NATIONAL STRATEGY AND LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT

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• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: January 28, 1987
• Content Type: MISC

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AL .,anuary .Z1, I 987
Ob.
NATIONAL STRATEGY
AND
LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT
Statement for the Senate Armed Services Committee
28 January 1987
by
Paul F. Gorman
General, U.S. Army (Retired)
Among the tasks before this Committee, none is more difficult than
ascertaining what strategies may be appropriate over the long run for the
U.S. In responding to terrorism, insurgency, and the regional wars of the
Third World --that genre of recourse to violence for political purposes
referred to these days as low intensity conflict
What should be U.S. objectives?
What concepts or premises should guide us?
What shall be the means to our ends?
Strategic Challenges
I can not start our discussion, as some who have spoken before me
have, with a brief characterization of principal threats to U.S. interests,
because interests and threats relevant to my topic are so diverse as to defy
compact generalization. The strategic challenges which I have been asked to
address are surely nol simply manifestations of the relationship between
the United States and the U.S.S.R.
Rather, I might usefully begin with a reminder that no President since
Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been able to avoid serious domestic political
problems arising from involvements with the Third World. Moreover, a
significant number of these difficulties, however aided and abetted by the
Soviets, had origins in, and derived perpetrators from, radical political,
religious, or racial forces beyond the Kremlin's control. And I might observe
that Presidents Carter and Reagan have had to cope with some such
non-Soviet crises which were without precedent. Trends are adverse. Future
PresidOts,, with less relative national power at their disposal, will face
larger.nOber. nf Inird World antagonists with access to sophisticated
arma, stpt, .d by mi cant nationalism, ethnocentrism, and
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SASC January 22, 1987
sectarianism.
As I understand the trends --and I hasten to disclaim expertise
concerning most-- we can expect, among the "less developed nations" of the
Third World, future troubles which will stem from:
I. Industrialization. It is not clear how the fundamental economic
transformations ongoing within the advanced industrialized countries --the
substantial conversion from hard-good manufactures to service industries
will affect Third World futures, but there is definite potential for
gstic presenting new military threats to U.S. Interests, for exacerbating
have/have-not differences, and for inducing high-volume migrations, as
well as for opening new opportunities for trade. It is already evident that
the growth of arms industries indigenous to the Third World has
contributed to the worldwide proliferation of advanced conventional
weapons; while the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. continue to be the main suppliers,
Brazil, Israel, China, and India are now capable of exporting armament and
munitions competitive in quantities and quality with those manufactured in
NATO or in the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, it seems just a matter of time
before a number of Third World nations will possess both nuclear weapons
and the means to deliver them over ranges of a thousand miles or more.
2. Unbalanced growth. There is already more socio-economic
dynamism among such rapidly industrializing giants as India, Brazil, or the
People's Republic of China, or among industrializing mini-powers like South
Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, than in either the stagnated communist-bloc,
or the much-slowed free, industrialized nations of the northern hemisphere.
Controversy over markets, tariffs, credit, and international money
management seems likely to heighten, and even to dominate other aspects of
U.S. policy toward industrializing states. Perhaps as importantly, our
Progressively more aged population will contrast with their
characteristically young populations, and we are apt to be perceived as a
"status quo" power, obstructing rather than facilitating a brighter future.
3. Oil supplies and oil prices. The Middle East remains the only major
source of petroleum fuels without substantial local claimants, and without
high accessibility costs. Exploratory wells there typically produce 100
times what flows from similar wells in the U.S. The chances are that OPEC
will reassert itseif Ir.: a major political-economic factor. But even OPEC
reserves are limi?-? -,nd the entire world is going to have to confront the
reality that peti. .:an continue to serve societies as it has over the
past century on,' . few decades to come. A shift to natural gas, coal,
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SASC January 2:2, 1957
and nuclear power is inevitable, and is bound to have profound implications
for U.S. national strategy.
