Counterinsurgency Doctrine Research Articles

Rwanda’s War in Mozambique: Road-Testing a Kigali Principles approach to counterinsurgency?

ABSTRACT Rwandan military behavior in Mozambique operationalizes Kigali’s rhetorical commitment to aggressively defend endangered civilians. The counterinsurgency doctrine applied in Cabo Delgado balances insurgent pursuit and civilian protection through a combination of contact patrolling and tactical restraint. This formula demonstrates learning from the country’s past experience with domestic rebellion and international peacekeeping but contrasts sharply with Rwandan army conduct in eastern Congo. The disparity suggests Rwandan battlefield demeanor is conditioned by institutional culture and role conception. The campaign underscores the influence of ideology on Rwandan soldiers' self-understanding and complicates the equivalence of nondemocratic regime type with repressive strategies of counterinsurgency.

From ‘Butcher and Bolt’ to ‘Bugsplat’: Race, Counterinsurgency, and International Politics

Beginning in the early 2000s, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan revived interest among security studies scholars in counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Yet most studies of COIN in mainstream security studies have not explored the role of race, despite the fact that the principles of COIN warfare were developed during the colonial period when racialized visions dominated world politics. We argue that mainstream security scholars tend to overlook race for two interconnected reasons: first, they treat race as an emotional and interpersonal phenomenon, and second, they assume that racial hostility will manifest in intense and indiscriminate violence. We argue instead that race should be understood as a particular kind of social ontology, one that places human communities into socially reductionist hierarchies based on assumed bio-cultural traits. We then examine how different kinds of racial ontologies were used in the colonial period to develop different kinds of COIN doctrines, whether punitive or paternalistic in character. We demonstrate how these different racialized COIN frameworks informed state practices on the battlefield through a comparative illustration of two COIN campaigns: Britain on the “North-West frontier” of India in the late nineteenth century and the United States along the “Af-Pak border” in the early twenty-first century.

‘L’esprit de défense’: separatism, counterinsurgency and the dissolution of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France

ABSTRACT At the end of 2020, the Macron government decided to dismantle the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). The CCIF was the primary actor of anti-Islamophobia in France. Its dissolution and the end of its missions in France was a shock for Muslim communities and affected their perception of themselves as well as the trust they put in the rule of law. Macron’s government justified the CCIF’s dissolution in part by arguing that, by denouncing institutional Islamophobia, the organisation incited acts of terrorism against French institutions and its workers. However, the dismantling of the CCIF took place within the larger context of the Macron government’s frustration with the CCIF efforts to question its policies and defend Muslim rights. Thus, the reasons behind the dismantling of the CCIF demand further exploration. After explaining the social function of the CCIF, the events leading to its dissolution as well as its consequences, this paper argues that its dissolution was politically motivated and corresponds with a remodelling of the French colonial counterinsurgency doctrine used to fight against a largely fantasised Islamist separatist insurrection.

‘Shaping hearts and minds: claret operations in Borneo, 1965–1966’

ABSTRACT For Western militaries, the choice between enemy-centric and population-centric approaches to unconventional warfare is really no choice at all. Contemporary counterinsurgency doctrines are clear on the decisive importance of hearts and minds in delivering success: in these conflicts, the population is the prize. As this article identifies, however, context may limit in important ways the relevance of many hearts and minds activities. Despite the scale of Commonwealth military success against Indonesia during Operation Claret in 1965–66, and despite the declared importance of hearts and mind activities in support of this success, the specific context that existed during the campaign limited the extent to which hearts and minds could exert a decisive impact. In particular, the limited nature of Commonwealth objectives, which did not seek to change the political ownership of the border area, meant that the local population could not, in the long term, be protected from the consequences of choosing to side with Commonwealth forces. Therefore, despite often being well disposed to Commonwealth troops, rational concerns for their own well-being limited the willingness of border villagers to provide overt help.

Transfers of colonial (dis)order: guerrilla warfare and the British military thought after the Great War

ABSTRACT The article analyses the gaps and ties betweenthe doctrine and theory, in contrast with the practice, of countering subversive movements in the British Empire during the Interbellum. Contradictions between security services led to the articulation and promotion of different models of counterinsurgency. The research contains an analysis of the guerrilla warfare concept’ evolution within the military thought, through the second Boer war, Irish warof Independence and the second Arab rising in Palestine, reflecting different thoughts on interrelated problems of the ‘revolutionary movements’ and ‘sub-war’ after the Great War. Particular attentionis paid to military and political incentives and constrains of the counterinsurgency doctrine, reflecting the bureaucratic logic that stood behind the implementation of the guerrilla warfare concept at the levels of doctrine and theory in the context of the systemic crisis of empire and the growth of external pressure over the questions of the imperial defense and self-determination. Conflicting coexistence of internal security models tested within the British Empire during the Interbellum is observed in the conclusion,as well as perspectives of transfers of colonial (dis)order in front of the ‘sub-war’, as it was understood among the military circles through the prism of the guerrilla warfare concept.

