“In the Wider View”: The Geostrategic Determinants of Counterinsurgency Strategy and Adaptation, Evidence from the Arab and Jewish Rebellions in the Palestine Mandate

Abstract

Expeditionary counterinsurgents often have trouble adapting to meet insurgent challenges, resulting in the adoption and retention of ineffective strategies. Whereas explanations often focus on military preferences and cultures, this paper argues civilian policymakers ultimately select counterinsurgency strategy from the recommendations of their advisors, and these strategies will reflect policymakers’ preferences. The goals and instruments of a counterinsurgency campaign are significantly shaped and constrained by policymakers’ foreign policy objectives and the geostrategic pressures they perceive. Strategy changes when geostrategic shifts render existing strategies liabilities for new foreign policy objectives; otherwise, existing strategies, consistent with existing goals, are likely to persist. A most similar comparison of British responses to two insurgencies in the Palestine Mandate, the Arab Rebellion (1936–39), demonstrating successful strategic adaptation, and the Jewish Rebellion (1945–47), demonstrating the failure to change ineffective strategy, reveal the role played by geostrategic pressures stemming from the onset and aftermath of World War II.