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Whose Hearts and Whose Minds? The Curious Case of Global CounterInsurgency
David Martin Jones a; M. L. R. Smith b
a
University of Queensland, Australia b King's College London, UK
Online publication date: 19 February 2010
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The Journal of Strategic Studies
Vol. 33, No. 1, 81–121, February 2010
Whose Hearts and Whose Minds?
The Curious Case of Global
Counter-Insurgency
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DAVID MARTIN JONES* AND M.L.R. SMITH**
*University of Queensland, Australia, **King’s College London, UK
ABSTRACT Traditionally regarded as a secondary activity in military thinking
and practice, the notion of counter-insurgency (COIN) has undergone a
remarkable renaissance. This analysis traces the origins of this renaissance to
two distinctive schools: a neo-classical school and a global insurgency school.
The global insurgency school critiques neo-classical thought and presents itself as
a more sophisticated appreciation of current security problems. An examination
of the evolution of these two schools of counter-insurgency reveals how the
interplay between them ultimately leaves us with a confused and contradictory
understanding of the phenomenon of insurgency and the policies and strategies
necessary to combat it.
KEY WORDS: Counter-insurgency, Insurgency, Strategy
‘I’ll shoot the bastard who says this emergency is over’.1
General Sir Gerald Templer
Since 9/11, Western military thinking has witnessed a ‘cultural
revolution’.2 The site of this revolution is the theory and practice of
‘counter-insurgency’ – the attempt to confound organised armed
challenges to established authority. Prior to the Iraq War and its
aftermath military studies treated counter-insurgency (COIN) disdainfully as a secondary activity. Implicitly disparaging labels like
‘unconventional war’ and ‘irregular war’ permeated military and
strategic discourse. These terms inferred that insurgencies were
abnormal, and of lesser importance, than actions requiring high-tempo
force-on-force concentration. This prejudice persisted despite the fact
1
Quoted in Victor Purcell, Malaya: Communist or Free? (Stanford UP 1954), 93–4.
Beatrice Heuser, ‘The Cultural Revolution in Counter-Insurgency’, Journal of
Strategic Studies 30/1 (Feb. 2007), 153–71.
2
ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/10/010081-41 Ó 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/01402391003603607
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82 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
that insurgencies and ‘low intensity small wars’ have, in terms of their
incidence, constituted the norm of war – the convention – since 1945.3
Thus, the revolution this article examines is the new military thinking
about counter-insurgency that radically questions the prevailing
military orthodoxy that has favoured the concept of ‘major battle’.
In 2007, Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszley of the British Army
summated the reasons traditional military thought evinced an ingrained
antipathy towards insurgencies. Kiszley maintained that counterinsurgency comprises ‘features with which the pure warrior ethos is
uneasy: complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty; an inherent resistance
to short-term solutions; problems that the military alone cannot solve,
requiring cooperation with other highly diverse agencies and individuals to achieve a comprehensive approach; the need for interaction
with indigenous people whose culture it does not understand; and a
requirement to talk to at least some of its opponents, which it can view
as treating with the enemy’. He continued:
Such a military sees its task hedged about with unfair constraints;
over-tight rules of engagement, negating the use of its trump card –
firepower; perceived overemphasis on force protection and its
disciplinary consequences; the need to accommodate the media.
Moreover, in the eyes of the warrior, counterinsurgency calls for
some decidedly un-warrior like qualities, such as emotional
intelligence, empathy, subtlety, sophistication, nuance and political
adroitness. Armies that find difficulty with these unwelcome
features tend to view counterinsurgency as an aberration, look
forward to the opportunity of returning to ‘proper soldiering’, and
see subsequent training as an opportunity to regain their warfighting
skills rather than to learn the lessons of counterinsurgency.4
In the United States, the armed forces, scarred by memories of the
Vietnam War, demonstrated an even greater reluctance to address these
characteristics of insurgency. The failure of military establishments, as
well as academics and policy-makers, to evaluate the complexities of
the Vietnam experience reinforced the assumption that counterinsurgency constituted a form of warfare from which no good could
3
For example Holsti’s statistical assessment indicates that 75 per cent of the 164 cases
of warfare identified since the end of World War II involved armed conflict within state
boundaries, while only 18–20 per cent of cases could accurately be termed inter-state
wars. See K.J. Holsti, The State, War and The State of War (Cambridge: CUP 1996),
22–4.
4
Lt. Gen. Sir John Kiszely, ‘Learning About Counterinsurgency’, Military Review
(March–April 2007), 10.
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 83
come. ‘After the Vietnam War’, according to General Jack Keane, ‘we
purged ourselves of everything that had to do with irregular warfare or
insurgency, because it had to do with how we lost that war.’5 Yet, as
David Ucko argued, the US military’s post-Vietnam ‘aversion to
counterinsurgency and stability operations’, in fact, ‘confused the
undesirability of these missions with an actual ability to avoid them’.6
The aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks upon New York and
the Pentagon, which dictated a policy of pre-emptive intervention to
forestall emergent threats to US security resulting, inter alia, in the
invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, only served to
reinforce this confusion.
The United States-led Coalition’s failure to stabilize Iraq in the
aftermath of the 2003 invasion prompted a radical re-evaluation of
traditional military priorities.7 The breakdown of civil society,
the descent into lawlessness, and the tenacity and brutality of
organized resistance to both the occupying forces and the fledgling
Iraqi government has been extensively documented and analyzed.8 From
the military perspective, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl observed that
the US Army’s difficulty in dealing with the evolving chaos in Iraq
stemmed from a failure to identify ‘a common understanding of the
problems inherent in any counterinsurgency campaign’. This in turn
reflected the Army’s institutional culture and orientation which
discouraged the study of such conflicts. Consequently, the military
establishment ignored both the lessons of such wars and the ‘ways to
achieve success in contemporary counterinsurgency campaigns’. Nagl
asserted: ‘It is not unfair to say that in 2003 most Army officers knew
more about the US Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency.’9
The Department of Defense’s eventual recognition, in 2004, that in
Iraq a deep rooted insurgency prevailed constituted the prelude to an
5
Quoted in John A. Nagl, ‘Foreword to the University of Chicago Press Edition: The
Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency’, in US Army and Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago
UP 2007), xiv.
6
David Ucko, ‘Innovation or Inertia: The US Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency’, Orbis 52/2 (Feb. 2008), 291.
7
David C. Hendrickson and Robert W. Tucker, ‘Revisions in Need of Revising: What
Went Wrong in the Iraq War’, Survival 47/2 (Summer 2005), 7–32.
8
See for example Ahmed S. Hashem, ‘The Insurgency in Iraq’, Small Wars and
Insurgencies 14/3 (Autumn 2003), 1–22; Alastair Finlan, ‘Trapped in the Dead
Ground: US Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Iraq’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 16/1
(March 2005), 1–21; Robert Tomes, ‘Schlock and Blah: Counter-Insurgency Realities
in a Rapid Dominance Era’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 16/1 (March 2005), 37–56;
Jeffrey Record, ‘Why the Strong Lose’, Parameters 35/4 (Winter 2005–06), 16–31.
9
Nagl, ‘Foreword’, xv.
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84 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
impressive learning process within the American military establishment.10 Ucko noted that ‘an uncommon level of humility and lack of
chauvinism’ informed this learning process.11 In the course of 2004–5
the US armed services, and coalition partners like the British,
undertook a critical examination of American conduct in Iraq.12 This
process of critical re-evaluation culminated in 2007 in the publication
of the joint US Army/Marine Corps manual on counterinsurgency, FM
3-24. The Counterinsurgency Field Manual stands as probably the most
comprehensive operational document for COIN operations ever
produced. More importantly, the new thinking was reflected in
operational practice and along with more general shifts in military
policy in Iraq associated with the so-called surge resulted in significant
improvements in the security situation.
This extraordinary renaissance of counter-insurgency thinking within
US military institutions attracted academic and analytic comment. This
military ‘cultural revolution’ in fact produced two distinctive schools of
thought about counter-insurgency. Writers like Frank Hoffman termed
one of these schools ‘neo-classical counter-insurgency’.13 Re-discovering and refining a traditional view, this school understood the insurgent
problem as one bound by time and place. It locates insurgency within a
revolutionary framework of Leninist-Maoist provenance. From this
perspective the practice of counter-insurgency demands a profound
understanding of the social and political conditions that pertain in a
given territorial space, and a strategy that tailors this knowledge to
specific military and socio-economic policies.
By contrast, a second school of thought reflects an ambitious attempt
to draw connections between the specifics of local insurgencies and
broader currents at work in the international system after 9/11. This
school views de-territorialised Islamist jihadism as a ‘global insurgency’. It further perceives such insurgency as ‘post-Maoist’, unbounded by space, where the local and global interact to produce a
transnationally networked resistance movement. In other words, this
second school presents a radically different appreciation of insurgency
from those who offer a neo-classical view of the phenomenon. It
requires a different perception of the threat and a different, more
complex, set of strategic responses.
10
See for example, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, ‘Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq’, Military Review (Jan.–Feb 2006), 2–11.
11
Ucko, ‘Innovation or Inertia?’, 294.
12
In particular see Brig. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2005), 2–15.
13
Frank G. Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Insurgency?’ Parameters 37/2 (Summer 2007),
71–87.
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 85
Taken together, we might describe both schools as neo-counterinsurgency or ‘neo-COIN’ for short. Although the distinction we make
between the neo-classical and global counter-insurgency schools of
thought may appear somewhat artificial given that they involve
elements of overlap, our subsequent analysis will show that it
constitutes a useful heuristic device. More precisely, it permits us to
reveal that differing perceptions of the nature of the current threat
subsumed under the category ‘counter-insurgency’ conceal degrees of
analytic and practical incoherence. Consequently, via an examination
of the evolution of these two schools of counter-insurgency thinking we
shall explore how their complex interplay ultimately leaves us with a
confused and contradictory understanding of the phenomenon of
insurgency and the policies and strategies necessary to combat it. To
demonstrate this incoherence we shall first examine the assumptions
informing neo-classical COIN thinking to which we now turn.
Necessity is the Mother of Re-invention – The Neo-Classical School
The rise of neo-COIN thought, in fact, preceded the 2003 invasion of
Iraq and its re-invention towards the later 1990s offers an interesting
insight into the evolution of current thinking about counter-insurgency.
