NO MORE VIETNAMS?: U.S. POLICY OPTIONS AND PLANNING FOR INSURGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86M00886R000600100027-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 41
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 29, 2008
• Sequence Number: 27
• Content Type: REPORT

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ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, JR.
The opinions expressed in this paper are the author's alone, and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense,
the Department of the Army, or the U.S. Naval War College.
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Brushfires on a Cold Dawn
For nearly forty years a succession of administrations, both
Republican and Democrat, have expended a large slice of America's
vast natural treasure on the maintenance and modernization of the
nation's nuclear and conventional military forces. Developing in
tandem with the growing potency of U.S. military might has been an
enormous body of literature devoted to analyzing the strategic
impact of both current and projected forces. Indeed, the fighting
and re-fighting on paper of nuclear Armageddon and a conventional
war on NATO's central front has assumed the status of a cottage
industry for those who populate the ever-increasing number of
think tanks and academic centers devoted to strategic studies.
While few question the merits of studying the impact of these
forces and how they might best be deployed to preserve the
nation's security, the fact remains that America's adversaries in
the future will more likely be the subversive, terrorist, and
guerrilla organizations which populate much of the Third World
than the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces or the Group of Soviet
Forces, Germany. Yet it is just this threat to U.S. security that
has been most overlooked by post-war occupants of the Oval Office.
This paper will examine the nature of the insurgent threat,
address options available to the United States for coping with it,
.and discuss steps to be taken to insure that, once committed to a
program of assistance or intervention, U.S. policies are carried
out to maximize the prospects for success.
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While nuclear warfare between the Superpowers and a
non-nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe
represent the greatest threats to U.S. security, it is insurgency
warfare which has become the prevalent form of conflict in the
post-World War II era. The reasons for the "popularity" of
low-intensity conflict (insurgency, terrorism, and subversion) are
several. With the advent of nuclear weapons, war between the
United States and the Soviet Union promises to exact costs from
both far exceeding the benefits either could ever hope to gain.
Indeed, the consequences of a nuclear exchange have so alarmed the
Superpowers that, in spite of their numerous and deep divisions,
they_have gone to great lengths to avoid direct confrontation, not
only on the nuclear level but in the conventional realm as well.
Gains must now be made at low risk -- not through direct conflict,
but by more subtle means; not in areas of vital interest, but on
the periphery -- on the battlegrounds of the Third World.
Aside from the inherent risk of escalation, the Superpowers
are well-advised to avoid conventional wars, if only for the
tremendous costs involved. One need not be a systems analyst to
observe the exponential growth in procurement costs between the
weapons systems of the Second World War and those under
development and in production today. Although NATO and the WTO
states have not yet priced themselves out of the market for.such
arsenals, the same cannot be said of most Third World nations. The
recent Arab-Israeli wars, the Falkland Islands War, and the
Iran-Iraq War demonstrate the need for Third World countries to
conclude their conflicts quickly, lest severe economic
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dislocations caused by the rapid depletion of irreplaceable
armaments, munitions, and trained personnel make any victory a
Pyrrhic one. Indeed, it is problematic if even the United States,
for all its wealth, could long endure the $80 billion or so per
year it expended at the height of the Vietnam War were it called
upon to do so today.
Thus, almost by default, low-intensity conflict has become
the low-cost, low-risk means of promoting international goals and
objectives, not only for the Superpowers, but for the Third World
nations as well. Arising from the dissolution of the great empires
of Europe after World War II, Third World states proliferated
dramatically. These young nations, many strategically located or
possessing important natural resources, have provided fertile-
ground for Superpower competition. The Soviets have backed, in
varying degrees, insurgent movements in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia,
China, Greece, Yemen, Central America and Southern Africa, to name
but a few. The United-States has also participated in insurgency
by proxie: witness Afghanistan and Nicaragua. As will be seen,
however, it is often the social and political unrest in these
Third World states-that creates the environment which the
Superpowers exploit to their advantage, exacerbating the problems
of Third World regimes more than creating them.
