Article ‘‘Legitimate Violence’’ in the Prose of Counterinsurgency: An Impossible Necessity? Christian Olsson 1 Abstract Drawing on a critical engagement with the claims made by (and interpretations of) the 2006 US army and marine corps field manual on ‘‘Counterinsurgency,’’ this article engages some of its underlying concerns with the problematic relation between violence, legitimacy, and political order. Since this manual draws heavily on many commonplaces of contemporary political science, the analysis explores their problematic presuppositions and the ways in which they play out in contemporary warfare. The primary conclusion is that while the encounter of legitimacy and violence is claimed by the doctrine to produce and maintain political order, its framing of this encounter is deeply rooted in a specific political order, that of the modern state, which severely constrains the conditions under which this encounter can take place. These constraints cast serious doubts on many of the doctrine’s assertions, especially as they have shaped recent wars in Afghanistan and, until recently, in Iraq. Keywords counterinsurgency, warfare, policing, legitimate violence, political order, pacification Counterinsurgency doctrine, as (claimed to be) applied by Western armed forces in Afghanistan, and until recently Iraq, is said to place ‘‘legitimacy in the eyes of the local population’’ at the heart of military action. References to legitimacy, legitimation, legitimate authority, legitimating narratives, and legitimate force are all over contemporary discourses on ‘‘war amongst the population’’ and, obviously, references to Max Weber are never far away. 1 In the joint US Army and US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency doctrine of December 2006 (Field Manual 3–24, henceforth FM 3–24), ‘‘legiti- macy’’ and its derivative terms appear 131 times in the 282 pages. 2 The mantra of ‘‘legitimate vio- lence’’ appears as the deus ex machina that separates ‘‘pacifying force’’ from ‘‘radicalizing violence.’’ 3 It will come as no surprise that the relation between violence and legitimacy is severely under- theorized in this context, including (and perhaps especially) by the academics acting as the prince’s counselors in these ‘‘savage wars of peace:’’ 4 is it its grounding in the decision of an allegedly legit- imate authority that is to make force legitimate? Is it the use of force, with the affirmed objective of ‘‘protecting local populations,’’ that creates legitimate authority? And why resort to force if one is 1 Universite ´ Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium Corresponding Author: Christian Olsson, Universite ´ Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium. Email: christian.olsson@ulb.ac.be Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(2) 155-171 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0304375413486332 alt.sagepub.com