If the immediate cause of a revival of interest was the evident failure of
the Coalition’s occupation of Iraq, those reviving this interest drew
upon evidence derived from a variety of sources. In particular, a
renewed interest in issues related to insurgency in the post-Cold War
epoch initially stemmed from the analytic attempt to understand why
the Northern Ireland conflict ended in the manner it did. The settlement
of this seemingly intractable insurgency inspired numerous scholarly
and journalistic studies from the mid-1990s onwards.14
The American anthropologist Montgomery McFate was one of the
more influential commentators to emerge from this background.15
McFate had lived and studied in Northern Ireland’s republican
14
Examples of this set of literature would be Jonathan Stevenson, ‘We Wrecked the
Place’: Contemplating an End to Northern Ireland’s Troubles (New York: Free Press
1996); Malachi O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns: Republican Strategy and the
Provisional IRA (Belfast: Blackstaff 1998); Michael Page, Prisons, Peace and
Terrorism: Penal Policy and the Reduction of Terrorism in Northern Ireland, Italy
and the Basque Country, 1968–97 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998); Ed Moloney, A
Secret History of the IRA (London: Allen Lane 2002); Peter Neumann, Britain’s Long
War: British Government Strategy in Northern Ireland, 1968–98 (Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan 2003).
15
Matthew B. Stannard, ‘Montgomery McFate’s Mission’, San Francisco Chronicle, 29
April 2007.
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86 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
community in the early 1990s whilst conducting fieldwork for her
doctorate. Early on she recognised the importance of acquiring ‘cultural
knowledge’ as a means of ‘enhancing military prowess’.16 In a series
of important papers published in the years following the invasion of
Iraq, McFate reiterated the need for the nuanced appreciation of the
social milieux from which insurgencies arose. In the Iraqi context this
meant understanding the nature of Sunni tribal networks.17 She argued
that US ‘military operations and national security have consistently
suffered due to lack of knowledge of foreign cultures’, and urged the
development of specialist centres in the Department of Defense to
‘produce, collect, and centralize cultural knowledge, which will have
utility for policy development and military operations’.18
Somewhat differently, a literature deriving from an interest in what
might loosely be characterised as ‘asymmetric’ challenges in the postCold War, constituted another source for the post-Iraq focus on
counter-insurgency.19 This concern, which developed in the late 1990s,
focused upon the nature of conflict as it seemed to evolve in the decade
following the Gulf War of 1990/91.20 Military and strategic thinking
after the Gulf War concentrated upon the Revolution in Military
Affairs and Fourth Generation Warfare, the technology of precision
16
Montgomery McFate, ‘The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture’,
Joint Forces Quarterly 38/3rd Quarter (2005), 42.
17
Montgomery McFate, ‘Iraq: The Social Context of IEDs’, Military Review (May–
June 2005), 37–40.
18
Montgomery McFate and Andrea Jackson, ‘An Organizational Solution for DOD’s
Cultural Knowledge Needs’, Military Review (July–Aug 2005), 18.
19
For a survey of this area see Col. Clinton J. Ancker, ‘Doctrine for Asymmetric
Warfare’, Military Review (July–Aug. 2003), 18–25; Patrick Porter, ‘Shadow Wars:
Asymmetric Warfare in the Past and Future’, Security Dialogue 37/4 (2006), 551–61.
20
There was, of course, always a residual academic interest in matters of insurgency
even during the years of the Cold War as represented by the writings of those like
Charles Townshend, Ian F.W. Beckett and others located ostensibly around the British
Army’s officer training academy and staff college at Camberley, Surrey. See for
example, Ian F.W. Becket and John Pimlott (eds.), Armed Forces and Modern
Counterinsurgency (New York: St Martin’s Press 1985); Ian F.W. Beckett, The Roots
of Counterinsurgency: Armies and Guerrilla warfare (London: Blanford 1988); Charles
Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth century
(London: Faber 1986). In the United States, the study of insurgency/counter-insurgency
also retained a marginal following. On the one hand, a handful of scholars like the
historian Thomas Mockaitis showed an interest in the British experience of counterinsurgency, while other analysts produced studies on the subject framed within the
context of conducting inquests into the American performance in Vietnam. See for
example Thomas Mockaitis, British Counter-Insurgency, 1919–1960 (London:
Macmillan 1990); Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP 1986).
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 87
guided weapons and integrated all-arms combat. Some analysts,
however, criticised this approach. They questioned whether it
represented the most likely form of confrontation in which major
Western states would be involved. Sceptical commentators felt that
those wishing to test the resolve of the major powers would be unlikely,
and indeed extremely foolish, to confront Western, or, more precisely,
American military and technological superiority through conventional
force of arms. Instead, an enemy would attempt to mount assaults
below the level of conventional combat operations, avoiding open
confrontation with materially superior opponents.
Influenced by the wars of dissolution that befell the former Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, along with the
increasing number of civil wars and violent non-state actors in failed
and failing states, which sometimes compelled Western forces to
intervene in humanitarian and peacekeeping/peace enforcement roles,
these analysts contended that accepted understandings of military
power required radical re-thinking.21 In particular, they
perceived a need for a more flexible military capable of adapting
quickly to multiple and diverse roles in ‘out of area’ operations, and
this implied, amongst other things, the necessity of contemplating tasks
that fell into the category of counter-insurgency.22
The key texts on asymmetric warfare, out-of-area operations, and the
changing nature of military power were published from 2001/2002
onwards, although almost all of their research data derived from source
material of pre-9/11 origin. If Montgomery McFate’s work epitomised
the renewed interest in insurgency/counter-insurgency deriving from the
latter stages of the Northern Ireland conflict, then John Nagl’s Learning
to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and
Vietnam (2002) exemplifies this second trend in the literature evolving
before the invasion of Iraq. Nagl’s principal concern was how military
institutions innovate and adapt, or sometimes fail to adapt, to low
intensity challenges. Contrasting the very different organisational cultures of the British and American armies, Nagl observed that the British
preference for patient adaptive learning, small-unit forces, decentralised
command and willingness to embrace civil-military cooperation could
explain the relative success they enjoyed in the Malayan Emergency
compared with the American army’s rigid adherence to ‘big unit’
21
Gen. Sir Rupert Smith’s The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
(London: Allen Lane 2005) is the seminal work in this developing field although Mary
Kaldor’s New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity
1999) also foreshadowed much of this debate.
22
See for example, Andrew Dorman et al. (eds.), The Changing Face of Military Power:
Joint Warfare in an Expeditionary Era (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave 2002).
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88 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
concepts in Vietnam that invariably emphasised firepower to resolve
what were essentially deeply entrenched political problems.23
From these two distinct lines of inquiry arose a growing admiration
for the British approach to COIN, which in historical terms emphasised
ideas of proportionality and long term commitment.24 Nagl argued that
the British Army’s institutional culture, forged over centuries of
colonial war, ‘reflected varied experiences outside conventional
conflicts on the European continent’ and explained its capacity to
adapt to new challenges. ‘The leadership of the British Army’, he stated,
‘shared a common belief that the essence of the organization included
colonial policing and administration.’ Thus, when ‘conventional tactics
and strategy failed in Malaya, the British Army had few problems
creating an internal consensus that change was needed and that
political rather than purely military solutions were well within the
purview of the British Army’. Nagl concluded that: ‘An innovative and
varied past created a culture amenable to the changes in organizational
process required to defeat a complex opponent in a new kind of war.’25
Only for the British, of course, it was not an especially new kind of war.
By contrast, McFate’s emphasis was slightly different. For her,
respect for British methods derived primarily from the British Army’s
ability to acquire deep cultural knowledge of its adversary. In her
attempt to persuade the American armed forces to take anthropological
approaches seriously, McFate related ‘an epiphany’ that she experienced while living in Belfast. ‘The common view of the Troubles as a
battle between Catholics and Protestants, or Loyalists and Republicans,
or even terrorists and the government was not how the warring sides
saw it.’26 Irish republicans legitimised their campaign of violence out of
a belief that they were part of a resistance movement against 800 years
of British military occupation. Yet, rather than deny this perspective,
the British Army understood the Irish republican myth that inspired
IRA actions. ‘They may think that these people are terrorists and
despise them, but they understand what’s motivating it’, McFate
reflected. ‘They could not have built an effective strategy in Northern
Ireland as they did without having a very full understanding of their
enemy, which by the way, it took them 30 years to get.’27
23
John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
(Chicago UP 2002), 51.
24
Montgomery McFate and Andrea V. Jackson, ‘The Object of War: Counterinsurgency and the Four Tools of Political Competition’, Military Review (Jan.–Feb.
2006), 13–16.
25
Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, 216.
26
Stannard, ‘Montgomery McFate’s Mission’.
27
Quoted in ibid.
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 89
Overall, then, this school of neo-COIN developed in the United
States. It had its origins before 9/11, and had already established an
interest in the practice of counter-insurgency. Those associated with
this school of thought came to prominence in the aftermath of the Iraq
War. Indeed, they were at the forefront of the deliberations on how to
improve Coalition strategy in the face of what was, by 2005,
increasingly seen as an intractable insurgency. It should come as no
surprise, therefore, that John Nagl, a serving officer in the armoured
divisions of the US Army and with firsthand experience both of the
original invasion of Iraq during Operation ‘Desert Storm’ and later
with occupation forces in Khalidiyah province, came to play a leading
part in shaping the debate over US counter-insurgency doctrine,28 eventually writing one of the forewords to FM 3-24.29 Analogously,
Montgomery McFate was undoubtedly influential in promoting the
view that ‘cultural and social knowledge of the adversary’ should be on
the American counter-insurgency agenda.30 As she argued: ‘in a
counterinsurgency situation such as the United States currently faces
in Iraq, ‘‘winning’’ through overwhelming force is often inapplicable as
a concept . . . Winning on the battlefield is irrelevant against an
insurgent adversary because the struggle for power and legitimacy
among competing factions has no purely military solution.’31
For some commentators the fact McFate and others had to re-state
the established maxims of counter-insurgency represented an indictment of the inertia in Western armed forces.32 The Western armies’
neglect of insurgent warfare meant that even the British Army, with its
‘repeated engagement in counterinsurgency, has historically found it
difficult to internalize the lessons drawn from these campaigns
necessitating quick adaptation on the ground [rather than being able
to draw upon a strong institutional memory and systematic operational
doctrine] with each new engagement’.33 The problem was even more
acute for the US military steeped in an institutional culture that
predisposed it towards thinking almost exclusively in conventional
terms. Such institutional insouciance demanded the re-statement and
constant reiteration of the basic principles of counter-insurgency.
28
See for example, Eliot Cohen, Conrad Crane, Jan Horvath and John Nagl,
‘Principles, Imperatives, and Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency’, Military Review
(March–April 2006), 49–53.
29
Nagl, ‘Foreword’, xiii–xx.
30
Montgomery McFate, ‘Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of
their Curious Relationship’, Military Review (March–April 2005), 24.
31
Ibid., 27.
32
Heuser, ‘The Cultural Revolution in Counter-Insurgency’, 165.
33
Ucko, ‘Innovation or Inertia’, 308.