“A Second Ireland”: Palestine in the Eyes of the British Military (1936—1939)

The article analyses the gaps and ties between the doctrine and theory, in contrast with the practice, of countering subversive movements in the British Empire within the frame of the example of the Arab rebellion of 1936—1939. Contradictions between security services on this question, objectivated by the experience of the Irish war of independence of 1919—1921 took for granted as referenced, led to the articulation and promotion of different models of counterinsurgency instead of the unified “British way” of resolving that problem. In the light of this the research contains an analysis of the “guerrilla warfare concept” evolution within the military thought in the second half of the 1930s, reflecting different thoughts on interrelated problems of the “revolutionary movements” and “sub-war” on the overseas territories, including Palestine. Particular attention is paid for military and political incentives and constrains of the counterinsurgency doctrine, reflected bureaucratic logic which stood behind the implementation of the guerrilla warfare concept at the levels of doctrine and theory in the context of the systemic crisis of empire and the growth of external pressure over the questions of the imperial defense and self-determination for the colonies.

Decision Making Processes in Counter-Terrorism Operations in Israel

Israel is fighting terrorism from its very early days. The terror acts are characterized by carrying out lethal attack on Israeli residents and/ or the abduction of civilians / soldiers in order to free Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jail. During the years Israel's counterinsurgency doctrine was shaped based on two main cornerstones – Moshe Dayan’s doctrine of reprisal actions on terror attacks, formulated in the early 1950s, and the Rabin Doctrine on dealing with abducted Israelis. This article will analyze the processes of decision- making in Israel when fighting the two main forms of terror acts. After reviewing the main decision – making model a new decision- making model will be presented - the Two-Group Decision Making Model that will be demonstrated through analysis of four case studies: two cases of terror attack that Israel reacted by a military reprisal operation and two cases in which Israelis were abducted and the decision- makers had to choose to surrender to the terrorists demands or to launch a military rescue operation. The main conclusions of this article are that most of the decision- making process is made within a very small and intimate group headed by the leader and in most cases the Israeli decision – makers prefer to carry out a military operation on negotiations or any other course of action.

A batalha entre a liberdade e a tirania: Revolução Cubana, guerra de guerrilhas e o desenvolvimento da Doutrina de Contrainsurgência norte-americana nos anos 1960

O objetivo central deste artigo é analisar a construção e o desenvolvimento das políticas produzidas no âmbito do governo dos Estados Unidos para a América Latina, sobretudo a partir da década de 1960. Tal escolha justifica-se pelo interesse em compreender as ações desenvolvidas para combater os movimentos guerrilheiros que se faziam atuantes nos países latino-americanos, além da influência e do impacto da Revolução Cubana nesse processo. A criação de programas de ajuda externa, com destaque para a Aliança para o Progresso, aliada ao desenvolvimento da Doutrina de Contrainsurgência, ambas no governo de John F. Kennedy, nos parece fundamental para a compreensão das estratégias adotadas pelos Estados Unidos na sua política de contenção do avanço comunista na região.

Terrorcraft: empire and the making of the racialised terrorist threat

Terrorism is so associated with Arabs, Muslims and South Asians that it has become common sense in the post 9/11 world. Drawing on various bodies of scholarship, this article traces the complex evolution of ‘race’ in relation to Arabs and Muslims from the 1960s to mid-’80s, alongside changing notions of ‘terrorism’, to advance an argument about the historically contingent nature of the racialised terrorist threat. The author argues that ‘terrorcraft’ – or terrorist racialisation – is a process. First, the racialised terrorist was crafted deep in the US empire. Counter-insurgency doctrine was instrumental in the US security state’s creation of the ‘Arab terrorist’ through racial profiling. Second, the ideology of terrorcraft followed, rather than preceded, the security state’s racialising practices, though racial stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims pre-date the 1960s. The ‘Arab terrorist’ is a new project of racial formation, the author argues. Third, the US’s strategic alliance with Israel after 1967 and two conferences organised by the Israeli Jonathan Institute laid the basis for the transatlantic production of terrorcraft. Over time, it evolved from its initial focus on Arabs to include Muslims during the 1980s and South Asians in the 1990s.