With the advent of the Cold War the United States
increasingly viewed insurgencies as a new form of Communist
aggression requiring an American willingness to intervene in the
affairs of Third World nations to help them complete the task of
nation building. Reaching its apogee under the Kennedy
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Administration, this perception of America as guardian to and
policeman of Third World states threatened by insurgency subsided
rapidly with United States intervention in the Vietnam War.
Indeed, by 1969 President Nixon proclaimed that in the future,
Third World states threatened by insurgency would have to rely
primarily, if not exclusively, upon friendly regional states for
direct military assistance. The United States, said Nixon, would
henceforth furnish military equipment and training; direct
intervention, however, was out of the question. There would be no
more Vietnams.
The resolution to avoid directly committing American power
and prestige. to support friendly Third World regimes threatened by
insurgency proved difficult to keep in the face of an
ever-changing international milieu. The fabric of the
international order is as frayed today as at any time since the
early post-war period. At the same time, the United States finds
itself more dependent for its security upon the friendship of
other nations than at any time since the darkest hours of World
War II. The importance of many Third World states has jumped
dramatically in the past twenty years. Those countries, many
strategically situated or rich in natural resources, are all
targets of Superpower attention in an increasingly resource-scarce
world.
At the same time the United States and its allies have become
dependent upon the stability of numerous regimes in the Third
World, the political volatility of many of these states makes them
ripe for the kind of political destabilization that, almost
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overnight, toppled the governments of Iran and Nicaragua. Where
will the next eruption occur? Saudi Arabia? Oman? The Phillipines?
Is there anything the United States can do, or should do, to
preserve these friendly governments in the event they are
threatened by a virulent insurgent movement? If there is, how
should the U.S. proceed? Devising a usable framework to answer the
question of whether or not to commit U.S. forces and national
treasure is not an easy task. It is particularly difficult given
the realtive indifference in which the problem of insurgency and
U.S. intervention is accorded in these days of nuclear warfighting
scenarios and the AirLand battle doctrine for Europe. Therefore,
before entering into any discussion of the United States' ability
to cope with insurgency, it is necessary first to understand the
basics of insurgency warfare.
Guerrillas: Why They're There; How to Beat Them
The basis for successful insurgent operations is found in the
insurgents' ability to-develop a popular cause around which they
can rally the people against the government, and a governmental
administration too weak and inefficient to suppress the
revolutionary movement before it gets up a full head of steam and
makes the transition from random acts of terror, sabotage and
subversion (Phase I) to full-blown guerrilla operations (Phase
II).l
A popular cause can be any injustice, real or imagined,
perpetrated on the people by the regime, such as the failure to
enact a true land'reform program in El Salvador; nationalism, as
in Afghanistan, an arbitrary system of justice (again, El
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Salvador), the failure to provide for political participation as
in Nicaragua, or simply a failure to meet the rising expectations
of the people. These problems are present in many Third World
nations, most of whom are not the target of an insurgent movement
-- yet. Espousing a popular cause is particularly important in the
early phase of an insurrection when the revolutionaries must
enlist the voluntary support of a large segment of the population
before they can move to guerrilla operations. Gaining the peoples'
voluntary support is often referred to as winning their "hearts."
However, to achieve the insurgents' ultimate objective, the
overthrow of the existing order and their assumption of power,
they must win the peoples' "minds;" i.e., convince the people that
they offer a legitimate alternative to the existing regime which
has at least some prospect of success; and that it is in the
interest of the peolple to support them. This is best accomplished
by having access to the people and exercising control over them.
In fact, winning and maintaining access to the people is a
prerequisite for any insurgent movement hoping to move beyond mere
random acts of terror and subversion to openly challenge the
government's legitimacy and sovereignty. This is as much a
function of the regime's inefficiency and/or corruption within the
state security forces as it is of the insurgents' organizational
ability and cunning. For the insurgents, access to the population
provides a source of manpower for guerrilla units, food and
medicine to sustain them, and critical intelligence concerning the
whereabouts of government troops and their plan of action.
