Kathryn Sears - Khalili, selections from Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies

Kathryn Sears - Khalili, selections from Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies

            In the first chapter of Laleh Khalili’s Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies, “The Forebearers: Imperial and Colonial Counterinsurgencies” begins with a discussion of asymmetrical war, which “was crucial to the conquest of the Americas, Africa, and Asia.” (12)  Her description of asymmetrical notes the fact that asymmetry does not exactly refer to numerical superiority of the colonizers, rather to the military advantage—such as weapons, disease, etc.—that caused them to have a greater negative impact to the colonized.  While asymmetrical war, once defined, seems rather obvious, Khalili’s discussion is important in how she frames “their access to superior arms and often savage methods of warfare, their utilization of divide and conquer in aligning with local factions (often via economic incentives), their cunning use of treaties and laws on which they reneged unscrupulously, their immediate establishment of centralized governance regimes and intuitions that codified their systems of intimidation and that in nonsettler colonies were mostly successful when deployed via local intermediaries or clients, and their capacity for ruthless suppression of any resistance in war or to their new regimes of rule” in the ensuing chapter does a creates a picture of the power that asymmetrical war had in colonizing and undermining counterinsurgencies (12-13).  Her case studies illustrate the repeated effect of asymmetrical war, the power of more advanced technologies, and how colonization is so difficult to unravel.  It is a multilayered, yet resilient form of oppression.

Discussion Question: How are such tactics of asymmetrical war being utilized in the twenty-first century within the media and the current administration in order to incite fear and hatred of the world outside of the United States?