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90 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
In the context of the failure of the Coalition’s policies in Iraq,
necessity was the mother of re-invention. The analysts who developed
this school of thought exercised a profound influence, in effect, reinventing COIN studies as a core rather than a peripheral focus of
military strategy. Given its provenance, this school may be considered
‘neo-classical’. It promoted and re-invigorated traditional counterinsurgency principles. The influence and authority of this neo-classical
school was first evident in military and scholarly research that rediscovered the major counter-insurgency campaigns of the later
twentieth century. Much of the research in this area highlighted the
largely successful British campaigns in Malaya (1948–60) and Northern Ireland (1969–98), and the failed but no less instructive French
efforts in Algeria (1954–62).34 American military commentators in
particular drew inspiration from the overarching strategies adopted by
the British in their campaigns, while admiring aspects of French
doctrine and operational technique. The re-publication of classic texts
from the 1960s, ranging from Lieutenant Colonel David Galula’s
reflections on the Algerian War in Counterinsurgency Warfare,
originally published in 1964, to Colonel John McCuen’s seminal
1966 publication, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary Warfare, indicated this growing interest in colonial-era insurgencies.35
34
See for example, Lt. Col. Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Winning the War of the Flea’, Military
Review (Sept. 2004), 41–6; Lt. Col. Wade M. Markel, ‘Winning Our Own Hearts and
Minds: Promotion in Wartime’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2004), 25–30; Lt. Col.
Robert M. Cassidy, ‘The Savage Wars of Peace’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2004),
76–7; Lt. Col. James D. Campbell, ‘French Algeria and British Northern Ireland:
Legitimacy and the Rule of Law in Low-Intensity Conflict’, Military Review (March–
April 2005), 2–5; Wade Markel, ‘Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of
Population Control’, Parameters 36/1 (Spring 2006), 35–48; Lou DiMarco, ‘Losing the
Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionnaire in the Algerian War’, Parameters
36/2 (Summer 2006), 63–76; Brian A. Jackson, ‘Counterinsurgency Intelligence in a
‘‘Long War:’’ The British Experience in Northern Ireland’, Military Review (Jan.–Feb.
2007), 74–85; Walter C. Ladwig, ‘Managing Counterinsurgency: Lessons from
Malaya’, Military Review (May–June 2007), 56–66; Maj. Michael D. Sullivan,
‘Leadership in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Leaders’, Military Review (Sept.–
Oct. 2007), 119–23.
35
See David Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 1956–1958 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
2006) (orig. published in 1963); David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory
and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger 2006) (orig. published 1964); Roger Trinquier,
Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (Westport, CT: Praeger 2006)
(orig. published 1964); Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in
Indochina (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole 2005) (orig. published 1963); John J.
McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War: The Strategy of Counterinsurgency
(St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer 2005) (orig. published 1966).
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 91
Significantly, those with pre-existing interests in such matters sometimes considered this resurgence in classic counter-insurgency doctrine
derivative and even trite. As Colin Gray captiously observed: ‘In the
history of strategic ideas, the contemporary American fascination with
asymmetry comprises the rediscovery of the stunningly obvious.’36
Nevertheless, the re-statement of the obvious constituted a necessary
stage in raising awareness within the US armed forces from what was a
very low base of knowledge. More importantly, from this intellectual
renaissance, a series of thoughtful monographs about how to develop US
counter-insurgency practice emerged37 that established the terms for a
critical analysis aimed at ‘[b]reaking the conventional paradigm’.38 ‘For
decades’, Sarah Sewall contended, ‘the US Army in particular had
discounted the need to prepare for counterinsurgency – a messy, hydra
headed conflict that can, by its very nature, only be won incrementally.’
‘American culture and US military doctrine’, she averred, ‘prefer a
technological solution and the overwhelmingly decisive blow. Americans
have a penchant for black-and-white clarity and have historically shown
little patience for complexity and extended commitment’.39
Progressive military commanders, by contrast, like Generals David
Petraeus and Peter Chiarelli who had experienced the ‘messy’ realities
on the ground in Iraq ‘recognized a responsibility to prepare troops to
meet the wars that call them, not the wars they might prefer to fight’.40
However, the preparation of American troops to confront insurgent
conflicts was only part of the problem. The unprecedented willingness of
the US armed forces to open itself to censure provided space for both
soldiers and scholars to reflect upon the conduct of US military
operations in Iraq and what needed to be done to prevail in the long run.
Writing in the US Army journal Military Review in 2005, Professor John
Lynn of the University of Illinois, offered this trenchant critique:
The most short-sighted statements I hear are: ‘They only understand force’. Or, ‘If only we could take the gloves off, we could
36
Colin Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, Parameters 32/1 (Spring
2002), 13.
37
There are too many examples to enumerate but for a selection see for instance: Kalev
I. Sepp, ‘Best Practices in Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (May–June 2005), 8–
12; Col. Thomas X. Hammes, ‘Countering Evolved Insurgent Networks’, Military
Review (July–Aug. 2006); Jan S. Breemer, ‘Statistics, Real Estate, and the Principles
of War: Why There is no Unified Theory of War’, Military Review (Sept.–Oct. 2006),
84–69.
38
Sarah Sewall, ‘Modernizing US Counterinsurgency Practice: Rethinking Risk and
Developing a National Strategy’, Military Review (Sept.–Oct. 2006), 103.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid., 104.
92 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
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win’. The truth is that everyone understands force, and everyone
can be battered or intimidated by violence, but such use of
violence generates the three ‘Rs’: resentment, resistance, and
revenge. People who argue that the enemy only understands force
imply that force wins respect. In reality, force usually only instills
fear. We are not trying to recreate Saddam’s regime of fear, so we
must use more than force.41
‘The wisest analysis of the counterinsurgency’, Lynn continued, ‘came
from an unidentified colonel on CNN who states that we cannot really
win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis but we can provide security and
establish trust. In security lies the support of the majority and the
environment in which a new and better state may emerge.’42 As
Lynn suggests, providing a critical framework that questioned
conventional wisdom was one thing, but it was the experiences of
military commanders on the ground in Iraq, when combined with the
new reflective mood, that decisively re-orientated military thinking.
Officers returning from tours of duty in Iraq offered practical insight
into dealing with insurgent forces and the local communities that
afforded them succour.43 Lieutenant Colonel Chris Gibson, for
example, writing of his experience in Ninevah province maintained
that COIN forces needed to ‘be able to convince the people that they
can provide security’. ‘Without that’, he contended, ‘locals will not
associate themselves with – or even be seen in the presence of – security
forces . . . Once security is established, however, locals can see that
COIN forces offer a better vision for the future than insurgent forces
do.’44
Building on these re-affirmations of the standard tenets of counterinsurgency, other serving officers offered practical evidence to support
McFate’s call for cultural knowledge, and the need to attain practical
awareness of the particularities of their local surroundings. In this
context the experience of Captain Travis Patriquin (who was later
killed in action in Tikrit in December 2006) was particularly notable.
Patriquin developed a practical understanding of how to work among,
41
John A. Lynn, ‘Patterns of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency’, Military Review
(July–Aug. 2005), 27.
42
Ibid.
43
See Col. James K. Greer, ‘Operation Knockout: COIN in Iraq’, Military Review
(Nov.–Dec. 2005), 16–19; Petraeus, ‘Learning from Counterinsurgency: Observations
from Soldiering in Iraq’, 2–12. For example see also Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly
Kagan, ‘The Patton of Counterinsurgency’, The Weekly Standard, 3 Oct. 2008.
44
Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, ‘Battlefield Victories and Strategic Success: The Path Forward
in Iraq’, Military Review (Sept.–Oct. 2006), 49.
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 93
and obtain the cooperation of, the traditionally pro-Ba’athist Turkomen population of Tal Afar.45
Although the neo-classical school of thought began by re-claiming
the insights of previous COIN campaigns, the experience of the Iraq
insurgency also meant that this renewed interest quickly led to the reorientation of much mainstream military thought in the United
States.46 The publication of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual
apotheosised this influence.47 More intriguingly, the renaissance in
COIN thinking soon moved from general re-statements of principle to
the promulgation of novel theoretical and practical insights that raised
the standard of counter-insurgency analysis. Reflecting on the
experience of stabilisation efforts in Iraq, and applying this to the
traditional principles of counter-insurgency, both soldier and civilian
analysts developed technical, doctrinal and operational understandings
in such areas as: equipping COIN forces; understanding
tribal networks; sanctuary denial; negotiation strategies and population
control.48 The experience also facilitated the examination of
45
Capt. Travis Patriquin, ‘Using Occam’s Razor to Connect the Dots: The Ba’ath Party
and the Insurgency in Tal Afar’, Military Review (Jan.–Feb. 2007), 16–25.
46
This is not to say that the efforts to make the US Army embrace COIN thinking do
not continue to meet resistance. For the contending positions see the debate between
John Nagl and Gian Gentile: John Nagl, ‘Let’s Win the Wars We’re In’, Joint Forces
Quarterly, 52/1st Quarter (2009), 20–6; Gian Gentile, ‘Let’s Build an Army to Win All
Wars’, Joint Forces Quarterly, 52/1st Quarter (2009), 27–33.
47
See also Carter Malkasian, ‘The Role of Perceptions and Political Reform in
Counterinsurgency: The Case of Western Iraq, 2004–05’, Small Wars and Insurgencies
17/3 (Dec. 2006), 367–94; Warren Chin, ‘Examining the Application of British
Counterinsurgency Doctrine by the American Army in Iraq’, Small Wars and
Insurgencies 18/1 (March 2007), 1–26; James Corum, ‘Rethinking US Army
Counter-Insurgency Doctrine’, Contemporary Security Policy 28/1 (April 2007),
127–42.
48
Of the many possible contributions in this respect see Maj. Morgan Mann, ‘The
Power Equation: Using Tribal Politics in Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (May–
June 2007), 104–8; Col. Joseph D. Celeski, ‘Attacking Insurgent Space: Sanctuary
Denial and Border Interdiction’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2006), 51–7; Col.
Gregory Wilson, ‘Anatomy of a Successful COIN Operation: OEF-Philippines and the
Indirect Approach’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2006), 2–12; Michael R. Melillo,
‘Outfitting a Big-War Military with Small-War Capabilities’, Parameters (Autumn
2006), 22–35; David M. Tressler, Negotiation in the New Strategic Environment:
Lessons from Iraq (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2007); James Clancy and
Chuck Crossett, ‘Measuring Effectiveness in Irregular Warfare’, Parameters 37/2
(Summer 2007), 88–100; Brian Reed, ‘A Social Network Approach to Understanding
an Insurgency’, Parameters 37/2 (Summer 2007), 19–30; Jeffrey Record, ‘External
Assistance: Enabler of Insurgent Success’, Parameters 36/3 (Autumn 2006), 36–49; Jim
Baker, ‘Systems Thinking and Counterinsurgencies’, Parameters 36/4 (Winter 2006–
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94 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
what constitutes the centre of gravity in counter-insurgency operations
and its implications for existing conventional forces.49 Indeed, this
remarkable efflorescence in neo-classical thinking has out-grown its
origins and surpassed previous COIN writings in operational appreciation and sophistication.
