The War at Home
To me, our most pressing problem is not in the Third World, but here at home in the struggle for the minds of people. . . . Propaganda and organizations are not enough. We must have a purpose,...
...assistance from the armed forces and intelligence services of "friendly" third countries such as Israel and Taiwan...
...3 It has helped launch new inter-agency programs such as the State Department Office for Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning, which in turn directs the Interdepartmental Group on Terrorism, made up of State, the National Security Council, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the FBI, CIA and others...
...Now we must harness these resources in a common security endeavor.' 2 In some instances, such as the expanded private component of "humanitarian" aid and development projects, religious and corporate involvement may have a significant economic impact...
...This "movement" is unified neither in its analysis nor in its program of action...
...Proponents of this view have distributed widely a two-part March 1985 Miami Herald article by Juan Tamayo, which depicts Nicaragua as a "haven for scores of leftwing militants," including not only Latin and Central Americans but the Italian Red Brigades, the West German Baader-Meinhoff Gang, the Basque ETA and the PLO...
...public affairs on the one end, through black propOn another level, the Administration is operating in aganda on the other end, is the advertising and marketing of our product...
...And when "counterterrorism" is equated with "counterinsurgency," U.S...
...They include an emphasis on training local forces...
...military establishment...
...Members of Congress *Livingstone is a senior vice-president with the New Right public relations firm of Gray & Company...
...Winning this war of ideas at home means mobilizing the U.S...
...Much clearer analysis is needed of how U.S...
...We did it in the 60s and 70s in South Carolina in civilian areas, and I think we should start to do it again with U.S...
...Furthermore, if the contras hope to expand their political influence inside Nicaragua, they will need non-military supplies to hand out to potential civilian sympathizers in situations where the carrot is seen as more effective than the stick...
...The War at Home 1. John Michael Kelly, discussant, "Economic/Security Assistance and Special Operations," in Special Operations in U.S...
...We have every right to strike back at terrorists," a senior official said today...
...At the same time, Congress has largely fallen in step behind the "compromise" option of low-intensity conflict offered by the Administration...
...Low-intensity conflict planners consider all aspects of social life as war fronts, with the population falling into three categories: insurgent, rearguard for insurgents, or in dispute-and thus a "target" to be won...
...Low-intensity tactics do not in themselves mean that the overall direction of the war has become more sophisticated, although, since 1983, they have reinforced and advanced the overall strategy...
...efforts to control Third World societies if they involve non-military tactics, or forms of warfare that claim to promote economic development...
...A narrow focus on conventional military indicators can often misinterpret the course of a low-intensity conflict and make it hard to see the real war...
...forces...
...He said, Reagan Administration has marketed the programWe have basically two tools with which to wage and most of Congress has endorsed it-as a comwar: a carrot and a stick...
...On the military front, various elements indicate a low-intensity approach...
...Like the Sandinistas, they are at a propaganda disadvantage when faced with a U.S...
...Low-intensity conflict is extreme: it is a science of warfare whose goal of controlling the qualitative aspects of human life merits the term "totalitarian...
...Simultaneously, it uses material lomatic or ideological backing...
...units...
...5. The Washington Post, July 23, 1985...
...In the absence of this research, it is difficult to grasp the extent to which any particular strategy is underway...
...Sarkesian, "Low-Intensity Conflict: Concepts, Principles and Policy Guidelines," p. 11...
...for its propaganda value and as a concrete means of advancing U.S...
...Instead, they lead to a false dichotomy between invasion and negotiations, at a time when Washington's real war has escalated in a manner designed precisely to avoid both talks and troops, both "giving in" and "going in...
...P RIVATE SECTOR INVOLVEMENT IN "HUmanitarian aid" programs has become a major feature of the war in Central America...
...the use of U.S...
...In low-intensity conflict, the local armed forces begin to incorporate police and intelligence functions...
...This kind of campaign asserts that the FMLN is a "terrorist" organization sponsored by Nicaragua...
...military sales and grants program...
...The "war against terrorism" has given birth to an entire cottage industry of right-wing experts, many of them with direct access to Administration policymaking, who provide the intellectual rationale for placing public opinion on a war footing...
