What does "counterinsurgency" mean?

Any political or military action taken to defeat insurgency, especially during guerrilla warfare.

Counterinsurgency

Common synonyms include: pacification, pacification, antiinsurgency, antiinsurgency, backfire, coin.

noun

noun ·6 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
Any political or military action taken to defeat insurgency, especially during guerrilla warfare. countable, uncountable
"The United States will continue to pursue a military and civilian counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan."
2
actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency wordnet

"The United States will continue to pursue a military and civilian counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan."

From counter- + insurgency.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.