Abstract
After 2006, counterinsurgency rose to prominence as the dominant paradigm in American and British thinking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the presumed wars of the future. Counterinsurgency—or COIN—achieved such currency in the strategic community that it became more than a military doctrine, its nominal status. Instead, it became a universal panacea. It offered a strategy, a theory of warfare, a movement in defense and military circles, and a ‘how-to’ guide for implementing an interventionist US and allied foreign policy, informed by a seemingly humanitarian orientation. Indeed, some version of counterinsurgency seemed central to promoting liberal peace universally (see also Moe and Müller this volume).
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Jones, D.M. (2017). Western Strategic Thought and the Devaluation of Counterinsurgency. In: Moe, L., Müller, MM. (eds) Reconfiguring Intervention. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58877-7_10
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