...Conflicts remain between the range of U.S...
...Within the military establishment, the debate over correct tools and tactics for particular situations is very much alive, an integral part of the evolving body of knowledge on low-intensity conflict...
...18...
...If their experiments can be aborted, the United States will be able to claim at least a partial victory...
...Since the beginning of the first Reagan Administration, a new vocabulary-inextricably linked to older anti-communist traditions-has emerged to justify the new forms of US intervention...
...funding to the described under the rubric of civil affairs and contras and continued support for military assistance economic assistance . . . the stick has been dis- channeled through the CIA...
...We are not going to accept the brutal communist regime in Nicaragua.'" Calls for "talks not troops" fail to come to grips with the total, unconventional war now being fought in Central America...
...While Americans may not be moved by Administration insistence that faraway revolutions represent a threat to their national security, terrorism personalizes the threat...
...The cussed...
...institutions and agencies and their counterparts in other countries, as does the problem of translating ideas into practice...
...The theme of terrorism has become a subtext in all discussions of U.S...
...We are not going to negotiate away political power in El Salvador...
...These supplies provide direct logistical support to the civilian rearguard that sustains the contra army...
...Survival is the ultimate morality.' 5 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 44N CENTRAL AMERICA, WASHINGTON'S INtent to follow a low-intensity strategy is not always clear...
...special forces, National Guard and reserve units...
...For low-intensity strategists faced with a prolonged war anywhere in the Third World, the task is to recreate the sense of a wartime situation within the United States-the only difference being that the war is not a conventional or declared one...
...Many apparently "low-intensity" practices are simply the continuation of older forms of political and economic control-what one Latin American economist calls "the maintenance system of imperialism...
...4. First proposed as the Prohibition Against the Training and Support of Terrorist Organizations Act of 1984...
...It threatens to hold the Sandinistas responsible for the APRIL/MAY 1986 41Military officers dispatch humanitarian aid: "In no wav soft...
...response-a low-intensity conflict in which civilians, by definition, are the target...
...The two aid channels are designed to be complementary...
...In effect, there is no more distinction between economic and military assistance than between M-l and M-16 rifles...
...F OR BETTER OR WORSE, AMERICAN CITIzens are participants in the low-intensity war that is being played out in Central America...
...It has prompted proposals for legislation that would allow the Attorney General to designate certain countries or organizations of its choice as "terrorist," and would allow for prosecution of U.S...
...The concepts of difficult to understand as "warfare...
...7 The charge of terrorism has also been used to discredit the FMLN in El Salvador...
...15...
...As Douglas Blaufarb said of the aid and refugee programs he ran in South East Asia, they are "the civilian front of an unconventional war, which could not have been prosecuted without the aid program...
...Sumner, "Negotiating with Marxists...
...The sheer size and complexity of the U.S...
...AID provides additional resources for similar projects...
...Author's interview, Managua, Nicaragua, August 1985...
...In 1984, the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program set up training programs with Central American governments...
...What will be the impact on the thinking of the Salvadorean military on events in neighboring Guatemala, where the process of "nation-building" follows counterinsurgency operations rather than accompanying them...
...control...
...command and control, since intelligence-sharing between the CIA and the contras is specifically authorized as a form of humanitarian assistance...
...The twilight battlefield of low-intensity conflict," he said...
...But, more importantly, it requires looking away from strictly military applications of power and toward the other tools that Washington employs in Third World conflicts...
...Yet the private sector offers the Administration much more than just a convenient source of funding to the contras when Congress opposes covert aid...
...Even if the United States is unable to win outright, it can cause enough physical destruction and political damage over a prolonged period to guarantee that the revolutionaries will not truly "win" either...
...The Reagan Administration may have learned from earlier U.S...
...The carrot is what is promise between a total cutoff of U.S...
...Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, Col...
...serving notice to other potential sympathizers that their Humanitarian aid is now a familiar part of the Cenfailure to isolate the FMLN will be taken as implicit ap- tral American landscape, crucial to Washington both proval of "terrorists...
...Army Secretary John Marsh recognized both the psychological and the practical implications of private sector involvement in the war effort...
...To gauge the dynamic of the war accurately also involves asking: Why a new weapon at this particular time...