‘The perfect counterinsurgent’: reconsidering the case of Major Jim Gant

ABSTRACTIn 2009, Major Jim Gant published a treatise online entitled One Tribe at a Time, outlining a strategy for victory in Afghanistan based on the still untested counterinsurgency doctrine developed by General David Petraeus. Gant was given the opportunity to put theory to the test by returning to the village of Mangwal in eastern Kunar Province. Evaluation of Gant’s mission has been overshadowed by the scandal that led to his resignation from the US Special Forces. This essay provides a re-examination of Gant’s time in Mangwal based on interviews with residents of Mangwal and an appraisal of the lessons that can be learned from Gant’s attempt to put counterinsurgency principles into practice.

Dialogue without negotiation: illiberal peace-building in Southern Thailand

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the Thai state’s approach in tackling the separatist movements in Thailand’s predominantly Malay-Muslim South. Developing upon Lewis et al.’s concept of Authoritarian Conflict Management, I argue that the state has largely employed an authoritarian mode to respond to the resurgence of violent rebellion since 2004, with the military taking dominant roles. Illiberal peace-building, largely influenced by Thai Cold War counterinsurgency doctrine, has extended not only to spatial, discursive and economic domains, but also to the legal realm. A nationally driven peace process initiated in 2013 was a departure from the state’s long-standing modus operandi. It was a period in which national elites experimented with a relatively more liberal approach. The Kuala Lumpur-facilitated process sparked both inter- and intra-group contention and soon collapsed due to the effect of unending battle between the so-called democracy camp and the royalist-establishment camp. The trajectory of the formalised dialogue took a significant turn after the 2014 coup. While retaining the process, the military regime turned it into an extended domain of illiberal peace-building.

Unpacking military emulation: absorptive capacity and German counterinsurgency doctrine during ISAF

ABSTRACTWhich organisational activities promote effective military emulation? Which variables facilitate and impede the emergence of these activities? Drawing upon the academic literatures on military change and management studies, as well as semi-structured interviews within the British and German militaries, this article identifies five key organisational activities which promote effective inter-organisational doctrinal learning. In doing so, the article improves understanding of the contribution that management studies can make to multi-disciplinary scholarship on military learning. The article examines the variables which facilitate the emergence of activities which support effective inter-organisational doctrinal learning through a case study of Bundeswehr doctrinal absorptive capacity during ISAF. It also explores the impact of these activities on doctrine development. The article demonstrates the crucial importance of active and well-informed civilian oversight of the activities which support military learning.

The Soul of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the US and UK. By Austin Long. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. 288p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The Soul of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the US and UK. By Austin Long. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. 288p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

General Zuo’s counter-insurgency doctrine

ABSTRACT This paper examines the career of one of the most notable of Chinese state officials in the mid-nineteenth century, General Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885) at a time when the Qing Empire was beset by enemies on all sides along with the massive Taiping Rebellion (1851–65). The paper explores how Zuo created a coherent and flexible counter-insurgency doctrine that underpinned his suppression of the Taipings, the Nian, Muslim rebels of the northwest and the defeat of a massive Sufi revolt in Central Asia. The paper also shows how Zuo helped convince the Russians to return territory they occupied in Central Asia, thereby preserving the territorial integrity of the Qing Empire in the region.

The Jenin Initiative: Counterinsurgency by Capacity Building

ABSTRACTIn late 2008, as negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians faltered, the US directed the Jenin Initiative on the ground in the West Bank. Designed to inspire confidence in Washington’s security-driven ‘West Bank First’ strategy, the Jenin Initiative married economic development to security sector reform under the Palestinian Authority. Drawing on the perspectives of those responsible for implementing the Jenin Initiative, this article reveals how counterinsurgency doctrine transplanted from the ‘war on terror’ shaped US interventions that built capacity in the Palestinian Authority. The Jenin Initiative exposes the extent of US intervention to create an effective apparatus of Palestinian self-policing to enhance – but not replace – that of the Israeli occupation.

