Throughout the two versions of the counterinsurgency manual, three main obligations are consistently associated with U.S. forces and the process of bolstering legitimacy in the host nation: suppressing the insurgency, building host nation agency and capabilities, and ensuring the pro- tection of host citizens throughout this process. These obligations are conceptualized as highly interdependent and entwined, and the degree to which U.S. forces are perceived to fulfill these obligations is believed to influence the overall process of bolstering the legitimacy of the host government and its partnership with U.S. forces. Interestingly, in the new manual the notion of legitimacy has changed in ways that impose new limitations on the scope of U.S. forces’ positive influence over the legitimacy process. Based on analytical findings, I argue that this loss of positive influence, and greater recognition of a plausible negative impact of U.S. forces, follows from a new way of thinking about local legitimacy and, in particular, its place as a military end state for U.S. forces. Ultimately, the new manual clarifies that the scope of U.S. forces’ positive influence on the quest for legitimacy is beyond the control of U.S. Armed Forces: mission objectives are at the hands of U.S. policymakers, while principal responsibility for bolstering legitimacy resides with host- nation authorities, not U.S. forces.
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