...Nicaragua border destabilize local society...
...3. See Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985 Report to Congress...
...When Secretary of State Alexander Haig declared in 1981 that "terrorism will replace human rights as the cornerstone of our foreign policy," he was laying the groundwork for "special operations" on a massive scale...
...The goal is to drive a aid "relief" projects to manage the civilian population, wedge between the Sandinistas and the FMLN, making under the guise of providing charitable assistance to their political alliances costly if not impossible, thereby needy refugees...
...Low-intensity conflict addresses every facet of policy and incorporates a wide range of means, few of which will be strictly military...
...The new doctrine of war in the Third World challenges conventional opposition responses as well as conventional military wisdom...
...Pentagon resources are for "tactical civic action," permitting the Army to gain a foothold in embattled areas where civilian agencies cannot operate...
...We must find a way to incorporate into a grand strategy the total resources of our society...
...It can settle for weakening its opponents to such a point that their political goals become unattainable...
...6 The continuing Administration campaign to portray Nicaragua as what Attorney General Ed Meese calls "a country club for terrorists" is psychological warfare on two levels...
...But these changes in tactics do not necessarily imply any shift in U.S...
...Certainly, not every event in the war is a direct outgrowth of deliberate, centrally directed plans...
...If we lose our own citizens we will not have much going for us anywhere else in the world...
...It is a difficult moment to plan a strategy for opposing the war in Central America...
...It is in no way soft...
...But understanding even the strictly military aspects of the real war means thinking about more than numbers or hardware...
...It is possible, for example, for Washington to "stop the bombing," or to claim it is providing "humanitarian aid...
...It also used the occasion to bring Nicaragua into the terrorism debate, branding the Sandinistas an illegitimate government and depicting Nicaragua, together with Cuba, North Korea, Libya and Iran as an outlaw nation...
...A LOW-INTENSITY FRAMEWORK INFORMS the way the United States thinks about using its military power...
...police aid, are more willing to take a stand against "terrorism...
...Since this approach can also incorporate conventional tactics into its overall framework and respond flexibly on many levels of the intensity spectrum, the study of tactics alone can be misleading...
...Much of the U.S...
...Without a context for their work, opponents of the war risk confusing tactics--or demands that apply to a specific moment-with principles...
...There is still inadequate research on how foreign policy is conceived, and then altered by its passage through the political bureaucracy of the administration of the day, as well as through the large and entrenched bureaucracies of the military itself, with all its branches and services...
...Marsh, "Introduction," p.24...
...7. Juan Tamayo, "World's Leftists Find a Haven in Nicaragua," Miami Herald, March 3, 1985...
...strategy that does not call itself a war strategy at all...
...military policy is formulated and executed...
...Ferguson and Morelli, "Low-Intensity Conflict: An Opera- tional Perspective," p.3...
...low-intensity conflict strategists hope to win the war...
...We live in a nation that has been the global pioneer in industrial development, marketing, advertising and communications...
...Marines in San Salvador's Zona Rosa, the Administration escalated its anti-terrorist rhetoric...
...The war in Central America cannot be reversed by theory alone, and already it may have progressed so far that it is too late for the United States to roll back the challenge of revolutionary nationalism...
...For the Reagan AdministraThe churches have been key opponents of the war tion, however, negotiations are not an alternative to the war: they are simply another front in it...
...He is also president of the Institute on Terrorism and Subnational Conflict, and director for terrorism and low-level warfare at the American Security Council.2 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40A fierce war of ideas at home: "If you like Cuba, you'll love Nicaragua" who are hesitant to endorse aid to military dictatorships or repeal long-standing bans on U.S...
...The involvement of churches, businesses and private relief organizations helps build an image of public consensus, and creates the psychological conditions for that consensus to grow...
...What are the dynamics of conflict between Honduraschosen by Washington as the support base for its war against Nicaragua-and El Salvador...
...16...
...IN JULY 1985, AFTER THE HIJACKING OF TWA Flight 847 in Beirut and the killing of four U.S...
...It portrays its actions on the ground as a peaceful relief operation, and the real war as charity...
...One former intelligence officer, contemptuous of the Pentagon's often faddish interest in the subject, decried the tendency to latch on to terms like "low-intensity conflict" without understanding them...
