Rethinking Western Approaches To Counterinsurgency

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.

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.

This book offers the first analysis of the brutalisation paradigm in counter-insurgency warfare. Minimising the use of force and winning over the population’s opinion is said to be the cornerstone of success in modern counterinsurgency (COIN). Yet, this tells only one side of the story. Drawing upon primary data collected during interviews with eyewitnesses of the Second Russian-Chechen War, as well as from secondary sources, this book is the first to offer a detailed analysis of the long-neglected logic underpinning brutalisation-centred COIN campaigns. It offers a comprehensive systematisation of the brutalisation paradigm and challenges the widespread assumption of brutalisation as an underperforming paradigm of COIN warfare. It shows that, although appalling, brutalisation-centred measures can deliver success. The book also outlines a stigmatised yet widely deployed set of COIN measures and provides critical insights into how Western military blueprints can be improved without compromising important moral and ethical requirements. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, military and strategic studies, Russian politics, and International Relations.

This two-volume history of counterinsurgency covers all the major and many of the lesser known examples of this widespread and enduring form of conflict, addressing the various measures employed in the attempt to overcome the insurgency and examining the individuals and organizations responsible for everything from counterterrorism to infrastructure building. How and when should counterinsurgency be pursued as insurgency is growing in frequency and, conversely, while conventional warfare continues to decline as a means by which political rivals seek to impose their will upon each other? What lessons from the past should today's policymakers, strategists, military leaders, and soldiers in the field keep in mind while facing off against 21st-century insurgents? This two-volume set offers a comprehensive history of modern counterinsurgency, covering the key examples of this widespread and enduring form of conflict. It identifies the political, military, social, and economic measures employed in attempting to overcome insurgency, examining the work of the individuals and organizations involved, demonstrating how success and failure dictated change from established policy, and carefully analyzing the results. Readers will gain valuable insight from the detailed assessments of the history of counterinsurgency that demonstrate which strategies have succeeded and which have failed—and why. After an introductory essay on the subject, each chapter provides historical background to the insurgency being addressed before focusing on the specific policies pursued and actions taken by the counterinsurgency force. Each section also provides an assessment of those operations, including in most cases an analysis of lessons learned and, where appropriate, their relevance to counterinsurgency operations today. The set's coverage spans modern counterinsurgencies from Europe to Asia to Africa since 1900 and includes the ongoing counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan today. Its wide, international approach to the subject makes the set a prime resource for readers seeking specific information on a particular conflict or a better understanding of the general theories and practices of counterinsurgency.

This book offers a detailed examination of the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the Nigerian military against Boko Haram between 2011 and 2017. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with military units in Nigeria, Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria has two main aims. First, it seeks to provide an understanding of the Nigerian military’s internal role – a role that today, as a result of internal threats, pivots towards counter-insurgency. The book illustrates how organizational culture, historical experience, institutions, and doctrine, are critical to understanding the Nigerian military and its attitudes and actions against the threat of civil disobedience, today and in the past. The second aim of the book is to examine the Nigerian military campaign against Boko Haram insurgents – specifically, plans and operations between June 2011 and April 2017. Within this second theme, emphasis is placed on the idea of battlefield innovation and the reorganization within the Nigerian military since 2013, as the Nigerian Army and Air Force recalibrated themselves for COIN warfare. A certain mystique has surrounded the technicalities of COIN operations by the Army against Boko Haram, and this book aims to disperse that veil of secrecy. Furthermore, the work’s analysis of the air force’s role in counter-insurgency is unprecedented within the literature on military warfare in Nigeria. This book will be of great interest to students of military studies, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, African politics and security studies in general.

This book presents a theory and empirical evidence for how security forces can identify militant suspects during counterinsurgency operations. A major oversight on the part of academics and practitioners has been to ignore the critical antecedent issue common to persuasion and coercion counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches: distinguishing friend from foe. This book proposes that the behaviour of security forces influences the likelihood of militant identification during a COIN campaign, and argues that security forces must respect civilian safety in order to create a credible commitment to facilitate collaboration with a population. This distinction is important as conventional wisdom has wrongly assumed that the presence of security forces confers control over terrain or influence over a population. Collaboration between civilian and government actors is the key observable indicator of support in COIN. Paradoxically, this theory accounts for why and how increased risk to government forces in the short term actually improves civilian security in the long run. Counterinsurgency, Security Forces, and the Identification Problem draws on three case studies: the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines post-World War II; Marines Corps’ experiences in Vietnam through the Combined Action Program; and Special Operations activities in Iraq after 2003. For military practitioners, the work illustrates the critical precursor to establishing "security" during counterinsurgency operations. The book also examines the role and limits of modern technology in solving the identification problem. This book will be of interest to students of counterinsurgency, military history, strategic studies, US foreign policy, and security studies in general.

How a new understanding of warfare can help the military fight today’s conflicts more effectively The way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns used to play out between large armies at central fronts. Today's conflicts find major powers facing rebel insurgencies that deploy elusive methods, from improvised explosives to terrorist attacks. Small Wars, Big Data presents a transformative understanding of these contemporary confrontations and how they should be fought. The authors show that a revolution in the study of conflict--enabled by vast data, rich qualitative evidence, and modern methods—yields new insights into terrorism, civil wars, and foreign interventions. Modern warfare is not about struggles over territory but over people; civilians—and the information they might choose to provide—can turn the tide at critical junctures. The authors draw practical lessons from the past two decades of conflict in locations ranging from Latin America and the Middle East to Central and Southeast Asia. Building an information-centric understanding of insurgencies, the authors examine the relationships between rebels, the government, and civilians. This approach serves as a springboard for exploring other aspects of modern conflict, including the suppression of rebel activity, the role of mobile communications networks, the links between aid and violence, and why conventional military methods might provide short-term success but undermine lasting peace. Ultimately the authors show how the stronger side can almost always win the villages, but why that does not guarantee winning the war. Small Wars, Big Data provides groundbreaking perspectives for how small wars can be better strategized and favorably won to the benefit of the local population.

Denying terrorists sanctuary has become a pillar of U.S. defense strategy since the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks. Violent extremist organizations in North Africa, such as the group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have used remote and sparsely populated areas in the Sahara for protection from security forces to conduct a range of terrorist activities, such as training, planning, and logistics.1 Despite the time elapsed since the 9/11 attacks, and the resources dedicated to denying sanctuary globally, the concept of sanctuary remains largely unexplored and poorly understood. This monograph proposes a functional understanding of sanctuary and offers fresh ideas to deny it using a detailed case study of the most notorious of these North African terrorists, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, from his arrival in Mali in the late 1990s, until the French intervention in early 2013. Contents: On Sanctuary Terrain: Geographic and Human Characteristics of Saharan Sanctuary Sanctuary Seekers in the Sahara Denial of Sanctuary: Ends, Ways, and Means