LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT: Is it Live or is it Memorex?
Hackel, Joy & Kornbluh, Peter
On January 14, 1986, the concept of low-intensity conflict emerged from the backrooms of the Pentagon and the hallways of right-wing think tanks into the spotlight of national attention. The...
...Long-time evangelists of low-intensity conflict such as AnPeter Kornbluh and Joy Hackel work at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington D.C...
...They had outgrown their singleminded foco tactics of the 1960s and become more sophisticated in their political strategy...
...Recognizing these shortcomings, the Administration has already submitted plans to the congressional intelligence committees to transform the contras from a proxy force into a genuine "national liberation movement'"-as if that were possible...
...The Salvadorean military, similarly, has taken effective steps to institutionalize irregular warfare, including the reorganization of infantry brigades into "hunter battalions" and rapid deployment forces, and has augmented its air power to ensure troop mobility...
...Miles believes that it does...
...All it takes is the will and resources to get the job done...
...blockade of aid, trade and multilateral development assisJUNE 1986 tance, and CIA/contra attacks on villages, warehouses, industrial facilities and the civilian population-have certainly taken a heavy toll on the Nicaraguan economy...
...A March 1961 issue of the Army journal Military Review defined a strategy of offensive political warfare as "a sustained effort by a government or political group to seize, preserve or extend power, against a defined ideological enemy...
...Mismanagement and corruption are endemic in the government and the military, while the continuing flight of capital into Miami real estate and Swiss bank accounts undermines U.S...
...In Washington, however, the Reagan strategy of couching the resurrection of U.S...
...The new generation of revoluLow-intensity: Out of the closet tionary governments that emerged in the mid- and late-1970s, and the advancing guerrilla wars in El Salvador, the Philippines and South Africa, created a crisis of control for U.S...
...We face "a matrix of different kinds of challenges, varying in scope and scale," Secretary Shultz told the audience...
...policymakers respond to this new set of circumstances abroad...
...The Central American Laboratory By accentuating the innovative aspects of low-intensity conflict, The Real War may overplay its success on the battlefield...
...But is it "a JUNE 1986 I 9radical departure," as Miles argues, from previous military thinking on war in the Third World...
...And while private "humanitarian" aid may indeed be a component of lowintensity conflict, mainstream private voluntary organizations, such as CARE and Catholic Relief Services, have declined to take part in the politically charged pacification effort...
...The national press turned out in force and dutifully reported the proceedings...
...As a military strategy, low-intensity conflict reflects that reality...
...Government agencies mandated to assist the displaced are unable to coordinate either among themselves or with the military...
...However, it was not until the Cuban revolution had triumphed over Batista, and then over CIA-backed contras at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, that the Kennedy Administration placed high-level emphasis on the development of a counterinsurgency doctrine...
...Even the ostensibly novel pro-insurgency policy known as the Reagan Doctrine derives from the concept of "rollback" espoused by John Foster Dulles, and from the military's writings on "counterrevolutionary offensives" in the early 1960s...
...planners began to test new strategies in the Philippines, Venezuela and Colombia...
...embrac[ing] diverse forms of coercion and violence including strikes and riots, economic sanctions, subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and, where necessary, kidnappings or assassination of enemy elites...
...As Miles notes, the defeat in Vietnam and the resulting breakdown of the public consensus on U.S...
...The synchronized pressures against the Sandinistas-threatening military maneuvers, a U.S...
...The ideological labels for U.S...
...Almost since the United States' inception as a nation, its foreign policy has had one central purpose-to gain and retain political and economic control of the regions that surround it...
...0 a. 0 EL M" REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8retary Weinberger urged a strategy that included an "unremitting willingness to make our case at the bar of public opinion abroad and at home...
...The organizers of the Fort McNair symposium took a step in that direction by offering a panel on "how the government can engage the support of both the public and the media in combating low-intensity warfare," and astutely invited ABC Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel to host it...
...The Fort McNair conference was clearly a salvo in that struggle...
...Domestic constraints, meanwhile, have prompted the refinement of counterinsurgency and conditioned how U.S...
...For those in the peace and anti-intervention movement, Miles' article is an invaluable aid to understanding the "enlarged and redefined" framework for intervention in the postwar era...
...It is noteworthy that none of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke at Fort McNair...
...In the "shadow" wars on the ground in Central America, the basic dictums of LIW hold true...
...political culture, it is no surprise that the military component of LIW is, as Waghelstein says, "a distant fourth in many cases"--behind psychological, economic and political warfare...
...She writes, "Although the United States has been fighting low-intensity wars in the Third World, under different names, for decades, the total concept, enlarged and redefined, is finally catching on within the military itself, where 'low-intensity conflict' is a term currently in vogue...
