Comment
A Welcome and a Good-bye As of May Ist, we are pleased to welcome Martha Doggett as the new editor of NACLA Report on the Americas. Readers already know the high quality of her work. For the...
...It means understanding the redefinition of "battlefields," and the redefinition of victory, that make LIC something new...
...a Salvadoran writer asked me last week...
...As the article makes clear, the names originally planned to be included as an appendix were released four months after publication of the book...
...No matter what the folks in Washington think, the real test is on the ground...
...This understanding has extended, in Nicaragua, to the point that a new phrase is being used to describe those peasants who may have taken up arms and joined the contras...
...doctrine of low-intensity conflict can't win in Central America...
...in Central America, the structural crisis which called forth a revolutionary response continues to grow...
...We laughed...
...We wish him well in his new endeavors...
...This "strategic defeat" of the contras, however, does not mean the end of the war, or that the United States is left with the single option of direct intervention...
...However, particularly in the case of Nicaragua-where the contra army is clearly not "winning' '"--observers have once again become tempted to predict that a U.S...
...LIC is not just a fad, or a fluke or a flareup in trouble spots: it is the new norm for relations between the United States and the nations of the Third World...
...Tactically, this process points up the Sandinistas' grasp of the nature of the war they are fighting and the success of their defense doctrine, institutionalized as "Patriotic and Popular Warfare...
...More profoundly, insurgencies and revolutions do not exist because of whims...
...The politico-military doctrine of LIC goes beyond tactical methodology, and will continue whether or not specific activities "win...
...strategists who are unable to score a direct military victory over the Sandinistas can continue engaging in counterrevolution by further regionalizing the battlefield...
...Most of us still assume that war-makers conceive of war as a linear activity, with a beginning, an escalation and an outcome...
...intervention will be necessary as a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat...
...The Third World War is not necessarily going to be "won...
...In fact, the Pentagon's own study on low-intensity conflict, the Kupperman Report, redefines victory precisely as "the avoidance of certain outcomes...
...using this formulation, the United States has avoided losing so far...
...None of this, in either the short or medium term, adds up to victory in a conventional sense: but it does mean a prolongation of the war in Central America...
...We tend to swing between triumphalism and a sort of "catastrophism"--either the people are on the continued on page 11 Our apology to Joan Dassin, author of "Time Up for Torturers...
...Based on the doctrine of popular war, this approach is seen by the Sandinistas as a way to respond to low-intensity conflict without overlooking the possibility of a foreign intervention...
...It will take different forms, bring successes at some points and yield ground at others-but it is not being fought with a short-term resolution in mind...
...She is also NACLA's specialist on the hemispheric debt problem and edited the March-April 1985 Report, "Debt: Latin America Hangs in the Balance...
...efforts in El Salvador, as the U.S...
...But U.S...
...The framework of LIC is a way for U.S...
...Report on the Americas, April/May 1986), for misstating on the contents page that...
...Already, the contras have become a more significant political and economic force within Honduran society, and among displaced Nicaraguans there, than they ever were in Nicaragua proper...
...increasing numbers of them are becoming desalzados, as they re-integrate into civilian life...
...media and Latin America and to act as consulting editor to Pantheon Books...
...The counterrevolution-called into being and shaped by the challenge of the Third World-can also, to one degree or another, shape the nature of the revolution...
...Simply on the tactical level, LIC is inherently reactive, a distorted mirror that mimics the rules of a game it didn't invent...
...Within the dynamic of events-diplomatic battles, propaganda initiatives, economic crises and particular military campaigns-victory, in the conventional sense, has become less the point than ever...
...But this assessment does not touch on other factors that make LIC so different from conventional war...
...It is also true that the contras have not disappeared from Nicaragua...
...It says that where there is revolution, there will be counterrevolution...
...Thus, the strategic defeat of the contras probably implies redoubled U.S...
...In their pieces on the subject, Allan Nairn, Joy Hackel and Peter Kornbluh all recognize that the emerging U.S...
