| Ever since Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer proclaimed that "the answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people," common wisdom suggests that the key to military victory in counterinsurgency is "winning hearts and minds." As interpreted in modern doctrine, Templer's dictum requires that the counterinsurgent promote economic, social and political reforms (to give everyone a "stake" in society) and minimize its use of force (to avoid popular backlash). My dissertation shows that 1) historically, most successful counterinsurgencies have not been fought this way; 2) when this approach has been tried, it rarely proves effective; and 3) instead, military victory comes from successful population control. Population control, in turn, employs some combination of three sets of tactics: physical measures (e.g. walls, resource controls and forced resettlement), cooption (of local elite and often the insurgents themselves) and "divide and rule" strategies. I demonstrate these claims through detailed analyses of four influential modern counterinsurgencies---the Malayan Emergency, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, along with a study of local opinion data from the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghan Wars. Ultimately, as far as military victory is concerned, whether the counterinsurgent wins "hearts and minds" matters far less than whether it can control them. |