...As Sir Robert Thompson, a veteran British counterinsurgency specialist, put it at the Fort McNair conference, where stable peace is unobtainable, "a state of stable war is better than defeat...
...The resources to get the job done drew Messing and Sam Sarkesian were in attendance...
...intervention is less the change in the doctrine itself than the shift in the domestic and international circumstances in which the doctrine unfolds...
...The Salvadorean laboratory has recently yielded some LIW success stories...
...national security managers...
...Gail Reed, "Low-Intensity Conflict: A War for All Seasons," The Black Scholar (January- February 1986...
...Insurgents developed political platforms and gained access to the international media to bring their case to the American pub- lic...
...After World War II, that bid for control was increasingly applied to Africa, Asia and the Middle East...
...With the assistance of USIA money, the Salvadorean Division of Psychological Operations (D-5), which is directly supervised by the Salvadorean Joint Chiefs of Staff, has launched a sophisticated propaganda campaign aimed at attracting public support for Duarte and away from the FMLN...
...Yet before we allow LIW concepts to be reduced to fashionable slogans in our own community, we should examine what is genuinely "new" in the "low-intensity" game plan, how effectively it is working, and whether it is anything more than another rubric under which the Empire intends to strike back against the challenge to its dominion in the Third World...
...Earlier strategies, oriented toward containment and prevention, gave way to offensive programs that could roll back established governments...
...Even as the contours of this type of war become clearer, opposition in Congress has all but disappeared...
...The occasion was a two-day Low Intensity Warfare Conference at Fort McNair, just outside Washington, D.C...
...Second, on the "micro-level," Miles rightly notes that advocates of low-intensity conflict are "practicing their own form of insurgency against the conventional military establishment...
...counterinsurgency strategy, such as civic action and civil defense, designed to meet the guerrilla threat in a rural setting...
...In El Salvador, for example, opposition forces grew increasingly adept at operating in urban areas and functioning in the political arena: a response to the main components of U.S...
...but we should not lose sight of the fact that LIW is a modernization and adaptation of earlier counterinsurgency methods...
...Largescale civil defense programs, seen as a key element of counterinsurgency strategy, have been scrapped in many areas as a result of FMLN attacks, and have left some villagers more fearful of siding with government forces...
...efforts to prop up El Salvador's economy and maintain Duarte's popularity with the Salvadorean middle class and the U.S...
...Meanwhile, the British were gaining experience in Malaya, and U.S...
...John Waghelstein, "Counterinsurgency is the old name for low-intensity conflict...
...intervention in the Third World has placed political restraints on the Reagan Administration's ability to revive intervention in its baldest forms...
...Congress...
...Though the displacement of population from guerrilla zones was part and parcel of the Salvadorean government's "relocation" campaign, the swelling ranks of refugees are creating major obstacles to the conduct of counterinsurgency...
...military is preparing for an unlikely war in Europe while the "real war" for the Third World goes unchallenged...
...Central America, Miles correctly points out, is now "the most important laboratory for testing advanced models of low-intensity conflict...
...Strategic Doctrine," The Nation, De- cember 28-January 4, 1986...
...government that subversive insurgency-'wars of liberation'-is a major form of politico-military conflict equal in importance to conventional warfare" (emphasis added...
...The conference agenda focused on the "phenomenon of low-intensity warfare" (LIW) and its various components-the subversive threat, the military options, civic action and public opinion...
...LIW is not only a military strategy: it is a political strategy, which has emerged as a subtle vehicle for the Reagan Administration to erode public and congressional resistance to escalating intervention abroad...
...Their common factor, he asserted, was the enemy's deliberate use of "ambiguous warfare" in the hope that "the legal and moral complexities of these kinds of challenges will ensnare us in our own scruples and exploit our human inhibitions against applying force to defend our interests...
...strategy has an equally mixed record...
...foreign policy...
...A New Crisis of Control The most striking contrast between past and present patterns of U.S...
...Their ranks were larger and better equipped...
...Communist subversion is not an irreversible tide," President Reagan told Congress in April 1983 when he first hinted at a policy of support for anti-communist insurgencies...
...Special Forces, rather than the CIA, will train the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) in civic action and guerrilla warfare, marking an important escalation in the formal involvement of the U.S...
...Reforming death squad activity was one, psychological operations another...
...The speakers included several top-level Reagan Administration officials: Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan...
...0I Ir , a C Maneuvers in Honduras CIA, the contras have wrought havoc with small hit-and-run attacks...
...The new breed of guerrilla forces also posed a more formidable challenge than their predecessors...
...According to Col...
...In military terms, low-level warfare is a response to the Vietnam syndrome...
