Konstruktive Kriege?

Abstract

During the 1950s, several European colonial powers invented new types of warfare, combining military violence, social engineering, and forced "modernization" in their battles for hearts and minds. This article explores the rediscovery of such techniques and the subsequent emergence of refined and partly tamed versions of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past decade. The systematic application of anthropological knowledge, a new type of "warrior intellectual" among the military leaders, and the representation of war as a necessarily armed formof developmental aid represent a remarkably open appropriation of large parts of Europe's violent late-colonial heritage.