Award for excellence in Joint Operations. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Politics and English from the University of New South Wales, a Masters of Management from the University of Canberra, a Graduate Diploma in Linguistics from the Australian Defence Force School of Languages, and a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales.

Dr. Kilcullen was named one of the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009. His books, The Accidental Guerrilla and Counterinsurgency, are used in several universities, as well as by policy-makers, the military, intelligence services and development agencies worldwide. His third book, Out of the Mountains, which examines conflict in the connected, coastal cities of the future, was awarded the 2013 American Publishers’ Association prize for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in Government and Politics. Accidental Guerrilla won the same prize in 2009 and was a Washington Post best-seller. His 2015 essay, Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State won the 2015 Walkley Award for long-form writing, and was published as a full-length book in 2016 by Oxford University Press.

  • Books | 2024
    Kilcullen D; Mills G, 2024, The Art of War and Peace: Understanding Our Choices in a World at War, Penguin Random House, Cape Town,
    Books | 2021
    Kilcullen D; Mills G, 2021, The Ledger Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan
    Books | 2020
    Kilcullen D, 2020, The Dragons and the Snakes How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, Oxford University Press, USA
    Books | 2016
    Davis D; Kilcullen D; Spencer D; Mills G, 2016, A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Divergence, Hurst
    Books | 2016
    Kilcullen D, 2016, Blood Year The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism, Oxford University Press
    Books | 2015
    Kilcullen D, 2015, Out of the Mountains The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, Oxford University Press
    Books | 2015
    Kilcullen D, 2015, Quarterly Essay 58: Blood Year Terror and the Islamic State, Black Inc.
    Books | 2014
    Kilcullen D; Rosenblatt N; Qudsi J; Geo FM; Associates C; Project AS, 2014, Mapping the Conflict in Aleppo, Syria
    Books | 2014
    Maley W; Schmeidl S; Kilcullen DJ; Stapleton BJ; Hoadley S; Saideman SM; Rietjens S; Khosa R; Grare F; Goodhand J; Ibrahimi N; Mohr J, 2014, Reconstructing Afghanistan: Civil-Military Experiences in Comparative Perspective, Maley W; Schmeidl S, (ed.), Routledge, London,
    Books | 2013
    Kilcullen D; Mills G; Pham JP, 2013, Somalia: Fixing Africa's Most Failed State, Tafelberg, Johannesburg,
    Books | 2010
    Kilcullen D, 2010, Counterinsurgency, Oxford University Press
    Books | 2009
    Kilcullen D, 2009, The Accidental Guerrilla Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford University Press
  • Book Chapters | 2024
    Kilcullen D, 2024, 'Postscript: The Future of Urban Operations in Context', in Sullivan JP; Jones NP; Argomedo DW (ed.), Urban Operations: War, Crime and Conflict, Keypoint Press, Boulder, Colorado, pp. 345 - 359,
    Book Chapters | 2024
    Kilcullen D, 2024, 'THE RISE OF CHINA AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR SPECIAL OPERATIONS', in Kitzen M; Kiras J (ed.), Into the Void Special Operations Forces After the War on Terror, Hurst & Co, London, pp. 73 - 88,
    Book Chapters | 2023
    Kilcullen D, 2023, 'Irregular and unconventional warfare', in Routledge Handbook of the Future of Warfare, pp. 166 - 177,
    Book Chapters | 2023
    Rosenblatt N; Kilcullen D, 2023, 'How Raqqa became the capital of ISIS', in Understanding the New Proxy Wars: Battlegrounds and Strategies Reshaping the Greater Middle East, pp. 115 - 150
    Book Chapters | 2023
    Rosenblatt N; Kilcullen D, 2023, 'Syria 2011-19: Lessons for US proxy warfare', in Understanding the New Proxy Wars: Battlegrounds and Strategies Reshaping the Greater Middle East, pp. 47 - 72
    Book Chapters | 2022
    Kilcullen D, 2022, 'The case of Afghanistan: How wars end', in How Wars End: Theory and Practice, pp. 123 - 138,
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Kilcullen D, 2021, 'Foreword', in American Defense Policy, JHU Press, Baltimore, pp. xi - xx,
    Book Chapters | 2020
    Kilcullen D, 2020, 'A Military Perspective', in Frame T (ed.), INTERFET Lessons and Legacies from East Timor 20 Years on, Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd, Redland Bay, QLD, pp. 94 - 105
    Book Chapters | 2020
    Kilcullen D, 2020, 'Enhancing Special Operations for Sustained Counterterrorism Operations', in Bowman B (ed.), Defending Forward: Securing America by Projecting Military Power Abroad, FDD Press, Washington DC, pp. 93 - 93
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, 'Strategic Culture', in Mansoor PR; Murray W (ed.), The Culture of Military Organizations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 33 - 52,
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, 'Strategic culture', in The Culture of Military Organizations, pp. 33 - 52,
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, 'The Roles and Utility of Ground Forces in Counterinsurgency and Stability Operations', in NIDS MGJ (ed.), A New Strategic Environment and Roles of Ground Forces, National Institute of Defense Studies, Tokyo, pp. 69 - 78,
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Austin GD, 2018, 'Strategic Military Geographies in the South China Sea', in Pearson S; Holloway J; Thackway R (ed.), Australian Contributions to Strategic and Military Geography, Springer,
