I’d like to call your attention to WPR’s latest feature issue, The Age of Counterinsurgency, which just went live today. Regular readers of the blog know that I’ve got a particular interest in this subject. I think today’s feature issue should give you an idea why.
Counterinsurgency doctrine, or COIN, represents the first rough draft of the dominant strategic vision that has emerged from the post-9/11 era: that failed and failing states represent the principal national security threat to the U.S. because of the safe haven they might provide to transnational terrorist networks, and that only a full-spectrum, whole-of-government approach to civil-military operations will succeed in stabilizing them. Now, whether or not you agree with this doctrine, it is now the most influential school of thought driving American national security policy. It is to today’s strategic landscape what Mutually Assured Destruction was to the early Cold War period.
In today’s feature issue:
– Spencer Ackerman gives a fascinating account of how the generation ofcounterinsurgents that has emerged out of the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan is gaining in influence within the policymaking circles of the Obama administration, and what that means in terms of national security policy.
– Joshua Foust, reporting from Afghanistan, puts a single province under the microscope, examining its ethnic demographics, its political history, and recent COIN operations, in order to identify the mistakes made in the past and best practices on the ground moving forward.
– Anastasia Moloney, reporting from the southern jungles of Colombia, examines the endgame of Bogota’s counterinsurgency war against the FARC guerillas, with all the implications that holds for the U.S.’ ambitious hopes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
All of these articles are part of our subscription service, which you can try out for free for a four-month period by registering here. It only takes a moment to register, and I think you’ll find this issue well worth it.