Andrew Mumford

Proxy Warfare and the Future of Conflict

The contemporary dynamics of proxy warfare will make it a significant feature of the character of conflict in the future. Andrew Mumford identifies four major changes in the nature of modern warfare and argues that they point to a potential increase in the engagement of proxy strategies by states: the decreased public and political appetite in the West for large-scale counter-insurgency ‘quagmires’ against a backdrop of a global recession; the rise in prominence and importance of Private Military Companies (PMCs) to contemporary war-fighting; the increasing use of cyberspace as a platform from which to indirectly wage war; and the ascent of China as a superpower.

The counter-insurgency myth : the British experience of irregular warfare

1. Evaluating the British Approach to Counter-Insurgency Since 1948 2. The Blueprint: Malaya, 1948-60 3. The Transfer: Kenya, 1952-60 4. The Turning Point: Aden & South Arabia, 1962-67 5. The Nadir: Northern Ireland, 1969-1979 6. The Culmination? Iraq, 2003-2009 7. Puncturing the Counter-Insurgency Myth: Britain and Irregular Warfare in the Past, Present and Future

Terrorist Learning: A New Analytical Framework

ABSTRACT Terrorists learn every day to gain further knowledge on how to achieve their violent objectives. Consequently, understanding terrorist learning forms a crucial part of the fight to counter terrorism. However, while existing literature within terrorism studies has examined a number of different parts of the learning process, there currently fails to exist a comprehensive framework to encompass the learning process as a whole. This article will rectify this oversight by drawing on wider learning literature to develop a new analytical framework for terrorist learning that provides a definition, considers the actors involved and identifies processes and outcomes. Consequently, the full landscape of current and potential research in this important area is revealed.

Sir Robert Thompson’s Lessons for Iraq: Bringing the ‘Basic Principles of Counter‐Insurgency’ into the 21st Century

Taylor and Francis FDEF_A_450198.sgm 10.1080/1 7 2430903497809 Defence Studies 470-2436 (pr nt)/1743-9698 (online) Original Article 2 1 & F ancis -2 0 0 00March-June 2010 ANDREWMUMFORD a.p.mumfo @qmail.com Counter-insurgency is back. Since the degeneration of post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq into asymmetric quagmires, the US-led coalition has sought to ‘relearn’ counter-insurgency, and indeed some national militaries have gone further by re-designing their entire counter-insurgency doctrine. 1 The ‘Long War’ on Terror has inadvertently sparked a fundamental reappraisal of this complex and nuanced form of warfare. However, this re-evaluation has been marked by a lack of coherence, politically and militarily. Early American conduct in Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ was marred by an absence of subtlety so crucial in such an operational environment, on a political, cultural and kinetic level. 2 In Washington, the intransigence of the Bush administration to provide appropriate troop numbers combined with an inchoate post-war strategy led to a political malaise that undermined the entire counter-insurgency effort. Counter-insurgency is a term now entered into public parlance, so why is it still so misunderstood? At base it can be perceived that that the essentially political premise of counter-insurgency has been underestimated. French ‘warrior-scholar’ Lieutenant Colonel David Galula asserted back in 1964 that counterinsurgency was ‘20 per cent military action and 80 per cent political’. 3

MINIMUM FORCE MEETS BRUTALITY: DETENTION, INTERROGATION AND TORTURE IN BRITISH COUNTER-INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS

Abstract This paper explores brutality and torture in the history of British counter-insurgency campaigns. Taking as a pretext the British governments announcement in January 2012 to scrap a judicial review into the rendition and torture of UK citizens at Guantanamo Bay by American intelligence operatives with the complicity of British intelligence agencies, the paper posits that the actions this review was supposed to evaluate are not restricted to counter-terrorism. By examining the historical usage of interrogation methods by the British in counter-insurgency campaigns against suspected IRA members in the first decade of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, this article builds a wider frame of reference for the recent controversies surrounding the treatment of detainees during the British occupation of southern Iraq. Although the detention and interrogation of suspects in counter-insurgency campaigns is a necessary security measure, the oft-heralded British adherence to ‘minimum force’ is heavily mythologised given the prevalence of the brutal treatment of detainees. Considering the detrimental impact (in an ethical, legal and security context) that the existence of torture during detention and interrogation had in these cases, the article upholds an absolutist position on the prohibition of torture.

Unnecessary or unsung? The utilisation of airpower in Britain's colonial counterinsurgencies

Making extensive use of primary archival documents, this article seeks to explore whether airpower in three of Britains most significant post-war colonial counterinsurgency campaigns, Malaya, Kenya and South Arabia, was an unnecessary part of British strategy, offering little useful military force due to the futility and strategic damage rendered by offensive bombardment, or whether airpower was indeed an unsung factor that provided operational flexibility through its effectiveness in a supply context, as well as its intelligence role in providing valuable aerial reconnaissance. In all three case studies the role played by the RAF in medical evacuations, in troop drops, in crop spraying during food-denial initiatives, and in providing ‘Voice Aircraft’ for the propaganda campaign, provide insights into an under-explored component of Britains politico-military efforts in counterinsurgency in the 1950s and 1960s and suggests that the main strategic value of airpower in counterinsurgency, then and now, lies in its non-kinetic functions.

Proxy Wars and the Contemporary Security Environment

The chapter is structured as follows: first, attention is be paid to the issue of theorising proxy wars. The chapter defines proxy wars by observing how they differ from cases of third-party military intervention. Here, the focus is on differentiating the Proxy Agent from third parties such as mediators or auxiliaries. Second, the chapter addresses the question of ‘Why do states engage in proxy wars?’, and attempts an examination of contenting and competing explanations. These two aims are then put to the empirical test. By using two recent and ongoing cases of proxy wars, the theoretical discussion is brought into the empirical realm. The chosen cases are, first, the situation in Ukraine emerging from the 2013 protests and culminating with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and, second, the collapse of the Syrian state and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Because proxy wars have generally been linked to the Cold War period and, thus, came to be associated with a superpower practice of avoiding direct interaction, the chapter moves away from discussing classic proxy wars such as the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’etat, the civil war in Angola (1975–2002), or the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia (1977–1978). A view from a post-Cold War security standpoint significantly expands our understanding of this ever-present security problem.

Policing in Kenya during the Mau Mau Emergency, 1952-60

Bennett, H. C., Mumford, A. (2014). Policing in Kenya during the Mau Mau Emergency, 1952-60. In Fair, C. C., & Ganguly, S. (Eds.), Policing Insurgencies. (pp. 83-106). New York: Oxford University Press.