Yet, this neo-classical revival represents only one side of the neoCOIN coin. Alongside the neo-classical school, an alternative approach
to neo-COIN thinking arose which emphasised the global characteristics of contemporary resistance movements. This school eventually
developed a theory best characterised as global counter-insurgency that
prioritised a different set of strategies to those advocated by the neoclassical school. It is the evolution of this school that we shall now
examine.
Disaggregating and De-globalising: The Rise of Global CounterInsurgency
The global COIN school emerged in the wake of the neo-classical
revival, which, as we have seen, developed in the context of the
Northern Ireland endgame and the post-Cold War wars of dissolution
before 9/11. By contrast, the events of 9/11 shaped the global counterinsurgency thesis. Moreover, although some early writings associated
with this school surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the events of 11
September 2001, it increasingly identified itself after 2005 in response
to the rise of neo-classicist thinking.
Following the attacks on the United States in 2001, John Mackinlay
first proposed the view that the unprecedented scope of Osama bin
Laden’s ‘organisation and operational approach’ supposed a movement
that had travelled ‘significantly beyond the established template of
insurgency’. Bin Laden’s global constituency, spreading over 40 states
ranging from ‘Oslo to Jakarta’, meant that his appeal ‘could not be
regarded as a national or even a regional phenomenon’. Potential
07), 26–43; Raymond Millen, ‘The Hobbesian Notion of Self-Preservation Concerning
Human Behavior During an Insurgency’, Parameters 36/4 (Winter 2006–07), 4–13.
49
See for example Christopher M. Ford, ‘Speak No Evil: Targeting a Population’s
Neutrality to Defeat an Insurgency’, Parameters 35/2 (Summer 2005), 51–66; Lt. Col.
Douglas A. Ollivant and First Lt. Eric D. Chewing, ‘Producing Victory: Rethinking
Conventional Forces in COIN Operations’, Military Review (July–Aug. 2006); David
Betz, ‘Redesigning Land Forces for Wars Amongst the People’, Contemporary Security
Policy 28/2 (Aug. 2007), 221–43; Major Mark P. Krieger, ‘We the People are Not the
Center of Gravity’, Military Review (July–Aug. 2007), 96–100; Col. Peter R. Mansoor
and Maj. Mark S. Ulrich, ‘Linking Doctrine to Action: A New Center-of-Gravity
Analysis’, Military Review (Sept.–Oct. 2007), 45–51.
The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 95
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recruits resided in the ‘immigrant and dispossessed family, the
internally displaced, the second generation migrants, refugees, and
rural communities which have fled from war and famine to add to
unhappy and overcrowded metropolitan areas’. Furthermore, Mackinlay observed that:
his financial, logistical and organisational assets do not come from
the same source as his popular support, as they would in a
national insurgent organisation. His hold over his followers is
emotional, no one has seen him but he has the exposure of an
international star, which is beamed intensively by a complicit
media, using the proliferating communicating system of the
McWorld.50
Identifying the complex web of transnational interactions that
sustained Al-Qa’eda, Mackinlay, a former British Army officer turned
academic, considered that bin Laden represented a new type, namely, a
‘global insurgent’.51 In an important study, published in 2002,
Mackinlay developed this analysis, maintaining that bin Laden’s
network ‘expanded the definition of insurgency to include a
global dimension’.52 Mackinlay’s ideas elaborated upon the ‘New
War’ thesis, which identified the simultaneous, but contradictory,
homogenising and centrifugal forces in the post-Cold War system that
were internationalising contemporary armed conflict, like the wars in
the Balkans, to a hitherto exceptionally high degree. He contended that
‘the al Qaeda style of organization must be regarded as a cruciallyimportant consequence of the global age and possibly even the leading
edge of a new chapter of insurgent techniques’.53 Although Mackinlay
did not stress the point overtly, his theory built upon the theorists of
‘New Terrorism’ that in the years preceding 9/11 had catalogued the
transnational networks that facilitated the threat that Islamist and
ethno-religious extremist groups increasingly posed.54
50
John Mackinlay, ‘Tackling bin Laden: Lessons From History’, Observer, 28 Oct.
2001.
51
Ibid.
52
John Mackinlay, Globalisation and Insurgency, Adelphi Paper 352 (London:
International Institute for Strategic Studies/OUP 2002), 79.
53
See for example, Kaldor, New and Old Wars; David Held and Anthony McGrew,
with David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics,
Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity 1999); Mark Duffield, Global Governance
and the New Wars (London: Zed 2001).
54
See Benjamin Barber, Jihad versus McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are
Reshaping the World Order (New York: Ballantine 1996); Olivier Roy, Bruce
Hoffman, Reuven Paz, Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, ‘America and the New
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96 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
Mackinlay situated Al-Qa’eda within the context of a new style of
insurgency that inhabited a ‘distinct category’, separated ‘from popular
forces by the international scope of their intent, their objectives,
recruiting base and organisation’. Moreover, he noted that the ‘global
insurgent’ faces formidable opposition forces, and asserted with some
prescience that ‘in its efforts to survive, becomes a dangerous and
highly-organised manifestation of insurgency, with a demonstrated
capability to attack the heart of powerful countries and survive
intensive counter-measures’.55
If Mackinlay described the lineaments of global insurgency, it was
David Kilcullen, an Australian soldier-scholar, who diagnosed a
possible antidote in the form of a global counter-insurgency. In
Kilcullen’s view, the ‘War on Terrorism’ obscured the nature of the
insurgency, implying that transnational jihadism was monolithic
and cosmically unified because its protagonists adhered to the same
religion.56 By contrast, Kilcullen maintained that although
Islamist movements cooperated with each other, function regionally,
and share similar tactical, strategic and operational approaches that
align with Al-Qa’eda pronouncements, there was ‘no clear evidence
that Al-Qa’eda directly controls jihad in each theater’.57 More
precisely, these theatres are frequently characterised by ‘local actors,
issues and grievances’ that have ‘little to do with pan-Islamic objectives,
and often pre-date the global jihad by decades or centuries’.58
Kilcullen’s doctoral research into the Indonesian Army’s counterinsurgency effort against the Darul Islam movement in 1950s Sumatra
and West Java facilitated his interpretation of Al-Qa’eda. It was his
contention that Darul Islam was less a bona fide Muslim movement
than a semi-criminal enterprise dominated by the charismatic
personality of its leader Sekarmaji Marijan Kartusuwiryo.59 To
counteract Darul Islam, Kilcullen argued that the Indonesian Army
developed pacification tactics to suit local conditions. In particular, the
Terrorism’, Survival 42/2 (Summer 2000), 156–172; David Martin Jones and M.L.R.
Smith, ‘The Changing Security Agenda in Southeast Asia: Globalization, New Terror
and the Delusions of Regionalism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24/4 (2001), 271–
88.
55
Mackinlay, Globalization and Insurgency, 79.
56
David Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/4
(Aug. 2005), 597.
57
Ibid., 598.
58
Ibid., 601.
59
David Kilcullen, ‘Globalisation and the Development of Indonesian Counterinsurgency Tactics’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 17/1 (March 2006), 52.
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 97
effective use of local militias, together with population control methods
contained and eventually defeated the guerrillas.
The Indonesian Army’s draconian approach to Darul Islam
in the 1950s escaped critical media scrutiny.60 In the era of
globalization, by contrast, where transnational connectivity ensured
that ‘ideas, capital, goods, services and information and people can be
transferred in near-real time across national borders’, there would be
no lack of intrusive media. Indeed, globalisation built both an
interdependent economy ‘along with an emerging global culture and
an embryonic international opinion’. Like Mackinlay, Kilcullen
believed that: ‘Insurgents have not been slow to realise the opportunities that such globalised communications – including the new
‘‘manoeuvre space’’ of the Internet and satellite television – provide
as a means to impose political and economic costs on governments
undertaking counterinsurgency.’61 Such technological advances enabled a ‘new class of regional or theatre-level actors’ to emerge. ‘These
groups’, he asserted ‘do have links to the global jihad’ often functioning
as ‘regional allies or affiliates of Al-Qae’da’ but, more importantly, they
exploited localised quarrels to advance its goals. Thus, Kilcullen
claimed that Jemmah Islamiyah, which functions as an Al-Qae’da
franchise in Southeast Asia, exploited sectarian conflict in Sulawesi to
‘generate recruits, anti-Western propaganda, funding and grievances’ to
further the global jihad.62 Consequently, Al-Qae’da’s modus operandi
was ‘not to have direct dealings with local insurgent groups, but to deal
primarily with its regional affiliates in each theater’, making ‘the
regional-level players in the jihad the critical link’.63
The principal task of global COIN, Kilcullen therefore emphasised,
must concentrate on breaking the link between the local and the global.
‘[I]f the global jihad is best understood as a globalized insurgency’, he
explained, ‘this suggests an alternative – indeed a diametrically opposed
strategy for the War on Terrorism, namely, ‘‘disaggregation’’’.64
Al-Qa’eda’s claim to aggregate ‘dozens of local movements, grievances
and issues’ into a single universal struggle constituted its seminal
strategic achievement. Similarly totalising notions like the War on
Terror merely played into the hands of those who ‘prey upon, link and
60
Kilcullen claims in fact that Indonesian COIN methods were less harsh than other
similar campaigns of the period such as those in Malaya, Palestine, Cyprus, Vietnam
and Algeria. Without some clear statistical or documentary evidence it is difficult to
compare and validate this contention. See ibid., 60.
61
Ibid., 59.
62
Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, 602.
63
Ibid., 602.
64
Ibid., 608.
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98 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
exploit local actors’. Yet, without the ‘ability to aggregate dozens of
conflicts into a broad movement, the global jihad ceases to exist. It
becomes simply a series of disparate local conflicts that can be
addressed at the regional or national level without interference from
global enemies such as Al-Qa’eda’.65 The disaggregation strategy thus
holds that the foremost challenge for the counter-insurgent should be to
attack the ‘intricate web of dependency’ at the local level, by employing
‘theatre-specific’ measures that ‘de-globalised’ the Al-Qa’eda brand by
emasculating its universal appeal.
The influence of global COIN thinking began to permeate US
military and analytic opinion from the late 2000s. It was increasingly
acknowledged that jihadist ‘strategies and tactics collectively amount to
a series of insurgencies, competing for the right to govern in
predominantly Muslim nations around the world’ and required a
campaign ‘against an ideologically driven collection of insurgents
who act transnationally . . . are highly networked, and like a cancer, are
adapting and metastasizing’.66 It demanded a comprehensive global
counter-insurgency effort that would combine all the elements
of national power67 – ‘diplomatic, military, economic, social, and
informational’68 – to counteract and de-legitimise the jihadist
message.69
Not Somewhere Else but Everywhere: The Global COIN Critique
Despite gaining adherents, global counter-insurgency theory remained
something of a minority avocation. At the same time, the proponents of
neo-classicism and global COIN shared a common desire to rehabilitate
counter-insurgency thinking and advance its status within defence
circles. David Kilcullen, for example, represents a crossover analyst
who accepts features of neo-classical writing, particularly those
represented in the US Army/Marines’ Counterinsurgency Field Manual.
