Abstract
Over the last half-decade, counter-insurgency (COIN) rose to prominence as the dominant paradigm in American and British thinking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and indeed for the presumed wars of the future. ‘COIN’ achieved such currency in the strategic community that it became more than a military doctrine, which is its nominal status. Instead, it became a universal panacea. It offered a strategy, a theory of warfare, a movement in defence and military circles, and a ‘how to’ guide for implementing an interventionist American and allied foreign policy, informed by a seemingly humanitarian orientation.1
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Notes
See Beatrice Heuser, ‘A Cultural Revolution in CounterInsurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (2007): 153–71
David Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the US Military for Modern Wars (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009).
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See, for example, Wade Markel, ‘Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Population Control’, Parameters 36, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 35–48
See US Army, PRT Playbook: Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Center for Army Lessons Learned, 2007). For an assessment see James Pritchard and M.L.R. Smith, ‘Thompson in Helmand: Comparing Theory to Practice in British Counterinsurgency Operations in Afghanistan’, Civil Wars 12, nos. 1 and 2 (March 2010): 65–90.
See Karl Hack, ‘“Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30, no. 1 (March 1999): 102.
In particular, see the work of Huw Bennett, who argues that harsh methods were perceived by the British Army as a necessary precursor to ‘hearts and minds’ operations. Huw Bennett, ‘“A Very Salutary Effect”: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 414–44
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See Karl Hack, ‘The Malayan Emergency as a Counter-Insurgency Paradigm’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 394–6.
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Alex Marshall, ‘Imperial Nostalgia, the Liberal Lie, and the Perils of Postmodern Counterinsurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 21, no. 2 (2010): 235.
Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 45–67.
See Jeffrey H. Michaels and Matthew Ford, ‘Bandwagonistas: Rhetorical Re-description, Strategic Choice and the Politics of Counter-insurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 22, no. 2 (2011): 352–84.
See Tom Englehardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), pp. 234–41.
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See John Nagl, ‘Let’s Win the Wars We’re In’, Joint Forces Quarterly 52, 1st Quarter (2009): 20–6.
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John Nagl, ‘Constructing the Legacy of Field Manual 3–24’, Joint Forces Quarterly 58, 3rd quarter (2010): 118
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© 2014 Celeste Ward Gventer, David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
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Gventer, C.W., Jones, D.M., Smith, M.L.R. (2014). Minting New COIN: Critiquing Counter-insurgency Theory. In: Gventer, C.W., Jones, D.M., Smith, M.L.R. (eds) The New Counter-insurgency Era in Critical Perspective. Rethinking Political Violence series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336941_2
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