COIN Flips: Counterinsurgency Theory and American IR

Abstract

This chapter examines the recent rehabilitation of counterinsurgency doctrine, especially as conducted by third-party interveners such as the USA. The advent of the refurbished US Army/Marine Corps Counter-insurgency Manual in 2007, a volume with a painstakingly scholarly self-presentation, is the focal point. This chapter is concerned with the dubious yet recurrent bases of the doctrinal justifications driving recent US interventions. The Vietnam War unsurprisingly persists as the crucial case for American scholars and policy makers who have toiled mightily to reconstrue the history of counterinsurgency there as an unacknowledged success, which has become the standard account in American international relations scholarship. The chapter examines this ominous development and its implications.