...audience, it explains that Nicaragua is the source of terrorist violence beyond Latin America and that U.S...
...Citizen involvement is reinforced by the growing role of the National Guard in Central America and serves a long-range purpose for low-intensity strategists...
...expanded intelligence and communications systems...
...more common are those who see only a set of tactical innovations or a flashy new name for counterinsurgency...
...13...
...It's a good idea, it gets the populace familiar with this type of warfare...
...It penetrates into homes, families, the entire fabric of grassroots social relations...
...By posing false polarities between military aid and "non-lethal" economic and humanitarian assistance, the Reagan Administration pretends that "war" uses only traditional weapons...
...But the shift in the nature of the war challenges the peace movement to reexamine its assumptions, as the Administration adopts the language of its opponents in an attempt to still their fears and seize the moral high ground...
...Nevertheless, its impact has been felt on some important levels: the human rights lobby and religious groups, for example, have altered some of the terms of the debate over Central America...
...This in turn makes it dangerously easy for low-intensity strategists to appropriate the language of their opponents...
...These are part of an effort, on a global level, to redefine the "threat," the enemy and the battle...
...It is important to remember that advocates of low-intensity conflict are still a minority within the U.S...
...Air Force, explained at a seminar on low-intensity conflict, "I think the most critical special operations mission we have today is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us...
...Campaigns limited to "cleaning up" the violence on a quantitative level do not touch on the fundamentally dirty character of this war...
...there are no "civilians" in a low-intensity conflict...
...Military hardware, in general, emphasizes high-tech surveillance and "anti-terrorist" equipment...
...Ironically, even alarmists like Neil Livingstone, an ultra-conservative "terrorism expert," admit that the number of terrorist incidents within the U.S...
...2. Neil Livingstone, The War Against Terrorism (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1982...
...the military talks more about reform, and much less about body counts...
...What are its specific characteristics...
...Such slogans first emerged as valid responses to specific issues at particular moments...
...If we can win this war of ideas, we can win everywhere else...
...the State Department, AID, the CIA or private relief agencies...
...The public's ability to read the indicators of this kind of warfare may have a real effect on the nature, severity and duration of the conflict...
...AID funds are for "strategic civic action' '--larger projects such as school and hospital construction, which require a degree of prior military control.' Humanitarian aid in Central America is inseparable from larger military purposes...
...To a U.S...
...Terrorism" has become a label for virtually all forms of conflict that emanate from the real process of change in the Third World...
...public, and many Central Americans, maintain faith in genuine negotiations and political solutions to conflict...
...James A. Taylor reminds his conventionally minded colleagues...
...citizens are more aware of-and more threatened by-the specter of terrorism than ever before, though few would be able to define it...
...In others, marginal and "populist" right-wing groups like the Alabama-based Civilian Military Assistance and mercenaries from Soldier of Fortune magazine and other groups help divert attention from the more substantial direct involvement of U.S...
...Determining the extent to which a low-intensity strategy is underway means reading a set of indicators that are often confusing and contradictory...
...But the concept of humanitarian aid has also been a vital theme in the propaganda battle at home, and has had remarkable success in Congress...
...The war against terrorism has provided the excuse for advocates of low-intensity conflict to restructure special forces training and equipment programs within the Pentagon...
...Gordon Sumner: We are not going to negotiate away any of our own interests in this area or those of our friends in Central America...
...Even if Congress continues to deny the Administration authority to provide explicitly military aid, "humanitarian assistance" makes the contra war effective on the ground and more politically sustainable over time...
...and the use of the military to channel economic and development aid to a target country...
...Revolution and counterrevolution develop their own morality and ethics that justify any means to achieve success...
...Whether they are guerrillas-at-ease or terrorists-in-waiting," wrote Tamayo, "it is clear that Nicaragua is attracting them by the droves...
...None of this means any appreciable lessening of U.S...
...If that point has been reached, Washington may be capable of no more than inflicting pain-which, given the available options, may in itself become a goal of the low-intensity strategy...
...involvement in low-intensity conflict may come to appear a matter of self-defense, of immediate concern to ordinary citizens...
