The Elusive Checkmate
"NOW, AFTER A DECADE OF NEAR ISOLAtionism when even the hint of military action brought denunciations of 'planning for another Vietnam" we can realistically think about the use of force...
...intelligence official who studies the Sandinistas...
...As Maj...
...The Sandinistas are under increased pressure," noted an internal National Security Council assessment, "as a result of our covert efforts and because of the poor state of the economy...
...Sandinista troops, in contrast to their U.S...
...Fifty five-the self-imoosed limit on military advisers in El Salvador- became a magic figure in the Administration's wrangles tions Committee, December 14, 1981...
...weaponry declines sharply (according to American military assessments) unless U.S...
...There is still some room for escalation short of the threshold of direct U.S...
...The words of Pentagon systems analyst Mark Cancian marked a return to familiar tradition, that for years had helped define the mainstream of U.S...
...Big Pine II offered a foretaste of this sequence...
...While the guerrillas offer their peasant recruits a number of powerful motivations, the Army is filled with reluctant warriors...
...ALCULATIONS OF COST ARE ALWAYS RELAtive to benefits and the cost of alternative courses...
...Only with U.S...
...President Rodrigo Carazo spurned the offer of $10 million to "combat terrorism," declaring that Costa Rica was "pacifist in word and deed...
...There has also been more emphasis on preparing for the original Special Forces mission of providing leadership and advising cadres to indigenous resistance movements...
...Light forces "configured and trained primarily for rapid-response and forcible-entry operations" were reorganized and expanded...
...Even if it wished to do so, its logistical ability would be doubtful...
...armed forces as the globe's ultimate social engineers...
...We know that as long as he's around we don't have to build up our forces to meet the Sandinistas.' But...they recognize the vagaries of American politics...
...But at what point are you willing to die for that...
...THE PENTAGON CAN PUSH ITS SALVADOREAN client only a few more steps before both arrive at the brink of direct intervention...
...A strategy of attrition relies on the ability to endure pain, but the ability of western democracies to endure pain is not clear...
...First, political support must jell and the elements of a winning initiative must be moved painstakingly into place...
...There, Israeli military support and one of the most blood-thirsty counterinsurgency campaigns in history have set a powerful guerrilla movement back on its heels...
...A MAJOR CONCERN OF U.S...
...Only when Washington has agreed that the United States must finally resolve the situation militarily will decisive measures be required...
...T HE POLITICAL FEASIBILITY OF A U.S...
...Update, January 16, 1984, Central American Historical Institute...
...This latter point has been a dominant theme in Administration rhetoric...
...Nutting was more restrained: "They are interested first, I think, in consolidating internal control and secondly upon (sic) defending their revolution and perhaps only thirdly in using it (their armed forces) in an aggressive way...
...in Central America, in particular, political means should be exhausted first...
...invasion would provoke "a national war, a patriotic war...
...The problem would be especially acute in any El Salvador action...
...The 1983 version of the annual Kindle Liberty maneuvers in Panama involved F-16 fighter aircraft for the first time...
...153-171...
...One of the Army's leading anti-guerrilla experts, he has been a prime architect of U.S...
...Fred K. Mahaffey, "Planning for a High Performance Army," Army, October 1983...
...Forces Fight in Central America," The New York Times Op Ed, November 18, 1983...
...The substance of Special Forces training also shifted in another respect...
...2 Vietnam had thrown that tradition into temporary disrepute...
...combat involvement...
...Even an operation accomplished in a month or two might be resolved before the patriotic aura of a president-at-war had evaporated...
...Newsweek, March 19, 1984...
...The Guatemalans," says a senior U.S...
...If, for example, the economy took a nosedive, or events in REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 52another part of the world tagged the United States with a further geopolitical humiliation, then post-Vietnam anxiety might not be enough...
...The CIA, operating out of Air Force bases in the United States, hires pilots for the hazardous sorties at $30,000 per mission.' 2 Throughout the world, Administration planners have emphasized the importance of "forward deployment"--having forces near the potential battlefield to map and analyze it geographically and politically and be ready to move at a moment's notice...
...official who works with the contras agrees: The people aren't crazy to join the counterrevolution, rise up against the regime and join the contras...
...James D. Strachan, "Remarks Summarizing Exercise AHUAS TARA II," 1984...
...El Salvador may be a more likely target...
...The danger with the Democrats is not that they will launch a new war...
...At the current level of intervention, as the Kissinger Commission recognized, no progress seems likely...
...On March 28, 1984-this time strictly for practicethey dropped 350 men at the San Lorenzo airfield in Honduras...
...7 A similar shift occurred at the Air Force Special Operations school at Hurlburt Field, Florida, home of the First Special Operations Wing...
...The 28th landed a thousand men near Puerto Castilla, Honduras last November as part of Big Pine II...
...An invasion of Nicaragua would carry at least to the third level of heavy U.S...
...Cancian's writing exemplifies this approach, and is worth quoting at length...
...Author's interview with Colonel Strachan, Tegucigalpa, March 19, 1984...
...The solution, says Cancian, is to strike while the iron is hot: Everything must be accomplished during the initial period of public support...
...Hatred is a marvelous political force...
...It must have been a sobering admission, for the FDN ranks had by now swelled to 15,000 men and the CIA had strongarmed its way into direct tactical control of operations in June...
...The cost would be too high...
...And that is not subscribed to by the U.S...
...What of a Democratic Administration...
...The pattern that emerges is as follows: initial public support (or at least acceptance), prolonged struggle without apparent result, decreasing public support, one battle that apparently goes badly (e.g...
...They have very limited storage and refining capacity, they're very susceptible to sabotage or air strikes...
...The carnage inflicted by aerial bombing since June 1982 has accomplished-little in military terms, argues Charles Clements, a former U.S...
...It is a machine of immense destructive power, but it will not take off on its own...
...If the solution were to eradicate the guerrillas, fine, we could eradicate them...
...forces would first secure the cities and then, over 20 days, establish a presence throughout the countryside, with a relatively high level of insurgency continuing over the following three months...
...Big Pine II also gave the 101st "invaluable experience in helicopter airmobile operations, parachute operations and support to deployed forces...
...A large part of the airpower for an invasion force would be seaborne...
...IN COSTA RICA, TOO, THE ADMINISTRATION has not had things all its own way...
...The strategy could be maneuver warfare, as some suggest, or massive escalation...
...air campaign...
