Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Asian Realities

Speaker: Professor Sir Adam Roberts, President-Elect of the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University Counterinsurgency doctrines are undergoing a remarkable reincarnation in the twenty-first century. These political-strategic ideas inherited from an earlier era of anti-colonial struggles, mainly in Asia, respond to the need for a comprehensive strategy that focuses on isolating insurgent forces. However, they are vulnerable to many criticisms especially in their assumptions about politics. They generally take for granted that the state is strong and effective, which is not the case in Afghanistan or in certain other states facing insurgency. The ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exposing the difficulty of applying the doctrine in todays conditions. The United States and its allies in Europe and Asia face a difficult choice: whether to go with the grain of societies undergoing insurgencies, with all the compromises that would be involved; or to continue with a modernising and centralising project that is increasingly in trouble.