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It is important to realize that the insurgents need not have
the.willing or active support (the "hearts") of the people, as
long as they have their passive support -- the product of threats
and reprisals made effective only when the insurgents can move
among the people to carry them out. Thus even though the people of
a village may not support the guerrillas' cause, if the insurgents
can exact retribution on those who support the government they
will grow in strength. The guerrillas can impress into their ranks
the sons and daughters of the elder villagers. And they will fight
for the guerrillas, lest the insurgents-return to the village and
single out their family for punishment. Food and medicine coerced
out of townspeople will sustain the insurgents just as well as
provisions freely given by supporters of the cause. Fearing
assassination, teachers, doctors, and government administrators
will either refuse to serve in these communities or, if forced to
do so, will quickly reach an accommodation with the guerrillas, if
only to survive. Obviously, government sources of intelligence
will quickly dry up.
It follows, then, that no matter how hard the government
tries to win the "hearts" of the people through civic action
programs and reforms, unless it can provide for their physical
security and deny the insurgents access to them, the regime cannot
extinguish the revolution.. The primacy of population control is
perhaps best reflected in the success Communist regimes (with
their ruthlessly efficient security apparatus) have had in
pre-empting popular efforts at organizing resistance against them.
For both the government and the guerrillas, controlling the
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population is the sine qua non for victory. If forced to choose
between winning the peoples' hearts or controlling their minds,
choose the latter every time. Once the guerrillas are denied
access to the population they will, over time, wither away to
small fragmented groups, incapable of threatening the regime. If
the government is wise enough, and able to enact those reforms
necessary to pre-empt the insurgents' cause and win the peoples'
voluntary support as well, the liquidation of insurgent forces can
be accelerated through a process of arming the people to defend
themselves against guerrilla attack.
While the disease of insurgency may be easy to cure in
theory, in practice it is'frequently a difficult, frustrating
process to find the right prescription. First, one must recognize
that there would be no insurgent movement to begin with if the
government had an effective security force to control the people
and if the populous was not enduring some sort of injustice which
the government could not easily remedy. Indeed, oftentimes the
nation's political leaders will be trapped in a "Catch-22" dilemma
when attempting to pre-empt the insurgents' cause. For example, in
El Salvador popular dissatisfaction stems from the inequitable
distribution of wealth and political power. The remedy appears
clear: break up the great estates of the landed aristocracy and
distribute the land to the. people; furthermore, conduct open and
fair elections where the people can choose their own leadership,
rather than have one imposed by the National Guard. In order to
effect these reforms, however, the political leadership in San
Salvador must disown the very people who were responsible for
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their assumption to power in the first place -- the military and
the wealthy landowners. The enactment of these reforms, coupled
with the elimination of corruption and incomptetence through the
cashiering of powerful military and political officials is asking
a lot from the Salvadoran leadership, perhaps more than they can
deliver. Of course, until the insurgency reaches the point where
the government is obviously in danger, the temptation to ignore
the problem of reform will always prove persuasive.
While both internal reforms and upgrading the nation's
security forces are formidable challenges, there are instances
where~'either or both were successfully accomplished. The British
in Malaysia, Papagos in Greece, and Magsaysay 'in the Philippines
all succeeded in wriggling free of their unique "Catch-22" _.
dilemmas. Others -- Diem, Chiang Kai-Shek, Batista, and Somoza --
were either unwilling or unable to resolve theirs.
Forming guerrilla units is but one accomplishment of the
insurgent leadership along the way to its ultimate goal of seizing
power. The insurgents would prefer to take on the government's
forces early and directly, but their initial weakness forces them
to adopt a strategy mandating a protracted conflict in which their
strength grows slowly as the government's gradually diminishes.
Thus once the insurgents' political cells have established contact
with the people and espoused a cause capable of attracting popular
support, they can begin the process of recruiting for their
guerrilla units and stockpiling the necessary supplies to support
their operations against the government. As the guerrillas
establish the ability to contest the government's legitimacy and
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control over the population, the revolutionary forces become a
formidable adversary. The government must greatly expand its
security operations to control the population, while bearing the
responsibility for maintaining the nation's communications,
transportation, and economic infrastructure, a difficult
proposition given that it often requires the sabotage of only one
bridge or power plant to disrupt the life of an entire city or
region. Thus at the very moment the regime finds its economy under
seige and its resource base narrowed, it must expend enormous
resources to maintain a force ten to twenty times that of the
guerrillas if it is to exercise its sovereignty over the country.