...Admiral Ulysses S. Sharp (formerly Commander in Chief, Pacific) put it best: 'The application of military, war-making power is an ugly thing-stark, harsh and demanding, and it cannot be made nicer by pussyfooting around with it.'4 T HE CONCEPT OF GRADUALISM REMAINS controversial in military ranks...
...Seventy percent of the Army-the highest pro- portion ever-was deployed in the field...
...The main force would probably be led by the Army's principal air assault unit, the 18th Airborne Corps of Fort Bragg, North Carolina...
...official in Tegucigalpa doubts the Hondurans will ever trust the Salvadoreans as reliable allies: The Hondurans say, yeah, well, we operated with them in the past and we set up a blocking position and we saw the guerrillas coming and we saw the Salvadoreans almost surround them and leave them an avenue of escape...
...For the first time [they] have cause to doubt whether they can export subversion with impunity...
...At that point, it would be difficult to argue with success...
...By March, said Blandon, Salvadorean troops were undergoing U.S...
...Pentagon thinkers had no grandiose dreams of using military power to alter basic social forces...
...MORAN'S SCENARIO imagines that U.S...
...the fourth, troop commitments large enough to require reviving the draft...
...pressure for Costa Rica to accept military aid...
...In Vietnam, Washington had a five-year grace period before anti-war sentiment became an obstacle...
...A pattern of kidnapping and murdering local activists began with an attack on San Francisco del Norte in Chinandega on July 24: eight militias were abducted...
...On the other hand...their forces are not sufficient to invade even the relatively lightly armed Hondurans, let alone conquer an alliance of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, backed by the United States...
...To fill out the ranks, we go to a football stadium and round them up by force...
...Nutting-now head of the Readiness Command at McDill Air Force base in Florida...
...2. Maj...
...M OST INVASION SCENARIOS FORESEE AN initial force of two to three divisions-some 60,000 troops and support personnel...
...It would take a goddamn lot...
...The 16-inch guns on these vessels, brought back into action off Beirut, can throw 803 tons of ordnance over 20 miles every 30 minutes.' 0 For the Air Force, the buildup of intervention capacity has taken a more technological bent...
...Gorman, commander of Southcom at Quarry Heights, Panama...
...air, naval, artillery or infantry personnel...
...Joseph Lutz in October 1983, "when we have the wherewithal to prevent that early on...
...THE ELUSIVE CHECKMATE 1. Cancian, "Future Conflict and the Lessons of Vietnam...
...troops along the frontier in ironic acknowledgement of what it may ultimately take to seal the guerrillas' escape hatch...
...Independent of ports and airfields it can quickly build in size from a zero base, then support itself with sea-based firepower and logistics...
...Congress has them worried, and they're not going to depend on the next Administration...
...And Eden Pastora, his CIA links notwithstanding, predicted that a U.S...
...Already, the four services and the CIA have built a sophisticated infrastructure to handle reconnaissance over Nicaragua and El Salvador and support contras inside Nicaragua who must survive without local facilities...
...Reagan has described the Nicaraguan threat in lurid terms, yet even Gen...
...Army magazine reported in May 1983 that in addition to "a renewed interest in the role of Special Forces as trainers of friendly armed forces-such as in El Salvador...
...In peacetime, say the Joint Chiefs of Staff, such forces "can assist in the training of military and security forces of friendly nations and can also provide a rapid, surgical response capacity when U.S...
...Gen...
...interest in the region...
...official, Tegucigalpa, March 1984...
...On the one hand, he cautions that "Military means are often poor tools for achieving political goals...
...involvement might shift to Guatemala...
...Yet the Army only chased guerrillas to and fro through their northern strongholds, rather than inflicting major combat casualties or destroying important rebel units...
...Marine Corps Maj...
...Policies Toward El Salvador, 1984-1989," in Robert S. Leiken, Central America: Anatomy of a Conflict, (New York, Pergamon Press, 1984), pp...
...The fifth, and only remotely plausible scenario, is a tank thrust up the Choluteca corridor in southern Honduras, "the only armor battle in town....In the absolute worst case of a liberated El Salvador or liberated eastern sector, they could shove an armored force across that short, flat corridor and link up with the Salvadoreans to establish a liberated Honduran area...
...6. The Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "United States Military Posture FY 1984...
...This might involve carpet bombing by B-52s and other strike aircraft, operating from the States, Panama or an offshore carrier...
...Their intelligence is not the greatest in the world...
...Edward L. King, "If U.S...
...Joseph Cirincione and Leslie C. Hunter, "Military Threats, Actual and Potential," in Leiken, Anatomy of a Conflict, pp...
...Paul Gorman Pat Flynn MAY/JUNE 1984 45Retor4 on t4 Americas Endgame Army could absorb each year...
...2 2 But the expected political consequences of U.S...
...interest without impinging on the cultural sensitivities of the region...
...A senior U.S...
...adviser told The bshington Post in 1981 that: In guerrilla war you don't win exactly....What you do is...make it not worthwhile...
...Another U.S...
...One official replied: The Hondurans tell us, 'We feel comfortable now with a president like Reagan...
...The problem for Washington has been to conjure up good pretexts for a more direct attack on Nicaragua...
...Today, military planners seem to have come back to earth...
...If the Nicaraguans came in and killed Americans, that would be a Pearl Harbor...
...Author's interview with Salvadorean official, San Salvador, March 1984...
...In Vietnam the same process took two or three days...
...They get hit in the night, spin a wheel and choose a direction to shoot in...
...The goodwill visit was "a manifestation of continued U.S...
...planes and pilots, he argues, could one reliably plan on crippling Nicaragua from the air...
...forces, many of whom took part in the Honduran maneuvers...
...military equipment and anti-terrorist training for the Costa Rican police, and joined two diplomatic initiatives designed to isolate Nicaragua-the Central American Democratic Community (January 1982) and the Forum for Peace and Democracy (October 1982...
...8. Johnson, Op Cit...
...Fidel Castro, after all, said soberly after the Grenada invasion that Cuba would not attempt to defend Nicaragua...
...hostilities has been diffuse and gradual to dissipate nationalist counter-reaction and deprive it of a clear focus-a "slow-motion Bay of Pigs...
...But the Guatemalan Left remains a serious long-term threat...
...In co-operation with Col...
...What operational deficiencies remain...
...and helicopter air cavalry supported by Cobra gunREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 46ships to insert Salvadorean infantry to surround and eliminate guerrillas spotted from the air...
...The contras had just signalled their emergence as a serious military force by dynamiting the Rio Negro and Ocotal bridges...
