Outhinking the insurgent : a comparative analysis of counterinsurgery theories

The intention of this piece of work is to examine counterinsurgency theory in order to attempt to find common factors with the goal of ascertaining the points of agreement in the theory and then testing if the theories are correct about their importance. The work is laid out around the opening chapter which examines common factors and attempts to explain why these factors matter in a counterinsurgency conflict. These are drawn from a number of different theoretical approaches to counterinsurgency warfare with the objective that the diverse nature of sources will strengthen the conclusion. As such, this thesis does not use any one guiding theory or doctrine, owing to its attempt to derive common strands in an effort to identify factors universally associated in the theories with counterinsurgency victory. The factors that I have identified as important common factors are: geography, popular support, external support, leadership, civil-military relations and luck. I examine each of these factors across three case studies, each of which is an example of a successful counterinsurgency effort, in an attempt to see whether these factors are present and if so, whether their presence (or lack thereof) had a major impact on the counterinsurgency struggle. The intention is not to provide a narrative study of each case. But rather, to examine just the role that the six factors had to play in each case. The three case studies that I examined are the Malayan Emergency, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines and the last phase of the Sri Lankan civil war. The case studies have all been chosen because they are cases of clear cut victory for the counterinsurgent and thus, they ought to show if those common factors are important. Then by comparing and contrasting the different conclusions drawn from the three case studies, it ought to enable some judgment on the importance of each of the factors. The judgement that has been reached is that whilst all of the common factors are important, their level of importance and the role they play vary substantially from case to case. In addition, the two most important factors, that of popular and external support are, to a certain extent, not reliant upon the counterinsurgency (COIN) effort but are instead structural factors. The structure of the thesis is as follows: 1. Introduction: laying out the most basic precepts and theoretical concepts (nature of counterinsurgency, definition of insurgency, significance of study) 2. Chapter I: theory, some work on the body of counterinsurgency theory, theoretical framework 3. Chapter II: The Huk Rebellion case study 4. Chapter III: The Malayan Emergency case study 5. Chapter IV: Sri Lankan Civil War case study 6. Chapter V: Comparison of factors 7. ConclusionMaster of Scienc