4 New and more restive neighbors. The prowess of air transportation
and modern information media have brought the U.S. into unprecedented
Intimacy with peoples worldwide. The recent waves of immigration, and the
newsworthiness of Third World developments attest to these
transformations. We live in an ever-smaller, ever more interdependent
world, and find ourselves caught up in national, racial and religious quarrels
for which our geography, history and mores have not prepared us. Even the
most familiar international relations require redefinition in the light of
current and portended realities: the premises which have heretofore
governed U.S. relations with Mexico are questionably relevant for the future,
for Mexico faces political, economic, and social urgencies which auger for
both more internal instability and increasings tensions with the U.S.
5. Smuggled drugs. Most of the illegal narcotics sold in the U.S. come
from Third World countries. The U.S. has not been able, as yet, to curtail
Illicit drug consumption at home, or to develop techniques for decisive
intervention, on behalf of a friendly government, against narco-traffickers
abroad.
6. Shrinking base structure. The divestiture of U.S. overseas military
bases, which has been a hallmark of U.S. experience in the Third World over
the last two decades, is likely to continue, and we are likely to become ever
more dependent militarily on naval power and force projection from the U.S.
itself to protect our interests abroad.
7. Exported violence. Whatever their rhetoric about "peaceful
competition", the U.S.S.R. and its client states behave as though they are
deeply committed to future political violence, and are determinedly
preparing to foment, to augment, to support, or to capitalize upon it. The
Soviet Union and Cuba, in particular, continue to train, year by year,
thousands of young men and women from Third World nations for terrorism,
insurgency, and subversion. Moreover, over the past decade, the presence and
influence of Soviet Bloc nations has grown substantially inthe Third World,
as the following charts attest:
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20 ECONOMIC ADVISERS IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES
18
/ 16
CUBAN
EAST EUROPEAN
SOVIET
100
180
60
40
120
1970
1975
1980
1985
MILITARY ADVISERS AND TROOPS IN
THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES
1990
Figure 1
CUBAN
EAST EUROPEAN
SOVIET
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
FIGURE 2
Figure 1 and 2 suggest that sometime in the mid-'70's, strategistB
the U.S.S.R., seeing the United States in the throes of Watergate, and pertsips
encouraged by the War Powers Resolution and the Clark Amendment to
believe that the U.S. did not intend to contest a more aggressive polic*
the Third World, launched a vigorous effort to suborn developing countr'es
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Like their war materiel, their undertia,lngs
were initially clumsy and trouble-prone; but they retrofitted in service.,.
today their overseas operations are quite serviceable. From Cie stratept
point of view, the Soviets have tanag w innsity cc. - far better
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5A5C 1957
than the United States. They prefer to work low profile, preferably at the
top. They are particularly adroit at installing their own or proxy command,
communications, and intelligence systems. Their hand is often hidden, or
clad in the velvet of humanitarian aid. They have an effective coalition
strategy; their use of "fraternal nations" has been masterful. While their
political and econ.omic doctrines are patently vapid, and while association
with them seems to offer to any Third World country only subjugation to a
new, more oppressive form of imperialism, they probably consider it
significant that the number of Marxist-Leninist garrison states in the Third
World has grown. And now a Cuba-like Nicaragua is on the same continent
with the United States.
But I hasten to reemphasize that the future security environment in
the Third World can not be assessed only in East-West terms. There are
ample indigenous causes for tension and violence, and year by year,
armaments increase in range and lethality. It is possible to anticipate a
time when nuclear weapons will be in the hands of Third World nations, such
as Libya, Iran and Iraq, whose recent history has been marred by instability
and international ruthlessness. For example, the Strategic Studies Institute
of the Army War College published last summer a paper entitled: A world
2010. A Decline of Suoeroower Influence in which the author, Charles W.
Taylor speculates that national holdings of nuclear weapons might look like
this:
YEAR 2010
POSTINDUSTRIAL
FRANCE 111
JAPAN 131
UNITED KINGDOM (1]
UNITED STATES 111
WEST GERMANY 131
ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL
ISRAEL (21
SOUTH AFRICA 121
TAIWAN (31
TRANSITIONING INDUSTRIAL
ARGENTINA 141
BRAZIL i 41
CHILE 14)
INDUSTRIAL
CHINA 111
INDIA 121
PAKISTAN 121
NORTH KOREA 131
SOUTH KOREA 131
U.S.S.R. 111
VIETNAM 141
PREINDUSTRIAL
EGYPT 151
IRAN 151
IRAQ 151
LIBYA 151
SAUDI ARABIA (51
Weapons
1112000+ Moto loo
121 tO 1000 151up to 50
131uo to 500
5
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17.^,
..-,
The implications of these speculations are not pleasant to
contemplate: a world in which trained terorists and subversives abound,
operating in league with drug cartels, in which irresponsitle nations will
possess devastating military power. There will probably be 3 decline in the
ability of any U.S. President to influence events abroad, and an increase in
the risks to national security with which our leaders, and the American
people, will have to live. Sound strategy will be more important than ever.
