Rethinking Insurgency

The U.S. military and national security community lost interest in insurgency after the end of the Cold War. Other defense issues such as multinational peacekeeping and transformation seemed more pressing and thus attracted the most attention. But with the onset of the Global War on Terror in 2001 and the ensuing involvement of the U.S. military in counterinsurgency support in Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgency experienced renewed concern in both the defense and intelligence communities. In this monograph, Dr. Steven Metz, who has been writing on insurgency and counterinsurgency for more than 2 decades, argues that this relearning process, while exceptionally important, emphasized the wrong thing, focusing on Cold War era nationalistic insurgencies rather than the complex conflicts which characterized the post-Cold War security environment. To be successful at counterinsurgency, he contends, the U.S. military and defense community must rethink insurgency.

The U.S. military and national security community lost interest in insurgency after the end of the Cold War when other defense issues such as multinational peacekeeping and transformation seemed more pressing. With the onset of the Global War on Terror in 2001 and the ensuing involvement of the U.S. military in counterinsurgency support in Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgency experienced renewed concern in both the defense and intelligence communities. The author argues that while exceptionally important, this relearning process focused on Cold War era nationalistic insurgencies rather than the complex conflicts which characterized the post-Cold War security environment. To be successful at counterinsurgency, he contends, the U.S. military and defense community must rethink insurgency, which has profound implications for American strategy and military doctrine.

This book critically examines the Western approach to counter-insurgency in the post-colonial era and offers a series of recommendations to address current shortfalls. The author argues that current approaches to countering insurgency rely too heavily on conflicts from the post-World War II years of waning colonialism. Campaigns conducted over half a century ago – Malaya, Aden, and Kenya among them – remain primary sources on which the United States, British, Australian, and other militaries build their guidance for dealing with insurgent threats, this though both the character of those threats and the conflict environment are significantly different than was the case in those earlier years. This book addresses the resulting inconsistencies by offering insights, analysis, and recommendations drawn from campaigns more applicable to counter-insurgency today. Eight post-colonial conflicts; to include Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Colombia and Iraq; provide the basis for analysis. All are examples in which counterinsurgents attained or continue to demonstrate considerable progress when taking on enterprises better known for disaster and disappointment. Recommendations resulting from these analyses challenge entrenched beliefs to serve as the impetus for essential change. Rethinking Western Approaches to Counterinsurgency will be of much interest to students of counter-insurgencies, military and strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.

Envisioning La Escalera--an underground rebel movement largely composed of Africans living on farms and plantations in rural western Cuba--in the larger context of the long emancipation struggle in Cuba, Aisha Finch demonstrates how organized slave resistance became critical to the unraveling not only of slavery but also of colonial systems of power during the nineteenth century. While the discovery of La Escalera unleashed a reign of terror by the Spanish colonial powers in which hundreds of enslaved people were tortured, tried, and executed, Finch revises historiographical conceptions of the movement as a fiction conveniently invented by the Spanish government in order to target anticolonial activities. Connecting the political agitation stirred up by free people of color in the urban centers to the slave rebellions that rocked the countryside, Finch shows how the rural plantation was connected to a much larger conspiratorial world outside the agrarian sector. While acknowledging the role of foreign abolitionists and white creoles in the broader history of emancipation, Finch teases apart the organization, leadership, and effectiveness of the black insurgents in midcentury dissident mobilizations that emerged across western Cuba, presenting compelling evidence that black women played a particularly critical role.

Why do only some incipient rebel groups become viable challengers to governments? Only those that control local rumor networks survive.

This book critically examines the Western approach to counter-insurgency in the post-colonial era and offers a series of recommendations to address current shortfalls. The author argues that current approaches to countering insurgency rely too heavily on conflicts from the post-World War II years of waning colonialism. Campaigns conducted over half a century ago – Malaya, Aden, and Kenya among them – remain primary sources on which the United States, British, Australian, and other militaries build their guidance for dealing with insurgent threats, this though both the character of those threats and the conflict environment are significantly different than was the case in those earlier years. This book addresses the resulting inconsistencies by offering insights, analysis, and recommendations drawn from campaigns more applicable to counter-insurgency today. Eight post-colonial conflicts; to include Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Colombia and Iraq; provide the basis for analysis. All are examples in which counterinsurgents attained or continue to demonstrate considerable progress when taking on enterprises better known for disaster and disappointment. Recommendations resulting from these analyses challenge entrenched beliefs to serve as the impetus for essential change. Rethinking Western Approaches to Counterinsurgency will be of much interest to students of counter-insurgencies, military and strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.

Plutocratic insurgency represents an emerging form of insurgency not seen since the late 19th century Gilded Age. It is being conducted by high net worth globalized elites allowing them to remove themselves from public spaces and obligations—including taxation—and to maximize their ability to generate profits transnationally. It utilizes ‘lawyers & lobbyists’ and corruption, rather than armed struggle—though mercenaries may be employed—to create shadow governance in pursuit of plutocratic policy objectives. Ultimately, this form of insurgency is representative of the challenge of 21st century predatory and sovereign-free capitalism to 20th century state moderated capitalism and its ensuing public welfare programs and middle class social structures. It can be viewed as a component of ‘Dark Globalization’ that, along with the emergence of criminal insurgency, is now actively threatening the public institutions and citizenry of the Westphalian state form. This important and groundbreaking Small Wars Journal book is composed of over thirty readings by fifteen contributors.