...Yet the FMLN September offensive, spearheaded by newly formed battalion- and brigade-sized units and spreading the battle to the economic heartlands of the south, was in many respects its most effective so far...
...invasion would come in an area of greater strategic importance to the United States...
...the 22nd served in Grenada and later in Lebanon...
...Their explicit purpose now was to overthrow the government...
...the occupying forces would then dig in for a long guerrilla war...
...But even the most optimistic advisers claim that such steps will do no more than allow the Army to regain the initiative...
...Author's interview with Salvadorean official, San Salvador, February 1984...
...Navy takes strong action against Nicaragua I don't think it would work politically...
...It sits on the runway, engines revved, flight plans drawn for Morazan and Managuaawaiting orders...
...supplies of spare parts and ammunition...
...diplomat in Managua in October 1983...
...In 1983, the Army reorganized the 101st Air Assault Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and reactivated 13 rifle companies at Fort Lewis, Washington and in Hawaii...
...and the fifth, a protracted involvement beyond the postinvasion honeymoon that the president might expect...
...While inveighing against gratuitous violence, U.S...
...No invasion scenario contemplates a million-man invasion force...
...Honduras would be fighting Salvador's battle...
...military official in Honduras, "are rightly pissed off...
...Instead, they drop the phosphorus as an antipersonnel weapon.18 Clements believes the guerrillas could be vulnerable to a U.S...
...Our effort to simply fight a war in the rural countryside was a failure"' a senior FDN leader later admitted, "because it did not produce the popular uprising of the Nicaraguan people we had originally hoped for...
...The problem can be seen in terms of thresholds...
...3 THE NEW SYNTHESIS HAS CONFUSED MANY people, with news of military buildups one day and Pentagon warnings against premature intervention the next...
...campaign of economic harassment, centered on pressuring multilateral lenders into denying Nicaragua credit, was beginning to bite...
...The resurrected military was ready and eager to roll, but this time it was determined to choose its target carefully and prepare the political and strategic ground well...
...4. Cancian, Op Cit...
...Small units patrolled seven days a week...
...Indeed, this would be the consequence of any style of escalated counterinsurgency...
...Although troops for a Central American invasion could be flown in directly from the States and Panama, Honduras provides a convenient forward base for intelligence and logistical backup...
...They're still consolidating their revolution...
...paratroopers chased mock guerrillas through the San Esteban valley in Olancho, just 100 kilometers from the Nicaraguan border, where they linked up with a brigade-level force "to seal them off and destroy them...
...only the air cavalry and helicopter gunship pilots would fly low enough to be vulnerable to guerrilla ground fire...
...There's no chance for that...
...John H. Admire, "Understanding Limited War," Marine Corps Gazette, January, 1983...
...involvement has failed to overcome the fundamental problems of an Army that is too small pursuing a guerrilla movement that has too many places to hide...
...The strategic and political feasibility of a decisive operation there remains an open question...
...advisers...
...capacity to prevail is beyond dispute...
...They know the Nicaraguans were nasty to the Pope...
...the second, direct and substantial involvement of U.S...
...The CONDECA thing doesn't make a lot of sense if you're talking about putting a force together to attack Nicaragua, unless it's going to be the United States and Honduras with one guy from Salvador and two guys from Guatemala...
...personnel with only a few casualties...
...STRATEGISTS HAS been to avoid direct involvement in the ultimate bloodletting in El Salvador or Nicaragua...
...The Kissinger Commission warned, just as Weinberger had a year before, that "collapse is not inconceivable...
...IN EL SALVADOR, THE ADMINISTRATION HAS nearly exhausted its options for indirect intervention...
...The Sandinistas would be there, stronger than ever politically, so you'd have to go in and do the whole thing...
...Army personnel in Honduras told the author in September 1983 that Green Berets were training contras and accompanying them on missions into Nicaragua...
...The very weakness of the Soviet bloc in the Caribbean Basin would make it likely that a Soviet reprisal for a U.S...
...Sigifredo Ochoa, for example, or the sweeps of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion...
...Cirincione and Hunter, "Military Threats...
...Yet the guerrillas have advanced and the Army and oligarchy have grown increasingly divided and dependent...
...The second, an infantry move into the triple-canopy jungle of Olancho, would be attempted "only in the worst case" and is "not likely" because "there are no natural resources there to sustain a group...
...So we use the con- tras...
...THIS MARCH, TWO OF THE SENIOR U.S...
...NOW, AFTER A DECADE OF NEAR ISOLAtionism when even the hint of military action brought denunciations of 'planning for another Vietnam" we can realistically think about the use of force again...
...Some U.S...
...Since 1981, it has cut the Nicaraguan arms flow, gained substantial behind-the-scenes control of the war effort and installed Duarte as elected president...
...advisers and their clients have recognized in practice that it often takes mass killing to defeat a mass-based movement...
...In Grenada, the 82nd parachuted 1,200 Army Rangers onto the Point Salines airfield...
...The lesson of Vietnam, he contends, was that "a policy of gradualism does not work...
...There's no real good way to do it...
...On the other hand, if domestic and foreign events run smoothly, a second Reagan Administration might be content to maintain the status quo in Central America, always able to claim that it had held the line against the tide of revolution...
...Moran, Op Cit...
...With an attack and a little exaggeration, American opinion will demand satisfaction...
...Some observers believe the Honduran Air Force capable of striking this kind of blow, but the intelligence official doubts it: Sure Honduras has the best air force in Central America, but compared to what...
...A re-elected Reagan Administration might choose to pay the price and fulfill its Central American wish-list...
...Since then, however, continuing tensions between Guatemala and Washington, and between El Salvador and Honduras, have stalled talk of a CONDECA action...
...The carrier America, with its complement of 85 aircraft, is currently leading maneuvers in the Caribbean...
...Nor did they identify the frequent cross-border firing from Nicaragua as evidence of aggressive intent...
...the copters have failed to insert troops into combat...
...There were, however, bitter conflicts between hawks and doves in the Monge Administration, and they came to a head in the fall of 1983...
...intelligence officials in Central America with responsibility for monitoring Nicaragua briefed the author on five possible scenarios for a Sandinista invasion of Honduras...
...E VEN IN THE NORTHERN HOMELANDS OF many ex-National Guardsmen, the anti-Sandinista terror campaign failed to provoke significant local sympathies...
...Author's interview with Charles Clements, New York, May 11, 1984...
...2 0 The U.S...