From small wars to counterinsurgency: C.W. Gwynn, ‘Imperial Policing’ and transformation of doctrine

ABSTRACTThe complicated problematic of Imperial Policing in many respects still comes down to the principle of minimum force, and much of what we consider an integral part of the modern doctrine of counterinsurgency, is perceived as by-product of post-1945 colonial experience. Charles Gwynn wrote about it in his still underestimated text-book on internal security, ‘Imperial Policing’. As a result, there is a lack of clear understanding how colonial (based on local experience) knowledge was transformed into the expert (universal, transferable) knowledge in confronting rebellions at the doctrinal level. This article examines the work of Gwynn as part of a transitional stage from the age of global empires to the age of nuclear superpowers within the context of internal security doctrine. Adaptation to the new realities during the interwar period and after the World War II – reconfiguration of the British army epistemological system in confronting insurgencies – was a hard process. In this sense, the question about transformation of colonial knowledge into expert knowledge onto the field of internal security is a part of a more general and sensitive question about transition from colonialism to the post-colonial age.

Population-Centric Counterinsurgency in the Age of Salafi-Driven Insurgencies

Abstract This article explores the relevance of the dominant, population-centered, counterinsurgency doctrine in an era dominated by Salafi-inspired state challengers. Building on Weinstein's (2007) argument, I argue that an insurgent group's emergent nature, shaped by its origin, affects how it will operate and the kind of strategy most likely to defeat it. I investigate the plausibility of my claims through an examination of Boko Haram. I demonstrate the disconnect between Boko Haram's Salafi ideology and its objective of establishing a caliphate, on the one hand, and the strategy of dialogue and socioeconomic reforms to end the insurgency, on the other. In light of this disjuncture, I argue that the key to Boko Haram's defeat lies in the mobilization of international military and intelligence resources to strengthen the Nigerian government's enemy-centered counterinsurgency operation against the group.

Colonial violence and its ‘Small Wars’: fighting the Kuki ‘guerillas’ during the Great War in Northeast India, 1917–1919

ABSTRACTThis paper concerns the lesser known British counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Northeast frontier of India during the First World War. Officially known as the ‘Kuki Operations’, it was considered as part of the Great War. Carried out in isolation from press and public, and shelved in colonial archives, the event remained invisible until today. Yet, it registers a critical case of colonial COIN doctrine where the ‘moral effect’ doctrine was employed without being questioned. It unleashed enormous amount of organized violence, ranging from shoot at sight to indiscriminate burning of villages, wholesale destruction of property and livestock, prevention of cultivation and rebuilding of villages, forced mass displacement in jungles or in ‘concentration camps’, and collective punishment (communal penal labour and payment of compensation) after the war. This paper argues that the theory of ‘minimum force’ and the practicability of the ‘moral effect’ doctrine as applied by the Empire, sit oddly with each other at the frontier, where violence was seen both as a natural and moral orders. Violence as an ‘imperatively necessary’ method to bring order in a disorderly frontier, in the opinion of colonial state, informs and registers Northeast India as geography of violence.

If At First You Don't Succeed: Explaining the Puzzle of Unchanging Russian Counterinsurgency Doctrine

What explains the persistence of Russia’s counterinsurgency doctrine of indiscriminate violence and collective punishment over time? Perhaps more interestingly, why has Russia not changed its counterinsurgency doctrine in the face of multiple failures, especially after its failures in Afghanistan and the first Chechen war? Few scholars have taken on the persistence of Russian civilian victimization over time and despite failures as a dependent variable. This paper distills and tests hypotheses from the literature on military organizational learning to understand Russia's unchanging brute-force counterinsurgency strategy. It finds that the Russian military’s continued use of harsh tactics against the population during its counterinsurgency campaigns is not explained by theories that emphasize military organizational bias, but rather better explained by civilian leaders’ failure to pressure the military to change its strategy—although why the civilian leaders did so remains an avenue for future study.

Sex as the secret: counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

AbstractI explore the construction of women as the secret for the ‘successful’ prosecution of war in Afghanistan. To do so, I take up the mobilization of gender in the US counterinsurgency doctrine as deployed in Afghanistan. I draw on the 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual, human rights and humanitarian reports, and scholarly works to identify and analyze this mobilization, paying attention to the colonial histories upon which COIN explicitly and implicitly relies. By critically integrating these sources and the paradigmatic moments that exemplify COIN, I demonstrate the constitutive relationship of gender and COIN. The valence of the secret – of women as concealing, revealing, being, and bearing the secret – is still a lesser explored element in the analysis of the gendering of COIN and of its ‘military orientalism’. Even as scholars have powerfully shown how, in the case of Afghanistan and elsewhere, the veil functions as an overdetermined and ‘multilayered signifier’ in its own right, symbolizing the ‘tension between disclosure and concealment that defines the dominant conception of the secret’, less subject to detailed analysis in case of Afghanistan is the ways in which Afghan women are constituted through COIN in polysemous relation to the notion of the secret.