Porch shines a torch on COIN

[davidbfpo]

A lengthy review by David Ucko of Porch's book alongside Gina Gentile's 'Wrong Turn' by David Ucko, which in places is very critical. Deserves a longer read, maybe even printing off:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/1...18.2014.893972

It also provides a glimpse into david Ucko's own book, which has been reviewed on SWJ.

The review appears in the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies and is not behind a paywall.

[davidbfpo]

I have recently purchased a copy of Porch's book, along with two others so a review in a few months time.

Then today I was reminded in this blog article that Porch believes "COIN has come home":

a much deeper trend is at work, which is the theme of a brilliant but little known book, Counterinsurgency, by an American military academic Douglas Porch. Porch follows the insight of Hannah Arendt who noted in The Origins of Totalitarianism that the violence and racism that accompanies imperial conquest abroad usually has a boomerang effect on the homeland. Porch shows how counterinsurgency strategies such as those used in Palestine by the British and Algiers by the French had far reaching domestic consequences.....

In his conclusion, he writes, "Nor has the United States escaped the domestic consequences of the global war on terror which recalls the British and French cases: democratic dissent is first colonialised (by which I think he means made alien) and then criminalised."

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkin...-on-greenpeace