Countering Guerrilla Warfare:
ROSTOW, W. W.
Countering Guerrilla Warfare By W W Rostow When the Kennedy Administration came to responsibility it faced four major crises: Cuba, the Congo, Laos and Vietnam. Each represented a...
...There are many ways in which we can help—and we are searching our minds and our imaginations to learn better how to help...
...has the primary responsibility for deterring the use of nuclear weapons in the pursuit of Communist ambitions...
...Like all revolutions, the revolution of modernization is disturbing...
...For this is not—and cannot be—the mission of Communism...
...The U.S...
...Where we have military pacts we have them because governments feel directly endangered by outside military action, and we are prepared to help protect their independence against such military action...
...The American interest will be served if our children live in an environment of strong, assertive, independent nations, capable because they are strong, of assuming collective responsibility for the peace...
...And we deeply believe that this victory will come—on both sides of the Iron Curtain...
...What is our reply to this historical conception and strategy...
...but a guerrilla war must be fought primarily by those on the spot...
...The operation of Marion's men in relation to the Battle of Cowpens in the American Revolution was governed by rules which Mao Tse-tung merely echoes...
...Each represented a successful Communist breaching—over the previous two years —of the cold war truce lines which had emerged from World War II and its aftermath...
...We are dedicated to the proposition that this revolutionary process of modernization shall be permitted to go forward in independence, with increasing degrees of human freedom...
...This is a fact which the whole international community must confront and whose consequent responsibilities it must accept...
...In facing the problem of guerrilla war, I have one observation to make as a historian...
...Moreover, we Americans are confident that, if the independence of this process can be maintained over the coming years and decades, these societies will choose their own version of what we would recognize as a democratic, open society...
...Despite all the Communist talk of aiding movements of national independence, they are driven in the end, by the nature of their system, to violate the independence of nations...
...The Cuban revolution against Fulgencio Batista was a broadbased national insurrection...
...And in time, through the fog of propaganda and the honest confusions of men caught up in the business of making new nations, this fundamental difference will become increasingly clear in the southern half of the world...
...And, as President Kennedy has made clear, he regards no program of his Administration as more important than his program for long-term economic development, dramatized, for example, by the Alliance for Progress in Latin America...
...BUT THE preservation of independence has many dimensions...
...This attempt is a present danger in Southeast Asia...
...The orchestration of professional troops, militia and guerrilla fighters is an old game whose rules can be studied and learned...
...and each had a guerrilla warfare component...
...Our job is not merely to accept the risks of war and to master its skills...
...The same religious and philosophical beliefs which decree that we respect the uniqueness of each individual, make it natural that we respect the uniqueness of each national society...
...has a major responsibility to deter the kind of overt aggression with conventional forces which was launched in June 1950 in Korea...
...A guerrilla war is an intimate affair, fought not merely with weapons but fought in the minds of the men who live in the villages and in the hills...
...Guerrilla warfare is not a form of military and psychological magic created by the Communists...
...But, to use Mao Tse-tung's famous phrase, we do not seek nations which "lean to one side...
...Our job is to work with those doctors, teachers, economic planners, agricultural experts, civil servants and others who are now leading the way in fashioning new nations and societies that will stand up straight and assume in time their rightful place of dignity and responsibility in the world...
...In different ways, each had arisen from the efforts of the international Communist movement to exploit the inherent instabilities of the underdeveloped areas of the non-Communist world...
...For the guerrilla warfare problem in these regions is a product of that revolutionary process and the Communist effort and intent to exploit it...
...These are, at best, half truths...
...and we have no reason to fear it on the world scene...
...What this victory involves—in the end—is the assertion by nations of their right to independence and by men and women of their right to freedom as they understand it...
...It takes somewhere between 10 and 20 soldiers to control one guerrilla in an organized operation...
...What is happening throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia is this: Old societies are changing their ways in order to create and maintain a national personality on the world scene, and to bring to their peoples the benefits modern technology can offer...
...I suspect that, in the end, the real meaning of the conference on Laos at Geneva will hinge on this question: whether or not the international community is prepared to mount an International Control Commission which has the will and the capacity to control the borders it was designed to control...
...Independence cannot be maintained by military measures alone...