The struggle between insurgent guerrilla forces and the
government is often protracted in nature, lasting years or even
decades. The reason for this is that, barring its outright
collapse, the government maintains the upper hand in terms of men
under arms, firepower, and resources. While government forces may
not be adequate to crush the guerrillas, they are formidable
enough to deter the insurgents from directly challenging the army
in the set-piece battles that could bring about the regime's
collapse. Only after a prolonged period of gradually amassing
strength (with a few exceptions) can the insurgents proceed to
Phase III insurgency operations -- open warfare designed to
directly topple the regime. Even then, the availability of
significant amounts of outside help has its greatest impact.
U.S. Options Against Insurgency
Every president since World War II has had to decide whether
or not to provide U.S. military and economic assistance or
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intervene directly in the case of friendly governments threatened
by insurgency. At the dawn of the Cold War, aid was provided to
the Greeks, the Phillipinos, and the French. As the empires of the
Great Powers of Europe melted into the Third World, American
assistance proliferated, peaking during the Kennedy-Johnson
administrations. Yet even in the wake of the American public's
disillusionment with the Vietnam War, President Ford actively
contemplated dispatching aid to groups opposed to Cuban-backed
marxist rebels in Angola. President Carter, whose election was, in
large measure, a product of anti-interventionist sentiment, saw
the need to airlift Belgian, French, and Moroccan paratroopers
into Zaire to defeat'an "insurgent" force launched from Angola.
Although he adopted a hands-off policy when it came to supporting
the Somoza regime against the Sandinistas, Carter also found it
necessary to provide aid to the government of El Salvador in its
struggle against an insurgency aided by revolutionary Nicaragua.
The Reagan Administration has continued and expanded American
assistance to friendly regimes threatened by marxist insurgencies,
.while supporting insurgents in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
The United States is, and in all likelihood will continue to
be faced with the problem of third World insurgencies. But under
what circumstances can the.United States provide effective
assistance or, in the worst case, conduct a successful
intervention where American security interests are jeopardized by
insurgent movements?
Amid the intellectual orgasms in Washington concerning the
unbeatability of guerrillas and insurgent movements in the wake of
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the Vietnam War, it is important to remember that not every
American venture into insurgency warfare has ended in disaster.
Greece and the Phillipines stand as examples of successful U.S.
assistance programs. It is equally important to remember that the
overthrow of autocratic regimes by self-proclaimed "freedom
fighters" and "liberation" forces does not necessarily improve the
human rights or material well-being of that nation's inhabitants,
as the world has sadly witnessed in South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia,
Iran, and Nicaragua.
The fact remains, however, that the United States no longer
has the resources or the political will to play the role of World
Policeman,' righting every wrong that occurs (or appears to be
occurring) to the detriment of its security interests. The United
States must pick and choose with great care when and how to commit
its power and prestige through intervention in Third World
insurgencies.
There are a number of aphorisms bandied about concerning when
and how the United States should intervene against insurgent
forces in order to achieve the highest probability of success.
Unfortunately, the "ought to's" involved are rarely useful in
light of the political realities a president must deal with when
faced with the decision of whether or not to intervene.
For instance, the reader can readily infer from the
discussion above that the United States ought to intervene as
early as possible against an insurgent movement, nipping it in the
bud before its cancerous political cells metastasize and infect
large portions of the affected nation with a guerrilla movement.
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Yet it is in this instance that the United States is least likely
to become involved. First, because the danger will not be as
readily apparent, either to the U.S. or the target regime, as it
will be in its later stages. Second, any regime whose legitimacy
is being challenged will likely try and put off requesting
large-scale assistance until the situation gets out of hand, lest
they confirm the insurgents' claims that the government is really
a puppet of the C.I.A. or U.S. "imperialist interests." Third,
counterinsurgency (CI) operations against an insurgent movement in
Phase I is primarily a police function. Any U.S. intervention at
this point will likely be politically unpopular at home,
particularly if the regime in question is autocratic in nature.
