Publication Date
2025-03-13
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2024
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Abstract
Counterinsurgencies, or the array of military, political and socio-economic efforts to counter an armed insurgency, are an ancient, enduring form of warfare, but the concept itself did not develop and cohere until the late colonial period. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, counterinsurgency was associated with a specific bundle of tactics and principles such as control of the population, use of minimum force to facilitate a political solution and unity of effort, with these principles being revived and updated during the ‘Global War on Terror’. Debates have been dominated by clashes over the general political and analytical relevance of counterinsurgency as a way of war, at the expense of comparative and theory-generative work. Recent works have increasingly integrated counterinsurgency research with theories of political violence and statebuilding and have widened case selection beyond the ‘usual suspects’, but are yet to fully form ‘comparative counterinsurgency studies’.
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Waterman A (2025) Counterinsurgency. In: Jahn B and Schindler S (Eds.) Elgar Encyclopedia of International Relations. Edward Elgar Publishing. 68-69.
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Book chapter