...Beyond attitudes, though, CONDECA is hobbled by the military problems that El Salvador and Guatemala face on the home front...
...national prestige, while at the same time trying to avert any repeat of a costly Vietnamstyle entanglement...
...The United States always ran the risk of confronting another superpower if it escalated too far or too fast...
...Maxwell O. Johnson, "The Role of Maritime Based Strategy," Marine Corps Gazette, February 1984...
...Strategically, a Central American war would be much easier than Vietnam...
...The real danger from Nicaragua, they claimed, was its sponsorship of internal Honduran insurgency, like the illfated Olancho group in August 1983...
...King, May 11, 1984...
...Quoted in Cirincione and Hunter, "Military Threats...
...military role in Central America will depend on political choices...
...From 1981-83, speculation focused on the possibility of a surrogate force from CONDECA, the alliance organized by Washington in 1964 to defend the Central American system from "forces which are attempting to destroy it by violence and the infiltration of totalitarian ideas...
...the jets have failed to provide troops with close air support...
...In any event, he reflected, "the Sandinistas aren't too interested in that now...
...In August 1981, Jeane Kirkpatrick outraged the Costa Ricans by suggesting that they had much to learn from the "very relevant" practices of "the nations of the Southern Cone [which] have experience in repulsing the disruption by guerrilla attacks on their society...
...In November, the Honduras-based FDN launched a sabotage campaign, designed mainly to disrupt agricultural production...
...Regardless of which party takes office, the U.S...
...We've all become humanists...
...If Washington went to war in the major strategic centers of Europe or the Middle East, there would be little reluctance to divert resources from Latin America and the Caribbean...
...advisers-the 1982 Cabanas operation commanded by Col...
...So will the price it is willing to pay in order to achieve them...
...another eight tortured and killed, four of them decapitated...
...Says one civilian official involved in the operation, The problem is that there doesn't seem to be enough political will in the States to get very tough with the Nicaraguans in a military sense...
...That's the Sandinistas shooting in the dark," says one...
...Psychological operations officers-two per company in the U.S.-trained battalions-helped run civic action programs designed to isolate the guerrillas politically...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 44The June 1983 National Plan (CONARA) in San Vicente and Usulutan marked the first full-scale application of U.S.- style tactics...
...With low re-enlistment and high desertion and casualty rates, it is a formidable task to restock and retrain the force, let alone expand it...
...U.S...
...politically, much harder...
...In my district," explains one colonel, "people leave home and become soldiers so they can eat...
...Author's interview with economist from Managua, New York, May 24, 1984...
...airpower could conceivably disperse the FMLN by involving limited numbers of U.S...
...Blandon, the general staff was purged and stocked with U.S...
...personnel directly into combat, their numbers and likely casualties would be small...
...First, it foreclosed any possibility of the United States winning a military victory over the FSLN by indirect means...
...clients, ships and planes...
...The 1984 Granadero I maneuvers deployed more than 1,000 U.S...
...Frederick F. Woerner Jr., who helped lead the 1966-67 50REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 50I ne li u si Airoorne division woula oe a Key unit in an invasion or Nicaragua...
...intervention capacity-and to do so in a politically palatable manner-has been a point of consensus since 1980...
...Regardless of how strong Reagan feels he is, if we were to do something like that and there were hundreds and hundreds of Americans killed down there, Congress would go through the ceiling...
...It is that they will only pull back slowly from the current levels of U.S...
...allies...
...It also implies early disengagement if the effort fails...
...These maneuvers usually involved Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs), the "assault echelons" of amphibious intervention...
...The hope of winning popular support assumed that a fundamental split existed between the Sandinista state and the people it ruled...
...instead, they would be preoccupied with trying to navigate between the contradictory currents of public opinion-which refuses on one hand to tolerate any further affronts to U.S...
...2 8 Other forces, too, would bring Big Pine experience to a Nicaragua invasion...
...Army or the U.S...
...Air assault units would parachute in to secure the major airfields and fly in troops, supplies and light artillery...
...In March 1984, Southcom commander Gen...
...It has, however, become a community of Vietnam survivors who take their Central America planning too seriously to see it squandered by hasty action...
...The deployment forces would be selected by Gen...
...the long war view prevails...
...The CIA had given covert support to business and opposition groups inside Nicaragua since the days of Carter's coexistence policy...
...They're trying to do now what will be needed four to eight years from now...
...troops, to enable surveillance planes to distinguish them at night from enemy forces...
...3 0 Col...
...The same officials could come up with no realistic scenario involving Nicaragua's 100,000-strong militias and reserves in an offensive role...
...strategy in El Salvador...
...Limited U.S...
...Ambassador John D. Negroponte, Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova, Gen...
...Realistically, they have a small squadron of A-37s which are strictly airto-ground...
...The thaw with Managua is an uneasy one, punctuated by border incidents as Sandinista troops pursue ARDE raiders, and strained by more aggressive U.S...
...dead, from 9,300 to 18,600 wounded, with 18 planes and 208 helicopters destroyed and a total cost of $10.6 billion...
...Vietnam was in the backyard of China and the Soviet Union, which offered the Vietnamese a logistical rear-guard, a constant route of supply...
...officer, Washington, D.C., May 1984...
...planners had begun looking for signs of popular revolt in April 1982...
...He explained: "No surge is required...
...We don't want to operate with people like that...
...Because events of the last five years have closed down, one by one, the possibilities for cheap, backdoor means of defeating the Central American revolutions, the nature of this country's goals will now have to be discussed explicity...
...Since the military phase has not yet begun, they argue, gradual escalation is still an acceptable strategy...
...Destroying the country's infrastructure, however, would be just the start...
...The size and motivation of the Salvadorean Army are constrained by the nature of the social structure it is fighting to defend...
...In September 1983, a CIA National Intelligence Estimate told Congress that its surrogates could not win...
...These are supposed to precede the A-37s into battle and mark targets with white phosphorus flares, but the A-37 pilots have been so unable to hit their targets that the spotters have given up trying to guide them...
...officials in Central America say that the likely political fallout rules out any invasion of Nicaragua...
...If the U.S...
...His successor, Luis Alberto Monge, proved more pliant...
...Now, if the United States wants to restore its dominance in Central America, it will have to pay for it--with young men in rubber bags and gunners who remember how they pulled the trigger that killed those unarmed peasants...
...The officials noted, however, that the mountainous terrain and the shortcomings of the Soviet-supplied T-55 tanks ruled out any move on Tegucigalpa...
...The lesson is about the use of force...