One can easily imagine the outcry in Congress, the media, and the
American public over the dispatch of American experts on methods
of police control to a Latin American dictator hoping to crush the
spark of popular opposition.
Given this, the best form of U.S. "intervention" in the early
stages of insurgency will most often be economic assistance,
particularly if the internal problem concerns unmet expectations
for an improved standard of living. Hopefully, such a transfer of
dollars will enable the government to buy time while it effects
those reforms necessary to right the economy and dissolve popular
dissatisfaction.
Much the same can be said of military assistance offered to
the government's security forces. Properly employed, such
equipment (particularly communications gear and assets for
enhancing the mobility of government forces) can enhance the
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regime's capability to break up insurgent attempts at terror and
exert pressure on their political infrastructure as well.
The problem, of course, with assistance of this sort during
Phase I is that the United States enjoys very little leverage over
the host regime. The target country's leadership has little
incentive at this stage to make basic reforms in the political,
economic, or social structure of the nation while the insurgency
appears to be nothing more than a low-level terrorist enterprise.
This, of course, is exactly how the insurgents hope the
authorities will react.
-Another popular aphorism holds that the president ought to
intervene only when the nation threatened represents a vital U.S.
interest, or when its loss would directly emperil a vital
interest. The problem here is that there is no consensus in the
United States today on what Third World states are "vital" to U.S.
security. Is Israel vital to U.S. interests on the grounds that it
is a democracy? If so,-what of Costa Rica? Must an Amercian
president maintain the autocratic rule of the Saudi monarchy?
What of mineral-rich Zaire, strategically located Panama, Mexico,
and the Phillipines? Where does one draw the line?
To Americans of different political stripes, the answer to
the question of where U.S. vital interests lie varies widely. For
this reason, a political consensus on the desireability of
American assistance and/or intervention in Third World states
threatened by insurgency often develops only after an insurgent
movement is well under way, or is on the verge of victory. The key
to maintaining a consensus among the American people for military
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and economic assistance and, far more importantly, direct military
intervention, revolve around:
? Justifying to the broad majority of the American people and
the policymaking elite the need to maintain a friendly regime in a
country that is vital to U.S. national security.
? Demonstrating that an insurgent victory would result in the
installation of a government hostile to the United States.
? Justifying the costs, both human and monetary, involved in
preserving the regime under attack.
These prerequisites are not easily met, but the burden of
proof is far less onerous for the first two conditions so long as
the costs are kept to a minimum. Simply stated, most Americans are
willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt when he-
says that assistance to El Salvador or the Contras in Nicaragua is
warranted in light of U.S. security needs. These assistance
programs are relatively cheap and involve little in the way of a
direct American military presence or the involvement of U.S.
troops in military operations. Indeed, the nation strongly
supported U.S. assistance to South Vietnam during the days when
16,000 American soldiers were involved in the advisory effort.
Should U.S. intervention become necessary, however, and
combat forces be dispatched to, say, Central America to commence a
large-scale Grenada-style operation, public scrutiny of the
benefits to be derived from protecting a given regime will be
magnified enormously. This makes sense when one realizes the far
greater price the nation will be asked to pay for preserving what,
on reflection, may not seem to be such a "vital" interest after
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all. The U.S. public will want reassurances that its sons are not
dying in vain and its tax dollars not misdirected from legitimate
needs at home to support a losing proposition abroad.
"If an administration has opted to proceed down the path of
intervention, it must have both a strategy that is capable of
resolving the issue in its favor and an awareness of the elements
that make up a successful intervention. For the United States, the
success or failure of any enterprise of this sort will be, first
and foremost, a function of the target government's willingness
and ability to undertake those reforms necessary to restore its
legitimacy, pre-empt the insurgents' cause, and instill
leadership, honesty, and competence into its security and
administrative apparatus. This is no mean challenge, given that if
the host regime had been acting in this manner previously, there
would hardly have arisen a need for U.S. intervention.
