This chapter briefly surveys the intellectual history of modern, western counterinsurgency theory, as conservative, high modernist utopianism. It sets out concise and synoptic evidence for the argument, which serves as context for the later case chapters. I focus on counterinsurgency manuals—applied theoretical texts written by counterinsurgency practitioners, aiming to shape battlefield and political conduct. Manuals link theory and practice, connecting idealized military and political theory to the history of on-the-ground conduct. My approach is primarily contextualist. Proceeding chronologically, I draw connections and contrasts between canonical manuals, from the early modern period to the present. While small wars or counterinsurgency manuals were conservative from early on, high modernism and utopianism emerged only gradually and incidentally, taking multiple forms. I show how ideas cross-pollinated across texts, accumulating scattershot political idealizations and military practices alike. In so doing, I link micro-level individual intellectual change with larger historical processes, at the global level.

The concluding chapter reviews the book’s findings, then considers implications for ongoing conflicts globally. Counterinsurgency and cognate ideas, I argue, are likely to persist, whatever their past failures and ambivalent reception. I consider potential future developments, in a period of reactionary politics and “the empire come home.” Alternatives are nonetheless possible.

This chapter introduces the study and sets out a framework for investigating counterinsurgency’s intellectual history. I argue late twentieth and early twenty-first century counterinsurgency is a form of conservative, high modern utopianism. It is conservative in aiming to protect a given status quo against revolution or other transformative change. Counterinsurgency is “high modernist” in James C. Scott’s sense: it imagines a linear, schematized world, effacing local difference and resistance—in line with modern ideologies of progress. It is utopian in aiming to (re)make not actually existing systems and practices, but instead the idealized preferences of their elites, shorn of compromise, incidental variation, and historical specificity. Counterinsurgencies are thus conservative worldmaking projects: attempts to reimagine and reorder the world, in response to insurrection. The book’s purpose is the explain how this configuration of armed politics arose. To do so, it focuses on counterinsurgency manuals: the military theoretical and instructional texts designed to make counterinsurgency doable in practice.

A presentation of the concluding remarks and main submissions on the issues discussed in Chapters 1 to 6 of the book.

Chapter 6 examines whether the weapons review obligation as formulated under Article 36 could have now attained customary international law status with the consequence that even States not party to Additional Protocol I are equally required to review weapons for their compliance with applicable international law. This issue remains contentious in the legal literature, with some commentators supporting the customary nature of Article 36 and others being less certain of this obligation. The chapter argues that, in the absence of ‘extensive and virtually uniform’ State practice showing that new weapons, means and methods of warfare are reviewed at the earliest stage in the acquisition process as a matter of law, no customary rule mirroring Article 36 exists. The chapter also demonstrates that, contrary to the argument advanced in the expert literature, an obligation narrower in scope – requiring States to review weapons ‘before fielding’ – also cannot be ascertained. Such an argument is simply not persuasive given the lack of required State practice and opinio juris. [164 words]