Counterinsurgency in (un)changing times? Colonialism, hearts and minds, and the war on terror
| Author | deRaismes Combes |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221122954 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221122954
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(4) 547 –567
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221122954
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Counterinsurgency in
(un)changing times?
Colonialism, hearts and minds,
and the war on terror
deRaismes Combes
American University
Abstract
Counterinsurgencies mostly fail, as the 2021 allied withdrawal from Afghanistan illustrates. Still,
confronting insurgencies remains a central component in ongoing counterterror efforts around
the world. The crux of counterinsurgency (COIN) centers on winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of
noncombatants in order to cut militants off from a needed source of material and psychological
support. In practice, however, COIN has failed to leverage a pacified civilian population into a
military victory and has instead led to protracted engagements with unclear and contradictory
goals. I argue that this policy failure can be explained by rehabilitating the doctrine’s colonial
heritage to its contemporary deployment. I do so by tracing the doctrinal origins of COIN to
American-led pacification programs in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Using time as a conceptual
anchor, I draw on postcolonialism and social theory to unearth how embedded imperialist
notions of Self/Other in the doctrine help explain this ongoing failure. A temporal lens augments
an analysis of COIN in three respects. First, it illustrates the longevity of counterinsurgency as
a geopolitical practice of pacifying ‘disruptive Others’. Second, it reveals a paradox in a doctrine
that intimates an end state marked by the absence of those disruptive Others but is designed to
constantly seek out disruption. Finally, it lays bare differing motivations for the imperial Self to
endure the encounter with the Other in the first place. I conclude by reflecting on the potentially
harmful consequences both at home and abroad should the underlying assumptions of COIN
remain unexamined.
Keywords
counterinsurgency, identity, postcolonialism, temporal lens, war on terror
Corresponding author:
deRaismes Combes, School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue,
NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA.
Email: deRaismes@american.edu
1122954IRE0010.1177/00471178221122954International RelationsCombes
research-article2022
Article
548 International Relations 36(4)
On the night of 30 August 2021, the last US military planes left Afghanistan after a cha-
otic few weeks of scrambling and failing to get all American citizens and Afghan allies
out of the country to safety. Upon taking office, American president Joe Biden had vowed
to uphold his predecessor’s pledge to leave Afghanistan as outlined in the February 2020
Doha Agreement. Despite push-back, Biden stated that remaining in what he called the
‘forever war’ was not in the national interest and it was time to leave.1 Full stop. Yet, at
the onset of the war on terror, President George W. Bush had warned that this would be
a different type of war altogether, one that could not be easily won in a few years or even
a few decades.2 Twenty years later, the Taliban reclaimed power within a matter of
weeks, and haphazard evacuation efforts were quickly deteriorating into frenzied scrums
of desperate people willing to fling themselves onto wings of airplanes. US government
officials were quick to dismiss comparisons to the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, but a
glance at images televised from both capitals belied such repudiations. The dizzying
Taliban take-over in the weeks surrounding the US withdrawal caught much of the world
by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. As the Taliban themselves have said, the United States
and its allies may have all the clocks, but the Taliban have all the time.3
This paper takes the preceding adage to heart and examines the doctrine of counter-
insurgency (COIN) through a critical temporal lens to better understand its application in
US foreign policy from the Vietnam war to the war on terror. To wit, Biden’s declaration
of the Afghanistan war’s ‘official time of death’ and Bush’s call for unending war against
terror highlight a tension built into the doctrine itself. Whereas ‘war-time’ is traditionally
understood as a discrete and exceptional period of violence bookended by ‘peace-time’,
or the persistent absence of violence, insurgencies are better defined by their nebulous
temporal and physical parameters, allowing groups like the Taliban to bide their time and
use that ambiguity to their advantage. Countering such uncertainty does not lend itself to
clear victories.
A healthy debate exists within strategic studies over COIN’s merits and why it failed.4
I contribute to this literature by reframing the debate through a combination of postcolo-
nialism, social theory, and a temporal lens. As such, I seek to bridge the gap between
traditional security treatments of US foreign policy and critical security studies. The
former generally focuses on the efficacy of those policies from the perspective of the US/
Self, while the latter deconstructs the doctrine’s foundational assumptions from the per-
spective of the Other. This paper meets strategic studies and the COIN community where
they stand and brings its own critical lens to bear on them. By offering a different theo-
retical framework through which to assess the failures of US pacification efforts, I prob-
lematize the underlying premises of COIN from the Self’s vantage point. I do not intend
this to deny or subvert attention away from the compelling critiques advanced by critical
security scholars of COIN’s effects on target populations.5 Rather, I aim to complement
such analyses with a critique of hegemonic regimes from within, in hopes of enjoining
greater reflection by proponents, using their own logics as a point of departure.6
Formally developed into a unique war doctrine during Europe’s 19th century push to
pacify colonized territories in Africa and Asia, counterinsurgency has adapted to the
digital age and the 21st century’s shift in focus to liberal state-building and develop-
ment.7 Yet both COIN approaches rest on the same logic: pacifying a hostile population
requires some amalgam of physical violence and political dexterity. Specifically, the
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