Today is the counterinsurgency class in Southeast Asian Politics. I don’t relish teaching this class—even though I’m assigning my own work—because it is a sad topic. Here is a lecture slide that always gets me (image from here).

I can talk about the strategic difficulties that the U.S. and allied forces faced in the Second Indochina War, and that’s fine, but nothing delivers the message better than a picture. I leave it as an exercise for the class (and for Indolaysia readers) to apply these lessons to contemporary conflicts.