Jones David M., Gventer Celeste W. The New Counter-Insurgency Era in Critical Perspective

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. — 375 p.The notion of counter-insurgency has become a dominant paradigm in American and British thinking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This volume brings together international academics and practitioners to evaluate the broader theoretical and historical factors that underpin COIN, providing a critical reappraisal of counter-insurgency thinking. This is a book that no one interested in the way COIN seduced policymakers can afford not to read - and read again. Each chapter casts new light on the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare from after World War II to Iraq and Afghanistan. All the authors demonstrate both special knowledge and general understanding of the issues. Explored in all its variations, the basic theme is the contradiction of an outside force promising to protect a population against its local enemies, and in the end creating a dependency.