When I began my professional career in the mid-aughts, counterinsurgency, or “COIN,” was beginning to supplant counterterrorism as the most important buzzword in Washington, DC. The steadily expanding civil war in Iraq and insurgency in Afghanistan—not to mention conflicts in other countries like Somalia—convinced foreign policy elites (and wannabe elites like me) that the United…
Tag: COIN
Review Essay 22 on Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War
Perhaps only Douglas Porch, with his encyclopedic knowledge of insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN) and his broader military expertise, could have written this book. Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War is a magisterial examination across time and space of the history of COIN. It is intended to dispel the myths propagated around…