The "Hearts and Minds" Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare

The "Hearts and Minds" Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare. Jacqueline Hazelton. International Security, Summer 2017, Pages 80-113, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00283

Abstract: Debates over how governments can defeat insurgencies ebb and flow with international events, becoming particularly contentious when the United States encounters problems in its efforts to support a counterinsurgent government. Often the United States confronts these problems as a zero-sum game in which the government and the insurgents compete for popular support and cooperation. The U.S. prescription for success has had two main elements: to support liberalizing, democratizing reforms to reduce popular grievances; and to pursue a military strategy that carefully targets insurgents while avoiding harming civilians. An analysis of contemporaneous documents and interviews with participants in three cases held up as models of the governance approach - Malaya, Dhofar, and El Salvador - shows that counterinsurgency success is the result of a violent process of state building in which elites contest for power, popular interests matter little, and the government benefits from uses of force against civilians.

My comment: I am afraid that this is how things are.