Counterinsurgency

Abstract

Counterinsurgency has staked its claim in the new century as the new American way of war. Yet, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have revived a historical debate about the costs - monetary, political and moral - of operations designed to eliminate insurgents and build nations. Today's counterinsurgency proponents point to 'small wars' past to support their view that the enemy is 'biddable' if the correct tactical formulas are applied. Douglas Porch's sweeping history of counterinsurgency campaigns carried out by the three 'providential nations' of France, Britain and the United States, ranging from nineteenth-century colonial conquests to General Petraeus' 'Surge' in Iraq, challenges the contemporary mythologising of counterinsurgency as a humane way of war. The reality, he reveals, is that 'hearts and minds' has never been a recipe for lasting stability and that past counterinsurgency campaigns have succeeded not through state-building but by shattering and dividing societies while unsettling civil-military relations.

Colombia – Not So Unusual After All: A case study on the transnational making of the boundary between ‘defence’ and ‘public security’

“…The features of Plan Lazo correspond to the main pillars characterising what we have come to know as counterinsurgency (Porch, 2013): (i) an emphasis on tactics, mobility, and the small units deriving from it; (ii) a population-centric approach and a 'winning hearts and minds' motto, due to the idea that the population acts as both the key to the success of the operations and the risk of infiltration of the enemy; and (iii) an emphasis on intelligence, given the difficulty of discerning an enemy from an ally in a given population. These features remained the main axes guiding military operations in Colombia throughout the following decades.…”

“…14 Actually, we could also picture it as a global phenomenon. Porch (2013), for instance, shows how military professionals from France and the United Kingdom travelled to the United States in the 1960s so as to engage in conversations on how their experience could be mobilized in counterinsurgency tactics that were being advanced by the United States in Southeast Asia. In a book edited by Arielli and Collins (2012), a compilation of chapters reminds us how the circulation of military professionals is not a phenomenon confined in a specific geography, nor in a specific time frame.…”

Allies at the End of Empire—Loyalists, Nationalists and the Cold War, 1945–76

“…Across Africa, local allies helped extend European power during the military conquest of much of the continent 35 -is eastern Africa, for example, Maasai auxiliaries crushed British enemies in 'punitive expeditions', 36 while the standing army of the kingdom of Buganda was deployed under British command as the 'sub-imperialists' of colonial conquest throughout the inter-lacustrine lands after 1900. 37 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the age of 'imperial recklessness', as Porch terms it, 38 European imperial powers escalated their colonial 'small wars' and used increasingly brutal tactics, often enlarging the scale of operations by securing and deploying local allies. The French forces in West Africa depended upon local allies as they extended control through the Sahel in a last quarter of the nineteenth century, while the British made use of a variety of African allies in their campaigns against the Asante kingdom.…”

Cognitivism, prospect theory, and foreign policy change: a comparative analysis of the politics of counterinsurgency in Malaya and Afghanistan

“…16 It is now popular to correct misconceptions about COIN being a distinct kind of warfare, 17 the role of 'saviour' generals, 18 or the importance of winning "hearts and minds" in COIN campaigns. 19 Moreover, it is common to question the viability of COIN as a tool of imperial policing, as well as its moral desirability, 20 which, though important in debating US grand strategy, bears little scientific relevance. 21 Several authors, including Gentile, note that the immense focus on the operational level means overlooking the "causes, ideologies, and motives" of interventions.…”