Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: U.S. Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan

Catalog description

Intrastate rather than interstate conflicts account for majority of armed conflicts today. The outbreak of the Syrian insurgency, the challenges experienced by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and humanitarian crisis in Yemen illustrate that stickiness of the problem. Today’s civil wars are mostly insurgencies, conflicts with the use of guerrilla tactics. Increasingly, they involve multiple non-state actors challenging the government. What explains the onset of such conflicts? What role do ethnic and religious differences play in conflict initiation? How do guerrilla fighters acquire the means to wage their war? Is democracy a solution to conflicts? Are insurgencies a threat to U.S. security and economic interests? Why has the United States struggled with its counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what lessons have been learned for future management of such threats? The course explores the onset, management, and termination of insurgencies, with special focus on current debates on counterinsurgency approaches. We will focus on the role of resources, state capacity, ethnic/religious differences and power in setting the stage for the conflict to start. We will then explain why insurgencies are difficult to end, and why the United States has struggled to stabilize the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lastly, the course will focus on conflict management by emphasizing specific counterinsurgency approaches, including population and state-centric strategies. We will explore in what ways the United States, in particular, has been successful in these areas and why it has failed in others. This course relies on classroom discussions, peer collaboration, creative thinking exercises/projects, simulation, game exercise, and case study analysis to facilitate learning and student engagement.