Strategic Objectives
As you know, the President's Commission on Defense Management, the
Packard Commission, recommended revision of the procedures by which
defense budgets were prepared to emphasize the importance of the
Commander-in-Chief's first eliciting from his principal advisers
recommendations on national strategy, and his providing them guidance
relating strategic ends to means. I believe that the Republic is indebted to
the leaders of this Committee not only to the attention they are directing to
these matters in this Congress, but to their role in enacting the
Nichols-Goldwater legislation on national security management, and on
national readiness for Special Operations and low intensity conflict.
Clearly, to arm for the future, we need to bring to bear all we can learn
from the oast, all our intellect, all our ingenuity.
Many Americans, and some Senators, believe, since violence is
inevitable lr the Third World, so inflexible are societies and governments
there, so intractable are the problems of overpopulation and livelihood, that
the obiective of the U.S. should be non-invoIven7ent But we live today in a
world so interdependent as to involve this nation with violence there,
whether the President intends involvement or not, whenever:
O American citizens are assaulted, killed or held hostage.
O A representative democracy, respectful of human rights,
faces violent extinction, or such a government might emerge
from ongoing violence.
rj American economic holdings are seriously threatened, or the
regional climate of investment is severely impaired.
O It causes a considerable flow of refugees to the U.S
O It facilitates international crimin ; preying .pon U.
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citizens, as in cocaine trafficking.
C It engages significant geostrategic imperatives, such as
access to fuels or raw materials, protection of sea or air
lines of communications, or denial of military bases to the
U.S.S.R. or its proxies.
To illustrate one approach to devising national strategy, let me offer
an very hypothetical example, simply to show how one might proceed from
presidential generality to budgetary specifics. A President might want to
establish national objectives something like the following:
Illustrative Strategic Objectives
L. Optimally, a community of free nations committed to open
political systems, to eschewing political violence, and to
respecting individual rights and freedoms. Minimally, reliable
friends and allies committed to political ideals similar to our
own, willing to act to preserve their independence and to help
others whose freedom is threatened. As a corollary, fewer states
affiliated with Moscow, or governed in ways inconsistent with
our precepts of human rights and dignity, or wedded to political
violence In any form.
M. Equitable trade, financing, emigration and aid policies
within the community of free nations, coupled with concerted
action against international criminality, especially illegal
narcotics trafficking.
N. Concerted security arrangements within that community
which shield political and economic developments consistent with
Objectives A and B above.
0. Reduction in the risks to American citizens at home or
abroad from international terrorists.
P. Security for international airways and waterways, anti
for access to fuels and raw materials.
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strategic Concepts
Objectives say what we want to do, but strategy also requires
articulating ?road principles of how to do it, and considering with what to
do it.
What concepts might be relevant to achieving the foregoing
objectives? The Presicent might want to consider some like these:
Illustrative Strategic Concepts
17. Intelligence will be central to ascertaining the best
course of action for the U.S. in any nation or region, and in any
given contingency. Intelligence is what we can best provide any
threatened friend or ally. Accordingly, first priority should be
given to collecting and analysing information about people, places
and events likely to affect achieving our objectives, and to
disseminating intelligence to underwrite effective planning,
diplomacy, and other actions.
18. Outside NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with few exceptions,
the United States role should be to support another party, or a
regional group, willing to act on its own behalf. Our main
contribution should be to help others to help themselves. But our
deeds and our word should leave no doubt in Moscow that use of
Soviet military forces anywhere in the Third World will
precipitate prompt counteraction, at a time and place of our
choosing.