...We have seen it rolled back...
...military after Congress lifts restrictions on U.S...
...As Miles points out, the contras remain an externally created and controlled force...
...The aim was to achieve an interlocking and synchronized approach to "political warfare...
...Low-level war seems to have proven most effective in Central America where U.S.-backed forces have mirrored the military structure of guerrilla tactics...
...Koppel reciprocated by inviting Secretary Weinberger on his show to offer ten million television viewers his thoughts on LIW...
...A Mixed Record in Nicaragua In Nicaragua, U.S...
...The profiteering mentality so widespread in El Salvador also continues to present major obstacles for LIW technocrats who count on every dollar of U.S...
...The contras, who are the vanguard of the Administration's proxy war strategy to overthrow the Sandinistas, have proven militarily ineffective and politically inconsequential inside Nicaragua...
...Given the pervasiveness of the "Vietnam syndrome" in U.S...
...The escalating setbacks to our interests abroad," Secretary of State Alexander Haig proclaimed when the Reagan Administration took office, "and the so-called wars of national liberation, are putting in jeopardy our ability to influence world events...
...As early as 1911, U.S...
...The Legacy of Counterinsurgency Like low-intensity warfare today, counterinsurgency stressed the coordination of the different foreign policy bureaucracies-AID, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S...
...Consolidated revolutionary regimes such as Nicaragua's meant that counterinsurgency had to be revamped...
...Psychological operations, counterterror civic action, economic assistance, agrarian reform, military assistance programs to host country troops and special forces activity, all became prominent tactics in the offensive against Third World revolution...
...On January 18, 1962, President Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum No.124, which called for "proper recognition -throughout the U.S...
...How those tests are proceeding in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the response and readjustment they have provoked from the "enemy," may offer evidence of how effective the strategy has been...
...In short, the type of warfare the Administration is waging against Nicaragua today...
...Information Agency (USIA...
...And as the political barriers to low-level warfare fall, only an American public informed and mobilized by analysis of the serious kind that Sara Miles provides can stop U.S...
...politically, it is a low-intensity attack on the remaining constraints on U.S...
...Unable to mirror the political and social strength of a popular movement, so vital to the success of the pro-insurgency strategy of low-intensity conflict, they have been incapable of sustaining their operations in the Nicaraguan countryside...
...objectives...
...To be sure, as Miles emphasizes, the concept has been substantially redefined, expanded and financed under the Reagan Administration...
...military planners began to develop a doctrine of "minor warfare," recognizing that, in certain circumstances, brute force might not be the most appropriate way of advancing U.S...
...For unconventional warfare strategists inside and outside the Pentagon, it offered an opportunity to raise the institutional visibility of their argument that the U.S...
...The Fort McNair conference underscores two important points that Sara Miles makes in her provocative and ground-breaking report, The Real War.* First, on the "macro-level," LIW strategists are seriously engaged in what former Rand Corporation President George Tanham calls "a struggle for the minds of the people"--the American people...
...and Tom Barry, Low-lntensity Conflict: The New Battlefield in Central America (Albuquerque, NM: The Resource Center, 1986...
...On the advice of the REPORT ON THE AMERICAS0...
...Granted, we may simply be disputing a point of emphasis...
...In 1940, the Marines released a 380page "Small Wars Manual...
...imperialism have ranged from "Manifest Destiny" to the "Reagan Doctrine...
...All the conference speakers agreed that the United States must respond in kind...
...In other critical areas, however, counterinsurgency operations by the Salvadoreans may have set in motion a response from the opposition that debilitates the new tactics...
...intervention in new, innocuous language, while building a public consensus for a more aggres- sive foreign policy, is clearly winning...
...The methods have evolved from "Gunboat Diplomacy" to covert intervention by the CIA, and now to "low-intensity conflict," a hybrid of many past practices...
...economic assistance as a strategic investment...
...But they have so far failed to separate the population from the government...
...Sec"*Other recent major articles on the subject include Michael T. Klare, "The New U.S...
...Against a military hierarchy weighted toward the glory of conventional wars, promotion on the battlefield and nuclear hi-tech, the proponents of LIW are waging a bureaucratic struggle for prestige and resources...
...national security managers from escalating the war to middle or high levels of intensity...
...support for the contras...
...The speakers portrayed LIW as a much-needed strategy to respond to the "permanent war" that they claim is being waged against the United States in the Third World...
...A "model village" program for displaced campesinos cannot come to fruition while peasants steadfastly refuse to be relocated from conflict areas...
...Sorting out the New from the Old Does this "LIW era" christened at Fort McNair really open a new chapter in the annals of unconventional warfare...
Vol. 20 • June 1986 • No. 3
