Crafting non-kinetic warfare: the academic-military nexus in US counterinsurgency doctrine

Abstract

Written in response to the ongoing insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new US Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual reflects a unity of effort between the military and academic worlds rarely seen at the doctrinal or operational level. Because counterinsurgency operations are predicated upon an intimate understanding of human behavior as well as the social, economic, and political forces that can aggravate and encourage insurgents to take up arms against the standing authority, the American military has called upon scholars to lend their expertise towards developing nonmilitary or ‘nonkinetic’ prescriptions for battling ‘internal’ war over the years. Since the early 1960s many within the academic community have answered that call. Such participation, however, has sparked a bitter debate among members of both academe and the military. This article will examine the role that human rights advocates and social scientists have played in shaping counterinsurgency doctrine as well as the controversy this participation has produced both during the Cold War and today.