India’s counterinsurgency knowledge: theorizing global position in wars on terror

Machold, R. (2022) India’s counterinsurgency knowledge: theorizing global position in wars on terror. Small Wars and Insurgencies, 33(4-5), pp. 796-818. (doi: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2034352)

Abstract

Within recent critical debates about the geographies and circulations of counterinsurgency knowledge, scholars have focused primarily on dominant centres of power and authority in the global North. Building a framework drawn from critical geography, this article decentres these locations and actors by exploring the global production and circulation of counterinsurgency knowledge from the vantage point of Indian strategic thinkers. Focusing on the work of the Indian think tank the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), the article traces how Indian counterinsurgency knowledge has been produced, packaged and circulated transnationally since the late 1990s. It argues the power and utility that forms of counterinsurgency knowledge command – Indian or otherwise – are never reducible to the essential features of what actors or texts say. Rather, it suggests that counterinsurgency knowledge is produced through particular relations and locations of power-knowledge that define what they represent and where they fit in. It theorizes forms of counterinsurgency knowledge as positions within broader transnational forces, entwined with colonial histories of pacification. In doing so, it illuminates the contestations and forms of work in staging or organizing the world through practices that make some forms, actors, and locations important and relegate others to the peripheries of global politics.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Machold, Dr Rhys
• Authors: Machold, R.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
• Journal Name: Small Wars and Insurgencies
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 0959-2318
• ISSN (Online): 1743-9558
• Published Online: 24 February 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Author
• First Published: First published in Small Wars and Insurgencies 33(4-5): 796-818
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License