Issues_whitehall RSS feedDefeating Complex Insurgency: Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan
By John Mackinlay25 Jul 2006
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Defeating Complex Insurgency is published amidst growing insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The perception arises of Coalition forces failing to exploit their technical and planning superiority; the best they have achieved is a war of gradual attrition. Meanwhile, it is the globally organised manoeuvrists that are moving with surprising agility and impact between the operational, the strategic and virtual. In this Whitehall Paper, John Mackinlay argues that to turn the tide against a global insurgency requires a rigorous effort to define the adversary with greater precision. This would reveal a headless, structureless network that grows organically and responds instinctively to events in a way that is more dangerous than the vertically organised versions of Al-Qa'ida that are part of the misleading rhetoric of 'Global Terrorism'. The international response to this phenomenon is at present too unwieldy and disparately motivated to succeed in taking a manoeuvrist approach. To regain the initiative, a future Coalition needs to be more globally minded, culturally inclusive and less tolerant of the multi-agency shambles that characterises the operational space.
In this Whitehall Paper, John Mackinlay argues that to turn the tide against a global insurgency requires a rigorous effort to define the adversary with greater precision. This would reveal a headless, structureless network that grows organically and responds instinctively to events in a way that is more dangerous than the vertically organised versions of Al-Qa'ida that are part of the misleading rhetoric of 'Global Terrorism'.
Dr John Mackinlay left the British Army in 1991 to become a research academic at Brown University, and subsequently taught at the Marshall Center in Germany, the UK Joint Services Staff College and King’s College London, where he currently researches and teaches War Studies. He is also an Associate Fellow of RUSI.
