Not so extraordinary: the democratisation of UK counterinsurgency strategy

Abstract

This article argues that recent developments in UK counterinsurgency strategy and subsequent counterterror legislation have been informed and enabled by military and political interventions in Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. The article contains three interconnecting arguments. First, that UK counterterrorism policies since the intervention in Afghanistan are an extension of previous practices in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, rather than representing a new phase in security strategy. Second, that the articulation of the external terror threat by successive UK governments since 9/11 has led to a blurring of emergency law into domestic governance and a movement of this emergency legislation from the colonial periphery into the metropolitan centre. Third, the article argues that the techniques at the heart of these counterinsurgency efforts risk hollowing out the values they are supposed to uphold and defend.