19. In supporting developing free nations, we must proceed
conscious of the real limitations upon our ability to act alone.
Our aid should be selective, calculated to effect maximum
deterrence among our antagonists, and greatest encouragement
among our friends. We should try to obtain the cooperation of all
advanced nations in proportion to their wealth, and to their
economic and military capacity. Moreover, we should seek
acceptance of responsibility by any free nation, whatever its
wealth and state of development, to help another with money,
manpower, or materiel, even if the donor can afford no more than
token aid.
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20. We should seek to obtain the cooperation of all nations
to stop international terrorists, illicit arms shippers, and illegal
narcotics traffickers. Particularly vulnerable terrorist targets,
such as airliners and airports should be hardened by international
compact. We should be prepared to support nations willing to
cooperate, primarily with intelligence. And we should be prepared
to act unilaterally as necessary ourselves.
21. We should maintain military readiness to attack with
precision and discrimination to eliminate any direct threat to our
homeland, but we should do so with mobile forces as independent
of foreign basing as possible.
Strategic Means
How can these concepts be translated into national power? Past
Presidents, and occasionally the Congress, have translated a strategic idea
--or "doctrine, as these are sometimes referred to-- into a capacity for
action :Dy one or more of the following:
Reorganization. Setting up a special command apparatus to
signify to prospective foes, and to Congress and the American people,
watchfulness, and intent to use force if necessary. Examples are
President Carter's establishment of the Joint Caribbean Task Force at
Key West to meet anxieties generated by "discovery" of Soviet troops
in Cuba in 1979, and President Reagan's assumption of the Carter
Doctrine on the Persian Gulf by establishment of the U.S. Central
Command. An even more recent, and perhaps further reaching example,
is the law establishing a new Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, and authorities within
the National Security Council to overwatch interagency actions on
Low Intensity Conflict.
(2) FundiN. Seeking extraordinary resource allocations to
build new capabilities, as in the drive for a 600 ship Navy, or the
Strategic Defense Initiative, or by canceling or postponing programs
(e.n 8-1, Sergeant York).
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A5C :2, 1987
(3) Diplomacy. Initiating action to alter strategic
relationships by forming new alliances, revising old ones, or
negotiating arms control agreements.
(4) Restructurin Directing alterations of force structure as
in the case of the recent Army initiative to form light infantry
divisions, or the recent Congressional action to bolster Special
Operations Forces.
(5) Redeployments. Changing the disposition of U.S. forces,
such as moving the 7th Fleet to the Indian Ocean, or withdrawing a
division from Korea.
This Committee has been at the center of strategic concept and action
for the past several years. The attention you have directed to management
of the Department of Defense, to the capabilities of our unified and
specified commands, and most recently to organization to deal with SOF and
LIC, has provided us all renewed strategic vision, and heightened awareness
of what is necessary to pursue strategy, and, as importantly, what is
superfluous or disfunctional.
Since my charge was to discuss strategy appropriate for Low
Intensity Conflict, I want now to focus on the recent legislation pertaining
to that matter. The law gave a much needed boost to Special Operations
Forces. It was an excellent example of addressing "how" in strategy, in that
Congress mandated the establishment of a new unified command with a
Commander-in-Chief, and a new Assistant Secretary of Defense, both
charged with seeing to it that Special Operations Forces were properly
funded, structured, and readied for employment. If these do their job, they
will also assure diplomatic action to guarantee access for SOF as needed.
But I doubt that the law did as much to enhance U.S. readiness for Low
Intensity Conflict. The new Assistant Secretary of Defense has a legislated
charter to concern himself with Low Intensity Conflict, but then virtually
every other DoD official of comparable rank has overlapping responsibility,
and Low Intensity Conflict is the concern of a number of Cabinet Officers
other than the Secretary of Defense. The mandated Deputy National Security
Adviser for Low Intensity Conflict is in a better position to deal with the
interagency issues which LIC presents, and presumeably the advisory board
established by the law can assist the NSC in laying down a long range
strategy for LIC. But unresolved are a wide range of questions, including
how to organize to implement LIC strategy, how and for what to obtain
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funding, to what ends diplomatic action, and what forces where. To be sure,
better SOF will help our LIC posture, but Special Operations are not
synonymous with Low Intensity Conflict, and I fear that making SOF a better
competitor for defense resources may make LIC less likely, in the
shouldering among claimants, to receive the support it deserves within DoD,
and less likely to attract Congressional interest.