Kilcullen empathised with the neo-classical commitment to
deep, anthropological understanding of local conflicts,70 while his
65
Ibid., 609.
John Hillen, ‘Developing a National Counterinsurgency for the War on Terror’,
Military Review (Jan.–Feb. 2007), 13.
67
Col. Joseph D. Celeski, ‘Strategic Aspects of Counterinsurgency’, Military Review
(March–April 2006), 35–41.
68
Hillen, ‘Developing a National Counterinsurgency’, 13.
69
See for example Daniel Byman, ‘US Counter-Terrorism Options: A Taxonomy’,
Survival 49/3 (Autumn 2007), 121–50.
70
In fact, David Kilcullen and Montgomery McFate shared a writing platform in
Anthropology Today, defending themselves and the role of anthropologists in
66
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 99
professional soldiering background enabled him to write ‘‘‘TwentyEight Articles’’: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency’,
a treatise much admired by neo-classicists for its distillation of practical
counter-insurgency methods for armed service personnel.71
Ultimately, however, the global COIN thesis questioned key pillars
of neo-classical thinking. Mackinlay, for example, maintained that
classical counter-insurgency theory failed to address the ‘linkage
between the Qaeda [sic] network’s tactics in the field’ and its ‘longterm aspiration’ of a restored Caliphate. For Western audiences, this
political objective might appear unrealistic, but viewed from AlQa’eda’s perspective and the constituency to which it appeals, the
‘acute sense of the symbolic’ embodied in its actions overrides any
‘apparent strategic weakness’. In this respect, he added:
Al-Qa’eda’s preference for huge statements, for bold acts of
extreme violence in place of a long-term incremental strategy,
appeals to the expectations of a society which is also conditioned
by the same global imagery as the west. Whether negatively or
positively, the 11 September attacks gripped our attention and
changed our lives in a way that justifies his [Osama bin Laden’s]
military concept from an insurgent’s point of view.72
Several years later, Kilcullen expressed similar misgivings about the
neo-classical school’s rise to prominence. He thought the ‘rediscovery of classical, ‘‘proven’’ counter-insurgency methods’, was
‘misplaced’. ‘Today’s insurgencies’, he declared, ‘differ significantly
at the level of policy, strategy, operation art and tactical technique –
from those of earlier eras.’73 In fact, the classical paradigm
and the ‘prescriptive application of ‘‘received wisdom’’ derived from
the classics . . . cast a long shadow’. Yet, in the era of globalization,
the ‘‘‘classic’’ version of counter-insurgency is less relevant for
current conflicts’.74
facilitating the writing of FM 3-24, who had been attacked by Roberto González for
supposedly allowing themselves to become tools of ‘US imperial power’ (17). See
Roberto J. González, ‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology? The New US Army
Counterinsurgency Manual FM 3-24 and the Military Anthropology Complex’, 14–
19; David Kilcullen, ‘Ethics, Politics and Non-State Warfare’, 20; Montgomery
McFate, ‘Building Bridges or Burning Heretics’, Anthropology Today 23/3 (2007) 21.
71
Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, ‘‘‘Twenty-Eight Articles’’: Fundamentals of Company-Level
Counterinsurgency’, Military Review (May–June 2006), 103–8.
72
Mackinlay, ‘Tackling bin Laden’.
73
David Kilcullen, ‘Counter-insurgency Redux’, Survival 48/4 (Winter 2006–07), 111.
74
Ibid., 112.
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100 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
It was left to former US Marines officer, Frank Hoffman, to deliver
the most telling indictment of the neo-classical approach. Despite his
membership of the team that wrote FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, he
had become increasingly critical of neo-classicism’s influence over the
manual. Echoing Kilcullen, he contended that the neo-classical position
focused ‘myopically, on the glorious heyday of revolutionary warfare in
the 1950s and 1960s’.75 It failed, however, to address the complexity of
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were part of the broader global
insurgency. More precisely, as another critic, David Betz, contended,
‘Maoist-style People’s Revolutionary Warfare, which is not the sort of
insurgency now being faced’ over determined the writing of FM 3-24.76
The Maoist understanding held that insurgency occurred within a
defined territorial space. For Hoffman, ‘the classicists ignore the
uniqueness of Maoist or colonial wars of national liberation, and overgeneralize the principles that have been drawn from them. Today’s
insurgent is not the Maoist of yesterday.’77
Maoist theories of revolutionary war did indeed influence much neoclassical writing. In this context, McFate predictably perhaps
cited Mao’s aphorism: ‘The people are water, the Red Army are fish;
without water, the fish will die’, to sustain a modern parallel.78 In an
analogous vein, FM 3-24 defers to past insurgency/counter-insurgency
thinkers and practitioners. It respectfully acknowledges Mao’s thinking
about protracted people’s war and the manual is predicated upon the
assumption that counter-insurgency is about the domination of a given
geographic setting.79
Ultimately, though, excessive deference to Maoist theories of
guerrilla warfare led neo-classicism into a strategic, Iraq-centric, culde-sac. Consequently, Hoffman argued classical precepts constitute
either ‘blatant flashes of the obvious’,80 or are simplistically onedimensional. Unintentionally confirming Hoffman’s thesis, one neoclassical monograph published in 2007 criticised the utility of the much
vaunted British COIN operation in Malaya, on the grounds that the
‘promise to withdraw once the situation was stabilized’ must be
assessed negatively because ‘the British had to surrender their role as
occupier to defeat the insurgents’.81 Such a view not only repeats an
75
Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Insurgency?’ 71.
Betz, ‘Redesigning land Forces’, 225.
77
Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Insurgency?’ 71.
78
McFate, ‘Iraq: The Social Context of IEDs’, 40.
79
See for example, US Army/Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24, 11–15.
80
Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Insurgency?’, 71.
81
Steven Metz, Rethinking Insurgency (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic
Studies Institute 2007), 36.
76
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 101
understanding first articulated by those like the radical journalist
Robert Taber in War of the Flea (1970), it assumes that any concession,
no matter how minimal, must be regarded as a victory for the
insurgents. Yet, a sophisticated counter-insurgency effort maximises
self-interest, and manages change to one’s own advantage.82 Such
reductionism, ultimately leads to a crude Maoist/counter-Maoist
paradigm that assumes holding onto physical territory, no matter the
cost, is the ultimate goal of any combatant. This neo-classical
reductionism not only implies that any withdrawal of forces from an
occupied territory represents a defeat, it also risks inducing the kind of
certainties that influenced the French approach to COIN during the
Algerian War with manifestly disastrous consequences. Evidently, it is
not an approach that should recommend itself to Coalition forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan.83
It is apparent, therefore, that the bulk of recent neo-classical writing
on counter-insurgency derives from an attempt both to understand and
rectify the failures arising from the Iraq occupation and to that extent,
often exhibits minimal awareness of the wider implications of threats in
the international system. The renaissance of neo-classical counterinsurgency thinking has clearly been of utility to the US armed forces,
facilitating an appreciation of small unit operations to stem the threat
posed by a concerted rebellion. However, in an age of transnational
threats that emanate, most notably, from de-territorialised jihadist
groups, the wider applicability of neo-classicist maxims beyond the
theatres of Iraq and Afghanistan remains questionable. Global COIN
theorists are therefore right to criticise the underlying premises of neoclassical thought which assumes that insurgencies happen somewhere
82
As Cassidy, in contrast to Metz’s assessment, notes with respect to British COIN
operations from ‘the predominantly rural jungle of conditions Malaya, Kenya, Borneo,
Guyana, and Dhofar to the desert conditions of Palestine: Muscat; and Oman; Radfan;
and Kuwait’ that the ‘British Army helped bring about favorable political outcomes for
Britain. In almost every case of devolution, newly independent states allowed the
British Army to retain facilities in their countries.’ Surely, this is the proper criterion for
gauging COIN success. Lt. Col. Robert M. Cassidy, ‘The British Army and
Counterinsurgency: The Salience of Military Culture’, Military Review (May–June
2005), 56.
83
French COIN thinking manifested itself in an unyielding contest that perceived the
Algerian nationalist campaign waged by the Front de Libération Nationale as a war
against Western civilisation, resulting in immense brutality and loss of life on all sides,
and which during certain parts of the campaign saw the creation of a clandestine
bureaucracy that institutionalised policies of torture and atrocity. Many assessments
have been written on the war, but for one of the most comprehensive treatments see
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962 (London: Macmillan
1977).
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102 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
else. This, in turn, facilitates the view that insurgencies constitute
external threats that reside beyond the realm of the modern liberal
democratic state – over there but not here. As the global COIN critics
maintain, this in itself reflects neo-classicism’s over-dependence on the
‘classic’ view that derived from the twentieth century experience of
colonial struggles where imperial powers sought to quell violent
opposition to their rule. Yet, as the contemporary experience
demonstrates, confining counter-insurgency thinking to the external
dimension is untenable when threats, plots, and physical attacks
manifest themselves from the Middle East, to South and Southeast
Asia, to the modern cityscapes of Europe, North America, and
Australia. The theorists of global COIN are surely correct to see the
modern-day insurgent phenomenon as an existential reality that has the
capacity to be, not somewhere else, but everywhere.
The Limitations of Global Counter-Insurgency
Despite its accurate characterisation of the contemporary transnational
insurgency, global COIN thinking, on closer examination, is itself not
without limitations. What, we might ask, does global counterinsurgency really mean? Its theorists appear reluctant to define it with
any degree of precision. Global counter-insurgency appears long on
assertion but short on specificity. Thus, Kilcullen holds that a global
disaggregation campaign would seek to:
interdict the Al-Qa’eda core leadership’s ability to influence
regional and local players – by cutting off their communications,
discrediting their ideological authority, and global operations to
keep them off balance. At the regional level, disaggregation would
isolate theater-level actors from global sponsors, local populations
and local insurgent groups they might seek to exploit in support of
the jihad.84
The global counter-insurgency agenda, inter alia, includes: ‘Attacking
the ‘‘intricate web of dependency’’’, which ‘allow [sic] the jihad to
function effectively’; ‘Interdicting links between theatres of operation
within the global insurgency; Denying the ability of regional and global
actors to link and exploit local actors’; ‘Interdicting flows of
information, personnel, finance and technology (including WMD
technology) between and within jihad theaters’, as well as ‘Denying
sanctuary areas (including failed and failing states, and states that
84
Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, 609.
The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 103
support terrorism) within theaters’.85 The suspicion arises that the
global COIN approach comprises little more than a transnational wish
list. Indeed, how does this approach differ in strategic insight from
Hoffman’s characterisation of neo-classical insurgency as ‘flashes of the
obvious’?