...Visionaries who understand the concept as a blueprint for global counterrevolution are even fewer...
...These conflicts, whatever their true source and character, can be made to represent frightening and irrational forces...
...Once insurgents have been labeled "terrorists," their revolution is stripped of context and reduced to purposeless violence...
...public against both communism-the old enemy-and its new junior partner, the Third World...
...As the contras readily acknowledge, food, clothing and medicine are as vital to their forces as guns and ammunition...
...To this end, the Administration has developed certain major themes and buzzwords-terrorism, humanitarian aid, free elections-intended to alter public perception of the war in Central America...
...attacks on the Sandinistas fall into the category of justifiable self-defense...
...a m a 8) a REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Repor Vos, th Amricas The Real War progress of the war in El Salvador: according to cussed at considerable length...
...Calls for economic aid instead of military assistance, or major themes such as "political, not military solutions," started life as the slogans of peace activists...
...is an enormous area in which private sector resources can be used...
...The Administration has channeled this assistance through the regular U.S...
...goals...
...though the two weapons have different tactical functions, their end purpose is the same...
...Taylor, "Military Medicine's Expanding Role," p.33...
...foreign policy...
...Most, in fact, will attempt to avoid high levels of violence...
...The blurring of the military/civilian distinction means that any one of a number of operations may signify low-intensity conflict in action...
...To frame the issues of war and peace as a contest between talks and troops can permit the United States to present its true strategy of low-intensity conflict as a moderate alternative, and allow the real war to be sold to the American public as a "third option," a compromise between the extremes of invasion or surrender...
...We've got to recondition our populace again, so that a soldier practic- ing for a war, for this type of war, is seen as a regular and necessary thing...
...Humanitarian aid in a low-intensity conflict is as defense-oriented as the providing of training and technology," Army Lt...
...citizens who support them...
...OPPOSITION TO ADMINISTRATION POLICY embraces many different constituencies attempting to affect public and congressional opinion...
...I]ntelligence Meese's logic, if the Salvadorean Army is losing to the should tell us whether to apply the carrot or the "terrorist" FMLN, then the Nicaraguan government stick...
...Author's interview, Washington, DC, April 1985...
...It is seeking to cut The most powerful mechanism for making civilians off the insurgents from their rearguard, deny them the target of low-intensity operations is also the most sanctuary and isolate them politically...
...The most obvious example is A T A 1983 SYMPOSIUM ON LOW-INTENSITY the current program of assistance to the contras and conflict, Deputy Assistant Air Force Secretary J. their families in Honduras, which has virtually doubled Michael Kelly summed up the elements being dis- the amount of direct aid to the contras annually...
...Even among those who agree on the principles of low-intensity conflict, there are significant differences over method...
...has actually declined since the 1960s, and has remained fairly level worldwide.* Yet the issue has become a media staple, a topic for analysis in sensationalist headlines and sober university forums alike...
...As J. Michael Kelly, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S...
...Indeed, its involvement is almost an article of low-intensity conflict doctrine, consistent with the free-market fundamentalism of the Reagan Administration...
...but they also express the principles by which U.S...
...Blaufarb, "Economic/Security Assistance and Special Op- erations," p.210 12...
...And what will be the larger consequences for conflict in the region of the broader Latin American debt crisis...
...third-country resources or local civilian government structures...
...Exactly how is it being used...
...The United States may work through its own military and reserves or local surrogate forces...
...It is much harder to oppose U.S...
...It involves using sanctuary and rearguard extend beyond arms ship- food, clothing and medical supplies to bolster U.S.- sanctuary and rearguard extend beyond arms ship- ments-often cited but never proved-and other forms backed military forces on the ground, while publicly of material support: Nicaragua is held to be equally portraying such assistance as politically neutral guilty if it offers the FMLN any kind of moral, dip- "humanitarian" aid...
...Waghelstein went on, We should be able to set up two opposing teams, APRIL/MAY 1986 43Civilian controls in uuatemala: wnat inTluence in il salvaaor-f and have one of them be able to go in and recruit the preacher to their side, and recruit the editor of the local paper to their side...
...42In the context of a low-intensity conflict, however, the distinction between "military" and "non-military" aid is totally superfluous...
