Abstract
Whereas the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers seemed to demonstrate the ineffective nature of deterrence theory, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to have undermined the efficacy of counter-insurgency (COIN). The result is a military instrument that in many respects not only looks to be hampered by a relative decline in funding among a number of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) powers but, more fundamentally, now also lacks a clarity of purpose that suggests other forms of state power have more utility. To be sure, a number of scholars have pointed out that brute force may well have the virtue of focusing our adversaries’ minds on whether they wish to continue along a particular course of action.1 However, the application of state violence also has the potential to undermine the human security values Western powers typically use to frame their objectives.2
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Notes
See, for example, Lauren Ploch, Africa Command: US Strategic Interests and the Role of the US Military in Africa (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2011).
David Engerman, ed., Staging Economic Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003)
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Roger Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Lorraine Elliott and Graeme Cheesman, eds, Forces for Good: Cosmopolitan Militaries in the 21st Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
Ken Booth, ed., Critical Security Studies and World Politics (London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2005), p. 12.
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This view is explicitly rejected by Francis Fukuyama who claims that Western economists have now properly understood the importance of balancing market reforms with maintaining effective state capacity for regulation or tax collection. See Paul Hirst, War and Power in the 21st Century: The State, Military Conflict and the International System (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), pp. 28–30.
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See, for example, Mary Kaldor, Mary Martin, and Sabine Selchow, ‘Human Security: A New Strategic Narrative for Europe’, International Affairs 83, no. 2 (2007); M. Kaldor, Human Security (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
Jeremy Black, War and the Modern World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents 1450–2000 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 24–6.
Army Doctrine Publication: Operations (Shrivenham: Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, UK MOD, 2010); ‘Joint Doctrine Publication 3–40 — Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution’, ed. Concepts and Doctrine Centre — The Development (Shrivenham: UK MOD, 2010); ‘British Army Field Manual, volume 1, Part 10, Countering Insurgency’, ed. Land Warfare Centre (London: UK MOD, 2010). Mary Kaldor indicates that the military have been highly receptive to Human Security discourse. See ‘New Wars and Human Security: An Interview with Mary Kaldor’, Democratiya, p. 28. With regard to British military doctrine, COIN fits within a stabilisation framework. See, for example, ibid. Chapter 1, ‘The Fundamentals’, Paragrap. 1–6. Stuart Griffin explains that ‘those seeking to explain the role of Stabilization often describe its essence as “COIN-plus”, a revealing sobriquet’. See Stuart Griffin, ‘Iraq, Afghanistan and the Future of British Military Doctrine: From Counterinsurgency to Stabilization’, International Affairs 87, no. 2 (2011): 324.
The literature on this topic is growing fast. For an excellent early example con-cerning US involvement and policy changes towards Iraq, see Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments — the Occupation and Its Legacy, Crises in World Politics (London: Hurst & Co., 2006).
Lawrence Freedman, War — a Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
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See, for example, John Bethell, ‘Accidental Counterinsurgents: Nad E Ali, Hybrid War and the Future of the British Army’, British Army Review 149 (Summer 2010); Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, Separating the Taliban from Al-Qaeda: The Cores of Success in Afghanistan (New York: New York University, Center on International Cooperation, 2011).
The literature on this subject is vast. For an introduction to and criticism of HTT see Roberto J. Gonzalez, American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (Chicago: Prickly Press, 2009).
This is the term used by Stewart. Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus, Can Intervention Work? (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), p. 18.
Stewart Partrick, Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
A number of authors have observed this in relation to Somalia and Afghanistan. See, for instance, Roland Marchal, ‘Warlordism and Terrorism: How to Obscure an Already Confusing Crisis? The Case of Somalia’, International Affairs 83, no. 6 (2007); Keith Stanski, ‘“So These Folks Are Aggressive”: An Orientalist Reading of “Afghan Warlords”’, Security Dialogue 41, no. 1 (2009); Ken Menkhaus, Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism, 364 ed., vol. 44, Adelphi Series (London: IISS, 2004).
Roy Licklider, ‘How Civil Wars End: Questions and Methods’, in Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End, ed. Roy Licklider (New York: New York University Press, 1993)
Charles King, Ending Civil Wars Adelphi Paper No. 308 (Oxford: Oxford University Press/IISS, 1997).
Mats Berdal, ‘Beyond Greed and Grievance — and Not Too Soon... A Review Essay’, Review of International Studies 31, no. 4 (2005); Mats Berdal and Nader Mousavizadeh, ‘Investing for Peace: The Private Sector and the Challenges of Peacebuilding’, Survival 52, no. 2 (2010); Mats Berdal and Achim Wennmann, eds, Ending Wars, Consolidating Peace: Economic Perspectives (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010)
David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘“New” and “Old” Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?’, World Politics 54, no. 1 (2001); ‘Ethnic Defection in Civil War’, Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 8 (2008); ‘Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria’, Rationality and Society 11, no. 3 (1999); ‘The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil Wars’, www.apsanet.org 1, no. 3 (2003); Stathis N. Kalyvas and Matthew Adam Kocher, ‘The Dynamics of Violence in Vietnam: An Analysis of the Hamlet Evaluation System (Hes)’, Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 3 (2009); Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Paul Collier, ‘Doing Well out of War’, in Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, eds Mats Berdal and David Malone (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000)
For work on diasporas see Abdulkadir Osman Farah, Mammo Muchie, and Joakim Gundel, Somalia: Diaspora and State Reconstitution in the Horn of Africa, 1st ed. (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2007)
Ken Menkhaus, ‘State Failure and Ungoverned Space’, in Ending Wars Consolidating Peace: Economic Perspectives, eds Mats Berdal and Achim Wennmann (London: Routledge, 2010).
Patricia Justino, War and Poverty (Brighton: MICROCON, 2010).
Anna Lindley, Leaving Mogadishu: The War on Terror and Displacement Dynamics in the Somali Regions (Brighton: MICROCON, 2009).
Edward W. Said, Orientalism, Modern Classics (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
Patrick Porter offers an insightful exploration of the pernicious effects of ethnocentrism on military practise. See Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism — Eastern War through Western Eyes (London: Hurst & Co., 2009).
James Dobbins et al., The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building (Washington, DC: AND, 2010).
A similar argument is advanced by retired US Army Lt Col. and now Professor Andrew Bacevich, see A. Bacevich, The Limits of Power — the End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Holt, 2008), pp. 160–9.
John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife — Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya to Vietnam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 203.
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Ford, M. (2014). The Military Utility and Interventions Post-Afghanistan: Reassessing Ends, Ways, and Means. In: Gventer, C.W., Jones, D.M., Smith, M.L.R. (eds) The New Counter-insurgency Era in Critical Perspective. Rethinking Political Violence series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336941_17
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