Success or failure will also be a function of the United
States' willingness to endure a protracted and bitter struggle,
one without decisive battles and a victory that, at best, will be
uncertain, confirmed only with the passage of time. Over this long
haul, the administration's ability to minimize the funds it must
ask of Congress and the number of troops it must deploy will
contribute to the preservation of domestic support. If the war is
capable of being fought without the, use of draftees, so much the
better. If allies can be found to help shoulder the burden, better
still. Finally, the human and material resources offered by the
nation must be used skillfully, and not squandered.
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Additionally, the success or failure of an intervention will
rest upon the leadership, the organizational ability, and the
skill of the insurgent military and political leadership in the
use of their resources. If the insurgents are well-organized and
well-led, as in the case of the Viet Minh; if they can succeed.in
advancing a cause which places the regime in a "Catch-22"
situation, then the obstacles to a successful intervention will be
formidable. The availability of sanctuaries and outside (Soviet?)
assistance will further complicate matters, but may also be used
to good advantage if it can be shown that the guerrillas are the
fabrication of outside forces and not the product of a disaffected
population.
The objective of any U.S. intervention against an insurgent
movement should be to prevent'a regime hostile to the United
States from assuming power by force. How this is accomplished
depends upon the strategy chosen. The strategies to be discussed
here are two: the Victory option and the Minimalist approach.
Finally, the "non-strategy" of withdrawal is examined.
The Victory option mandates U.S. intervention with the
objective of crushing the insurgent movement. Its greatest
prospects for success occur when the regime in question is
generally perceived as legitimate by the people, is democratic or
quasi-democratic, and offers some form of redress of grievances
for the population. A parallel might be made here with the
Philippines under the leadership of Ramon Magsaysay. This
strategic approach is further warranted if the approval or active
support of friendly nations in the region is forthcoming, if
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Soviet involvement'is minimal, and if domestic support for
intervention within the U.S. is both broad and deep. If all, or
most of these conditions are present, pursuance of the Victory
option may be warranted. The key elements here is the target
regime's state of health and the popular mood within the United
States.
Realistically, it must be recognized that the conditions
conducive to adoption of the Victory strategy are unlikely to
obtain and, if they did, the regime in question (as in the case of
Magsaysay) would likely handle the insurgents on its own with a
minimum of U.S. support.
Should the United States pursue the Victory option in the
absence of these key conditions in an attempt to prop up an
illegitimate or reactionary regime in the face of a popular
insurgent movement, it is essentially committing itself to waging
a colonial war. Under these circumstances, it would benefit U.S.
CI operations if the entire target government were unified under
the American ambassador. The United States ambassador and the U.S.
military commander on the scene would then mandate the necessary
political, economic, administrative, and military reforms,
effectively running the country as necessary until the insurgency
had subsided and a new political elite was prepared to assume
control.
This approach may sound preposterous, given the imperialist
connotations it implies, not to mention the cause of nationalism
it automatically furnishes the insurgents and the public outcry
certain to follow in many liberal circles in the United States.
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Nevertheless, the U.S. successfully pursued this strategy in the
Philippines in this century shortly after the Spanish-American
War. More recently, the United States has (although under
different circumstances) cashiered ineffective South Korean
officers while they served under an American command in the Korean
War. Experience in setting up free elections to replace "tainted"
regimes was gained in Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, South
Vietnam, and Grenada, with varying degrees of success. Nor should
one underestimate the ferocity with which the American public is
capable of responding when faced with a potentially calamatous
situat-ion abroad: witness the Oil Embargo of 1973-74 and the
hostage crisis in Iran.
In opting to achieve the traditional military objective of
victory over the insurgent forces in the absence of those local
factors necessary to its accomplishment, the decisionmaker is left
with little choice other than the conduct of a traditional
colonial war, with all that it implies. If the American people
perceive the stakes as high enough, and if the insurgents are of
less than legendary proportions, then-a Victory strategy may
succeed. It would be the greatest folly, however, to adopt a
Victory strategy without recognizing the high probability of
having to wage a colonial war, as was demonstrated in Vietnam.
