The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency

M.L.R. Smith; David Jones

M.L.R. Smith and David Jones

The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency

Strategic Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes

In: Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare

Columbia University Press | 2015

https://doi.org/10.7312/smit17000

Overview
Contents

About this book

The counterinsurgency (COIN) paradigm dominates military and political conduct in contemporary Western strategic thought. It assumes future wars will unfold as "low intensity" conflicts within rather than between states, requiring specialized military training and techniques. COIN is understood as a logical, effective, and democratically palatable method for confronting insurgency—a discrete set of practices that, through the actions of knowledgeable soldiers and under the guidance of an expert elite, creates lasting results.

Through an extensive investigation into COIN's theories, methods, and outcomes, this book undermines enduring claims about COIN's success while revealing its hidden meanings and effects. Interrogating the relationship between counterinsurgency and war, the authors question the supposed uniqueness of COIN's attributes and try to resolve the puzzle of its intellectual identity. Is COIN a strategy, a doctrine, a theory, a military practice, or something else? Their analysis ultimately exposes a critical paradox within COIN: while it ignores the vital political dimensions of war, it is nevertheless the product of a misplaced ideological faith in modernization.

Author information

M. L. R. Smith is professor of strategic theory in the Department of War Studies at King's College, University of London. Among his publications are Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement and The Strategy of Terrorism: How It Works and Why It Fails.

David Martin Jones is associate professor in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. His publications include Political Development in Pacific Asia, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought, and, with M. L. R. Smith, ASEAN and East Asian International Relations: Regional Delusion and Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age.

Reviews

A penetrating study... The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency shows itself to be confident and decisive in its sceptical outlook, and a powerful and authoritative contribution to the literature of counter-insurgency.

Austin Long, Columbia University:
As the 'success' of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan is increasingly called into question, The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency offers valuable insights that are likely to be both timely and enduring. The authors demonstrate with admirable lucidity that 21st century counterinsurgency has often been a catechism rather than a real strategy, with technocratic and modernizing zeal frequently blinding its practitioners to historical and contemporary reality. Vital for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future of counterinsurgency in theory and practice.

Huw Bennett, Aberystwyth University:
Concise, impeccably well structured and penetrating, this book provides the most insightful analysis yet of the theoretical underpinnings of insurgency warfare, and what this means for contemporary armed conflict.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgments Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	vii
Introduction Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	ix
1. What Is Counterinsurgency Meant to Counter? The Puzzle of Insurgency Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
2. Counterinsurgency and Strategy: Problems and Paradoxes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	29
3. Counterinsurgency and the Ideology of Modernization Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	55
4. The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency and Globalization Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	89
5. The Illusion of Tradition: Myths and Paradoxes of British Counterinsurgency Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	119
6. The Puzzle of Counterinsurgency and Escalation Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	151
Conclusion Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	179
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	187
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	225
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	247

The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency

Strategic Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes

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