COIN flips: American international relations and counter-insurgency

The essay examines the recent rehabilitation of counter-insurgency doctrine, especially as conducted by third party interveners. The advent of the refurbished US (United States) Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency field manual, a volume with scholarly self-presentation, is the focal point. This essay is concerned with the dubious bases of the doctrinal justifications driving recent US interventions. The Vietnam War turns out to be the crucial case for American scholars and policy-makers who have construed the history of counter-insurgency there as an unacknowledged success, which today has become the standard account in American International relations scholarship. The essay is a critical examination of this development and of its implications.