THE NEW FACE OF WAR: COVERT CONFLICTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504520001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504520001-8
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25 April 1986
The New Face of War: Covert Conflicts
By JOHN NORTON Moose less well-known campaign of armed sub-
The powerful images of World War II version, terrorism and destabilization
have conditioned us to think of aggression against neighboring Honduras and Costa
as panzer divisions racing across an inter- Rica. In July 1983, 96 Nicaraguan- and Cu-
national frontier. With some exceptions, ban-trained guerrillas were captured by
such as the Korean War and the last tragic the Hondurans. A year later, another
phase of the Vietnam War, the core threat group of 19 similarly trained recruits was
to contemporary world order has been captured. Trials of terrorists in Costa Rica
state-sponsored terrorism, guerrilla war- have repeatedly implicated Nicaragua in
fare and other forms of covert attack. Our terrorist activities. In February 1985, after
general failure to focus on these continuing nearly 100 terrorist incidents where Nicar-
secret wars-whether waged by Cuba, Nic- guan involvement was present, Costa Rica
aragua or Libya-has made people forget ordered Nicaragua to reduce its embassy
that while all policy options have warts, a staff from 47 to 10 people.
policy of non-action against violence and The failure to view assistance to the
terrorism may lead to a complete collapse contras as a defensive response to a large-
of world order. scale and sustained secret war against
Today a variety of radical regimes and neighboring states has strongly skewed the
movements, sharing an antipathy for dem- debate. As with the democratic response to
ocratic values and a belief in the use of other such attacks world-wide, it is the
force to spread their ideologies, practice contra response rather than the Cuban-Nic-
this covert aggression. Libya's Col. Qad- araguan secret war that is scrutinized.
hafi, for example, is a particularly blatant Perceptions of U.S. and Latin American
offender. By publicly denying their attacks interests focus heavily on the national se-
and accompanying them with a drumbeat curity threat of a Soviet base in this hemi-
of propaganda, these radical true-believers sphere. But the real, short-term issues are
seek to make their attacks indistinguish- the continuing armed aggression of Nica-
able from a global background noise of ter- ragua against neighboring states, the im-
rorist incidents and guerrilla activity. portance of maintaining Latin American
Sadly, this strategy is proving successful self-determination against such attacks,
in avoiding the mobilization of world opin- and the expanding program of state-sup-
ion against these violent attacks. It is also ported terrorism and subversion that is be-
destroying the very fabric of world order ing used to destabilize other countries such
by putting an action such as the U.S. as Colombia.
bombing of Libya in the same moral light Cuban and Nicaraguan bases are a
as the terrorist actions it was a response
to. It is as though the immune system of threat, since they might become a second
international law had gone haywire and be battleground in a North Atlantic Treaty
gun to attack defensive responses while ig- Organization emergency, but these coun-
noring the virus of aggression. tries' covert attacks against neighboring
Nowhere is this phenomenon more evi- states are an immediate and continuing as-
dent than in the debate over Central Amer- sault that is vitally important yet strangely
ican policy. Despite six detailed State De- politically invisible. The parade of U.S. vis-
partment white papers, repeated findings itors to Managua who discuss possible
of the congressional intelligence commit- terms of settling the dispute fail to focus
tees, the findings of the Kissinger Commis- on the solemn treaty obligations already
Sion, a plethora of refugee reports, state-
ments of Salvadoran leaders, and media binding the Nicaraguan comandantes not
reports, the debate proceeds largely as to attack neighboring states and on their
though the Cuban-Nicaraguan secret war continuing failure to adhere to those obli-
against El Salvador was nonexistent. gations. Some creative commentators even
The Sandinistas have also fostered a defend the Sandinista incursions into Hon-
duras as legitimate "hot pursuit" against
contra "attacks" rather than as a signifi-
cant escalation of the Sandinista secret
war against neighboring states. Interest-
ingly, House Speaker Tip O'Neill rightly in-
voked the RIO Treaty-which is the NATO
Regional Defense Treaty of this hemi-
sphere-in response to the recent open
Sandinista incursion into Honduras. How-
ever, there seems to be only peripheral
awareness that the continuing secret war
against El Salvador and neighboring states
should be the real occasion for invoking
this hemispheric defense treaty.
President Kennedy - reflecting Presi-
dent Monroe-wisely established as a con-
dition in negotiations during the Cuban
Missile Crisis that Cuba not be used as a
launching platform for secret warfare
against its neighbors. Congress embodied
this principle in the Cuban Resolution of
Oct. 3, 1962, declaring that "the United
States is determined . . . to prevent by
whatever means may be necessary, includ-
ing the use of arms, the Marxist-Lenin-
ist regime in Cuba from extending, by
force or the threat of force, its aggressive
or subversive activities to any part of this
hemisphere. ..." Three years later the
House resolved that "any one or more of
the high contracting parties to the .. .
[Rio Treaty] may, in the exercise of indi-
vidual or collective self-defense, which
could go so far as resort to armed force
. take steps to forestall or combat .. .
[such subversion)." A central choice today
for all Americans is whether we will ac-
cept as inevitable the secret Cuban and
Nicaraguan assault on the integrity and in-
dependence of the Americas. Will we un-
derstand and act on the wisdom and im-
portance of this Monroe-Kennedy condition
or let it sink into an increasing background
noise of terrorism and guerrilla attack?
Mr. Moore is Walter L. Brown professor
of law at the University of Virginia. He
was a special counsel for the US. in the
Nicaragua case before the World Court.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504520001-8