...R EAGAN'S POST-VIETNAM MILITARY IS READY to fight but determined to pick a battle it can win...
...The national security bureaucracy has not become a nest of doves...
...King foresees a "village-to-village, hill-to-hill" fight that would require 100-125,000 men on the ground for the first three to six months, and from 120-150,000 troops after the first year...
...The FMLN-organized civilian support structure has survived intact, aided by air-raid trenches and the inaccuracy of the Salvadorean pilots...
...They leave them to be attacked to ignite the feelings of Americans so they'll accept the war...
...Managua is in their range, but the Nicaraguans have a strong anti-aircraft capability, SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, anti-air artillery and quite a bit more...
...Materially, it needs more consistent ammunition and fuel supplies, secure field radios, modern howitzers, more trained pilots and maintenance experts, better field medical facilities, re-enlistment pay in- centives, STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) transport planes and between 30 and 80 transport and gunship helicopters...
...His successor, Col...
...Theodore Moran estimates that the invasion would call for three air wings, comprising 216 planes and 734 helicopters...
...casualties, and probably to the fourth and fifth as well...
...Author's interview with former U.S...
...26...
...In 1980-81, the Army began a program of English as a Second Language to increase its capacity to absorb Spanish-speaking recruits...
...Author's interview with Colonel Strachan, Tegucigalpa, September 29, 1983...
...Among them are: "* the 43rd Logistic Support Group of Fort Carson, Colorado "* the Navy Special Warfare Group of Norfolk, Virginia "* the 41st Combat Support Hospital of Fort Sam Houston, Texas Potentially active special operations contingents would include three key units out of Fort Bragg: "* the airborne 5th and 7th Special Forces Groups "* the 4th Psychological Operations Group "* the 96th Civic Affairs Battalion as well as: * the 75th Rangers of Fort Stewart, Georgia and Fort Lewis, Washington * the 10th Special Forces Group of Fort Devens, Massachusetts Light infantry forces could be drawn from: "* the 197th Brigade at Fort Benning, Georgia "* the 7th Division at Ford Ord, California "* the 9th Division at Fort Lewis...
...mercenaries, too, have been concentrating near the border this year...
...The one deviation from gradualism-the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi (Operation Linebacker II)-was, he believes, a tremendous success...the Vietnamese expected the usual pinpricks but what they got was a baseball bat on the head...
...So long as the guerrillas retreated and gave the Army its moment in the sun, the program had the look of success...
...Only an unexpected collapse of the Salvadorean Army might spur the Democrats to intervene...
...The need to enhance the U.S...
...The chances of a direct U.S...
...When you invade somebody you like to have ten to one...
...Gustavo Alvarez' enthusiasm for co-operating with the Salvadoreans was widely read as a factor in his ouster by the Honduran high command in March 1984...
...Its spearhead would likely be a Marine Amphibious Unit, such as the 28th or the 22nd, both of Camp Lejune, North Carolina...
...Naval forces offered especially attractive opportunities for intervention at low political cost...
...They know Communism is bad and they know the Soviets are bad...
...1 ' Military planes flying out of Honduras are coordinated by a laser navigation system, and contras operating inside Nicaragua are receiving night supply drops from C-130s using the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System, an advanced technique first tested in Vietnam and known only by a few pilots...
...For one thing, the Sandinistas have not been so stupid as to fall into the trap...
...The one group with anything like a genuine anti-government constituency-the indigenous contra organization MISURA -berated the FDN leadership for treating it as cannon fodder...
...Where does Central America fall between the polar possibilities...
...They have a squadron of old, corroded Super Mysteres from Israel that were designed for desert warfare...
...Ships at sea are not normally susceptible to the charge of neocolonialism...
...I don't know how many Honduran families want to get their soldiers killed cooperating with the Salvadoreans...
...The new assertiveness, however, was not a simple reprise of Big Stick imperialism or the hubris of the 1960s, which saw the U.S...
...The State Department responded to Monge's cries of the "threat of Marxist-Leninist Totalitarianism" on Costa Rica's borders with assurances that, under the Rio Treaty, Washington stood "ready to join other countries...to repel the aggressor...
...facilities are here for a military eventuality;' says one senior Salvadorean officer who travels frequently to Honduras, "but also for public opinion...
...the U.S...
...another basic choice about how the United States relates to revolution, and to its own moral principles, will determine whether we cross it...
...Army went in there seriously I think it could be done, but it would be too much work...
...173-192...
...Yet the prospect of popular backing and ultimate victory was receding fast...
...The people have come to hate the contras because the militia boys are being killed...
...Huey helicopters and A-37 jets...
...Some reckon it would then take 12 days to seize the four main cities...
...Gorman proposed strafing guerrilla strongholds with the Gatling guns of the CIA-operated AC-130 surveillance planes-weapons capable of putting a bullet in every square foot of a football field every 60 seconds...
...It wouldn't be a dozen guys in Grenada...
...Is Central America the right war...
...actual victory is not mentioned as anything more than a longterm possibility...
...If casualties were high enough, King believes, that could happen after just three or four months, as the Army dipped into NATO standby forces to cover the Nicaraguan countryside...
...Paul Gor- man decided that the time had come to cross the threshold...
...leadership was consolidated still further...
...adversaries, have recent combat experience...
...Wallace Nutting could hardly have been more explicit: "In a geographic sense at least the Central America-Caribbean Basin area is our Afghanistan, and if push comes to shove in this region, the outcome is not in doubt...
...The first level of escalation would be a dramatic increase in support for proxies-the contras, the Hondurans and the Salvadorean Army...
...The maneuver force is a formidable one, with 350 ships and...
...Along with this growing sensitivity to potential pitfalls in "target countries" came a new awareness of political constraints at home...
...In that case, the focus of new U.S...
...Administration would easily leave itself exposed on the military front lines for the sake of a war in Central America whose motives were primarily political...
...A long war might also strain the depleted U.S...
...Indeed, the U.S...
...CONDECA partners wouldn't be able to spare anyone anyway'," argues the senior diplomat...
...It's a way to politically motivate the country...
...During the Grenada invasion, the Air Force reportedly experimented with infra-red readable buttons on the uniforms of U.S...
...Air Force pilot who worked as a doctor in the Guazapa guerrilla zone...
...2 3 When one gets down to specifics, the specter shrinks still further...
...training every day of the year, in Honduras, the United States and the new basic training center at La Union...
