In-Depth Archive

Is counterinsurgency dead, as some observers claim? Is it alive and well, as others have argued? Or is it, as still others maintain, merely evolving? One thing is certain. Once fashionable within the Washington beltway, counterinsurgency — or COIN, as it’s known — has come under withering criticism, as violence in Afghanistan escalates and the Pentagon tightens its belt. Many of counterinsurgency’s critics are convinced that the U.S. would do well to avoid such campaigns in the future. Who can blame them? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have extracted an ever-mounting toll in time, blood and treasure from a […]

Americans often assume that insurgency is a modern phenomenon, invented by Mao Zedong and refined by his emulators. The notion permeates official thinking, including Department of Defense definitions and doctrines. In reality, insurgency has existed ever since states and empires began attempting to impose their will on people too weak to resist with conventional military means. Indeed, counterinsurgency is a common function for most states and an inevitable one for empires. That said, the strategic significance of insurgency has ebbed and flowed over time. When the chance of direct conflict between great powers was high, insurgency became background noise in […]

The first page of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps’ Field Manual 3-24 (.pdf), entitled “Counterinsurgency,” states, “Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation-builders as well as warriors.” Authored in 2006 by Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the director of the CIA, and Lt. Gen. James F. Amos, currently the commandant of the Marine Corps, the manual essentially enshrined counterinsurgency as nation-building in U.S. military doctrine. This required U.S. soldiers and marines to undertake, in roughly proportionate measure, five tasks: safeguard the indigenous population, improve democratic governance, combat corruption, deliver economic projects and institute the rule of law […]

For the past several years, the widely accepted view among defense analysts had been that counterinsurgency, or COIN, represented the future of U.S. defense planning and operations. This consensus was initially driven by the belief that “effective COIN” had “won” the Iraq War, and later by the need, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, to fight “the wars we’re in.” Now things have become far less clear. Awareness has set in that the effects of the 2007-2008 “surge” in Iraq were only partial and, even at the time, only partly achieved by the shift toward conducting what we […]

Defense policy analysts and pundits are wasting ink arguing back and forth about whether or not counterinsurgency is dead or alive. The real debate — the one that risks getting lost in the noise about counterinsurgency’s vital signs — concerns the future of the U.S. Army. As the U.S. military ends its role in Iraq and winds down in Afghanistan, the U.S. Army, alone among the armed services, has no compelling narrative for how it fits into the nation’s defense. The questions today surrounding the future of counterinsurgency are no less intense than the debates over whether or not counterinsurgency […]

From its initial emergence as a British mandate following World War I, to the post-independence monarchy from 1932-1958, through the military coups that ushered in the rule of first the Baath Party in 1968 and then Saddam Hussein in 1979, external threats and internal tensions have characterized the history of Iraq. Now that all U.S. military forces have left the country, Iraq’s government once again faces the challenge of overcoming internal divisions, even as it becomes fully and solely responsible for Iraq’s security for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. Iraqi leaders must manage these interrelated challenges […]

Although extended periods of one-party dominance may be endorsed by voters in free and fair elections, they can also prove detrimental to the health of democratic government in various ways. Corruption — in particular, the misappropriation of public resources for private gain — is a pronounced feature of dominant-party systems and one of the more obvious means by which those systems can pose a threat to clean, transparent and efficient government. As South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) celebrates its 100th anniversary and enters its 18th year in power, its experience in government is largely serving to confirm this familiar, […]

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s Cabinet has undergone enormous change during her first year in office, with seven ministers sacked, all but one under a cloud of corruption, and at least two more teetering under corruption allegations. Many in the commentariat have been quick to laud these firings as proof of Rousseff’s diligence in fighting sleaze, and her personal approval rating is now higher than that of her two immediate predecessors at the same stage in their first terms. A complete Cabinet overhaul is rumored for the new year, when Rousseff may reorganize the coalition she inherited from her predecessor, the […]

From the start of 2011 to the year’s end, corruption dominated India’s headlines and enflamed public opinion like no other issue. Three developments in particular brought corruption to the fore. First, in late-2010, the office of India’s comptroller and auditor general released a report stating that the Indian exchequer had lost more than $20 billion in revenue in the auction process allocating 2G telecommunications airwaves. Second, a 70-year-old Gandhi-esque figure led an anti-corruption movement that captured the nation’s attention and garnered global coverage. Third, an increasing number of India’s powerful elite began calling the country’s most famous prison, Tihar jail, […]