...There will be no peace in the world if the international community accepts the outcome of a guerrilla war, mounted from outside a nation, as tantamount to a free election...
...And we do so for a reason: because we are deeply confident that nations which stand up straight will protect their independence and move in their own ways and in their own time toward human freedom and political democracy...
...These are our commitments of policy and of faith...
...The truth is that guerrilla warfare, mounted from external bases—with rights of sanctuary—is a terrible burden to carry for any government in a society making its way toward modernization...
...he can help create conditions in which it can be won, and he can directly assist those prepared to fight for their independence...
...And whatever Communist doctrines of historical inevitability may be, Communists know that their time to seize power in the underdeveloped areas is limited...
...The power of old social groups—notably the landlord who usually dominates the traditional society—is reduced...
...We seek two results: first, that truly independent nations shall emerge on the world scene...
...It is an extremely dangerous operation and it could overwhelm Vietnam if the Vietnamese, aided by the free world, do not deal with it...
...My point is that we are up against a form of warfare which is powerful and effective only when we do not put our minds clearly to work on how to deal with it...
...It could quickly become a major danger in Africa and Latin America...
...They believe that the weak transitional governments one is likely to find during this modernization process are highly vulnerable to subversion and to guerrilla warfare...
...This article is adapted from - longer speech made by Rostow to recent graduates, representing 19 countries...
...It will be a victory of men and nations which aim to stand up straight, over the forces which wish to entrap and to exploit their revolutionary aspirations of modernization...
...Cuba's Che Guevara knows nothing of this business that T. E. Lawrence did not know or was not practiced in the Peninsular Campaign during the Napoleonic wars, a century earlier...
...Moreover, the guerrilla force has this advantage: Its task is merely to destroy, while the government must build and protect what it is building...
...Thus, our central task in the underdeveloped areas, as we see it, is to protect the independence of the revolutionary process now going forward...
...My view is, then, that we confront in guerrilla warfare in the underdeveloped areas a systematic attempt by the Communists to impose a serious disease on those societies attempting the transition to modernization...
...This is so for a quite particular reason...
...Individual men are torn between the commitment to the old and familiar way of life and the attractions of a modern way of life...
...There is no rule or parable in the Communist texts which was not known at an earlier time in history...
...We, too, recognize that a revolutionary process is under way...
...The U.S...
...They believe that the techniques of political centralization under dictatorial control, and the projected image of Soviet and Chinese Communist economic progress, will persuade hesitant men faced by great transitional problems that the Communist model should be adopted for modernization, even at the cost of surrendering human liberty...
...We seek nations which will stand up straight...
...They believe that their techniques of organization, based on small disciplined cadres of conspirators, are ideally suited to grasp and to hold power in these turbulent settings...
...The diffusion of power is the basis for freedom within our own society...
...Power moves toward those who can command the tools of modern technology, including modern weapons...
...that is, guerrilla war designed, initiated, supplied and led from outside an independent nation...
...Cuba, of course, differed from the other cases...
...More than that, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in his report to the November conference of 81 Communist parties (published January 6), explained at great length that the Communists fully support what he called wars of national liberation and would march in the front rank with the peoples waging such struggles...
...Finally, the United States has a role to play in learning to deter guerrilla warfare, if possible, and to deal with it, if necessary...
...This requires, of course, not merely a proper military program of deterrence, but programs of village development, communications and indoctrination...
...And this can be done...
...An outsider cannot, by himself, win a guerrilla war...
...And the truth will out...
...It is important that the world fully understand, for example, that the operation run from Hanoi against Vietnam is as clear a form of aggression as the violation of the 38th parallel by the North Korean armies in June 1950...
...They are the scavengers of the modernization process...
...has no interest in political satellites...
...Men and women in the villages and the cities, feeling that the old ways of life are shaken and that new possibilities are open to them, express old resentments and new hopes...
...Although, as leader of the free world, the United States has special responsibilities which it accepts in this common venture of deterrence, it is important that the whole international community begin to accept its responsibility for dealing with this form of aggression...
...A guerrilla war mounted from outside a transitional nation is a crude act of international vandalism...
...When Communists speak of wars of national liberation and of their support for "progressive forces," I think of the systematic program of assassination now going forward in which the principal victims are the health, agriculture and education officers in the Vietnam villages...