As you well know Special Operations Forces are a unique set of
soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, with specialized training and
equipment. Low intensity Conflict Is a form of warfare In which the U.S.
deliberately accepts limits on the kind and amount of force it brings to bear.
These distinctions occasion very different requirements and attitudes
within the armed services, within the Department of Defense, and within
Congress, as the following indicates:
Armed Services DoD OF/LIC Law
SPECIAL OPERATIONS Requires elites; Prime actor Supports, promotes;
FORCES services abhor elites Provides ASD, CINC
LOW INTENSITY Rewires non?elites; State Dept in Constrains; provides
CONFUCT low priority charge; DoD in NSC staffer, Board
supporting cast
Special Operations Forces have missions across the entire spectrum
of war. Both U.S. SOF and their Soviet counterparts were conceived for the
apocalyptic contingencies of World War III. Much of the capabilities with
which we endow our SOF have little or nothing to do with combatting
terrorists, or training Third World forces to cope with guerrillas. Rather,
SOF are organized and trained to lend an unconventional dimension to
deterrence, and in particular to pose a threat of exploiting Soviet
vulnerabilities to nationalist dissidence. To be sure, they are manned by the
sort of individuals one would want on his team in any dangerous, chancy,
unstructured operation, of the sort we have often had to mount in the Third
World. But we must not equate SOF with counter-terrorist forces --although
counter-terrorist forces are SOF-- and we surely must not consign them to
the dustbin of "counterinsurgency". SOF are assuredly more catholic than
"low intensity conflict."
It was the British, I believe., who first pointed out how useful it was
for a nation possessing nuclear weapons to remind itself in its strategic
doctrine hat there are forms of conflict for which the possession of
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nuclear weapons is simply irrelevant --a number of possible cases of
recourse to violence for political purposes which are unlikely to be deterred
by a nuclear arsenal, nor resolved by its use. Frank Kitson's !9.71 book, Low,
Intensity Operations, is a case in point. I do not know whether those who
teach strategy at the Soviet equivalent of our War Colleges point out that
the USSR's supporting international lawlessness, terrorism, and insurgency
is a low risk, low cost way of achieving the stated objectives of Leninism.
Soviet strategy in the Third World would certainly suggest that such is the
case.
But note that the Soviets have not made extensive use of their
"special operations forces" outside their borders (with the significant
exception of Afghanistan). Rather, they have pursued their ends indirectly,
through training, aid, and advice for Third World proxies, avoiding the
employment of elite combat forces. The telling fact about the Soviet role in
Central America is that two-thirds of their nationals in Nicaragua are in a
military field-hospital in Chinandega: they appear before a people sensitive
to foreign domination as benefactors.
The united States ought to approach low intensity conflict no less
thougntfully. We can not pursue our objectives in the Third World
exclusively with the Peace Corps on the one hand, or the Green Berets on the
other we need a broader range of instruments for creating and maintaining
the security shield for development than recourse to Special Operations
Forces alone.
Two years ago I imposed on this Committee the following chart, a
depiction of 3 continuum of possible wars, or war-like uses of violence in
which U.S. interests might be involved:
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1.0
A1111OVE108d
Lov
POSSIBLE CONFLICTS
Mid-
INTENSITY
High
FIGURE 4
The continuum is shown as broken to suggest that there is a
categorical difference among conflicts pitting U.S. forces against those of
the Soviet Union, or of another power armed with weapons of mass
destruction and intercontinental ranges, and conflicts with lesser
adversaries. After all, U,S. troops have not exchanged shots with the Red
Army since it skirmished with the Michigan National Guard in the winter of
1918-1919, an.o going to war against the Soviets themselves would be to
cross a significant, long-standing "firebreak." Similarly, we may be
confronted with other enemies who could attack the U.S. itself with
chemical or nuclear weapons. In this paradigm, "low intensity conflict"
occupies the left sector, where probability of occurrence is high, but
intensity, referring to use of weapons of mass destruction, relatively low.