...Many would come from the Tactical Air Command of Langley, Virginia, which sent a hundred fliers to Big Pine II to "improve the ability of Honduran pilots to do defensive air strikes"' 2 7 The Military Airlift Command of Scott Air Force base, Illinois, which contributed 400 personnel to Big Pine II, would handle the transportation of troops and equipment to Nicaragua and the Honduran support base...
...By year's end the force had swelled to five or six thousand and was mounting major attacks that led the Sandinistas to declare a state of military emergency in five northern departments...
...The Navy's advantages "allow the United States to maintain a force presence in the area and the capability for projecting power ashore when and if required...
...officials on the scene suggest that Central American rollback will not come cheaply...
...The defeat of Carter's policies of coexistence in 1979-80 has brought us to the brink...
...They feel the Carter Administration, then Congress, unjustly torpedoed them by cutting back their aid...
...Levels like that would mean pulling troops from assignments elsewhere in the world, "much reducing our ability to meet our commitments in NATO and the Pergian Gulf...
...In lieu of direct intervention, U.S...
...Many analysts, as well as U.S...
...surveillance ships and planes...
...5. Lt...
...Army engineers have built a new airstrip at Jamastran 50% over the next two years simply to maintain its current strategic position.' 7 The FMLN's ability to capture government weapons-20% of those sent by Washington in 1983, they claim-creates a systematic need for expansion...
...The third would be a motorized drive toward the villages of Cifuentes and Las Trojes...
...No U.S...
...The contra stuff is something we kind of sweep under the rug....But if the U.S...
...News and World Report, June 13, 1983...
...I would assume that, like them or not...80% of the population would stand with the Sandinistas," said a senior U.S...
...After the initial 122 days of high tempo fighting, approximately one division withdraws, leaving a one-and-a-half division American occupation force as well as CONDECA troops to deal with sabotage and insurgency over the remainder of [a] five-year period...
...But the contradiction is more apparent than real...
...It would also mean AC-130 Gatling gun attacks to break up guerrilla concentrations...
...Our hearts bleed too much.' 9 In fact, some of the highest civilian death tolls have come precisely in operations most praised by U.S...
...They have neither scared the Sandinistas into abandoning revolution at home, radicalized them to the point of alienating their popular base, nor provoked an aggresssive REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 48action against Honduras or Costa Rica...
...This kind of optimism had been rejected by the Pentagon when it prepared contingency plans for Haig in 1981, but revived after the invasion of Grenada...
...You still have Nicaragua," says another official...
...But so far, the Reagan Administration's efforts to construct an appealing victim of Nicaraguan aggression are far from complete...
...In strictly military terms, U.S...
...engineers have already built or improved three airfields-at San Lorenzo, Palmerola and Cucuyagua-and two munitions storage dumps near the Honduran-Salvadorean border...
...According to Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zackheim, a MAGTF "can sail to a crisis area without disclosing its precise direction...
...If every new weapon enables the guerrillas to arm another combatant, then the Army must field four to ten new troops of its own to maintain the ratio recommended by counterinsurgency theorists...
...A LTHOUGH SOME ANALYSTS SEE AIRPOWER AS a way around these obstacles, the Salvadoreans have reached the limit of their own personnel and equipment...
...Another official doubts that Honduras will commit troops: "The Hondurans are very simple, unsophisticated people...
...The Sandinistas' revolutionary internationalism, their Cuban and Soviet military ties and large armed militia and reserves have been used to portray them as territorial aggressors whose neighbors must be defended by a U.S...
...El Salvador could also carry to the third, though one scenario that calls for massive application of U.S...
...The ones where the existing government has won, it has been won by terribly brutal methods-where you are just as terrorinspiring as the terrorists...
...Until we get that aid back it will be hard to get them to play ball...
...Its commander is Gen...
...Others counter that the U.S...
...Even so, his scenario anticipates 4,783 U.S...
...Here, "you're talking about the possiblity of shoving a few vehicles through, but the road is so narrow that it would take virtually no effort to close it off...
...It could knock their teeth out...
...What will happen...
...Some officers chafe at the restrictions imposed in El Salvador...
...He accepted U.S...
...The Washington Post, June 7, 1981...
...Indeed, the FMLN opened new ground in the western department of Santa Ana...
...They would come into office with no rollback agenda...
...You still have the same problem...
...Walter Lopez, has already called for a reduction in the ratio of Salvadoreans trained at the CREM...
...John H. Admire, "only if we as a people understand it and we as a Nation support it...
...casualties...
...maybe they're not the best in the world but they're people with guns...
...forces could expect...
...Ibid...
...This was reportedly one of the lessons derived from CENTWAR, an internal Pentagon war game played in 1983...
...They have also organized Surface Action Groups, built around the refurbished World War II Iowa class battleships...
...2 9 AND WHAT OF THE COST...
...A S THE FORCES SWELLED, THEIR EYES turned southward...
...Author's interview with U.S...
...They think they want to do it but they don't know enough about the problerl...
...7. Brig...
...One economist believes that the escalation of U.S...
...A senior U.S...
...involvement-a state of non-war which kills hundreds of Nicaraguans and thousands of Salvadoreans each year and distorts the politics of Costa Rica and Honduras...
...public opinion is mobilized...
...An outright, Cuba-style trade embargo, for example, would cut off 64% of imported raw materials used in production and parts for 31% of the country's machinery and equipment...
...Troops would establish beachheads at Bluefields/El Bluff and Puerto Cabezas on the Atlantic Coast...
...Nicaragua and the guerrillas of El Salvador are geographically isolated, surrounded on all sides by U.S...
...An analysis of the strategic factors involved and the opinions of U.S...
...One senior officer estimates that the 35,000-man Army must grow by U.S...
...1 4 The political sensitivity of finally putting Americans behind the gunsights was dramatized when the plan was vetoed by no less an interyentionist than Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...Military analyst Theodore Moran has compiled a list of $171 million in new military aid that the Salvadorean Reviewing the troops: (left to right) U.S...
...There is utility in limited war"' writes Marine Corps planner Lt...
...An aerial blitz would not eliminate FMLN forces, but it would scatter them and kill their supporters en masse...
...As Americans consider their response, the apparatus of intervention stands ready...
...Some, like retired Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll Jr., suggest that the United States could dominate the situation within 10 days...
...General Gorman was on hand...
...The ability...to maintain civil order after foreign intervention is not impressive," though the more straightforward business of eliminating enemies and propping up allies, shows "more favorable results...
...Maxwell O. Johnson pointed out that, "Unlike forces stationed ashore, maritime forces can provide a credible overthe-horizon presence as an expression of U.S...