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The Negation of Ideological Motivation
On the surface, it seems that global COIN offers an improvement over
vague terms like the ‘War on Terrorism’, given that its analysts clearly
recognise the threat posed by global jihad, and the uncompromising
character of Al-Qa’eda and Osama bin Laden. In his deconstruction of
the US Army/Marines counter-insurgency manual Hoffman observed
that it was ‘relatively mute on the subject’ of religion. Indeed, ‘it offers
few indications that the classical approach to terrorist or insurgent
activities are altered at all by religions based groups’. Hoffman directed
this criticism at the field manual’s neo-classical pre-occupation with a
Maoist perspective, which assumes that the target population of a
counter-insurgency programme shared an American value system
desiring to live in free societies that ‘are consistent with representative
democracy’. ‘But’, Hoffman contended, ‘if the population’s values
system is not consistent with these basic elements of the US approach,
or if they reject them in favor of something founded in the thirteenth or
fourteenth century [sic], we may need a drastically revised counterinsurgency strategy’.86
However, when it comes to identifying the drivers of jihadism, global
COIN theorists are surprisingly coy. Significantly, global neo-COIN
writing goes to great lengths to dismiss the religious and ideological
motivation for Islamist activism. Instead, it focuses upon organisational
characteristics, social networks, psychological profiling, and patterns of
recruitment to understand the new global threat. In this context, ‘global
insurgency’ reveals a definitional ambiguity analogous to that of the
much criticised War on Terrorism. Like the notion of a War on
Terrorism global counter-insurgency denotes an amorphous threat,
conceals hidden assumptions and obfuscates the object of the war,
namely militant, ideologised Islam: or Islamism.
David Kilcullen notably promulgates this view. He dismisses Islamist
ideology as the motivation to jihad. Instead, he considers the
‘sociological characteristics of immigrant populations’ responsible for
jihadist activity in Europe. These characteristics explain ‘contemporary
85
Ibid., 610.
Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Insurgency?’, 78. It would be more accurate to say the
jihadist aspires to something founded in the seventh century.
86
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104 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
threats rather than Islamic theology’.87 He further avers that Islamic
thought ‘has little functional relationship with violence’.88 In an
interview with The New Yorker magazine he even claimed that: ‘After
9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘‘The problem is Islam’’, I was
thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social
networks and the way they operate.’ Kilcullen’s post-graduate research
into the Indonesian Darul Islam movement led him to conclude that
‘it’s not about theology’. He maintained, somewhat adventurously,
that: ‘There are elements in human psychological and social makeup
that drive what is happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is
human behavior in an Islamic setting. It is not ‘‘Islamic behavior’’’.89
He added: ‘People don’t get pushed into rebellion by their ideology.
They get pulled in by their social networks.’ He further opined, rather
tangentially, that 15 of the 9/11 Saudi hijackers ‘had trouble with their
fathers’.90
The process of radicalisation is obviously a complex one. Certainly,
the passage to the act of terrorism cannot be reduced solely to religion.
Nevertheless, it is somewhat naive, if not perverse, to dismiss it
completely. The bombings of the Madrid and London transport
systems in March 2004 and July 2005 respectively, and even the 9/11
assaults, are, whatever else, Islamist acts in a Western setting. The view
that religion is at best a secondary motive defies the evidence. All the
groups that have undertaken high-profile terrorist acts dating from 9/11
and stretching from Bali to Madrid, London and Mumbai have acted in
the name of a militant understanding of Islam. Such a pattern of
worldwide attacks, exhibiting a profound devotion to a politically
religious cause intimates, if nothing else, a religious dimension to
jihadism.91 In fact, to reduce jihadism to individual social pathology
attempts to explain away political religion as a social fact. Rather
worryingly, it assumes that when a highly motivated jihadist claims to
undertake an operation to advance a doctrine, he does not really mean
it.
Ultimately, for global COIN theorists to deny the relevance of
political religion to jihadist insurgency is akin to suggesting that the
armed campaigns waged by Che Guevara, the Red Brigades and the
87
David Kilcullen, ‘Subversion and Counter-subversion in the Campaign Against
Terrorism in Europe’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 30/8 (Aug. 2006), 649.
88
Ibid., 652.
89
Quoted in George Packer, ‘Knowing the Enemy: Can Social Scientists Redefine the
‘‘War on Terror’’?’ The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2006.
90
Ibid.
91
See in this context Barry Cooper, New Political Religions, Or an Analysis of Modern
Terrorism (Columbia: Missouri UP 2004).
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 105
Baader-Meinhof gang, had nothing to do with Marxist-Leninist and
Maoist thought, but can be explained primarily with recourse to their
individual personalities and backgrounds. A variety of factors may
‘push people into rebellion’, but ideology inevitably justifies the violent
act. Paradoxically, Hoffman’s criticism of neo-classical COIN, namely,
that it misunderstands a worldview that wishes to re-create an Islamic
caliphate, applies equally to much global counter-insurgency thinking.
Consequently, we need to resolve this paradox: why do counterinsurgency theorists exhibit this reluctance to confront the ideological
or politically religious dimension of modern insurgency? We can
provisionally discern two factors that explain the paradox and point to
its potential resolution: first, the determination of both neo-classical
and global COIN theorists to denigrate the most important theorist of
war, Carl von Clausewitz; and, second, the absence from the neoCOIN perspective of any conception of terrorism.
Disappearing Clausewitz
In June 2007 a group of influential academics and soldiers met to
consider a draft of the British Army’s evolving doctrine for Countering
Insurgency: A Handbook for Commanders. The group evaluated
modern counter-insurgency thought in the light of the ‘characteristics
which might distinguish what might be described as the post Maoist
era’. They recognised that: ‘Insurgency has become a globalised
technique, the response is now international and multi-disciplined;
the strategic centre of gravity lies beyond the territorial boundaries of
the operational space; success is determined more in the virtual
dimension than by events on the ground in the operational space; (and)
in the 1950–60s [sic] the vital ground comprised a single nation’s
population now there are multiple populations involved [sic]’.92
This explicitly global COIN agenda, further stipulated, as the
minutes record: ‘Be wary of Clausewitz . . . some of his theories
complicate rather than inform an effort to explain the complexity of
the current version of insurgency’.93 A similar wariness may be
discerned among neo-classical COIN writers. Thus, Montgomery
McFate observes:
Neither Al-Qa’eda nor insurgents in Iraq are fighting a Clausewitzian war, where armed conflict is a rational extension of
politics by other means. These adversaries neither think nor act
92
Notes from ‘Reviewing UK Army Countering Insurgency Meeting’ (KCL Insurgency
Group), King’s College London, 20 June 2007, 1. John Mackinlay chaired the meeting.
93
Ibid., 2.
106 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
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like nation-states. Rather, their form of warfare, organizational
structure, and motivations are determined by the society and
culture from which they come.94
These and other statements, however, reveal both a failure to
comprehend Clausewitz and a curious desire to dismiss a theorist
whose writings remain seminal to understanding the current era of
insurgency.95 As his most important modern interpreter observed,
‘revolutionary’ or guerrilla war ‘would figure just as prominently as the
theory of nuclear weapons in the treatise of a twentieth century
Clausewitz’.96 One of Clausewitz’s most significant dictums was that
‘wars will always vary with the nature of their motives and of the
situations which gave rise to them’.97 In other words, warfare is always
determined by the ‘society and culture’ from which it arises, the point
that McFate’s research re-discovers. The interaction of a multiplicity of
factors, both tangible and intangible, Clausewitz argued, will govern
the course of a war, influence how any adversary chooses to fight and
the aims for which they strive. All these factors influence the direction,
nature and duration of war. War always ‘moves on its own goals with
varying speed’.98
The Napoleonic era of warfare between nation-states shaped
Clausewitz’s thinking, but his concern was not exclusively with interstate war.99 He sought instead to comprehend the ontology of war,
rather than see it as a mere epiphenomenon of state activity. As Jan
Honig observes, Clausewitzian ideas are ‘easily adaptable to forms of
94
McFate, ‘The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture’, 43. See also
Celeski, ‘Strategic Aspects of Counterinsurgency’, 35, for another example of critical
remarks that question the relevance of Clausewitzian understandings.
95
For a recent discussion see Colin M. Fleming, ‘New or Old? Debating a
Clausewitzian Future’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32/2 (April 2009), 213–41.
96
Raymond Aron, On War: Atomic Weapons and Global Diplomacy, trans. Terence
Kilmartin (London: Secker & Warburg 1958), 63.
97
Carl von Clausewitz, On War (trans. and ed., Michael Howard and Peter Paret)
(Princeton UP 1984), 87–8.
98
Ibid., 87.
99
Which is something that John Mackinlay, for instance, believes Clausewitz embodies,
when he suggested in 2001 of the ‘coalition of likeminded states to ‘‘wage the War on
Terrorism’’ is an old-fashioned emergency structure that would address a Clausewitzian threat to security’. Again this is an erroneous interpretation. Clausewitz never
wrote of what constituted ‘threats to security’ and to the extent that it is possible to
discern a Clausewitzian understanding of threat, it is one that arises from the complex
social and political conditions of individual societies, i.e. the source of all war.
Therefore the statement is a tautology. Mackinlay, ‘Tackling bin Laden’.
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 107
warring social organizations that do not form states’.100 The Prussian
thinker remains highly relevant to understanding insurgencies, both in
their classical and modern manifestations. In this regard, McFate’s
assumption that rational warfare occurs only among nation-states
seriously misrepresents Clausewitz. It is curious, indeed, that an
anthropologist, ostensibly dedicated to understanding the customs and
traditions of particular social groups, considers non-state actors like AlQa’eda existing beyond reason merely because they are not states.101
From a political perspective, however, such neo-COIN misunderstanding is not so strange after all. McFate evidently recognises
Clausewitz’s central premise that ‘War is a continuation of political
intercourse, carried on with other means’.102 It is this recognition,
though, that unsettles COIN theorists. The reluctance to attribute
religious motives to jihadist action, the emphasis on ‘post-Maoism’,
and the dismissal of Clausewitz all evince a profound neo-COIN
discomfort with the political dimension of war. It is the politics of
modern jihadist resistance that contemporary counter-insurgency
theorists wish to avoid: for politics denotes complexity, particularity,
ambiguity, controversy, and the need to challenge or defend specific
value systems. As Honig again observes, what many analysts find
disconcerting about insurgent conflicts ‘is the seemingly irrational
motivations of parties which originate in the murky depths of
history’.103 Consequently, Clausewitz, who emphasises the politics of
war above all else, represents a problem for COIN thinkers who believe
any talk of underlying value systems shaping the societal and cultural
complexity from which war arises undermines their neutral observer
status.
Terrorism: Where Art Thou?