...national security establishment is willing to "settle" for such an ambiguous state of affairs...
...But the contras have been effectively denied a social base, and have failed miserably to construct any kind of "dual power" within the country...
...Most attempts by LIC to stop or reverse this process will probably fail, though many will do a great deal of damage, in both quantitative and qualitative terms...
...Southern Command, using its mechanistic interpretation of the "conflict area," takes the offensive where it can...
...The frightening thing about LIC is that winning, as we normally think of it, might not matter so much anymore-at least not as much as does the creation of a system for waging permanent war in the Third World...
...Operating from a framework of lowintensity conflict, U.S...
...As of early 1986, Nicaragua's "strategic defeat" of the contras was fairly well established...
...A rough assessment of the balance of forces would conclude that the popular movements in Central America are frustrating U.S...
...According to an April 1986 analysis by the Managua research institute CRIES, "The contras have assumed more the form of an expeditionary force using methods of irregular warfare, than of an insurgent guerrilla force...
...and it is not going to go away...
...George Black leaves the position of editor, which he has held since September 1983, to write a book on the U.S...
...But activists concerned with the future of Central America should remember that this is exactly what the new generation of low-intensity hawks has in mind...
...verge of their inevitable victory, or the imperialists are on the verge of invading and destroying the region...
...Brazil was rocked by the publication of a book which revealed the names of 444 torturers...
...goals will be different...
...Allan Nairn writes that a "severe limitation" of low-intensity conflict is its ability to "freeze the situation and avoid certain outcomes...
...It involves consolidating territorial defense by involving civilians, the militias and reserves in popular formations that can fight the contras and give any potential invader pause, at the same time recovering the Sandinistas' own guerrilla experience to strengthen the regular Army...
...strategists to engage what they see as an inevitable revolutionary process in the world, and to continue their struggle against it...
...plans now, and will gain as the alternative they offer becomes more clearly the only popular alternative for their societies...
...Such people are considered alzados, or rebels, and not contras...
...Equally important, the doctrine has meant economic initiatives in the countryside designed to address the real needs of the peasantry, and efforts by the Sandinista Army to understand and work with the rural population...
...For the past five years, Martha has been Features Editor of the Report and responsible for making that section of the magazine into a respected forum for understanding the complexity and diversity of the hemisphere...
...Some still doubt that the U.S...
...You think it's GBI enough to stop revolution...
...What this translates into is hard to accept for many Central America activists, who seem unable to come to terms with the prolonged anti-popular warfare strategy of the United States...
...The much more difficult reality requires projecting the struggle, ideologically and organizationally, beyond the short term...
...Low-Intensity: Just Not Losing Sara Miles responds to Nairn, Hackel and Kornbluh: In Central America, they call it GBI-guerra de baja intensidad...
...At the same time, unable to sustain a counterrevolutionary project within the territory of Nicaragua, the United States may simply continue to extend the boundaries of the war geographically, carrying it more comprehensively to Honduras...
...On the grassroots level, as Nairn points out, you can't win a population with anti-popular operations...
...low-intensity strategists have, if you will, discovered dialectics: they understand it as a permanent, global struggle...
...Savage attacks persist in isolated areas, and the elite Jorge Salazar column of the FDN continues to be a military presence in parts of Matagalpa and Boaco...
...She takes her new position after a three-month leave in El Salvador where she worked in a refugee camp...
...LIC is not "won" in the sense that conventional wars are won...
...There are a lot of reasons why it's not enough...
...As the war in Central America continues, the perspective of low-intensity conflict continues to inform its overall direction...
...Added to all of this, and to a dozen other reasons, is the plain fact that the high-profile test for LIC comes in places where even its advocates admit that it's already "too late...
...If the purpose is more to have a war than to win it outright, then U.S...
...A commitment to intellectual excellence, an intense concern always to improve the quality of the Report, an unusual understanding of the anxieties which writers face and the ability to provide them creative assistance have been hallmarks of George's term as editor...
Vol. 20 • July 1986 • No. 4
