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Counter-insurgency is fashionable again: more has been written on it in the last four years than in the last four decades. This is heartening for those who were in the wilderness during the years when Western governments regarded counter-insurgency as a distraction, of interest only to historians. So it is no surprise that some have urged the re-discovery of classical, 'proven' counter-insurgency methods. But today's insurgencies differ significantly - at the level of policy, strategy, operational art and tactical technique - from those of earlier eras. An enormous amount of classical counter-insurgency remains relevant. Indeed, counter-insurgency provides the 'best fit' framework for strategic problems in the 'war on terror'. But much is new in counter-insurgency redux, possibly requiring fundamental re-appraisals of conventional wisdom. (Survival / SWP)

The situation in Afghanistan is increasingly grave. Causalities continue & commanders warn of set backs ahead. German troops are in the least dangerous part of the country, yet the debate back home includes the option of a pullout. The difficult decisions may have a serious impact on NATO & the Atlantic alliance. Adapted from the source document.

This study argues that guerrilla insurgencies will be a major feature of the post-Cold War international scene, and that the advisability of intervention in some of them will become a serious issue in American politics. Americans therefore need to refine their understanding of insurgency. Anthony James Joes analyzes several major insurgencies of this century, all of which the United States became involved in to one degree or another. While approaching each guerrilla insurgency as a primarily political phenomenon within a definite historical and cultural context, Joes also provides the reader w

Social and political discontent is fa­cilitated by the press of people on people in the packing boxes of the city. Manifestations of disorder range from riots in the urban environment to full-­blown war in cities-—from riots in Watts, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Tokyo, Berlin, London, through the May 1968 revolt in Paris to combat in Hue and Saigon in the 1968 Tet offensive.

Leftist insurgency has been a major form of civil war since 1945. Existing research on revolution has linked leftist rebellions to authoritarianism or blocked democratization. This research overlooks the onset of leftist insurgencies in a number of democracies. This paper theorizes the roots of this distinctive form of civil war, arguing that democracy shapes how these insurgencies begin, acting as a double-edged sword that simultaneously blocks the emergence of a revolutionary coalition and triggers intra-left splits that breed radical splinters. Leftist revolts can thus emerge during "incorporation windows" that trigger disputes within a divided left over electoral co-optation. Empirically, the paper studies all cases of leftist insurgency in southern Asia since 1945, under both autocracy and democracy, as well as a set of non-onset cases. It offers a new direction for understanding varieties of revolutionary mobilization, highlighting ideology, intra-left debate, and the multi-faceted effects of democracy on conflict.

Research on insurgency has been invigorated during this past decade by better data, improved methods, and the urgency of understanding active engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. This "empiricists' insurgency" reinforces a classic literature on the essential role of civilians while challenging older theories about how they affect conflict outcomes. It provides a general framework describing "irregular" insurgencies (where government capacity exceeds rebel capacity), which is analytically cohesive and empirically tested using subnational data from multiple conflicts. The new research provides guidance on intervention design, including governance improvement, development programs, and rules of engagement. The design of interventions matters: Some key evidence comes from measuring the effects of misguided policies. The framework may enable better conceived and implemented interventions, including foreign engagements with and without troop deployment, depending on the type of insurgency and mindful of political limitations. We position these findings in the literature and highlight directions for future research, including legal aspects of countering insurgency.

Abstract
Urban climate insurgency refers to the ensemble of grassroots initiatives aiming to tackle climate change from a radical point of view. Insurgency in this case does not imply violence but rather refers to the radical rejection of the current socioecological system. While explicitly challenging planetary ecocide and climate-change effects, these forms of insurgency target all policies that make the urban condition yet more precarious, demonstrating that climate mobilization is inherently intersectional. The focus here is on the urban dimension of this global climate insurgency that unsettles the dichotomy between rural and urban. It is on the urban terrain, already fissured by racial capitalism but also traversed by antiracist and promigrant movements, that the climate emergency becomes a climate and social justice issue. This introductory essay offers a fresh approach to the new municipalist project and digs into its environmental agenda. From New York to Mälmo, from Rio de Janiero to Istanbul, passing through Jakarta, Bangalore, and Naples, this special issue explores the articulation of radical climate-change politics, the materialization of climate injustices, and grassroots reactions to these injustices in the urban sphere.