Democratic Counterinsurgents
Democratic Counterinsurgents

Author: William Patterson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-06-21

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1137600608

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This book explores the ways in which democracies can win counterinsurgencies when they implement a proper strategy. At a time when the USA is retrenching from two bungled foreign wars that involved deadly insurgent uprisings, this is a particularly important argument. Succumbing to the trauma of those engagements and drawing the wrong conclusions about counterinsurgency can only lead to further defeat in the future. Rather than assuming that counterinsurgency is ineffective, it is crucial to understand that a conventional response to an insurgent challenge is likely to fail. Counterinsurgency must be applied from the beginning, and if done properly can be highly effective, even when used by democratic regimes. In fact, because such regimes are often wealthier; have more experience at institution-building and functional governance; are more pluralistic in nature and therefore enjoy higher levels of legitimacy than do autocracies, democracies may have considerable advantages in counterinsurgency warfare. Rather than give up in despair, democracies should learn to leverage these advantages and implement them against future insurgencies.

Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India
Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India

Author: Mona Bhan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-11

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1134509839

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The rhetoric of armed social welfare has become prominent in military and counterinsurgency circuits with profound consequences for the meanings of democracy, citizenship, and humanitarianism in conflict zones. By focusing on the border district of Kargil, the site of India and Pakistan’s fourth war in 1999, this book analyses how humanitarian policies of healing and heart warfare infused the logic of democracy and militarism in the post-war period. Compassion became a strategy to contain political dissension, regulate citizenship, and normalize the extensive militarization of Kargil’s social and political order. The book uses the power of ethnography to foreground people’s complex subjectivities and the violence of compassion, healing, and sacrifice in India’s disputed frontier state. Based on extensive research in several sites across the region, from border villages in Kargil to military bases and state offices in Ladakh and Kashmir, this engaging book presents new material on military-civil relations, the securitization of democracy and development, and the extensive militarization of everyday life and politics. It is of interest to scholars working in diverse fields including political anthropology, development, and Asian Studies.

Bullets Not Ballots
Bullets Not Ballots

Author: Jacqueline L. Hazelton

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-05-15

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1501754807

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In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and makes military victory possible. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

Ethics and Counterrevolution
Ethics and Counterrevolution

Author: Kermit D. Johnson

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9780761809067

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This book is an ethical critique of U.S. policy and involvement in counterrevolutionary war. It rejects the thesis that the end of the Cold War means the end of revolution, since revolution is grounded in root causes. The defining characteristics of revolutionary war are outlined based on thought ranging from Mao Tse-tung to modern counterinsurgency theorists to recent U.S. national security directives and military publications. Underlying doctrines for U.S. interventions are traced from the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary to Kennedy's Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Nixon Doctrine. From previous U.S. war-fighting experience and declaratory policy, an outline of national policy and strategy for counterinsurgency emerges. This policy has been a formula for winning wars, not revolutions. The book advocates the adoption of a modest political Hippocratic oath of 'Do no harm' and argues that civiliization, demilitarization, and the root causes for revolution are necessary for the building of true democracy.

When Bad States Win
When Bad States Win

Author: Jeffrey Treistman

Publisher:

Published: 2022-07-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780228011132

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This book challenges the belief that democratic institutions and economic growth are effective tools for defeating an insurgency. Jeffrey Treistman reveals that while moderate violence can lead to government overthrow, bad actors that pursue indiscriminate violence and brutal repression can defeat a rebellion. As a result, bad states sometimes win.

Pathological Counterinsurgency
Pathological Counterinsurgency

Author: Samuel R. Greene

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-06-29

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1498538193

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Pathological Counterinsurgency critically examines the relationship between elections and counterinsurgency success in third party campaigns supported by the United States. From Vietnam to El Salvador to Iraq and Afghanistan, many policymakers and academics believed that democratization would drive increased legitimacy and improved performance in governments waging a counterinsurgency campaign. Elections were expected to help overcome existing deficiencies, thus allowing governments supported by the United States to win the “hearts and minds” of its populace, undermining the appeal of insurgency. However, in each of these cases, campaigning in and winning elections did not increase the legitimacy of the counterinsurgent government or alter conditions of entrenched rent seeking and weak institutions that made states allied to the United States vulnerable to insurgency. Ultimately, elections played a limited role in creating the conditions needed for counterinsurgency success. Instead, decisions of key actors in government and elites to prioritize either short term personal and political advantage or respect for political institutions held a central role in counterinsurgency success or failure. In each of the four cases in this study, elected governments pursued policies that benefited members of the government and elites at the expense of boarder legitimacy and improved performance. Expectations that democratization could serve as a key instrument of change led to unwarranted optimism about the likely of success and ultimately to flawed strategy. The United States continued to support regimes that continued to lack the legitimacy and government performance needed for victory in counterinsurgency.

Bullets Not Ballots
Bullets Not Ballots

Author: Jacqueline L. Hazelton

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-05-15

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1501754807

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In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and makes military victory possible. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

Shooting Up
Shooting Up

Author: Vanda Felbab-Brown

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2009-12-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 081570450X

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Most policymakers see counterinsurgency and counternarcotics policy as two sides of the same coin. Stop the flow of drug money, the logic goes, and the insurgency will wither away. But the conventional wisdom is dangerously wrongheaded, as Vanda Felbab-Brown argues in Shooting Up. Counternarcotics campaigns, particularly those focused on eradication, typically fail to bankrupt belligerent groups that rely on the drug trade for financing. Worse, they actually strengthen insurgents by increasing their legitimacy and popular support. Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on drug interdiction efforts and counterinsurgency, draws on interviews and fieldwork in some of the world's most dangerous regions to explain how belligerent groups have become involved in drug trafficking and related activities, including kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling. Shooting Up shows vividly how powerful guerrilla and terrorist organizations — including Peru's Shining Path, the FARC and the paramilitaries in Colombia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan — have learned to exploit illicit markets. In addition, the author explores the interaction between insurgent groups and illicit economies in frequently overlooked settings, such as Northern Ireland, Turkey, and Burma. While aggressive efforts to suppress the drug trade typically backfire, Shooting Up shows that a laissez-faire policy toward illicit crop cultivation can reduce support for the belligerents and, critically, increase cooperation with government intelligence gathering. When combined with interdiction targeting major traffickers, this strategy gives policymakers a better chance of winning both the war against the insurgents and the war on drugs.