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Managing Revolution: Cold War Counterinsurgency and Liberal Governance

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / Counterinsurgency doctrine, as an intellectual project, began as a response on the part of liberal world powers to the dual crises of decolonization and the Cold War. Unlike earlier means of suppressing rebellions, counterinsurgency sought not to quash, but to channel the revolutionary energies of decolonization into a liberal, developmentalist direction. Counterinsurgency would simultaneously defeat communists and build a new and better society. As early efforts at developmentalist counterinsurgency failed in Vietnam in the early 1960s, the counterinsurgent’s methods and goals changed. The CORDS Project, starting in 1967, replaced the emphasis on building a new society with altering present societies in such a way as to prioritize surveillance and the removal of subversive elements. From its inception, the political visions that counterinsurgency seeks to implement have shifted alongside – and at times prefigured – changes in liberal governance more broadly. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_108101
Date January 2018
CreatorsBerard, Peter
PublisherBoston College
Source SetsBoston College
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, thesis
Formatelectronic, application/pdf
RightsCopyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.

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