Counterinsurgency in (un)changing times? Colonialism, hearts and minds, and the war on terror

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.