Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. What Is Counterinsurgency Meant to Counter? The Puzzle of Insurgency 2. Counterinsurgency and Strategy: Problems and Paradoxes 3. Counterinsurgency and the Ideology of Modernization 4. The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency and Globalization 5. The Illusion of Tradition: Myths and Paradoxes of British Counterinsurgency 6. The Puzzle of Counterinsurgency and Escalation Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Concise, impeccably well structured and penetrating, this book provides the most insightful analysis yet of the theoretical underpinnings of insurgency warfare, and what this means for contemporary armed conflict. -- Huw Bennett, Aberystwyth University

About the Author

M. L. R. Smith is professor of strategic theory in the Department of War Studies at King's College, University of London. Among his publications are Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement and The Strategy of Terrorism: How It Works and Why It Fails. David Martin Jones is associate professor in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. His publications include Political Development in Pacific Asia, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought, and, with M. L. R. Smith, ASEAN and East Asian International Relations: Regional Delusion and Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age.

Reviews

Concise, impeccably well structured and penetrating, this book provides the most insightful analysis yet of the theoretical underpinnings of insurgency warfare, and what this means for contemporary armed conflict. -- Huw Bennett, Aberystwyth University As the 'success' of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan is increasingly called into question, The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency offers valuable insights that are likely to be both timely and enduring. The authors demonstrate with admirable lucidity that 21st century counterinsurgency has often been a catechism rather than a real strategy, with technocratic and modernizing zeal frequently blinding its practitioners to historical and contemporary reality. Vital for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future of counterinsurgency in theory and practice. -- Austin Long, Columbia University A penetrating study... The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency shows itself to be confident and decisive in its sceptical outlook, and a powerful and authoritative contribution to the literature of counter-insurgency. Survival