Counterinsurgency in the age of geopolitics: a new dawn or a new death?

In the context of great power rivalry and the war in Ukraine, comparatively little attention is paid to counterinsurgency (COIN). Classes are closing down in military academies, fewer scholars are working on the topic, and less funding is being allocated to research. However, we argue that counterinsurgency will return to the agenda. Furthermore, the military failures in Afghanistan, Iraq and the ‘forever wars’ in the global ‘wars of terror’ compel us to examine the quality and usefulness of established COIN concepts and knowledge. This special issue contributes to the post-Afghanistan COIN discourse by exploring ongoing, yet often overlooked, counterinsurgency campaigns in East Africa through the lens of recent approaches to COIN, such as elite accommodation and brutalization. Using multiple theoretical approaches, we demonstrate why problems are often encountered when general and over-simplified COIN theories are applied on the ground.