Not so extraordinary: the democratisation of UK counterinsurgency strategy

This article argues that recent developments in UK counterinsurgency strategy and

subsequent counterterror legislation have been informed and enabled by military and

political interventions in Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. The article contains three

interconnecting arguments. First, that UK counterterrorism policies since the intervention

in Afghanistan are an extension of previous practices in Northern Ireland during

the 1970s and 1980s, rather than representing a new phase in security strategy. Second,

that the articulation of the external terror threat by successive UK governments since

9/11 has led to a blurring of emergency law into domestic governance and a movement

of this emergency legislation from the colonial periphery into the metropolitan centre.

Third, the article argues that the techniques at the heart of these counterinsurgency

efforts risk hollowing out the values they are supposed to uphold and defend.