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Palgrave Macmillan

Democratic Counterinsurgents

How Democracies Can Prevail in Irregular Warfare

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. William Patterson

    1. Bureau of HR, Records, HR/EX/ADM/RM, MV, U.S Dept of State, Mission Support, Washington, USA

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Part of the book series: Rethinking Political Violence (RPV)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Introduction

    • William Patterson
    Pages 1-9

  3. The Arguments

    • William Patterson
    Pages 11-37

  4. A Population-Centric COIN Strategy

    • William Patterson
    Pages 39-59

  5. Malaya

    • William Patterson
    Pages 61-83

  6. Vietnam

    • William Patterson
    Pages 85-120

  7. Iraq

    • William Patterson
    Pages 121-148

  8. Conclusions

    • William Patterson
    Pages 149-158

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 159-170
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the ways in which democracies can win counterinsurgencies when they implement a proper strategy. At a time when the USA is retrenching from two bungled foreign wars that involved deadly insurgent uprisings, this is a particularly important argument. Succumbing to the trauma of those engagements and drawing the wrong conclusions about counterinsurgency can only lead to further defeat in the future. Rather than assuming that counterinsurgency is ineffective, it is crucial to understand that a conventional response to an insurgent challenge is likely to fail. Counterinsurgency must be applied from the beginning, and if done properly can be highly effective, even when used by democratic regimes. In fact, because such regimes are often wealthier; have more experience at institution-building and functional governance; are more pluralistic in nature and therefore enjoy higher levels of legitimacy than do autocracies, democracies may have considerable advantages in counterinsurgency warfare. Rather than give up in despair, democracies should learn to leverage these advantages and implement them against future insurgencies.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Bureau of HR, Records, HR/EX/ADM/RM, MV, U.S Dept of State, Mission Support, Washington, USA

    William Patterson

About the author

William Patterson earned his PhD in International Studies from Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA. He previously served a tour in Afghanistan with the US Army’s Human Terrain System conducting socio-cultural research in furtherance of the USA counterinsurgency strategy. He is a graduate of the US Army’s Counterinsurgency Leaders Course. He has published articles in a variety of scholarly journals, and currently serves with the US Department of State.

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