...Here, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of marines will fall...
...Monge himself backed a Southcom plan to have U.S...
...This co-ordinates two divisions: the 82nd Airborne of Fort Bragg and the 101st Airborne out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky...
...I think the Hondurans will say, I'd rather be left alone, thank you...
...The Green Berets, each of whose troops specializes in the language and culture of a particular region, began steering trainees toward a study of Latin America...
...2 6 The 193rd Infantry Brigade, based at Fort Clayton, Panama, is another likely participant, though political objections from the Panamanian government could complicate their involvement...
...The troops and jumpoff points involved would not be in Honduras, as is often thought, but at the home bases of U.S...
...Second, it hinted ominously at the reception that invading U.S...
...Author's interview with Charles Clements, New York, May 11, 1984...
...Though this would bring U.S...
...The contras' inability to establish a local base created the need for still more infusions of CIA arms, money and logistical support...
...3. Lt...
...the third, combat engagement on a scale sufficient to produce heavy U.S...
...But beyond this relatively limited level-Moran, for instance, allows for only 30 new helicopters--'the marginal utility of supplying increased U.S...
...6 In 1982, the Army chief of staff approved a long-term special forces revitalization plan, consolidating all units under a single command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina...
...The Washington Post, September 29, 1983...
...Most plans envision air strikes on Managua, the seaports of Corinto and Puerto Sandino, and a handful of other key points...
...Even this last scenario does not stand up to serious scrutiny...
...This March, the Navy flew Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadorean officers and diplomats to the America's deck to observe jet fighter takeoff and landing...
...rather, they set their sights on more narrow and obtainable goals...
...How does this kind of threatjustify the Honduran buildup...
...Why...should we let more Cuban-style revolutions occur in Latin America," asked Special Forces commander Gen...
...tactics were pulled up through the ranks...
...They don't feel a conventional attack on Honduras from Nicaragua is likely," explained one CIA analysts discount each of these possible scenarios for a Nicaraguan invasion of Honduras Map by Carolyn Cannon LA MOSOUITIA HONDURAS A NICARAGUA MAY/JUNE 198449 COMPANIES A COUNT RA ENCAMPIMENTS " VEHICLES A PROPOSED Sm DIRECTION OFATTACK INFANTRY MAY/JUNE 1984 49Endgame official...
...The U.S...
...Nicaragua's military capabilities are still largely defensive," concludes a study by military analysts Joseph Cirincione and Leslie C. Hunter?, 4 Its four-year arms buildup has made it unlikely that the country could be successfully invaded by any combination of Central American countries...
...Above all, it will rest on the extent to which U.S...
...the Green Berets expanded from 3,600 men to 5,800 and added a new group headquarters and two new battalions...
...Army only has 800,000...
...Accordingly, the CIA defined the broad range of organizations aligned with the Sandinista project-co-ops, unions, Christian base communities, rural schools, local civil defense groups-as part of that state and singled them out for attack...
...Joseph C. Lutz, "Special Forces: To Help Others Help Themselves," Army, October 1983...
...Tet or Dien Bien Phu), a change of government, then withdrawal...
...They got a message of determination that broke their will...
...Clements contends that the Salvadoreans have proved technically unprepared to maintain their U.S...
...Theodore H. Moran, "The Cost of Alternative U.S...
...official in Honduras agrees: "If we MAY/JUNE 1984 51Endg oame Americ Endgame wanted to do something quick and easy," he argues, "I could see air strikes like the early stuff on North Vietnam, you just attack harbors and radars and airfields, petroleum deposits, ammunition storage...
...carrier-based tactical air support for Salvadorean troops in the field...
...Heliborne troops can help to isolate or expand the beachhead established by landing craft...
...Four years of U.S...
...Cuba lacks the air and sealift capacity to move large numbers of troops and heavy armor...
...The Army's aggressive pre- election offensive, featuring stepped-up bombing and new, better armed 584-man light infantry battalions, won praise from U.S...
...combat advisers and/or troops are inserted along with it...
...younger middle-ranking officers sympathetic'to U.S...
...5 If that were so, the goal could be accomplished before Congress and public opinion had a chance to react...
...Not even Eden Pastora's reopened front in the south, also enjoying CIA support, could swing the balance...
...There's animosity...
...officials in the region regard Moran's predictions as overly optimistic...
...efforts to weld the Honduran and Salvadorean armies into an effective pincer force on the border have been largely fruitless...
...The Army White Paper of February 1980 set in motion a series of changes including the expansion of special counterinsurgency forces, development of "lighter, more deployable forces which use technology to provide...lethality and survivability," and a new set of conventional field tactics-the Airland Battle Doctrine-which "exhibit a fight-to-win spirit...
...foreign policy...
...buildup...
...Today, even amidst resurgent conservatism and patriotism, hard-core opposition to another costly intervention remains astonishingly strong...
...citizens or facilities overseas are threatened by terrorists, dissidents or the irrational acts of foreign governments...
...Maxwell O. Johnson recalled in a recent study, "In the post World War II period the United States has employed military force as a political instrument on a global basis over two hundred times...
...At the same time, he argues, once the battle has been joined militarily, U.S...
...pressures on the FSLN have not materialized...
...The converse, however, is far from true...
...their expeditionary forces to Angola and Ethiopia relied on Soviet transport-an unlikely prospect in a U.S.-occupied Nicaragua...
...On October 1, 1983, CONDECA--defunct since the 1969 Salvador-Honduras war-was formally revived with a statement denouncing "the Sandinista threat...
...Shortly afterwards, contra camps were moved inside MAY/JUNE 1984 47The Sandinista troops plan a border operation against Honduran-based contras Nicaragua...
...role there is still essentially political...
...Internal resistance has bogged down U.S...
...3 ' Most ominously, it might well mean bringing back the draft...
...9. Dov S. Zackheim, Marine Corps Gazette, March 1984...
...domestic politics deREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 42mand that action be swift and decisive...
...combat engineers build a road along the Nicaraguan frontier, but the anti-militarists in his cabinet gained the upper hand, and on November 17 Monge issued a reaffirmation of Costa Rican neutrality...
...You're talking about a lot of people: I don't even know if we have that many...
...Edward King, a former Pentagon planner and liaison between the Inter-American Defense Board and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, puts the cost much higher...
...The 193rd includes some of the Army's best trained jungle warfare forces...