The notable absence of any concept of terrorism from military and
academic journals addressing the problem of insurgency following the
100
Jan Willem Honig, ‘Strategy in a Post-Clausewitzian Setting’, in Gerd de Nooy (ed.),
The Clausewitzian Dictum and the Future of Western Military Strategy (The Hague:
Kluwer Law International 1997), 110.
101
David Kilcullen, too, appears to subscribe to this conception when he writes that the
‘religious ideology of some modern insurgents’ meant that they often do have ‘realworld objectives’. ‘Particularly in al-Qaeda-linked insurgencies’, he contends, ‘the
insurgent may not seek to do or achieve any practical objective, but rather to be a
mujahid, earning God’s favour (and hope of ultimate victory through his intervention)
through the act itself.’ Kilcullen, ‘Counter-insurgency Redux’, 116.
102
Clausewitz, On War, 87.
103
Honig, ‘Strategy’, 118.
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108 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
events of 11 September 2001 further corroborates the view that COIN
thinking eschews the Clausewitzian political dimension. A cursory
examination of articles published in the US Army journal, Military
Review confirms this point. The journal’s editor acknowledges for
instance that for the United States the events of 11 September 2001
‘marked a pivotal change in our lives, our Army, and our country’.104
However, it did not mark any significant change in the content of the
Review (or that of other military journals). Given the pivotal change
that 9/11 announced, it might be assumed that the pages of Military
Review would critically evaluate the radical re-orientation of security
priorities. Such an assumption, however, would be wrong. Apart from
a special supplement entitled ‘Attack on America’,105 and a series of
excerpts from speeches by the President, Secretary of Defense and the
Chief of Staff of the Army contained in its first post-9/11 edition, the
Review makes only sporadic reference to the Al-Qa’eda terror threat
thereafter.106 This contrasts dramatically with the attention that the
key military and academic periodicals devote to counter-insurgency
after 2004. We might infer that the specialist military journals avoid
terrorism as an object of concern precisely because it is a politically
contested term that requires the analyst to adopt a stance upon the
character and intent of Islamist inspired violence.
Neo-COIN’s determination to confine Clausewitz’s relevance to
inter-state war and its aversion to the vexed question of terrorism is
itself ideological. COIN theorists can dismiss Clausewitz’s thinking for
understanding the nature of current threats only by assuming
that insurgent groups act irrationally and function outside any form
of political discourse (because their motives are assumed to be
unfathomable). Meanwhile, avoiding any discussion of the ‘terrorist’
threat facilitates an analytical framework that is de-politicised and
rationalises intellectual disengagement from any attempt to understand
its ‘murky depths’. This process of exclusion and disengagement
enables the neo-COIN agenda to address the phenomenon in the
rationalist terms with which it is most comfortable, namely, that of
technique.
104
Col. Melanie R. Reeder, Editorial Statement, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2001), 1.
David J. Shaughnessy and Lt. Col. Thomas M. Cowan, ‘Attack on America: The
First War of the 21st Century’, Military Review, supplement (Nov.–Dec. 2001), 2–9.
106
The authors could only find two such articles in Military Review after 9/11: Lt. Col.
Peter J. Schifferle, ‘Terrorism and the Crabgrass’, Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2001)
and Col. John W. Jandora, ‘Osama bin Laden’s Global Jihad: Myth and Movement’,
Military Review (Nov.–Dec. 2006), 41–50.
105
The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 109
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Technique as a Substitute for Political Understanding
The ‘globalised technique’ of insurgency and the tactics required to
combat it, therefore, dominates neo-COIN thinking. Although affecting interest in the cause and spread of de-territorialised jihadism, the
assertion of a global counter-technique ultimately reveals the neoCOIN approach to be one of ideological avoidance. Ignoring the
politics of the Islamist threat, neo-COIN dismisses what might be
politically necessary to defeat it within the state. Focusing upon
apolitical operational concepts, statements of aspiration, abstruse
debates on the insurgent centre of gravity, the policy minutiae of
countering radicalisation, and what Sir Lawrence Freedman describes
as ‘vague talk of hearts and minds’ represents an easy, but ultimately
evasive option.107
In this context, global neo-COIN is guilty of political equivocation.
Whilst the neo-classical school focuses on the tactics necessary to
counter armed challenges in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, global
neo-COIN practitioners advance techniques that are either intangible
or strategically ambivalent. Indeed, for all their criticism of neoclassical thought, vague aspiration apart, global COIN advocates only
what in practice amounts to a broader application of colonial,
Malayan-style, counter-insurgency. Somewhat bewilderingly, Kilcullen
considers the global insurgency paradigm a ‘better model’ than
‘counter-terrorism’, precisely because ‘the key to defeating global
jihad’ does not ‘lie in traditional counter-terrorism (police work,
intelligence, special operations or security measures) at all’.108 Instead,
he contends that the insurgency needs to be ‘regarded as representative
of deeper issues or grievances within society. We seek to defeat
insurgents through ‘‘winning the hearts and minds’’ of the population,
a process that involves compromise and negotiation.’109
Similarly, Mackinlay considers that a ‘dangerous insurgency’ ‘usually
has legitimate grievances or cause’ and requires a successful counterstrategy that is ‘politically strong enough to change direction in
order to remove the pressure of the grievance, and at the same time
hopefully remove a substantial element of popular support from the
insurgent’.110 Kilcullen reinforces this position, asserting the need to
‘counter the grievances on which insurgencies feed, denying their
energy to their recruiting and propaganda subsystems, and ultimately
107
Lawrence Freedman, ‘Globalization and the War against Terrorism’, in Christopher
Ankerson (ed.), Understanding Global Terror (Cambridge: Polity 2007), 227.
108
Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, 606.
109
Ibid., 605.
110
Mackinlay, Globalisation and Insurgency, 33.
110 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
marginalising them’. Drawing directly from the Malayan experience, he
notes approvingly that the British ‘countered the Communist appeal to
nationalism by setting a clear date for independence and commencing
transition to self-government’.111
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Global Neo-COIN as Appeasement and Defeatism
The global neo-COIN attempt to project the Malayan way of grievance
settlement onto a global canvas has significant political consequences
overlooked in the technical literature devoted to it. This is particularly
the case when it applies its technical knowledge to ‘the unbearable
sense of grievance’ that energises support for the world wide
jihadist struggle.112 In fact, a political consequence of this de-politicised
technical approach to insurgency, and its reluctance to confront the
ideological worldview of Islamism, leads to policy prescriptions that
are either dangerously naive, or radically utopian. For the practice of
grievance removal necessarily raises highly political questions such as:
what level of conciliation would placate disaffected Muslim opinion;
are the ends of militant Islamism amenable to real world solutions; and
if they are, does the price paid for peace in the short term unduly
compromise the national interests of Western states? These questions
have been widely debated beyond the realm of counter-insurgency.113
Suffice to say, however, global COIN’s answers are notable for their
temporising. Thus, Mackinlay opines, somewhat curiously, that the
‘global developments’ that engendered Al-Qa’eda inspired violence
‘cannot be arrested by a democratic, free market society; they are
the consequences of that society’.114 In a similar vein, Kilcullen feels
the Islamist’s pain, observing that: ‘For Muslims in much of the
world, there is no middle way: only a stark choice between jihad and
acceptance of permanent second-class citizenship in a world order
dominated by the West and apparently infused with anti-Islamic values.
For many self-respecting Muslims, the choice of jihad rather than
surrender is both logical and honourable.’115
111
Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, 611–12.
Mackinlay, ‘Tackling bin Laden’.
113
See for example, Cooper, New Political Religions, Or an Analysis of Modern
Terrorism, 147 and Samuel L. Berger and Mona Sutphen, ‘Commandeering the
Palestinian Cause: Bin Laden’s Belated Concern’, in James F. Hoge and Gideon Rose,
How Did this Happen? Terrorism and the New War (New York: Public Affairs 2001),
123.
114
Mackinlay, ‘Tackling bin Laden’.
115
Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, 612.
112
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The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 111
These and similar statements from global COIN advocates evince an
interesting and quite surprising family likeness to understandings
expressed by a radical pacifist, and idealist ‘English school’ of critical
international relations theory. Thus, the global COIN view that the
prevailing Western economic and political order represses Muslims
everywhere closely resembles the analysis of critical international
relations scholars that consider Al-Qa’eda style violence either a
‘construction’ of, or a reaction to, Western ‘elite power’. From this
perspective, the ‘Westernised world system’ imposes a global economic
‘apartheid’ that reduces Muslims to second-class citizens via the open
markets that create a burgeoning economic divide between the rich
‘West’ and the exploited poor of the ‘majority world’.116 This
perspective sees insurgency and terrorism as weapons of the weak117
used against the hegemonic West and arising, pace Mackinlay,
inexorably from the ‘global capitalist system’.118
In this context, ‘Al-Qa’eda is not a state nor a great power’ but a
‘transnational network and more importantly an idea around which
resistance is organised globally and locally’.119 From this critical
and idealistic perspective the solution demands a radical transformation of the international order into ‘a system of sustainable security’,
‘based . . . on justice and emancipation’.120 The details of this
radically transformed order, like the techniques of global COIN,
remain somewhat opaque but at a minimum require the abandonment
of market economics and the radical revision of Western foreign policy.
Interestingly, this utopianism finds echoes in the global COIN
perspective, as advanced by Mackinlay, which holds that ‘disarming
the hatred of the disaffected Islamic communities means a new US
policy on Israel and in the long term, for the US to . . . learn to talk to
insurgents’.121
Global COIN analysis, ultimately, if rather equivocally, supports a
radical, transformational, global thesis. Both approaches reject political
religion as the driver of Islamist action while at the same time claiming
116
Paul Rogers, Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of
Control (Routledge: London 2008), 82 and 99.
117
Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass, ‘The Terrorist Subject: Terrorism Studies
and the Absent Subjectivity’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 1/1 (April 2008), 33.
118
Ken Booth, ‘The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked Looking-Glass’,
Critical Studies on Terrorism 1/1 (April 2008), 75.
119
Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, ‘The Post-Colonial Moment in Security Studies’,
Review of International Studies 32/2 (2006), 329. See also Taraq Barkawi, ‘On the
Pedagogy of ‘‘Small Wars’’’, International Affairs 80/1 (2004), 28.
120
Rogers, Global Security and the War on Terror, 33.
121
Mackinlay, ‘Tackling bin Laden’.
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112 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
to know the technical causes that inspire Muslim disaffection. This of
course is not to deny Mackinlay’s observation that governments should
be prepared to negotiate with those insurgents able to compromise.
Such negotiation may be strategically advisable within the confines of a
specific theatre, whether talking to Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq or
elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it is an entirely different
case to extend this ‘grievance settling’ technique to the international
arena. It invokes the logic of appeasement without examining whether
global jihadism is capable of being appeased.
The scepticism Sir Lawrence Freedman expressed towards the ‘vague
talk of hearts and minds’ reflected his belief that as potential victims of
jihadist violence we need to try to understand its political causes.
