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The Long War: insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states

Abstract This introductory article provides the context for the contemporary debate about insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states taking place against the backdrop of what originated as the ‘global war on terror’ (gwot) and is now increasingly being characterised as ‘the Long War’. The Long War and the gwot are often represented as a ‘new’ era in warfare and US geopolitics, despite the fact that, rhetorically, George W Bush and other administration officials have on occasion invoked the Second World War as analogous to the Long War. This article argues that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity between the Cold War and the Long War is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency are seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are neglected. In this context US policy makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a ‘grand strategy’ that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geopolitical thinking rather than engaging with what is a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. The Long War is ostensibly a war against various non-state movements, networks and actors, and is even represented as such by the Pentagon and the White House. However, the overall approach to the Long War has continued to fall back on the conventional ‘American Way of War’ that produces more problems than it solves.