...Psychological operations, ranging from should be punished...
...Its engagement in the war effort is an effective weapon in the fight to win hearts and minds at home...
...We must have a purpose, and we must integrate the purpose of special operations, psychological operations, shows of military force, economic programs and all the rest...
...Along with its redefinition of battlefields, the innovation of low-intensity doctrine has been its redefinition of victory...
...Indeed, economic aid is often the more potent weapon...
...How can the Reagan Administration manage "preventive" nationbuilding measures in Costa Rica while its "active" measures in support of contras on the Costa Rica...
...the Administration is now arguing for an expanded Regional Counter-Terrorism Program to aid Central American police...
...objectives...
...They include the peace movement, anti-intervention and solidarity activists, sectors of the churches and the human rights community...
...Private aid makes the war more overt, and serves as a counterbalance to real and potential sources of domestic opposition...
...8 accordance with the basic principles of counterin- marketing of our product.h surgency and low-intensity conflict...
...STRATEgy is the belief that winning low-intensity conflicts means changing the way that people think about the world...
...6. The New York Times, July 24, 1985...
...That is not what the U.S...
...Asking how many new helicopters have been sent to El Salvador is not in itself a useful question...
...mistakes, to the extent that it has avoided committing combat forces to Central America, and has refined some aspects of counterinsurgency theory...
...John Waghelstein offered a graphic argument for new ways of enlisting civilian sympathies: I think we've also got to begin to do counterinsurgency training here in the U.S., not just on the military reservations where it's been for the last few years, but out in the countryside...
...In frustration over the constraints imposed by a democratic society, Sam Sarkesian writes: National leaders and the public must understand that low-intensity conflicts do not conform to democratic notions of strategy or tactics...
...The real issues that gave rise to the war are obscured, as is the terrorist character of the U.S...
...The objective of negotiations is to protect our national security and our national interests," explains Lt...
...Waghelstein, talk at American Enterprise Institute...
...The integrated character of the crisis in the Caribbean Basin raises further questions about how Washington will conduct its regional strategy...
...In this political climate, most U.S...
...apparatus may mean that it cannot effectively "mirror" the politico-military structures of revolutionary warfare...
...Strategy, p.223...
...That's our stated policy...
...4 Finally, it is serving to justify a new wave of counterinsurgency training of Third World police and military forces...
...Questions of intent versus ability are key...
...But even if Washington succeeds in implementing a more sophisticated, low-intensity strategy, events on the ground are still determined by many factors beyond U.S...
...One major risk is that opponents may organize to stop the wrong war-a rerun of Vietnam...
...What is the impact on the economic component of the low-intensity model if the Caribbean Basin Initiative fails as a viable example of economic nation-building in Grenada and other island countries...
...military is fighting today, and the Reagan Administration is quite sincere when it says it wants "no more Vietnams" in Central America...
...5 The same week, The New York Times reported that, Administration officials deliberately began calling the Salvadorean guerrillas and their purported backers in Nicaragua terrorists recently, an official said, to bring any future military strike or other action under the oratorical umbrella of the Reagan Administration campaign against terrorism...
...Under a similar program, the Pentagon has been supplying the Salvadorean Army with food, medicine and other "humanitarian" aid supplies for use in civic action projects in government-controlled rural areas...
...George Tanham, former President of the Rand Corporation and counterinsurgency expert A T THE HEART OF CURRENT U.S...
...They should be able to capture the town without firing a single shot, so that when the other side comes in and the commander tries to talk to the people, he can't even get a glass of cold water...
...They'll probably start training their kitchen workers with courses like 'Low-Intensity Food Preparation,' " he said...
...8. Kelly, "Economic/Security Assistance and Special Opera- tions," p.223 9. See Department of Defense, "Task Force Report on Humanitarian Assistance" (Washington, DC, April 1984...
...The current low-intensity conflict in Central America is, as military officers Morelli and Ferguson write, "neither simple nor short-term," and it remains to be APRIL/MAY 1986 45The Real War seen whose side time is on.' 7 That unknown will be resolved in part by the impact of the war at home and the course of events within the United States...
Vol. 20 • April 1986 • No. 2
