The Antinomies of Population-Centric Warfare: Cultural Respect and the Treatment of Women and Children in U.S. Counterinsurgency Operations

There is tension between three of the U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine's central goals: the restoration of security, democratization, and cultural respect. These goals are particularly difficult to reconcile when it comes to the treatment of women and children in contested areas. Those groups have unique security concerns that are margin-alized in the U.S. military's conceptions of security and they may be victims of violence that is tacitly permitted by efforts to show cultural respect. After discussing these problems as they appear in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine the author shows how they shape events in real operations with the help of interviews conducted with veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.