COIN through the eyes of Bourdieu: American legitimation practices in Iraq 2007-2009: American legitimation practices in Iraq 2007-2009

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 initiated a three-year process of transition in which the US military retooled itself – in training, doctrine, equipment, and personnel policies – to fight the irregular wars that many thought would be the primary security challenge of the 21st century. In Iraq, a model of expeditionary counterinsurgency (COIN) was rediscovered, and the concept of political legitimacy was explicitly placed at the centre of military and interagency doctrine as the US struggled to stabilize its new Middle Eastern democratic project. For a time during and immediately following the 2007-2008 Iraq Surge, it seemed that legitimacy-oriented expeditionary COIN was to be the answer the US was seeking for Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. <br/><br/>Today, things look quite different. As tensions have risen with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and as it has become clear that US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed to achieve most of their associated political objectives, the US military has once again transitioned away from irregular warfare concepts, capabilities and doctrine in favor of deterrenceoriented preparation for high-end near-peer contingencies around the globe. Yet despite the excellent work done by academics and practitioners alike to reflect upon COIN in the modern era, there are still critical questions that are unanswered about how and why the US failed to achieve its objectives in what has been dubbed the ‘counterinsurgency decade’. In Iraq, specifically, where America’s legitimacy-oriented expeditionary COIN model was invented, the question of what the Surge accomplished has been answered, but the question of how it was (or was not) accomplished has not, to date, been rigourously examined. As we look toward future conflicts in the information age, this central question of legitimation is likely to become increasingly important. <br/><br/>The core research question driving this thesis – to what extent and how was the United States able to legitimize the government of Iraq between 2007 and 2009 through its counterinsurgency practices – is designed to look anew at the US experience in Iraq, through the lens of counterinsurgency’s core logic of legitimation. The originality of the argument in this thesis, aside from its central focus on COIN as a process of legitimation, lies in its theoretical and methodological approach. Using a Bourdieusian sociological framework to conduct analysis of practices as patterned and repeated actions allows for a unique approach to bridging the structure-agent divide. By tracing COIN ‘practices’ as the ontological focal point and unit of analysis within the single case study of Iraq, the thesis is able to integrate structure and agency and focus on the operations and interactions that shaped the cognitive and physical battlespaces in Iraq during the Surge. The ontology of practice is central to both the theoretical and methodological frameworks used in this thesis, which are linked by a Pragmatist epistemology that is neither overly dogmatic nor relativist in its commitments to truth claims. Acknowledging the contingent and evolving character of human interaction and warfare alike, the findings in this thesis are considered to valid until proven otherwise. <br/><br/>

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral Thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Queen's University Belfast

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Brammer, Alexander

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Thomson, Andrew
• Bryan, Dominic

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

oai:pure.qub.ac.uk/portal:studenttheses/78ad74b9-b4cc-4dc2-8a25-2160e58de86e

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:pure.qub.ac.uk/portal:studenttheses/78ad74b9-b4cc-4dc2-8a25-2160e58de86e