This collection provides a comprehensive overview of the historical evolution of the art and practice of insurgency and counter insurgency. This is a dimension of war whose significance has been contested but, since 9/11, many would argue has become the single most important challenge facing national military and security forces throughout the world. Although certain sources have argued that we are witnessing the birth of a new type of war which, primarily because of the effects of globalisation, represents a phenomenon that has no earlier precedent, others have looked to the past to see if any lessons can be learned and applied to the ‘new wars’ we face today.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Insurgency and Counterinsurgency incorporates both aspects of this debate to provide the reader with an informed and balanced overview of insurgency and counter insurgency in the past, present and future. Given the scope and focus of the text the study works on the assumption that the history of insurgency and counter insurgency does offer insights and continuity between wars across time and space, but accepts that changes in recent insurgent strategies also makes incremental adaptation necessary.
This volume is divided into a series of self contained epochs.
- Each section introduction provides a broad overview of the drivers of conflict in this ‘epoch’. It considers in general terms why groups opted for an insurgent strategy and it will then examine the counter response adopted by governments.
- Each epoch is characterised or defined by a dominant mode of war based on the prevailing technological, economic and social and political conditions that existed in that time frame.
- Each epoch explores the key theorists who dominated thinking on insurgency and counter insurgency at this time and the most important campaigns that shaped and defined the experience of insurgency and counter insurgency are explored.
This comprehensive collection provides the reader with a wide survey of ‘classic’ insurgency and counter insurgency campaigns covering an expansive period of time. Each chapter can be used in its own right to inform a student about a campaign and provides further sources that can be consulted by those who want to learn more about that campaign. Moreover it supplies the reader with the context needed to understand the causes of insurgency; the nature of the actors involved; the key strengths and weaknesses of this strategy; and why it fails in one case but succeeds in another. The provision of these campaigns will also allow the reader to make a better judgement about the degree to which insurgency and counter insurgency today is fundamentally different from the past and the extent to which we need to think of new approaches.
