Description
Counter-insurgency research has increasingly identified legacies of colonial myth-making and practice. 21st century counter-insurgency has undoubtedly drawn from colonialism’s blueprint and frequently stumbled in its shadow. But there is another side to this legacy. British and U.S. intelligence analysis tries to make sense of the world by looking at other states’ insurgencies and counter-insurgencies. Explaining how foreign counter-insurgents get things wrong is a crucial part of proclaiming Anglosphere intelligence’s clear-sighted objectivity, and of legitimising a world order with their own states at the top. The self-delusions and weak conclusions of this intelligence work are equally colonial in their lineage. This paper therefore follows two lines of inquiry. First, it looks back to 1950s-60s U.S. and British intelligence assessments of uprisings in Persian Gulf protectorates and in Soviet Union satellite states. These assessments tried to critique autocracies’ poor counter-insurgency strategy without evoking similar problems involving their own states. Second, the paper explores echoes of this strained effort in recent Anglosphere intelligence on insurgency in Russian-occupied Ukraine and on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. This intelligence reporting is not about gaining accurate knowledge. It is instead about tracing others’ strategic errors to fundamentally different, inferior political cultures.
