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The government of South Vietnam sought to use forcible displacement as a tactic of hearts and minds and a tactic of pacification. By uprooting villagers and moving them from insecure to secure zones and giving them relief assistance, the gov. hoped to transform the nation through economic contributions from these groups, gain their support and create a bulwark against communism while denying the insurgents the ability to gain revenue from taxation. On the pacification front, the gov. strategically resettled some villagers along highways to create human buffer zones. In this way the resettled population would be weaponized. This forced displacement was seen as integral to counterinsurgency. The outcome was negative, however. The practice of uprooting villagers in order to protect them created deep resentment against the gov. because they were forced to leave ancestral lands and leave behind their property. Furthermore, the relief assistance didn't provide them with land to cultivate, contributing to policy failure. Thus, there is no support for the inferred hypothesis that forced displacement helped secure the population's support of the government.

The study finds that colonial insurgencies fought after 1918 are statistically significantly more likely to result in defeat for the incumbent government, thus supporting the hypothesis. The author argues that likely mechanism has to do with changed global political contexts between the 19th and 20th centuries. After the 19th century, colonial incumbents were at a disadvantage, as colonial domination lost legitimacy. Previously, colonial rule was legitimized in bilateral agreements between colonial powers and international legal standards intended to justify colonial rule. Even in competition with one another, European powers exercised constraint by not funding guerillas struggling against colonial rivals. In the 20th century, it became the norm to transfer sovereignty to former colonies. The establishment of the United Nations directly contradicted colonial rule, and insurgents wishing to struggle against colonial powers had access to support. Additionally, domestic political concerns shifted, with the public placing less emphasis on overseas treasures along with declining economic interest/benefit in colonies and the stress colonial rule placed on military forces. Additionally, colonial powers found it increasingly difficult to maintain collaborative relationships with indigenous inhabitants of their colonies. Finally, 20th century colonial powers did not have the flexibility to choose when to fight the insurgents. In the 19th century, colonial powers could be discriminative when it came to staking colonial claims, making them in territories where they had adequate support. By the 20th century, however, they had already formalized their stakes and had an interest in specific colonies: direct challenges to these colonies therefore demanded a response lest they walk away from a fight and severely injure their prestige.

The study also shows that when colonial powers are increasing the number of colonial possessions, they are more successful at defeating insurgencies in their colonies. This is likely because colonial expansion demonstrates an ambitious empire with the capability to suppress and defeat the enemy. However, in the full model, the coefficient is not statistically significant, though it remains positive. This offers some support of the hypothesis.

Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when global hegemons (i.e., the U.S. and Britain) have a large number of colonial assets, they are more likely to defeat colonial insurgencies. This is likely due to a favorable global political context. However, in the full model, the coefficient is not statistically significant though it remains positive. This offers some support for the hypothesis.

Another finding is that the precolonial level of development has a statistically significant and negative effect on the likelihood of success against a colonial insurgency, thus there's support for the hypothesis. This indicates that colonies that had low levels of development prior to colonization were likely to provide opportunities for the colonial power to forge collaborative relationships with certain segments of the indigenous population due to the population's likely fragmentation.

The study also finds that insurgencies occurring in new colonies or young colonies were more likely to result in a success for the colonial incumbent than those occurring in longstanding colonies, thus supporting the hypothesis. This suggests that the proposed mechanism is plausible: in territories in which colonial empires have a longstanding regime, they lose the flexibility to choose how to fight an insurgency.

Finally, in connection to the British operations in South Africa, the case study explored in the article shows that the forces in South Africa were able to successfully defeat Xhosa insurgents in the 19th century due to a political context favorable to colonial powers that enabled the British to deploy the necessary means to engage in COIN. Colonial officials in Africa received support from the British mainland due to the empire's interest in the continent, providing a steady stream of funds and supplies. Additionally, at the global level, colonialism was accepted as a norm, which prevented colonial rivals from directly intervening in the South African conflict on behalf of the Xhosa. The British were also successful at forging collaborative ties with segments of the indigenous population to establish a dense network of allies. This enabled the British to recruit indigenous soldiers and police and leverage their knowledge of local terrain and culture to the benefit of the British. Finally, the British were able to strategically choose their fights, which freed up resources to use in the COIN effort. By accommodating different clans and cutting deals with different tribes, the British could avoid additional rebellions that would distract them from the core Xhosa threat.