Given that the United States is likely to find more Thieus,
D'Aubuissons, and Somozas than it is Magsaysays when the decsion
for intervention is made, the Victory option represents a
high-risk, high-cost strategic approach; high cost because it
implies that the United States is willing to assume the entire
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burden, not only of defeating the insurgents, but of running the
country as well, with all the attendant material costs and combat
casualties; high risk because the enormous costs involved will
sorely try the patience of the American public, eroding support
for continued involvement in all but the most critical situations.
In-the final analysis, then, what makes the victory strategy
possible is not U.S. economic and military might, although this is
important, but the durability of American support at home, the
enlightenment and flexibility of the threatened regime abroad, and
the quality of their insurgent adversaries.. The key element is,
however, is the regime under attack. The United States can assist
it in making the changes necessary to defeat the insurgents, but
it cannot, short of fighting a colonial war against odds only __A
Mississippi riverboat gambler would love, win the war by its
efforts alone.
Nor does the United States need to crush the insurgents, at
least not in the sense of destroying their field forces and
expelling them from the country. Although it has often been said
that, to win, the insurgents simply have to avoid losing, it is
less well recognized, particularly in U.S. military circles that
victory is not essential for the achievement of its policy
objectives. Indeed, as long as the United States does not lose, it
wins. This brings us to a discussion of the Minimalist strategy.
An advocate of the Minimalist approach would contend that
only the government of the state threatened by insurgency can take
those steps needed to defeat the insurgents. Thus it is folly to
believe that a U.S. Victory strategy can succeed in and of itself.
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On a higher plane, the Minimalist would argue that the
Victory option, involving as it does the presumption of a colonial
war effort, would reduce the United States to the moral level of
the Soviet Union, whose violation of Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia,
and Hungary prompted an international outcry against the Kremlin
that lingers even today. The American people, the Minimalist would
warn us, will not permit their government to wage a colonial war
for long; thus all the insurgents would have to do is wait the
U.S. out, as the Communists did in Vietnam.2
As a clincher, the Minimalist would raise the issue of how
other friendly Third World regimes would react to a de facto U.S.
assumption of power in a country for the purpose of suppressing an
uprising. How certain could they be that a U.S. presence,
ostensibly for their protection, would not also represent the
potential force to effect their liquidation? It is a fear that
Third World nations, most only a generation out of the bondage of
colonialism, feel acutely. One need only recount the unease of
many Arab states over the creation of the Rapid Deployment Force
and their strongly negative reaction to the U.S. request for
basing facilities to get a sense of how they would react to an
imperialist America in the Soviet mold.
The Minimalist strategy recognizes that insurgents attempting
to overthrow an existing regime, even a corrupt and inefficient
one, still face formidable obstacles along the path to power. This
is particularly true when the level of outside assistance is
balanced on both sides. After all, insurgency warfare is
considered a form of protracted conflict. Given this conflict
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environment, it is far easier for the United States to keep a
government from losing the war than it is to actively attempt to
crush the insurgent movement by itself. Should the government
effect the reforms necessary to reverse the situation, the need
for direct American intervention in the conflict will be
minimized, serving primarily to offset any large-scale infusion of
outside support for the insurgents. A Minimalist approach (as
surfaced during the Vietnam War under the guise of the enclave and
demographic frontier strategies) is far more manageable in terms
of the burden it places on U.S. resources.3.At the same time, it
does riot involve the strong decreasing returns to scale that occur
through the adoption of a strategy for all-out victory which, in
every respect, is the responsibility of the government under.___
attack. Ideally, a Minimalist strategy would see the commitment of
only those U.S. combat forces which are needed to prevent the
insurgents from conducting successful Phase III operations. The
numbers of these forces should be held to an absolute minimum, and
the units promptly withdrawn after an emergency Phase III campaign
is completed. Other U.S. forces committed as advisory units in
Phase II should have population security as their primary mission.
