This month, 4000 United States Marines launched Operation Khanjar (strike of the sword) into Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The images splashed across the media, of soldiers and helicopters in rugged desert, illustrate the bare facts of yet another US led operation. There have been so many since September 11, 2001, that it can be difficult to distinguish the latest.
But whether it succeeds or otherwise, Operation Khanjar is worth noting for the strategic change it represents.
On 4 July The Australian ran the headline 'Offensives reveal Obama's strategy'. Really, Operation Khanjar is not Obama's strategy at all. Behind this operation lies a strategic consensus on counter-insurgency that has been gaining ground since the 2007 'surge' in Iraq.
David Kilcullen, former Australian Army officer and senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, has been an emerging voice articulating new ways to combat insurgency. His book, The Accidental Guerrilla is a mind-boggling read and not just because it is a work of analytical depth.
Kilcullen's book rams home the almost overwhelming complexity of the Pashtun Taliban insurgency and the challenge of building an Afghan state, a project in which Australian troops are engaged.
His argument is that most of those Pashtun tribesmen fighting for the Taliban are 'accidental guerrillas' who are not ideological radicals, but tribesmen who have been provoked, bullied or bribed into attacking foreign troops.
To combat this 'accidental guerrilla syndrome' Kilcullen lays out what he calls a 'population centric approach,' which emphasises denying Taliban insurgents access to rural population centres rather than endlessly hunting them down in the countryside.
This approach to counter-insurgency, Kilcullen argues, proved its worth in the 2007 'surge', pulling Baghdad back from the brink of sectarian chaos. Kilcullen draws from his experience as one of the architects of that operation and applies it to Afghanistan, where, he argues, protecting the population from intimidation and coercion by the Taliban is a vital part of stifling the insurgency.
For the insurgents, he says, the populace is oxygen: deny them access and the Taliban will eventually wilt.
Operation Khanjar has Kilcullen's thesis written all over it. The central tenets have been echoed by US commanders. In particular, Kilcullen's argument that 'reforms targeting local and provincial government effectiveness are indispensable' seems to have been taken to heart.
As Marine Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said to his officers before the operation began: 'our focus is not on the Taliban'