David H. Ucko's Blog, page 2

Exhumed and abused: the sorry fate of the Malayan Emergency

The Malayan Emergency is back in the news – again. And once again, bloggers and pundits are invoking this British campaign from the 1950s to say something new about the wars of today. If one were to anthropomorphize the campaign, one would have to feel sorry for the Malayan Emergency: buried only to berepeatedly exhumed and used, in the most simple way, as ammunition for arguments largely unrelated to it. Held up by some as the paragon of counterinsurgencies, it is more frequentlyderided by o...

What to make of Hamas?

Asreported in recent days, Hamas this week announced a shift in its ‘emphasis from armed struggle to non-violent resistance‘. This development ties in to the discussion prompted by thelast KoW postthat dealt with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One question discussed then was the level of threat posed to Israel by the groups and states surrounding it.

Obviously Hamas’ declaration will inform this debate. Since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006 there has been speculation...

Cohen on the GOP candidates’ fawning over Israel

Normally this type of endorsement would be done with a quick hit on Twitter, but I thought Michael Cohen‘s article over at Foreign Policywas so ‘necessary’ (usually such a pretentious way of putting it) that it deserved to be flagged in its own post. It is not that he says anything particularly revolutionary, but rather that he says it at all – and that so few others have done the same.

Cohen assesses the disturbing implications of some of the recent statements by various GOP presidential cand...

Prine Attacks! Again.

It is ironic that my article, which lamented the ‘heated and overly personalized polemic’ about counterinsurgency, has now dragged me deep into it. I say ‘dragged’ because it is with reluctance that I reply to Carl Prine’s latest broadsideagainst the article and my subsequent defence of it(following his initial assault). The reason I do so is Prine’s renewed attempt to undermine my integrity as a researcher – something I take seriously. Sure, my analysis can be wrong, but to accuse me of ‘che...