The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency

Strategic Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes
Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-17000-0
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 538 g

Reihe: Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare

The counterinsurgency (COIN) paradigm dominates military and political conduct in contemporary Western strategic thought. It assumes future wars will unfold as "low intensity" conflicts within rather than between states, requiring specialized military training and techniques. COIN is understood as a logical, effective, and democratically palatable method for confronting insurgency a discrete set of practices that, through the actions of knowledgeable soldiers and under the guidance of an expert elite, creates lasting results.

Through an extensive investigation into COIN's theories, methods, and outcomes, this book undermines enduring claims about COIN's success while revealing its hidden meanings and effects. Interrogating the relationship between counterinsurgency and war, the authors question the supposed uniqueness of COIN's attributes and try to resolve the puzzle of its intellectual identity. Is COIN a strategy, a doctrine, a theory, a military practice, or something else? Their analysis ultimately exposes a critical paradox within COIN: while it ignores the vital political dimensions of war, it is nevertheless the product of a misplaced ideological faith in modernization.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, M. L. R.

Jones, David

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Friedens- und Konfliktforschung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen Theorie der Kriegsführung und Militärwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen Nationale und Internationale Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Konflikt- und Friedensforschung, Rüstungskontrolle, Abrüstung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Revolutionäre Gruppen und Bewegungen, Bewaffnete Konflikte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Terrorismus, Religiöser Fundamentalismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. What Is Counterinsurgency Meant to Counter? The Puzzle of Insurgency2. Counterinsurgency and Strategy: Problems and Paradoxes3. Counterinsurgency and the Ideology of Modernization4. The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency and Globalization5. The Illusion of Tradition: Myths and Paradoxes of British Counterinsurgency6. The Puzzle of Counterinsurgency and EscalationConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

M. L. R. Smith is professor of strategic theory in the Department of War Studies at King's College, University of London. Among his publications are Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement and The Strategy of Terrorism: How It Works and Why It Fails.

David Martin Jones is associate professor in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. His publications include Political Development in Pacific Asia, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought, and, with M. L. R. Smith, ASEAN and East Asian International Relations: Regional Delusion and Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age.