Book Review: War Without End
A Review of War Without End - American Planning for the Next Vietnams, by Michael Klare of NACLA (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972, 480 pages). Many of us remember taking shelter under our school desks...
...military will engage in protracted war without committing large numbers of troops...
...militarism...
...A major point of the book is that even the newest forms of counterinsurgency can be overcome...
...As Klare explains in the last section of the book...
...troop strength around the world, American military-aid expenditures are up 25 percent from 1970 (to a total of $5.2 billion...
...has been intimately involved in the development of the electronic battlefield...
...Klare had to study war research and war technology to accomplish this...
...air support - suggests that a mercenary strategy offers no long term solution to the challenge of a protracted People's War...
...As Klare shows, not only can it fly the troops there, but it can provide them with instant military bases and keep them supplied as well...
...manufactures starlight scopes which attach to weapons for nightshooting, radar and navigation systems...
...Blueprint for Counterrevolution The book traces the history of the counterinsurgency network, beginning with the Kennedy era and following its inexorable and frightening expansion since then...
...In my Kansas school we even had to wear dog tags so that we could be identified in case of a direct hit...
...As Leonard Sullivan, the man responsible for all Vietnamoriented Defense Department research, put it: This is the beginning of instrumentation of the entire battlefield...
...I.T.T...
...Klare emphasizes from the beginning that he wrote War Without End as part of his antiwar activism, and he provides a helpful methodology guide in the appendix so that others may carry on their own research...
...Mercenarization The Nixon Doctrine ultimately depends on what Klare calls "the mercenarization of the Third World...
...As demonstrated so dramatically in Southeast Asia, these "specialized military skills" include a massive air war utilizing aerial gunships, tactical fighters and giant B-52 bombers...
...A primary objective of U.S...
...The latter were especially useful in Bolivia, where green berets used them to locate Che Guevara's band of guerrillas...
...Vietnam and Korea are only the bloodiest of the battlefields...
...planning for future wars...
...It is not surprising that McCone moved onto I.T.T.'s Board of Directors, since I.T.T.'s telecommunications capabilities have been crucial to the development of the electronic battlefield,(which i a cornerstone of the counterinsurgency program...
...These alternatives constitute the essence of the Nixon Doctrine...
...In spite of formidable nomenclature, most military weapons and plans can be uncovered, exposed and combatted...
...The group organized sit-ins and teach-ins, and ultimately the projects were cancelled...
...But a "hot" war with Russia never did break out...
...maneuverings against the Allende government in Chile, was a member of the Special Group for Counterinsurgency which was established by Kennedy in 1962 to develop a long-range counterinsurgency program...
...Why keep American troops in foreign lands, when the military can fly them there in a matter of hours...
...It shows how the planning of the early sixties is finally bearing fruit, providing the Nixon administration- 31 - with many alternatives besides massive troop involvement in nations undergoing wars of national liberation...
...The United States learned in Vietnam that it was a "giant without eyes" in trying to combat guerrilla warfare, and so it developed guerrilla-detection systems, including "peoplesniffers" and infrared sensors...
...Greece (1948), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Lebanon (1958), Cuba (1961), Congo (1964), and the Dominican Republic (1965) are a few of the principal examples...
...War Without End will be released in late May, which is fortunate timing since the "Nixon Doctrine" has deceived many Americans into believing that the United States is withdrawing from Vietnam and gearing down the war machine in general...
...plans for engaging in such conflicts...
...War Without End is the final product of four years of collecting and disseminating information that has been crucial to anti-war organizing, not only in the United States, but around the world...
...At the same time as Nixon boasts of cutting back U.S...
...Thus, the outlines of the United States' future war planning become clear: the U.S...
...As the I.T.T...
...With the introduction of these advanced electronic sensors and communications systems, it will no longer be necessary to devote large numbers of troops to the task of finding and engaging the enemy...
...While many books have been written on the strategy and tactics of guerrilla and counterguerrilla warfare, only one other book, John S. Tompkins' The Weapons of World War III, includes data on actual U.S...
...Since 1965, Green Berets from the United States have hunted down Che Guevara in Bolivia and have organized counterguerrilla campaigns in Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and other countries in Latin America and Asia...
...foreign aid programs, import subsidies, and military grants are all designed to create in each country privileged strkta dependent upon continued American benificence for their prosperity...