Moreover, ‘even when we do we must also recognize the limited quality
of the political response available to us’. Such a political response does
not mean ‘finding grievances’ to placate. Rather, it requires comprehending more fully the nature of the forces that wish to establish an
illiberal, theocratic world order, considering where and why this
problem has arisen, and thereby appreciating the limited scope for
agreement, conciliation and amelioration.122 This further intimates a
nuanced understanding, not only of jihadist adversaries, but also of the
values and interests that Western societies wish to maintain and defend.
This is global COIN’s political failure. For when it is not dimly
aspirational on issues of practical counter-insurgency, it is silent on the
political question of how to counter the appeal of jihadist ideology. In
the end, it is the political battle of ideas and world views that is – as
Clausewitz would no doubt assert – the most important theatre of
combat in the global insurgency. And where is this crucial struggle to
take place? Surely, it is within the domestic context, and the borders of
the modern state, not in some putative global sphere.
More Neo-Maoism than Post-Maoism
Although the defining feature of global COIN is its insistence on the
‘post-Maoist’ nature of insurgency, the reality of any counter-strategy,
global or otherwise, is that it can only be prosecuted effectively within
the spatial confines of the state. In fact, global COIN thinking, through
its emphasis on ‘de-linking local issues from the global insurgent
system’ unintentionally acknowledges this point.123 Thus, rather than
transcending the era of Maoist insurgency, ‘disaggregation’ and dealing
with the threat at the local level, actually returns us by a somewhat
circuitous route to the Maoist paradigm. However, global COIN
122
123
Freedman, ‘Globalization and the War Against Terrorism’, 227.
Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, 609.
The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 113
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theory’s refusal to countenance the ideological motivation to jihadist
activism, obscures what is happening at the domestic political level in
Western cosmopolitan centres. It misdiagnoses the nature of the threat,
and to the extent that it proposes practical policy guidance, it is
mistaken. More precisely, global COIN’s diagnosis invariably conflicts
with the thinking and experience of intelligence and law enforcement
officials. Diametrically opposed to Kilcullen’s contention that political
religion is a second order concern, having little ‘functional relationship
with violence’, Jonathan Evans, the Director General of the British
Security Service, MI5, in a speech in Manchester in November 2007
maintained:
As I am sure you are aware, the main national security threat that
we face today is from al Qaida and its associated groups. But
before we look at the violent manifestations of that threat in the
UK, we need to remember where this threat comes from. The
violence directed against us is the product of a much wider
extremist ideology, whose basic tenets are inimical to the tolerance
and liberty which form the basis of our democracy. So although
the most visible manifestations of this problem are the attacks and
attempted attacks we have suffered in recent years, the root of the
problem is ideological. Why? Because the ideology underlying al
Qaida and other violent groups is extreme. It does not accept the
legitimacy of other viewpoints. It is intolerant, and it believes in a
form of government which is explicitly anti-democratic. And the
more that this ideology spreads in our communities, the harder it
will be to maintain the kind of society that the vast majority of us
wish to live in.124
This statement reveals the constituting weakness in the global COIN
thesis. The term global insurgency rather than clarifying the nature of
the current security condition actually ignores it. In reality, ‘global’
insurgency functions as a euphemism for something more prosaic,
namely, a domestic insurgency arising from the political forces
promoting Islamism both at home and abroad. It is, moreover, the
ideology, which global COIN theorists dismiss, that renders the threat
transnational and requires governments to deal with elements of
jihadism externally and at a multilateral level, as well as at a domestic,
police level. Yet, at its core, the threat challenges the integrity of the
modern democratic state. In the case of Western states like the United
Kingdom this requires, among many other things, re-asserting political
sovereignty, securing state borders and elaborating an inclusive
124
‘Full Text of MI5 Director-General’s Speech’, Daily Telegraph, 5 Nov. 2007.
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114 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
national identity as part of a shared public morality and counterideology.
Defeating the ideological message that inspires jihadist militancy,
rather than detracting from the Maoist concept of insurgency, actually
reinforces its relevance, accentuating as it does the imperative of
political and ideological struggle within a given territorial space. It is
the sovereign state that provides security for its citizens and through
this contributes to the defeat of Islamism globally. Yet the global COIN
school obfuscates this prudential requirement of statecraft. Its
reluctance to confront the political dimension of the struggle means
that it overlooks the core of the problem – the contest over political
values at home. It is the internal dimension of the conflict that is
problematic, controversial and value-laden, which is why global COIN
theorists find it easier to ignore. Moreover, when they do attend to this
dimension, they focus not on the illiberal ideology of jihadism but on
second order issues like the formation of social networks, prisons,
urban deprivation and family breakdown as sources of jihadist
recruitment. Even here, the equivocation is palpable, as this technical
agenda conspicuously overlooks practices in schools, mosques, colleges
and universities which provide much of the ideological energy for
jihadist recruitment.125
To summarise, neo-COIN thinking clearly avoids the political
dimension of the current conflict and its implications for promulgating
a counter-strategy. Yet the ideological contest over values at the level of
the state renders the conflict explicitly political. The consequent need to
consider state security, however, poses difficult questions relating to
civil liberty, public morality, sovereignty, and the problem of multicultural identity for analysts functioning within a cosmopolitan, liberal
democratic paradigm. Rather than confront this difficulty, neo-COIN
evades it. This contrasts with the growing awareness among law
enforcement agencies of the threat jihadism poses to policing a liberal
democracy. Thus, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Peter Clarke, Head
of the UK’s Counter-Terrorism Command at the Metropolitan Police
admits that, counter-terrorist policing (i.e. internal counter-insurgency)
has become intrinsically more ‘political’ as it now has to pre-empt plots
and target resources against an identifiable section of the population.126
125
See for example Anthony Glees and Chris Pope, When Students Turn to Terror:
Terrorist and Extremist Activity on British University Campuses (London: Social
Affairs Unit 2005).
126
Peter Clarke, Learning from Experience: Counter-terrorism in the UK Since 9/11,
Colin Cramphorn Memorial Lecture (London: Policy Exchange 2007), 18.
The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 115
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Conclusion: Whose Hearts and Whose Minds?
Reviving a state orientated ‘Maoist’ paradigm for insurgency demonstrates the enduring relevance of classical COIN thinking to the
dilemma of policing the modern cosmopolitan condition. It also raises
difficult questions about the application of counter-insurgency principles in both the democratic state as well as the state of concern. The
central Maoist revolutionary warfare objective remains the control of
the people: the battle for hearts and minds. We should finally ask,
therefore, the question that theorists of global COIN prefer to avoid,
namely, what are the implications for internal security of a Maoist
strategy operating globally and locally? For the notion of a transnational insurgency poses an intriguing question: who are the people?
And whose hearts and whose minds need to be won?
Established neo-COIN thinking, as we have seen, merely offers a
recipe of grievance settling, and assumes that Muslim communities in
Western states and on the Arab street must be the focus of ‘hearts and
minds’ operations. Certainly a comprehensive counter-insurgency
strategy would attend to those communities in order to interdict
subversive plots and deter those that might otherwise be attracted to
the path of violence.
However, a properly conceived political strategy that effectively
confronts the existential threat a globalised insurgency presents
requires more than this. In an age of polymorphous violence inspired
by clashing ideological and religious visions, hearts and minds
operations must also address the growing insecurity of majority
populations in multicultural states. This no longer silent majority
requires government to ensure security and public order before it
considers second order re-distributive concerns.127 Sustaining popular
support for protracted struggles abroad, such as the Western
commitment to fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, while
countering the internal jihadist threat at home, minimally requires this
political assurance from a coherent counter-strategy.128
As global COIN recognises, the contemporary security challenge is a
complex transnational insurgency, which manifests itself simultaneously at both the state and international levels. The totalising
political religion driving jihad necessarily conceives ‘over there’ as
‘here’. Consequently, countering this distinctively post-modern style of
127
See Jonathan Sacks, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society (London:
Continuum 2008).
128
See Thomas Harding, ‘Public Support for Afghanistan is Vital’, Daily Telegraph, 13
Nov. 2008; Michael Evans, ‘Army Chief predicts a ‘‘Generation of Conflict’’’, The
Times, 28 Aug. 2007.
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116 David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith
revolutionary warfare requires a political strategy that transcends
conventional counter-insurgency precepts. It means that a properly
Clausewitzian global counter-insurgency effort would indeed entail a
global ‘hearts and minds’ campaign, but one very different from that
offered in the global COIN theorists’ grievance settling playbook.
Maintaining security and facilitating development in places as diverse
as Iraq or Afghanistan, as classical and neo-classical insurgency thought
contends, would remain an essential ingredient in a properly conceived
‘global’ counter-insurgency programme. At the same time, it also
entails the quite separate task of neutralising the ideology that inspires
radicalised diasporic Islamic communities to violent jihadism in
advanced Western states, while ensuring the necessary social cohesion
to sustain a protracted campaign.
Dismissed by neo-COIN commentators, Clausewitz once again
seems both prescient and perplexingly overlooked. His first principle
in war requires us to acknowledge what the fundamental struggle is
about, ‘neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into something
alien to its nature’.129 This means recognising that the contemporary
struggle is ideological and permeates both the global system, and the
domestic politics of both Western and non-Western societies. Ultimately, it is an eschatological struggle between an illiberal and
totalising political religion, Islamism, and secular, cosmopolitan liberal
democracy. In that struggle it is not inspiring Muslim hearts and minds
that is crucial. It also requires crafting a secular political response as
well. It is, then, among other things, a conflict within modern
democracies that involves the whole population and the terms of a
shared public morality, not just the cultural concerns of minorities
within it. Democratic governments must necessarily convince the
majority of the validity of the struggle. This cannot be achieved by
conceding important points of principle in foreign policy, or
compromising political values at home to appease vocal but intolerant
minorities under the aegis of grievance settlement.
The evolution of neo-COIN thinking represents a remarkable rediscovery of both archetypal conflicts and the revolutionary style of
warfare that has helped define the contemporary polymorphous
condition. Its precepts continue to haunt conflicts like those in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The evolution of global counter-insurgency techniques that attend to the transnational connections between local
conflicts and the external factors that sustain them has also enhanced
our understanding. Nevertheless, we should not exaggerate its influence
or accept that we have entered a new era of post-Maoist insurgency
that marginalises state responses.
129
Clausewitz, On War, 88–9.
The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency 117
The state, on the contrary, remains central, particularly in the
domestic political arena where transnational threats ultimately
manifest themselves and have to be combated. Global COIN, despite
its insights, fails Clausewitz’s first principle. It evades the political issues
that must be confronted at the state level in order to defeat the threat of
de-territorialised jihadism at the transnational level. In this respect, the
rise of the neo-COINs compels us to recognise that the insurgent
phenomenon manifests itself not somewhere else but has profound
implications for the soul, as well as the hearts and minds, of a liberal
and pluralist society.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the
editors of the journal for their observations and constructive comments.
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