Regardless of the controversy over COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan and some people's desire to not have to deal with insurgency again, I think we have to keep in mind that insurgency has been around for a long, long time and will likely be around for a long, long time. We certainly must understand the range of theories of insurgency.
But I think I will buy this book if only to read David Ucko's chapter (or maybe check it out of the library since it is going for $175 on Amazon) .
Intriguingly, David Ucko raises the question of whether the term ‘counterinsurgency’ should be dropped in favour of a more complex understanding of war. Although he does argue that the term provides a rallying point for those opposed to the use of (even more repressive) conventional tactics against insurgents. After the perceived failure in Afghanistan, ‘the future of counterinsurgency now looks bleak, and what happens in the United States will no doubt seal its fate across much of Europe, where the embrace of counterinsurgency has from the outset been far more tentative’ (p. 77). ‘Among critics, counterinsurgency is too ambitious, even presumptuous and arrogant, encouraging the idea that if equipped with the right doctrine, military forces can achieve social and political change in a foreign society that they do not understand. More discreet operations, carried out by local forces, and assisted by special forces, are seen as a less provocative, costly and fateful means of exerting influence as and when needed’ (p. 77).
V/R
Dave
Review – The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
By Paul Dixon on November 17, 2012
Edited By: Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn
Routledge, 2012
Routledge, 2012
The Counterinsurgency Industry
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ‘counterinsurgency’ (COIN) has enjoyed a revival. The perceived failure of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to a ‘backlash’ principally by advocates of the use of conventional warfare against insurgents, some of whom see COIN as not a ‘manly’ approach to warfare, as well as by Anti-imperialists who see COIN as a means of extending Western imperial power.
Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn’s handbook of insurgency and counterinsurgency gives us an opportunity to survey the state of the art in ‘orthodox’ counterinsurgency thinking. This ‘orthodox’ approach appears to dominate the ‘counterinsurgency industry’ and could be argued to represent an ‘interpretive’ or ‘epistemic’ community. Peter Haas defines an epistemic community as a ‘network of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area’. This community tends to share common assumptions and intellectual beliefs and is influential because policy-makers may rely on their expertise.
Orthodox COIN reflects a positivist approach to knowledge in which the methods of the natural sciences (or a particular conception those methods) are applied to the study of social reality. Positivism is often considered to include the following: an emphasis on observation in the development of knowledge; the generation of hypotheses and laws that can be tested; the accumulation of facts that provide the basis for laws; the belief that science can and must be conducted in a value free way that is objective; a clear distinction between scientific and normative statements, accompanied by the belief that it is scientific statements that are the proper job of the scientist because normative statements cannot be confirmed by the senses.
(Continued at the above link)
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