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The nature of contemporary conflicts, coupled with the ambition to engage in state-building, suggests that counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations will remain critical challenges to Western armed forces with global expeditionary ambitions. While many armed forces, including the US, have struggled to adjust their organisations and doctrines to these challenges, the British have a legacy as COIN experts by virtue of tradition and culture. However, in Iraq and Afghanistan, British forces have struggled with what may be termed modern 'counterinsurgency' campaigns. The British campaign in southern Iraq highlights the challenges of such complex operations. During initial operations British forces were said to employ best practices learnt in previous campaigns and levels of violence were initially lower in the British-commanded southern provinces than elsewhere in the country. Since then, however, a much more complex and troubling reality has emerged, as British forces were unable to prevent Basra's slide into criminality, insecurity and lawlessness.

Britain's shift in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan in 2006 contributed to operational failure in Basra. As troops deployed to their new theatre, Helmand province, expecting a largely defensive operation, they instead found an escalating insurgency for which resources, manpower and a clear strategy were lacking. Improvements have since been seen across these three fronts, but the British effort still risks being undermined by the broader challenges that mar the Afghan campaign as a whole: the lack of legitimacy on the part of the central government; the shortage of NATO troops to hold captured territory; the inadequacies of indigenous security forces; not to mention the inability and, oftentimes, unwillingness of Pakistan to impose itself in the all-important tribal north-western borderlands.