"Low intensity conflict" then includes both terrorism and guerrilla warfare,
as the following diagram suggests (Figure 5):
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ASC.;ruary 22, 1987
1.0
PROBAB IL ITV
Low
Mid-
INTENSITY
P
FIGURE 5
Note that I categorize any use of conventional forces for fire support
or maneuver as mid-intensity; hence, as I see it, Grenada and Tripoli are
outside the rubric of "low intensity conflict" (but I know that there is not
general agreement on that point).
We can now visualize what sort of forces one might need to enact the
concepts for achieving our national objectives. There are two contextual
imperatives: (1) strategic or national intelligence, which provides a means
of assessing threats, of anticipating their actualization, is essential for
deciding if, when, where, and how to commit U.S. forces; (2) mobile forces,
especially naval forces which can collect intelligence and convey to
potential adversaries our potential for using force should our interests so
require. Admiral James Watkins, the former Chief of Naval Operations, used
this construct for naval contributions to Low Intensity Conflict (Figure SA):
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SASC .-3ntAry 22, 1987
High
The Spectrum of Conflict
Peacetime Presence
Surveillance
Show of Force Crisis Response
of Force
ed varGlobal Conventional War
Nuclear Vor
trategic
leer %far
Low Level of Violence High
Figure SA
But if our fundamental goal is to help others to defend themselves,
then our own forces would avoid direct action except in those rare
circumstances where speed, surprise, or lack of alternative dictates the use
of our own Special Operations Forces. Rather than engagement (fire support
or maneuver), the force functions most likely to be needed ashore are
secru7-ity assistance, intelligence, and communications. On the following
diagram (Figure 6), I have portrayed U.S. force functions in the order in
which they are likely to come into play inside a country afflicted with Low
!ntensity Conflict:
1.0
A11119VgOdd
SOF Direct Aopmil
:??Seuri. V ht_e ?
? ? 't is?sistaim___m?
"?ts
? Ao
rieCoostrrtionuna.
&seaport
....Fire Support
:?:::?:?::?:?:?:?:::?.?. Monlevvic
U.S. FORCE FUNCTIONS
IN
LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT
Low
Mid-
INTENSITY
High
FIGURE 6
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SAS,: 190 /
I believe that adroit use of U.S. forces capable of performing the cited
non-combatant functions in Third World countries might obviate the need to
proceed beyond logistical support of indigenous forces to use of U.S. General
Purpose Forces for fire support or maneuver.
1 regret to say that professional colleagues have obscured this issue
by justifying the Army's new light infantry division on the grounds of utility
for "low intensity conflict." One way the Army's natural repugnance for
elites manifests itself is in a propensity to advertise all infantry as elite,
and to claim for light infantry attributes one would be pleased to have in
Rangers or Special Forces.
The facts are, of course, that light infantry divisions were built for
strategic mobility, designed to deploy in a specified number of C-141's for
use in intercontinental force projection to meet conventional threats. Their
training may harden them to SOF standards, but I find it hard to conceive of
useful missions for light divisions in "low intensity" conflict. It is
fallacious to assume that readiness for one form of warfare automatically
insures readiness for another; I suspect that readiness to defend the defiles
of the Zagros is questionable preparation for serving on a Mobile Training
Team in El Salvador, or even for securing an airbase in Honduras. As for
fighting, we would no longer be talking about LIC. U.S. comPatants would
transform the intensity of any conflict. Any time a U.S. infantryman dies in
combat anywnere, we will be impelled to wage mid- or higher intensity
warfare, to use ordnance in quality and quantity which almost surely will
escape sensible definitions of "low intensity."
The diagram emphasizes the importance of Security Assistance,
Theater Intelligence, and Communications, and each deserve comment as
elements of readiness for Low Intensity Conflict:
Security Assistance. The second of the "Illustrative Strategic
Concepts" set forth above stressed helping others to help themselves. That
is, of course, the fundamental premise of the "Guam Doctrine", a strategic
concept which President Nixon and every President since has espoused.