...Michael Klare was an anti-war activist at Columbia University in the years preceeding the 1968 Columbia uprisings...
...Klare describes this mercenarization, and the police and military aid that makes it possible...
...He recognizes the contradictions implicit in the United States' counterrevolutionary strategy and points out its failures in Southeast Asia...
...the outcome of South Vietnam's 1971 incursion' into Laos - in which half the invasion force was lost despite abundant U.S...
...documents in this issue of the Report point out, the United States government even promised material and financial aid to the Chilean military should it move against the socialist government of Salvador Allende...
...Eventually, we will be able to tell when anybody shoots, what he is shooting at, and where he is shooting from...
...This success gave Klare and others the idea to investigate all the universities to discover to what degree they were involved in war-related research, and to build campaigns on the universities which would identify elements of the war machine that could be stopped...
...Utilizing mercenaries and sophisticated military skills, the United States will fight against the struggles for national liberation in its dependencies, and it will be harder for the people of the United States to know just what the military is up to...
...Mercenaries are bound to realize that they are being used as cannon fodder by an absentee imperial power, and sophisticated electronic devices are no match for guerrilla forces which have the support of masses of people in their country...
...preparation for an attack by the Soviet Union...
...You begin to get a 'Year 2000' vision of an electronic map with little lights that flash for different kinds of activity...
...And while Tompkins' book is based on pre-1965 data, War Without End utilizes all of the recent disclosures on America's Vietnam involvement, including The Pentagon Papers...
...At the height of the Vietnam war buildup, a group of anti-war activists discovered some secret defense-financed chemical and biological war projects at the University of Pennsylvania...
...Many of us remember taking shelter under our school desks during the bomb drills of the mid-fifties at the height of U.S...
...When asked to clarify what these "necessary support functions" might be, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird admitted that the Nixon Doctrine depends on "indigenous manpower organized into properly equipped and welltrained armed forces with the help of materiel, training, technology and specialized military skills furnished by the United States...
...The electronic battlefield represents another key element in U.S...
...The Cold War thawed bit by bit, and many Americans believed (and believe) that there has been world peace since World War II, except for those bothersome interruptions, Korea and Vietnam...
...Utilizing new techniques, developed during the long years of fighting in Vietnam, these new wars would be largely invisible to the American public...
...His analysis is helpful in gaining a full understanding of the new directions of American militarism...
...As War Without End shows, the new war machine will include "garrisons in absentia" -mobile forces, centrally-located and ready for quick deployment to any threatened area of the world...
...Michael Klare's book may make it harder for the military to initiate these invisible wars...
...The book's 453 pages contain an unprecedented amount of information on the military's preparations for counterinsurgency operations...
...The C-5A and the new helicopter landing assault ships (LHA's) form the key elements in this rapid deployment strategy...
...Nonetheless, as Michael Klare's new book, War Without End - American Planning for the Next Vietnams, makes clear, the United States has been at war nearly continually since World War II...
...Klare's book also helps to demystify research into military operations...
...foreign policy is, as Klare puts it, "to install client regimes in many countries that can be compelled to supply native troops for America's counterinsurgency mission...
...Among other devices, I.T.T...
...Board of Directors and involved in I.T.T...
...This book is meant to aid in that process...
...There has been a military campaign or a CIA military operation in an underdeveloped country about once every 18 months since World War II...
...Klare's book - some of which has appeared in previous NACLA publications demonstrates that this is not the case, and that, despite the withdrawal of troops from the Far East, the United States is still determined to continue its control of the destiny of much of the Third World...
...By providing detailed information on the government's counterinsurgency apparatus, War Without End demonstrates the American military's capacity to begin new Vietnams elsewhere...
...Fortunately Klare does more than overpower the reader with hard facts and analyses of U.S...
...Simply stated, the Doctrine (enunciated in July, 1969) holds that henceforth the United States will leave to its allies the primary defense role in Asia (and by implication Latin America), while limiting itself to the necessary support functions...
...In fact, John McCone, former CIA Chief, currently a member of the I.T.T...
...Along with other people, he perceived a need to go beyond traditional protest, a need to do something to stop the war machine and cut back its power...
Vol. 6 • April 1972 • No. 4
