COIN Is Dead—Long Live Transformation

Abstract

The intention of this article is to analyze recent British military experience and current policy requirements and to offer a framework for considering the ways in which future interventions might be more adequately understood and undertaken by military means. While the recent short-term success achieved by NATO forces in Libya during the summer of 2011 points to a potential reemphasis on a light ground footprint, short duration interventions, using high technology platforms to support local actors in the prosecution of mutually convenient strategic aims, this article seeks to develop a broader perspective and cautions against any simplistic pendulum swing in military conceptual thinking on both sides of the Atlantic. The starting place for tackling this assessment is the development of insight into how the conflicts of the past decade have been understood in terms of a "liberal peace" and how this notion influences and constrains the ways in which military force can legitimately be employed by the UK and her allies.