The British Approach to Counterinsurgency: From Malaya and Northern Ireland to Iraq and Afghanistan

摘要

This collective volume adds some essential and innovative perspectives to the ongoing debate on the future viability of counterinsurgency doctrine after the retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan. Paul Dixon has united 13 contributions written by nine authors, including prominent scholars and former diplomats such as Huw Bennett, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, and Karl Hack. Rather than choosing a purely historical approach, which can be found in many other works on British counterinsurgency, the book approaches the overarching theme through a dual structure: First, several contributions focus on specific aspects of contemporary counterinsurgency practices and discourses and especially their links to issues of domestic politics. Second, a number of case studies studying mainly the contexts of Northern Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan highlight specific characteristics of these campaigns as well as their impact on the evolution of the politics of counterinsurgency in Britain. Many authors highlight the domestic implications of British counterinsurgency, and this is probably the most important merit of this book. Its second - and related -strength resides in the fact that that the authors write from a political science rather than from a military science perspective. Whereas many contributions to the assessment of counterinsurgency doctrine come from scholars with close connections to the defence establishment, a political science approach helps to discern the conditions for and the repercussions of the conduct of counterinsurgency caused by domestic institutional rivalries and civil-military relations. This implies that counterinsurgency strategies cannot be 'optimized' at will according to the perceived requirements on the operational level, including in terms of deployed manpower, applied tactics, or long-term commitment.