...It nas received special training at the Jungle Operations Training Center at Fort Sherman, Panama Department of Defense counterinsurgency campaign in eastern Guatemala...
...3 But at what political cost...
...The turnaround from taking the aerial photograph, through processing it in the United States to having its results in the hands of Salvadorean field commanders, has been cut to a matter of hours...
...INVAsion of Nicaragua turns directly on how it would unfold in military terms...
...The AC-130 and Mohawk spy plane overflights of El Salvador and Nicaragua employ new concepts in computer photo analysis...
...The post-Vietnam synthesis brought a more sophisticated view of the difficulties of intervention...
...Invoking 700,000 Nicaraguans active in mass organizations, and 200,000 under arms, he went on to ask, "Could there possibly be a government [here] with 200,000 guerrillas spread throughout the country, when there practically isn't even a government in El Salvador with few guerrillas and far fewer arms...
...In October 1981, meetings between Guatemalan President Lucas Garcia and the Honduran and Salvadorean chiefs of staff led to a call from Lucas' brother Benedicto-Army chief of staff-for unification of the three country's armies "to prevent Communism from dominating Central America...
...The following September, then Salvadorean Defense Minister Jose Guillermo Garcia announced that his Army had contingency plans to invade Nicaragua and that it could do so jointly with Guatemala and Honduras...
...9 Since 1981, the Marines have rearmed their landing units with "more punch per pound" and obtained new helicopters, landing craft and amphibious assault vehicles...
...This is in line with the 1985 defense budget comment that, "Forward storage of munitions such as iron bombs and rockets will significantly enhance the Air Force's tactical air contingency capabilities...
...The Navy did the same in 1982, working through the Puerto Rican National Guard...
...Salvadorean troops told the author that U.S...
...The Hondurans do not possess the anti-armor equipment needed to stop T-55s, and say they feel no need to acquire it, despite their rapid military buildup...
...We went through a lot of trou- ble and took casualties and a lot of heat and the Salvadorean Army chickened out on us...
...This can even be elevated to a moral philosophy: "When it is not possible to reconcile liberty and order," said Salvadorean Defense Minister Vides Casanova in a 1983 ceremony to honor the Chilean military attache, "one should sacrifice liberty to order...
...Author's interview with Col...
...Casualty rates have increased every year since 1979.'6 More than 1,000 troops surrendered in the six months prior to May 1984...
...The point is that we won't do it...
...These units, whose primary mission is direct invasion and occupation, were supplemented by upgraded Special Operations Forces which, to quote Secretary Weinberger's 1984 Report, "meet threats at the lower end of the conflict spectrum-where the use of conventional forces may be premature, inappropriate or politically infeasible...
...They would also count on an aroused populace and hidden stockpiles of arms and supplies...
...In its closing maneuver, helicopter-supported U.S...
...A LL OF NICARAGUA'S ENERGY IS SHIPPED -- kin," notes the U.S...
...In 1984, it unveiled two new 10,000-man mobile divisions specially equipped for Third World "low-intensity" conflicts and capable of moving overseas in four days instead of the usual eleven...
...Only 10% of the noncommissioned officers trained at Fort Benning have re-enlisted...
...their field commander would be Gen...
...One senior diplomat, weighing the implications of action in Nicaragua, says that: There are lots of people around Reagan who want to do it...
...The repudiation of the contras had two profound implications...
...efforts to promote the country a a base for ARDE attacks into Nicaragua and as a political platform for condemnations of Nicaraguan aggression...
...One example of the Air Force's incompetence is the performance of its six small 0-2 spotter planes...
...The combat radius of Cuban MIGs would not reach farther than Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast...
...U.S...
...for another, no hypothetical "Nicaraguan aggression" carries much conviction...
...s When the Reagan Administration took office, Admiral Harry D. Train II, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, noted that the United States had "no forces programmed for a CaribMAY/JUNE 1984 43Endgame bean contingency...
...T HE MOST IMPORTANT EXPERIMENT WITH I surrogate forces-the Nicaraguan contras-also appears to have played out to a point of diminishing returns...
...The United States has prepared its combat units and facilities to launch an invasion of Nicaragua...
...This option, however, carries another kind of cost-mass killing of the Salvadorean population on a scale not yet seen, a moral spectacle likely to provoke domestic and international problems of its own...
...Gustavo Alvarez, Gen...
...base and overflight rights do not become an issue...
...Washington still has economic screws to turn on Managua...
...The Joint Chiefs devised plans for the special forces of the various servicesincluding the Navy SEALS and Air Force Special Operations-to coordinate their operations...
...The first, an infantry thrust into the Mosquitia, is "not likely" because "there is no strategic prize there" and the terrain is "virtually impassable...
...You talk about a hundred thousand people under arms...
...the total armed forces number 2.18 million...
...When the contra operation formally got underway in 1981, many officials hoped it could topple the Sandinistas by sparking an insurrection or carving out a liberated zone that Washington could recognize and reinforce...
...30,000 servicemen, including a Marine Amphibious Unit...
...The Administration must calculate how much it will take to achieve its political goals in Central America, and how much can be put in the field before Congress and the public become sufficiently aroused to cry halt...
...Is it another Vietnam or another Grenada...
...Military observers say the Army could still make better use of night patrols, relentless pursuit and the intelligence provided by U.S...
...A War College study based on a mathematical model of invasions and their impact found that "military intervention has but a limited effect on the structural behavior of target countries...
...25...
...In 1982, the Marine Corps activated nine new Forward Air Defense platoons...
...Army...
...2 1 "Let us suppose"' said Comandante Jaime Wheelock of the FSLN National Directorate in May this year, "that tomorrow Ronald Reagan...intervenes militarily in Nicaragua...
...The fourth attack, using motorized rifle companies and secondary armored wheeled vehicles near El Espino and La Fraternidad, "could be closed off with tactical engineers fairly quickly...
...The historical question that was first raised in the hills of El Salvador and Nicaragua has now come for an answer to the living rooms of the Untied States...
...But by 1984, a virtually unbroken series of major maneuvers, including at least half a dozen simulated amphibious invasions, had established the fleet as a major Central American presence...
...invasion of Nicaragua or El Salvador would be much less...
...But the demise of Carter's coexistence policy and the advent of the Reagan defense budgets made it legitimate again to visualize foreign policy as a geopolitical chess game in which Third World nations were, in the title of an influential 1982 Army War College study, "Microstates: Pawns in the Global Strategic Balance...
...Miami Herald, September 24, 1982...
Vol. 18 • May 1984 • No. 3
