Counterinsurgency's Impossible Trilemma
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0163660x.2010.492722
ISSN1530-9177
Autores Tópico(s)Global Peace and Security Dynamics
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Filippo Andreatta, Ted Hopf, Alex Lennon, Peter Mansoor, Randy Schweller, and Alex Wendt for helpful comments on earlier drafts. He also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Italian Ministry of Education, Research and University (PRIN 2008–Grant 2008AJT9AC_001). Notes 1. See Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Colin S. Gray, “Irregular Warfare: One Nature, Many Characters,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 1, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 35–57; Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson III, “Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars,” International Organization 63, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 67–106; Jason Lyall, “Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents? Reassessing Democracy's Impact on War Outcomes and Duration,” International Organization 64, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 167–192. 2. Colin H. Kahl, “COIN of the Realm: Is There a Future for Counterinsurgency,” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 6 (November/December 2007): 169–176. 3. For exceptions see Edward N. Luttwak, “Dead End: Counterinsurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice,” Harper's Magazine, February 2007, pp. 33–42, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081384 and Ralph Peters, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007), pp. 57–59. 4. Maurice Obstfeld, “The Global Capital Market: Benefactor or Menace?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 9–30. 5. The Iraq war has essentially had four phases: 1) the enemy-centric strategy, implemented in 2003–2005; 2) training and supporting the Iraqis in 2005–2006; 3) the population-centric approach or the “the surge” in 2007–2008, which was a very bloody phase for U.S. forces; and 4) the post-surge stage, which has been ongoing since 2009, and where military operations are no longer only carried out by U.S. forces. 6. See George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 59; Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 387. 7. See David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 8. See Antonio Giustozzi, “One or Many? The Issue of the Taliban's Unity and Disunity,” April 23, 2009, pp. 3–6, http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/PSRU_IssueTalibanUnityDisunity.pdf. 9. On the likelihood of reconciliation with the Taliban, see Fotini Christia and Michael Semple, “Flipping the Taliban,” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 4 (July/August 2009): 34–45. 10. See John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973). 11. Richard Auxier, “Few in NATO Support Call For Additional Forces in Afghanistan,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, August 31, 2009, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1325/little-support-in-nato-for-afghanistan-troop-increases. 12. Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 13. John Mueller, “The Cost of War,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 1 (January/February 2006): 143–144. 14. Thomas W. Smith, “Protecting Civilians…or Soldiers? Humanitarian Law and the Economy of Risk in Iraq,” International Studies Perspectives 9, no. 2 (April 2008): 144–164. 15. The expression “death from a safe distance” was used by a reader in the blog “At War” in the New York Times. See John F. Burns, “John Burns on the NATO Strike,” New York Times, September 4, 2009, http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/john-burns-on-the-nato-strike/. 16. See Michael Reisman, “The Lessons of Qana,” Yale Journal of International Law 22, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 381–399 and Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). 17. See Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Classic House Books, 2009) and David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 2006). 18. Although in this article, I do not discuss the current gap between the Afghan government and its people, it is apparent that the weakness of the local government is the strength of the insurgency. 19. L. Beehner, “U.S. Military Strategy in Iraq,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, April 12, 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10434/us_military_strategy_in_iraq.html. 20. See Nathaniel C. Fick, and John A. Nagl, “Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2009. 21. Bob Woodward, “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure’,” Washington Post, September 21, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002920.html. 22. International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), “ISAF Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance,” August 26, 2009, p. 2, http://www.nato.int/isaf/docu/official_texts/counterinsurgency_guidance.pdf. 23. Ann Scott Tyson, “Less Peril for Civilians, but More for Troops,” Washington Post, September 23, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/22/AR2009092204296.html. 24. See UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2009,” January 2010, p. 16, http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/human%20rights/Protection%20of%20Civilian%202009%20report%20English.pdf. 25. Elisabeth Bumiller and Carlotta Gall “U.S. Admits Civilians Died in Afghan Raids,” New York Times, May 7, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html. 26. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force (London: Penguin, 2006). 27. John Keegan, War and Our World (London: Hutchinson, 1998). 28. Peter Paret, “Clausewitz,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, Peter Paret, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 200–201. 29. The Afghan National Army currently consists of approximately 112,000 troops, which should expand to 171,600 by October 2011. The Afghan National Police consists of approximately 100,000 units and is expected to reach 134,000 by October 2011. At the end of next year, the total amount of the Afghan national security forces will be 305,600 units. See “NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan Combined Security Transition Command,” unclassified, March 29, 2010. 30. See Robert Mackey, “How Many Troops to Secure Afghanistan?,” The Lede, September 21, 2009, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/how-many-troops-to-secure-afghanistan/. Additional informationNotes on contributorsLorenzo ZambernardiLorenzo Zambernardi is a lecturer at the University of Bologna-Forlì and doctoral candidate in the political science department at the Ohio State University
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