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kilcullen D, 2018, 'Geographies of Irregular Warfare', in Pearson S; Holloway J; Thackway R (ed.), Australian Contributions to Strategic and Military Geography, Springer Verlag, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 103 - 108,
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kilcullen D, 2018, 'Geographies of irregular warfare', in Advances in Military Geosciences, pp. 103 - 108,
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Pearson S; Holloway JL; Thackway R, 2018, 'Australian Contributions to Strategic and Military Geography Introduction', in Pearson S; Holloway JL; Thackway R (ed.), AUSTRALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO STRATEGIC AND MILITARY GEOGRAPHY, SPRINGER, pp. 1 - 11,
    Book Chapters | 2014
    Kilcullen DJ, 2014, 'Fumbling the baton: US civil-military relations in the Afghan war', in Reconstructing Afghanistan: Civil-Military Experiences in Comparative Perspective, pp. 10 - 24,
    Book Chapters | 2012
    Kilcullen D, 2012, 'Counterinsurgency: The State of a Controversial Art', in The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency, Routledge, pp. 128 - 154
    Book Chapters | 2012
    Kilcullen D, 2012, 'Taliban and Counter-Insurgency in Kunar', in Decoding the New Taliban, Hurst Publishers, pp. 231 - 246
    Book Chapters | 2011
    Kilcullen DJ, 2011, 'Deiokes and the Taliban: Local governance, bottom-up state formation and the rule of law in counter-insurgency', in The Rule of Law in Afghanistan: Missing in Inaction, pp. 35 - 50,
    Book Chapters | 2010
    Kilcullen D, 2010, 'Intelligence', in Understanding Counterinsurgency Doctrine, operations, and challenges, Routledge, pp. 141 - 159
  • Journal articles | 2023
    Kilcullen D, 2023, 'Stand-in Manoeuvre in a Contested Littoral Environment', Australian Army Journal, 19,
    Journal articles | 2023
    Kilcullen D, 2023, 'Wake-Up Call: Pacific Islands are potential missile launch pads', Australian Foreign Affairs, pp. 27 - 41,
    Journal articles | 2022
    Kilcullen D, 2022, 'Russia's War in the Ukraine is Complex and Probably Already Underway', UNSW Opinion,
    Journal articles | 2021
    Shearer AW; Kilcullen DJ; Pendleton G, 2021, 'Conceptualizing a model of antifragility for dense urban areas', Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture, 2021, pp. 75 - 84,
    Journal articles | 2020
    Kilcullen D, 2020, 'Liminal Manoeuvre and Conceptual Envelopment: Russian and Chinese Non-Conventional Responses to Western Military Dominance since 1991', Journal of Future Conflict, 1, pp. 1 - 14,
    Journal articles | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, 'Feature Review: How to Defend Australia, by Hugh White', Australian Foreign Affairs, 1, pp. 117 - 6,
    Journal articles | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, 'The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare', Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies, 2, pp. 61 - 71,
    Journal articles | 2014
    Kilcullen D, 2014, 'Afghanistan in 2024: Muddling through?', Stability, 3,
    Journal articles | 2011
    Kilcullen D; Mills G; Oppenheimer J, 2011, 'The art of post-conflict economic recovery and reconstruction', RUSI Journal, 156, pp. 100 - 107,
    Journal articles | 2011
    Kilcullen D, 2011, 'Interview with David Kilcullen', International Review of the Red Cross, 93, pp. 587 - 601,
    Journal articles | 2007
    Kilcullen DJ, 2007, 'Australian Statecraft: The Challenge of Aligning Policy with Strategic Culture', SECURITY CHALLENGES, 3, pp. 45 - 65,
    Journal articles | 2007
    Kilcullen DJ, 2007, 'Subversion and countersubversion in the campaign against terrorism in Europe', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30, pp. 647 - 666,
    Journal articles | 2006
    Kilcullen D, 2006, 'Counter-insurgency redux', Survival, 48, pp. 111 - 130,
    Journal articles | 2006
    Kilcullen D, 2006, 'Globalisation and the development of Indonesian counterinsurgency tactics', International Journal of Phytoremediation, 17, pp. 44 - 64,
    Journal articles | 2005
    Kilcullen DJ, 2005, 'Countering global insurgency', Journal of Strategic Studies, 28, pp. 597 - 617,
  • Working Papers | 2020
    Kilcullen D; Abasanjo O; Pinzón Bueno JC; Mills G; Hartley R; Hamukoma N; Calburn S; Doyle N; Games D; Muzenda A; van der Merwe E; Davis D, 2020, Where the Rubber Hits the Road - The Future Of African Cities, The Brenthurst Foundation, Johannesburg, South Africa, Special Report, ,
    Working Papers | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, Hargeisa, Somaliland – Invisible City, Brenthurst Foundation, Johannesburg, South Africa, DISCUSSION PAPER 4/2019, ,
    Working Papers | 2019
    Kilcullen D, 2019, Mombasa: Gateway to Africa, The Brenthurst Foundation, Johannesburg, South Africa, 07/2019,
  • Conference Papers | 2022
    Kilcullen D, 2022, 'Terrorism crisis: cosying up to the Americans?', in Blyth A (ed.), Howard Library Policy Perspectives Paper No. 4, University of New South Wales; John Howard Prime Ministerial Library, Canberra, pp. 1 - 11, presented at The Art of Crisis Management: The Howard Government Experience, 1996–2007, Canberra, 23 June 2022 - 24 June 2022,
    Conference Presentations | 2021
    Kilcullen D, 2021, 'A Future of Risk and Opportunity for the Indo-Pacific', presented at Pacific Future Forum 2021, Portsmouth, UK, 20 October 2021 - 21 October 2021,
    Reports | 2020
    Kilcullen D; Rosenblatt N, 2020, The Tweet of Damocles: Lessons for U.S. Proxy Warfare, New America Foundation, Washington DC,
    Reports | 2019
    Kilcullen D; Rosenblatt N, 2019, How Raqqa Became the Capital of ISIS -- A Proxy Warfare Case Study, New America, Washington, D.C., 2, ,