John Mackinlay

The central proposition of this book is that global changes have altered the nature of insurgency by weakening some governments and empowering the forces that seek to overthrow them. The book identifies four distinct categories of insurgent force, and concludes that globalisation of insurgency leads inexorably to the globalisation of counter-insurgency.

As a British Gurkha officer assigned to the jungle borders of North Borneo, John Mackinlay experienced firsthand the Maoist-style insurgencies of the 1950s and 1960s, and later in his career, as a scholar researching Muslim NGOs and preventative security, he witnessed the transformation of territorial, labor-intensive uprisings into the international networks of individuals and communities that operate across the world today. In this book, Mackinlay focuses on the situation in Afghanistan to see how threats from one theater of operation impact on us domestically in the UK and in the US. Mackinlay maps the transformation of insurgencies against the rapid modernization of their origin cities, noting the ways in which technology has accelerated and complicated a variety of coalitions and the efforts to defeat them. Our current bin Laden era, Mackinlay argues, must be understood from a Maoist perspective of insurgency. The campaigns of mid-century are directly linked to the global movements of tomorrow, yet the past two decades of insurgent activity have also marked a new chapter in the practice, in which propaganda of the deed (ie, suicide bombings) has become centrally important. This shift presents new challenges to our traditional, time-honored response to terror and places a greater emphasis on mastering the virtual, cyber-based dimension of these campaigns. Mackinlay revisits the roots of global insurgencies, describes their nature and character, reveals the power of mass communications and grievance, and recommends how individual nations can counter these threats by focusing on domestic terrorism.

British and U. S. counterinsurgency (COIN) operations have been slow to respond and adapt to the rise of the global jihadist insurgency, whose base of support is global and whose exploitation of the virtual dimension has outstripped the West's. After analyzing past British COIN experiences and comparing them to the evolving nature of the modern jihadist insurgency, the authors suggest a new framework for future COIN operations. British and U. S. counterinsurgency (COIN) operations have been slow to adapt to the rise of the global jihadist insurgency. The authors analyze past British COIN experience, explore the evolving nature of insurgency, and suggest a new COIN framework.

The central proposition of this book is that global changes have altered the nature of insurgency by weakening some governments and empowering the forces that seek to overthrow them. The book identifies four distinct categories of insurgent force, and concludes that globalisation of insurgency leads inexorably to the globalisation of counter-insurgency.