"You can't succeed in beating the insurgents unless you can convince the people that they can be protected"
About this Quote
Counterinsurgency, Rand Beers reminds us, isn’t a video game about racking up enemy casualties. It’s a political contest staged in neighborhoods, where the decisive metric is whether ordinary people believe tomorrow will be safer than today. The line lands because it flips the usual battlefield hierarchy: the “center of gravity” isn’t the insurgent force, but the public’s perception of security, and perception here isn’t a soft, optional add-on. It’s the terrain.
The intent is bluntly practical. “You can’t succeed” sets a hard condition: no amount of raids, drones, or checkpoints matters if civilians think cooperation will get them killed. Protection isn’t only body armor and patrols; it’s predictability, rapid response, and the absence of arbitrary violence. Beers’s phrasing - “convince the people” - signals the uncomfortable truth that safety has to be both real and legible. If the population can’t see it, it doesn’t function.
The subtext is a critique of militaries that treat insurgency as a purely kinetic problem. Insurgents thrive on demonstrating state weakness: assassinations after elections, intimidation of local leaders, spectacular attacks that say, “We’ll still be here when the foreigners leave.” Against that, protection becomes a credibility campaign. Every failure to shield informants or keep markets open becomes insurgent propaganda.
Contextually, the quote sits in the post-9/11 era’s hard-earned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, where “winning” regularly meant tactical victories paired with strategic erosion of trust. Beers is naming the wager: legitimacy is built, or broken, at the doorstep.
The intent is bluntly practical. “You can’t succeed” sets a hard condition: no amount of raids, drones, or checkpoints matters if civilians think cooperation will get them killed. Protection isn’t only body armor and patrols; it’s predictability, rapid response, and the absence of arbitrary violence. Beers’s phrasing - “convince the people” - signals the uncomfortable truth that safety has to be both real and legible. If the population can’t see it, it doesn’t function.
The subtext is a critique of militaries that treat insurgency as a purely kinetic problem. Insurgents thrive on demonstrating state weakness: assassinations after elections, intimidation of local leaders, spectacular attacks that say, “We’ll still be here when the foreigners leave.” Against that, protection becomes a credibility campaign. Every failure to shield informants or keep markets open becomes insurgent propaganda.
Contextually, the quote sits in the post-9/11 era’s hard-earned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, where “winning” regularly meant tactical victories paired with strategic erosion of trust. Beers is naming the wager: legitimacy is built, or broken, at the doorstep.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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