Population and Affective Perception: Biopolitics and Anticipatory Action in US Counterinsurgency Doctrine Ben Anderson Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK; Ben.anderson@durham.ac.uk Abstract: This paper analyses the biopolitical logics of current US counterinsurgency doctrine in the context of the multiple forms of biopower that make up the “war on terror”. It argues that counterinsurgency doctrine aims to prevent spectral networked insurgencies by intervening on the “environment” of insurgent formation—the relations between three different enactments of “population” (species being, logistical life and ways of life) and a fourth—affectively imbued perception. Counterinsurgency is best characterised, then, as an “environmentality” (Foucault M 2008 The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Coll´ ege De France, 1978–1979. Translated by G Burchell. London: Palgrave Macmillan) that redeploys elements from other forms of biopolitics alongside an emphasis on network topologies, future-orientated action and affective perception. Keywords: counterinsurgency, war on terror, biopolitics, perception, population Introduction In December 2007 the US Army released approximately 40,000 copies of a sequel to the infamous “most wanted” deck of playing cards first issued in 2003. If the 2003 pack expressed military violence in its purist form—the desire to target and kill—the 2007 pack was taken to express and herald counterinsurgency as a new way of fighting an “asymmetric war” against “terrorists”, “violent extremists” and “insurgents”. In contrast to the 2003 deck, the theme of the 2007 deck was “Preserving Heritage”. 1 The deck expressed a change in warfighting—from catastrophic techniques that damage and destroy life to providential techniques that repair and improve life (Ophir 2007). As such a public hope has subsequently been attached to counterinsurgency—to restore belief in the virtue of the American military post Abu Ghraib (Gregory 2008a)—at the same time as it expresses a violent promise—the promise of a better way of defeating an enemy. Realising these hopes and promises requires, however, developing new emotional or affective tools of war to supplement the bombs and bullets of forms of military violence. The Queen of Hearts, for example, calls for a display of emotion from the military by declaring Antipode Vol. 43 No. 2 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 205–236 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00804.x C  2010 The Author Journal compilation C  2010 Editorial Board of Antipode.