Given the increasing diversity of the world, and the growing limitations on
American military power, such a concept reflects the only realistic way we
can play an active role in the Third World. We and our friends face
increasing threats from internationally supported subversion, terrorism and
criminality. As a strategic response, we have little recourse beyond helping
those friends t,7 deal with the perpetrators within the frame, -Irk of their
own laws and ,A.i1ture. Our alternatives, passivity or unilater- action, are
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riUdry
unattractive, and would almost sure!y eventuate in more violence, at higher
levels of intensity.
My impression from teaching and speaking around the country is that
most Americans agree that we ought to provide Security Assistance. But it
does not seem to have solid support in the Congress. Security Assistance is
provided for under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, as a
part of "foreign aid." In the Budget, it is classified as "International Affairs"
(Budget Function 150), not "national defense" (Budget Function 050).
Twenty-five years of Congressional compromises have layered over the
procedures f or devising, reviewing, and justifying expenditures under the
law to the point that, in my judgement, the resultant program is overly
rigid, and no longer responsive to strategic reality. Let me be clear,
however, that I believe that the several Administrations must bear
responsibility for this state of affairs with the Congress.
In recent years, most Security Assistance funds have been spent as
Quid pro at.io for overseas bases (e.g., Spain, Portugal, the Philippines,
Korea), or to Cain/Abel pairings in which we seek to bribe one of a fraternal
pair to escnew attacking another (e.g., Egypt/Israel, Greece/Turkey). Very
little is left for Third World nations struggling with Low Intensity Conflict.
The follow ir.g chart ( Figure 7) portrays how little is set aside for Africa
and Latin America; the diagram is based on figures which exclude Economic
Support Funcs, but show funds for Military Assistance, Foreign Military
Sales Financing, and Training:
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..)dnuary
? East Asia & Pac
53 N.East & S.Asia
? Europe
O Africa
M American Rep.
5.8%
60.9%
27.1%
1.9%
4.3%
Figure 7
The Administration's total proposal for Fiscal Year 1986 Security
Assistance (which are the latest figures I have to work with) amounted to
some $6 billion. But within that amount just 6 nations were allocated over
80%; Egypt and Israel received more than half:
FY 86 SECURITY ASSISTANCE
X Total Program
Egypt
22.0
Israel
33.0
Greece
7.6
Turkey
10.8
Portugal
2.7
Spain
&./
Subtotal 82.8%
Figure a
But issues concerning Security Assistance are much'more profound
than simply cutting the resource pie, or arguing over whether the pie should
be Digger or smaller. Even if budgets were not likely to grow smaller over
tne coming years, the United States can no longer De of much material help
to any Third World nation wrestling with Low Intensity ict because
this nation no longer produces the sori of inexpensive, rugged
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military equipment they require. Even more crippling, we charge too much
for services, such as training and transportation.
Let me give an example: anyone who travels in the Third World
appreciates that in most countries the sinews of nationhood include a fleet
of rickety, but still-serviceable C-47 (DC-3) aircraft, built in the U.S. 3 or 4
decades ago. LIC crisis thrusts on any developing nation urgencies for use of
air transportation --for them, those old two-engined, unpressurized C-47's
constitute strategic airlift. But we now have no American-manufacturea
aircraft which is a modern equivalent of the C-47 in versatility of
operations, simplicity of maintenance, ease of manning, or cost of
operation. The current U.S. Air Force counterpart, the C-130, is much too
complicated and demanding for most Third World countries, and when we
present aid-clients C-130's, as we did to Chad a few years ago, we hang an
economic millstone around their neck. Since 1966 there has been a
recognized requirement within the U.S. armed services for a fixed wing air
transport capable not only of freight and transport duty, but also use in
medical evacuation, communications relay, reconnaissance, and fire support.
Because of competing demands for funds, and the lack of a constituency for
so modest an airlifter within the Air Force, we still have nothing to fill
that requirement, a "Third World airlifter" to offer LIC-beleagured friends
anvwnere.
do not see how any Administration could implement the "Illustrative
Strategic Concepts" above without some substantial revision of the Foreign
Assistance Act as it now stands, a revision which would permit the
Administration to engage our military professionals and American
industrialists in imaginative, extended research and development programs
seeking rational sets of equipment germane to LIC, some of which might
then be manufactured overseas by one of the industrializing nations of the
Third World. The strategic objectives and concepts under discussion would
be the more viable were we thus to extend the notion of collective security
within the Free World to include cooperative programs for integration into
our Security Assistance --meaning that we ought to set out, deliberately
and energetically, to help others help others.
