Between Tactical Success and Strategic Failure: Rethinking Effectiveness in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency

16 June 2026

The contribution, "Between Tactical Success and Strategic Failure: Rethinking Effectiveness in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency", by Laurence Jost, has been published in the CISS Munich Working Paper series. Since the 1990s, and particularly following 9/11, Western counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrines have emphasised legitimacy, population protection, and civil-military integration. In practice, however, these strategies have repeatedly defaulted to short-term, kinetic approaches that prioritise measurable outputs over sustainable political outcomes. Drawing on cases such as Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, the paper highlights a persistent gap between tactical success and strategic effectiveness. The paper argues that this gap is not only rooted in operational challenges, but also in a fundamental problem of measurement: commonly used indicators, such as kill counts or disrupted networks, fail to capture the decisive factor of legitimacy.

Drawing on recent research into evaluation frameworks, this paper sets out how the effectiveness of counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN) could be assessed more systematically by integrating political and societal indicators, such as public trust, local cooperation and institutional resilience. Without shifting towards an evidence-based, multidimensional approach, the risk is that Western counterterrorism efforts will remain trapped in a cycle of short-term efficiency and long-term instability.

The article can be downloaded here.

More information on the Working Paper Series of CISS Munich can be found here.

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