Mark T. Berger - The Long War - Insurgency, Counterinsurgency and Collapsing States

THE LONG WARINSURGENCY, COUNTERINSURGENCY AND COLLAPSING STATES

The rise and fall of the Cold War coincided with the universalization and consolidation of the modern nation-state as the key unit of the wider international system. A key characteristic of the post-Cold War era, in which the US has emerged as the sole superpower, is the growing number of collapsing states. A growing number of states are mired in conflict or civil war, the antecedents of which are often to be found in the late-colonial and Cold War era. At the same time, US foreign policy (and the actions of other organizations such as the United Nations) may well be compounding state failure in the context of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror (GWOT) or what is also increasingly referred to as the Long War. The Long War is often represented as a new era in warfare and geopolitics. This book acknowledges that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also emphasizes that the Long War bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency were and continue to be seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are marginalized or neglected. In this context American policy-makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a grand strategy that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geo-political thinking rather than engaging with what is a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. This book provides a collection of well-integrated studies that shed light on the history and future of insurgency, counter-insurgency and collapsing states in the context of the Long War.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Mark T. Berger is Visiting Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, CA.

Douglas A. Borer is Associate Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis and a member of the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare at NPS.

THE LONG WARINSURGENCY, COUNTERINSURGENCY AND COLLAPSING STATES

Edited by

Mark T. Berger and Douglas A. Borer

First published 2008 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2008 Mark T. Berger and Douglas A. Borer

Typeset in Times by KnowledgeWorks Global Limited, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books. Bodmin, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 10: 0-415-46479-X (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-46479-6 (hbk)

Contents

Mark T Berger & Douglas A Borer

Kalev I Sepp

Richard Caplan

Andrea M Lopez

Glenn E Robinson

Hy S Rothstein

Gordon H McCormick & Frank Giordano

Gordon H McCormick, Steven B Horton & Lauren A Harrison

John Arquilla

Anna Simons & David Tucker

Nazih Richani

Timothy W Luke

Radhika Desai

Douglas A Borer & Mark T Berger

Mark T Berger is Visiting Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, CA. He is on leave from the International Studies Program and the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of The Battle for Asia: From Decolonization to Globalization (2004); editor of From Nation-Building to State-Building (2007) and co-author, with Heloise Weber, of Rethinking the Third World: International Development and World Politics (2007, forthcoming).

Douglas A Borer is Associate Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis and a member of the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare at the NPS. His research has focused on the topic of political legitimacy and warfare, nation building, and strategic thought. He is the author of Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam and Afghanistan Compared (1999) and co-editor, with John Arquilla, of Information Strategy: A Guide to Theory and Practice (2007).

Kalev I Sepp is Assistant Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the NPS. He wrote Best Practices in Counter-Insurgency (2005), an unclassified analysis, which was included in the US military campaign plan in Iraq in 2005, later published in Military Review. He is also the co-author of Weapon of Choice (2006) the official US Army study of special operations in Afghanistan. He has testified before the US Congress on security affairs, and is currently an expert member of the BakerHamilton Bipartisan Commission on Iraq, investigating policy options for the USA in the Persian Gulf and Middle East.

Richard Caplan is Professor of International Relations and Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is the author, most recently, of International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction (2005) and Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia (2005).

Andrea M Lopez is Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-ordinator of the International Studies Major Program at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA. She is co-author, with Steven F Jackson, of International Relations: A Case Studies Approach (2008, forthcoming) and co-editor, with Andrea Kathryn Talentino and Paul Rexton Kan, of Afghanistan: The Forgotten Front of the War on Terror (2008, forthcoming).

Glenn E Robinson is Associate Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the NPS. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Journal, Current History, Journal of Palestine Studies and Middle East Policy.

Hy S Rothstein is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defense Analysis and a member of the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare at the NPS. His most recent book is Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare (2006).

Gordon H McCormick is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Defense Analysis at the NPS. He was previously on the staff of the RAND Corporation and has taught at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Frank R Giordano is Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the NPS. He is the author of A First Course in Mathematical Modeling (third edition, 2002), Thomas Calculus (11th edition, 2004), and Discrete Dynamical Systems: Mathematics, Methods, and Models (2002).

Steven B Horton is Professor of Operations Research, Department of Mathematical Sciences, United States Academy at West Point.