Theater Intelligence. That intelligence plays a critical role in Low
Intensity Conflict seems a truism, but there is a difference between the
sort of intelligence which is available to the United States on a day-to-day
oasis, from our national collection systems or from our military forces in
their normal pursuits, and the kind of detailed, fine-grain intelligence
which can be generated by at.:ivating an intensive collection and analysis
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effort within one of the regional unified commands. The United States has
had among its armed forces resources which might be used for sucn
purposes, of proven efficacy, but currently scarce. By and large, they were
brought into being for other purposes, chiefly as a hedge against high
intensity conflict, and their diversion to LIC tasks entails acceptance of
risk. Military intelligence units are often awkward to host abroad, equipped
and manned as most of them are for missions in more Intense warfare.
Non-military intelligence services, and some Ambassadors, are
understandably often reluctant to employ them. But I believe that
developments in communications and processors (computers) now make it
possible to contemplate new, economical intelligence architectures very
different from the past.
Communications. To meet the exigencies of LIC, the President should
seek, and the Congress should support, a National Command Communications
System which makes possible secure image-conferencing among
Ambassadors and C1NC's abroad with officials of the several Departments
and agencies in Washington, the better to exchange information and
judgements, and to evaluate collectively fast-moving situations. State
Department communications have, in my experience, been inadequate for the
task; DoD communications are more versatile and reliable, especially for
intelligence dissemination. Intelligence is, after all, information that nas
been sifted, transmitted, and placed between the ears of a decider or
operator. But we will not have effective intelligence for LIC, in my view,
until we remedy three major deficiencies in DoD communications:
(1) Most DoD assets have been reserved for the contingencies for
mid- and high intensity conflict, and have been only reluctantly and
sparingly made available for LIC situations.
(2) Most are expensive, complicated, and manpower intensive,
buttressed as they are against electromagnetic pulse and the energetic high
technology countermeasures of a world-power adversary.
(3) Most are not welcomed in Embassies; diplomats have been prone
to resist installing communications which they do not directly control.
But we are entering into an age of communications plenty; we need
but a plan for exploiting technology. Communications for supporting LIC
functions need not be provided at the expense of other missions, and need
not be either expensive or complex.
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JarrJary 22, 187
Other Force Functions for LIC. Civic Action, the provision by
military forces of aid to the populace, is a contentious undertaking. Most
Ambassadors and AID Country Directors look upon It with suspicion that it
lead to the military's usurping projects which should properly be performed
by civilian agencies or the private sector. When it comes to using U.S. forces
in civic action, these complications multiply. But if civic action projects be
carefully selected, military forces will be assigned tasks only when and
where there are no civilians to perform them. As far as U.S. forces are
concerned, civic action projects overseas often provide opportunities for
training unavailable in the U.S., given the EPA and other constraints on what
military units, such as engineer battalions or well-drilling detachments,
can do at home station.
I have mentioned four other "force functions --possible U.S. force
contributions to coping with low intensity conflict:
Construction
Medicine
Mobility
Logistic Support
Were the Administration so to direct, and the Congress to support, I
am convinced tnat the United States could:
C Acquire capabilities to communicate broadly and effectively with
peoples anywhere on the surface of the globe.
O Greatly increase our own capabilities, and those of foreign
governments, to develop and act on intelligence on terrorists,
guerrillas, and international criminals.
O Develop and teach pioneering and construction techniques which
could significantly change the orientation of foreign armed forces.
O Create similarly useful medical cadres and medical service
organizations within foreign armed forces.
O Modernize and rationalize logistics within foreign forces, to the
betterment of their military efficiency, and the improvement of
their nation's economy.
The payoff for sucn a strategy would be more free nations, and
confounded and deterred terrorists, insurgents, and traffickers. The payoff
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JA(... January 22, 1987
would be diminished chances that U.S. armed forces, SOF or any others,
would have to be committed to combat.
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