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Counterinsurgency is perhaps the most context-dependent activity in which militaries engage — U.S. "small-footprint" interventions have typically succeeded in highly favorable conditions, where few of the insurgencies occur.

• "Success stories" in small-footprint U.S. interventions on behalf of partner governments have occurred in countries with relatively inclusive politics and reasonable levels of state capacity.
• Most insurgencies target governments that are weak in inclusion and in capacity. Such regimes gravitate toward counterinsurgency practices relying on blunt, abusive military force.
• The United States should seldom expect a productive counterinsurgency partnership with a regime whose character must be transformed to achieve a favorable outcome.

Nevertheless, the United States can support difficult partner regimes in exploiting settlement opportunities, improving security force accountability, and buttressing more inclusive successor governments.

• Given the duration of most contemporary insurgencies and the length of time it typically takes to build state capacity or institutionalize mechanisms of political inclusion, most U.S. partnerships in such contexts will be long-term.
• The United States can help partner regimes credibly commit to political compromises with reconcilable elements of the armed opposition through a variety of instruments, potentially including large-scale commitments of foreign aid and, in some contexts, international peace operations.
• Security forces that do not include members of the same ethnic or religious affiliation as the population in which they are operating are at particularly high risk of abusive behavior.