Progressive Counterinsurgency and COIN

Abstract

This last chapter compares and contrasts the Progressive counterinsurgency strategy implemented by John J. Pershing in the Muslim Philippines with twenty-first-century counterinsurgency (COIN) guidelines as set forth in The U.S. Army * Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, first published in 2006. It argues that although modern COIN ideas have much to recommend them, American officers engaged in combatting Islamic militants today would be wise to study Pershing’s full-spectrum but more limited approach to counterinsurgency among Philippine Moros in the early twentieth century.