The United States must devise entirely new military and political strategies because threats to the nation's security have shifted so markedly. This work provides the first comparative analysis of unconventional conflicts, using Malaya and Vietnam as lessons for developing effective policies and operations to counter strife, drug wars, and new types of Third World conflict today. This text for students, experts, and policymakers in military studies, history, and international relations combines insights from primary and secondary sources, participant-observer experiences, and scholarly and professional thinking in order to formulate practical recommendations for future policy.

Sarkesian provides a comparative framework for analyzing unconventional conflicts, describing past strategies used by Great Britain, France, and the United States. He defines the military posture and nature of conflict, leadership, and indigenous situations in Malaya and Vietnam. He analyzes the nature of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary systems. Sarkesian describes a new U.S. national security agenda to deal with a transformed geostrategic world landscape. A lengthy bibliography adds to the usefulness of this provocative text for classes in contemporary military studies, world history, war and peace, U.S. foreign policy, and conflict management.