The author finds support for the hypothesis, "The incapacity of state institutions (the military) to protect the locals from Boko Haram helps explain the state's support of CJTF." The state's inability to differentiate between insurgents and the locals has made it favorable to CJTF. The state enjoys the partnership because CJTF fulfills some of its tasks of protecting locals from Boko Haram. These partnerships help with COIN and have led to the reduction of violence by Boko Haram. While CJTF continues to offer protection to the people, there is a caveat. CJTF is also ready to fight and thus could become a threat to the state if there is any provocation.

The author also finds support for the hypothesis, "Fear of domination, being a victim, fear of assimilation, fear of extinction, and fear of property being taken drives the formation of these citizen groups and explains their continued existence." While fear of Boko Haram drove the locals to support the formation of CJTF, fear of CJTF explains why locals continue to support this non-state actor even when it engages in vandalism and rape.

The study finds support for the argument that the British tactical-level units were unable or unwilling to execute non-kinetic population-centric (hearts-and minds) operations due to their lack of understanding of the principles of COIN warfare and the training needed to internalize such principles. Despite the Army's top-down organizational innovations and focus on lessons learned, institutionalization of bottom-up adaptation has not happened. The training still focused predominantly on conventional threats and basic soldiering and command/control procedures. When the focus turned to incorporating insights from the Afghan war into the training, the emphasis has been on providing the basic survival and tactical skills needed to deal with the threats present in Helmand, with greater attention to clear and hold strategies. There was not enough time and resources to train the units in the deeper understanding of COIN warfare and how to conduct population-centric operations, including influence operations. Several short courses on COIN principles did not provide enough depth to understand the complexity of COIN. Lack of highly qualified personnel to provide guidance on conducting influence operation also contributed to the problem.

The study shows that the British approach to COIN is ambiguous and not merely focused on the hearts and minds strategy to achieve success. Specifically, the ambiguity of COIN hearts and minds approach is used to justify the use of hostile methods on local population. Thus, the British army proclaimed to be using hearts and minds approach in order to conceal the level of coercive and repressive methods used in Malaya. Successful counterinsurgency operations sometimes cannot be fought within the law and without high levels of coercion as shown from the Malaya experience. From this perspective the phrase hearts and minds is a useful way of concealing from human rights organizations, media and public opinion the reality that effective counterinsurgency practice is necessarily highly coercive.

While some of the techniques used in Malaya were also employed in Northern Ireland many were not. For example, the population displacement was contemplated but never seriously considered. The British military used less coercive approach in Northern Ireland (in comparison with the Malaya case), but illegitimate and counterproductive force was used which did little to win hearts and minds and contributed to a prolonged conflict. Had government agencies (including military) applied human rights principles during the conflict; those actions could have been used to counter the paramilitary groups' propaganda, undermine their political representatives, thereby reducing the credibility of such groups in the eyes of local residents as well as outside observers. The case of Northern Ireland does not suggest that coercieve measures were helpful; instead the peace process was successful in spite of abuses and violence.

The study also considers the differences in U.S and British COIN approach in Iraq and Afghanistan. In these contexts, it finds that there was disagreement between the British and the American forces over the best COIN strategies to use. The British military felt its hearts and minds approach was undermined by the highly coercive nature of the U.S military action in Iraq. The fragmentation of the Iraqi state led the U.S to consider the conflict there as existential, thus encouraging the use of a conventional approach instead of COIN in the north of Iraq through excessive deployment of force, which led to disastrous outcomes. The British, by contrast, tended towards a traditional approach that emphasized the minimum use of force justified solely on grounds of necessity and a minimum intervention in Iraqi society in the south. Overall, the study shows that dichotomous thinking about coercion vs. hearts and minds prevents the debate on which approaches and in which contexts should be used.

The business management style of war logistics that appeared during World War II and persisted through the Vietnam war era is integral to the identity of the American military industrial complex. The management style focuses on performance measurement, management accounting and quality improvement metrics. War managerialism is highly prevalent ideologically even though it has important limitations in practice. With focus on metrics of progress, tactics and operations, it neglects broader strategic, political and ethical issues. In Vietnam, war managerialism took the form of a façade of clear progress against objectives communicated to the public, media and Congress. Specifically, McNamara's management speak emphasized body counts, percentage of population secured, weapons seized, areas 'cleared' of insurgents and declines in incidents of terrorism. In many ways, the ideology was disconnected from reality on the ground. Despite the shortcomings of war managerialism, quantitative systems analysis still retained a central role in Afghanistan and Iraq as evident in the indispensability of Big Data, statistics, and attempts to make the U.S. military even more scientific in approach to these conflicts. COIN, which the author argues has become the central ideology in these conflicts, thus has the mangerialist obsession with metrics of progress. The risk is not only the oversimplification of conflict complexity that affects outcomes, but also the normalization of wars as a scientific enterprise. War managerialism's role in counterinsurgency does not offer positive contribution that would help with conflict termination.

