Foreign internal defense
approach to combating actual or threatened insurgency
Foreign internal defense (FID) is a term used by the military in several countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, to describe an integrated or multi-country approach to combating actual or threatened insurgency in a foreign state. This foreign state is known as the Host Nation (HN) under the US (and generally accepted NATO) doctrine. The term counter-insurgency is commonly used for FID.
FID involves military deployment of counter-insurgency specialists. According to the US doctrinal manual, Joint Publication 3-22: Foreign Internal Defense (FID), these specialists occasionally get involved with the actual fighting. This doctrine calls for a close working relationship between the Host Nation government and security specialists, which could include diplomatic, information, intelligence, military, economic, and other specialties. A successful FID action is one that leads to the suppression of actual violence. If combat operations are required, Host Nation security forces take the lead. FID is tasked with external support and training where required.
Definition
Formally, FID is defined as "Participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency."
Instruments of national power
FID is a multinational and interagency effort that requires the integration and synchronization of many different factions of national power.
The joint forces that make up the FID effort, support other instruments of national power as well,(diplomatic, information/intelligence, economic, etc.) to protect and enhance Host Nation security interests.
“Foreign internal defense” enters the record as approach to combating actual or threatened insurgency. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Foreign, internal and defense can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5468408.
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This entry incorporates text from “Foreign internal defense” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.