...But it is an unsubtle operation, by the book, based more on murder than on political or psychological appeal...
...They know that, as momentum takes hold in an underdeveloped area and the fundamental social problems inherited from the traditional society are solved, their chances to seize power decline...
...Here W. W. Rostow, Deputy Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, explains the U.S.' goals in creating the program...
...Despite all the Communist talk of American imperialism, we are committed, by the nature of our system, to support the cause of national independence...
...They tell me that guerrilla warfare cannot be won unless the peoples are dissatisfied...
...I do not need to tell you that the primary responsibility for dealing with guerrilla warfare in the underdeveloped areas cannot be American...
...We are determined to help destroy this international disease...
...The U.S...
...With resolution and confidence on all sides and with the assumption of international responsibility for the frontier problem, I believe we are going to bring this threat to the independence of Vietnam under control...
...The Viet Cong are not trying to persuade the peasants of Vietnam that Communism is good: They are trying to persuade them that their lives are insecure unless they cooperate with them...
...They believe that they can exploit effectively the resentments built up in many of these areas against colonial rule, and that they can associate themselves effectively with the desire of the emerging nations for independence, for status on the world scene and for material progress...
...The U.S...
...Thus, it is on the weakest nations, facing their most difficult transitional moments, that the Communists concentrate their attention...
...fought by the spirit and policy of those who run the local government...
...Faced with these four crises, pressing in on the President from day to day, and faced with Khrushchev's candidly stated position, we have, indeed, begun to take the problem of guerrilla warfare seriously...
...The U.S...
...Similarly, I am confident that we can deal with the kind of operation now under way in Vietnam...
...Without such international action those against whom aggression is directed will be driven inevitably to seek out and engage the ultimate source of the aggression they confront...
...It touches every aspect of the traditional life: economic, social and political...
...The increasing use of guerrilla warfare by the Communists in such places as Laos and Vietnam has led President Kennedy to establish the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for men from underdeveloped countries...
...This will not be a victory of the United States over the Soviet Union...
...This process is truly revolutionary...
...second, that each nation shall be permitted to fashion, out of its own culture and its own ambitions, the kind of modern society it wants...
...The victory we seek will take many years and decades of hard work and dedication—by many peoples—to bring about...
...We are struggling to maintain an environment on the world scene which will permit our open society to survive and to flourish...
...has a special responsibility of leadership in bringing not merely its own resources but the resources of all the free world to bear in aiding the long-run development of nations that are serious about modernizing their economies and their social life...
...It will not be a victory of capitalism over socialism...
...But that revolution was tragically captured from within by the Communist apparatus, and now Latin America faces the danger of Cuba's being used as the base for training, supply and direction of guerrilla warfare in the Hemisphere...
...The military arm of Khrushchev's doctrine is, clearly, guerrilla warfare...
...But this outcome would be a defeat for Communism—not ior Russia as a national state, but for Communism...
...What is the American purpose and the American strategy...
...To understand this problem, however, one must begin with the great revolutionary process that is going forward in the southern half of the world...
...Modern societies must be built, and we are prepared to build them...
...This is the grand arena of revolutionary change which the Communists are exploiting with great energy...
...The introduction of modern technology brings about not merely new methods of production but a new style of family life, new links between the villages and the cities, the beginnings of national politics, and a new relationship to the world outside...
...has the primary responsibility for assisting the economies of those hard pressed states on the periphery of the Communist bloc that are under acute military or quasi-military pressure which they cannot bear from their own resources, e.g., South Korea, Vietnam, Formosa, Pakistan, Iran...
...In my conversations with representatives of foreign governments, I am sometimes lectured that this or that government within the free world is not popular...
...I, for one, believe that, with purposeful efforts, most nations which might now be susceptible to guerrilla warfare could handle their border areas in ways which would make them very unattractive to the initiation of this Ugly game...
...This is our mission and it is our ultimate strength...
...We can learn to prevent the emergence of the famous sea in which Mao taught his men to swim...
...The best way to fight a guerrilla war is to prevent it from happening...
...The sending of men and arms across international boundaries and the direction of guerrilla war from outside a sovereign nation is aggression...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 29
