The minimum force debate: contemporary sensibilities meet imperial practice.

No aspect of British counter-insurgency has been more problematic and controversial than the doctrine of minimum force. This common law principle provided ambiguous guidance for soldiers and police quelling unrest within a global empire and has become the subject of intense scholarly debate in the post-imperial era. The argument divides academics into two broad camps. One group sees minimum force as a vital element of a largely successful, uniquely British approach to counter-insurgency. The other claims that the legal principle never really restrained British security forces and considers the British approach to counter-insurgency neither unique nor particularly successful. This debate appeared in an exchange of views between John Newsinger and the current author in a 1990 volume of Small Wars and Insurgencies and more recently in a similar but lengthier argument between Rod Thornton and Huw Bennett in the same journal between 2007 and 2010. Such disagreements are of course endemic to academic discourse. This one, however, seems to be about more than history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]