The author reviews sociologist Max Weber's typology of authority to inform processes of legitimation in COIN. For Weber, legitimate authority has three ideal types: (1) rational authority, based on a population's belief in the legality of a social system and the right of those with positions of authority to exercise their power; (2) traditional authority, which is rooted in the perceived legitimacy of sanctified offices or hereditary lineages; and (3) charismatic authority, which is rooted in the perceived legitimacy of an exemplar individual and their particular attributes (e.g, personality, heroism, etc.). Counterinsurgents can use rational authority to enhance political participation (e.g., by using existing legal frameworks and holding elections) or addressing population grievances using state resources to enhance the legitimacy of the state. In societies without a robust legal framework, traditional and/or charismatic authority might be used. Traditional authority can be used by co opting local leaders and incorporating them into the government, which can enable the government to address their grievances while also enhancing the government's influence over the population. Charismatic authority is unstable and only obtains legitimacy insofar as it "proves" itself in practice. The state can work to co opt charismatic leaders where possible (e.g., through alliances with warlords), but then should try to institutionalize the charismatic leader into the state, which will formalize the charismatic leader's authority through rational-legal means. There are risks to working with charismatic leaders like warlords, including failing to actually institutionalize them in the state's legal framework as well as effectively manipulating them towards the state's desired ends.

The Record does not simply chronicle the actions taken by the British in Ireland from 1922 to 1923, but also outlines the ambition to use the Record as a sort of blueprint for future insurgencies should they arise elsewhere in the British Empire. The four volumes of the record touch on all elements of COIN: tactics and strategies (vol. 1); intelligence and counterintelligence (vol. 2); law and order during an insurgency (vol. 3); and idiosyncrasies of urban and rural insurgency and counterinsurgency (vol 4). The authors of the Record also envisioned that their work would be used to train new officers and retrain existing officers based on the lessons learned from Ireland. The collaborative nature of the Record, "both sides of the Irish Sea," demonstrates a common interest in disseminating lessons learned. However, the Record was hidden and forgotten, classified due to a sense that conflict could start again at any moment, and the findings from the Record could be used by the enemies against the British. This prevented the Record from becoming a significant part of British officer training, institutional memory, or staff colleges' curriculums. Consequently, this has led to a broad sense that the British had "failed" in Ireland, a perspective that was hardened during the Cold War when British global security priorities shifted to the Soviet Union.

The article also notes that several studies of guerilla warfare were prompted by the Irish war. This included multiple conferences for intelligence officers and military personnel, as well as special schools. In the years after the war, some military personnel and leaders showed an interest in guerilla warfare, viewing it as a central aspect of modern warfare that must be grasped and understood. However, this concern within the ranks was exceptional and far from the norm. The Record was likely not widely read and its lessons were never formally institutionalized. However, there is evidence that experience transferred in minimal cases, such as to the Palestine in 1936-1939, which drew parallels to the conflict Ireland. There were also tensions between the principle of minimum force deployed in imperial/colonial policing and the perception of a different standard of force deployed in counterinsurgencies and whether or not COIN could weigh in effectively on questions of imperial/colonial policing.

In the early 1990s, military intelligence in Colombia was outside of the civilian hands and mostly outside of legal framework. This led to a lot of freedom, which in turn, resulted in illegal arrests and abuses. Subsequent reforms, however, made improvements to intelligence gathering through use of technology, signals and HUMINT, and the ability to infiltrate FARC. These have played a role in helping to disrupt FARC operations. The author notes, however, that problems still remain in the area of intelligence, such as interagency cooperation.

The author develops a theoretical argument that connects house raids to counterinsurgency success. Specifically, she argues that as long as house raids are not conducted in accordance with humanitarian law, they are likely to undermine the idea of winning the hearts and minds of the population. While house raids may meet a requirement for the necessity to prevent violence, when they violate proportionality, the outcome is negative. Excessive violence that accompanies such raids in the form of screaming at civilians, kicking the doors, pushing, kicking, and rounding the family in a room may not cause physical injury and harm to property but it leads to moral, psychological, and emotional injury such as humiliation. These injuries create perceptions that house raids are excessive and make them illegitimate in the eyes of the people. The author uses the Iraq case to show support for this logic; aggressive tactics in house raids in Iraq created negative perceptions of Coalition counterinsurgency efforts and undermined these efforts by increasing recruitment to the insurgency.