Should U.S. combat forces be assigned to a country not involved in
combatting Phase III insurgent operations, they should also
concentrate on area security. Given the proper leadership and
training, "conventional" forces can function effectively in a
population security role. The Combined Action Platton (CAP)
program run by the U.S. Marines in Vietnam is but one example. If
outside assistance is crucial to the success of insurgent
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operations (rarely the case in Phases I or II), the instigation of
unconventional warfare activities in local supplier states, as is
occurring today in Nicaragua, may prove worth the diversion of
resources away from population security.
Save in the event of an imminent collapse of the regime in
question, U.S. ground forces should never bear the major burden of
combat in CI operations.
In sum, then, the Minimalist approach seeks to buy time for
the target government to put its house in order, or for a capable
and acceptable political alternative to emerge.
The effectiveness of any U.S. intervention in a Third World
insurgency war will thus be measured in terms of:
? How effectively time was bought for the government to
establish its legitimacy and rebuild its strength to cope with the
insurgents without U.S. combat assistance. The measure of
effectiveness will be how cheaply time was bought in terms of
American casualties and materiel. This is a necessary condition
given the nature of protracted warfare, which often requires an
extended commitment. Keeping costs low helps maintain popular
support at home for a continued American military presence after
the immediate crisis has passed, as in Korea but, unfortunately,
not in Vietnam.
? How effectively U.S. forces contributed to the defeat of
the insurgent forces. To the extent that American military
operations weaken the insurgents, they increase the relative
strength of the government, thereby accelerating the process of
the regime's recovery and U.S. withdrawal from a combat role.
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There is implicit in this criterion a trade-off between American
casualties and progress against the insurgent movement. Here we
find another shortcoming of the Victory option. By focusing on the
military defeat of the insurgents field forces, it trades
casualties, but gains little. If American forces suffer losses,
they should be associated with attempts to assist the government
reassert its control over the population, the surest way of
bringing the insurgent forces to battle -- on U.S. terms. Again
the lesson of Vietnam is clear. There U.S. forces expended
resources at a prodigious rate as part of a Victory strategy
against communist insurgents. In so doing the U.S. military
achieved neither a quick victory, nor the maintenance of support
at home for a continued U.S. presence in Vietnam after the bulk of
American ground forces were withdrawn.4
The adoption of either a Victory or Minimalist strategy
presupposes that the president has effectively made the case for
it to the Congress and the American people. If such a
justification is not forthcoming, then the administration must
seriously consider foregoing the military option in favor of a
policy of withdrawal. Withdrawal, in its own way, is often just as
risky a proposition as the Victory option. Abandoning a known
quantity, no matter how undesirable a regime may be, for an
unknown element has its risks as Castro, the Sandinistas, and
Khomeini, among others, have clearly demonstrated. Furthermore,
while the president may view the policy option as one of
withdrawal, the leaders of other states in the region friendly to
the United States may see it as a policy of abandonment, as did
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the Persian Gulf monarchs in the wake of the Shah's demise and
Latin American strongmen after the fall of Somoza.
Of course, should the consequences of an insurgent victory
(which seemed of small moment at the time the decision for
withdrawal was made) turn out to be worse than anticipated, the
president will have to weather the angry storm of protest from
Congress, the media, and the American public. Little wonder, then,
that four successive U.S. administrations pursued the Minimalist
strategy in Vietnam before President Johnson adopted a Victory
strategy in the summer of 1965 as the price of committing U.S.
forces to battle.5
Thus the withdrawal policy has a certain "damned if you do,
damned if you don't" quality about it. It is not surprising that
revolutionaries such as Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, or the
Ayatollah Khomeini failed to embrace the United States merely
because, after years of support for their enemies, it now read the
handwriting on the wall and recognized the inevitable transfer of
power. Abandoning old friends for new often brings nothing more in
return than the enmity of both.
Despite these shortcomings, the policy of withdrawal has
qualities which recommend it under certain circumstances. If the
president cannot justify an intervention to Congress or the
people; if the United States has made a good-faith effort through
its military and economic assistance programs to provide the
regime with an opportunity to right itself; and if, in spite of
this, the rot in the political structure of the government under
attack has passed beyond the point of redemption, then withdrawal
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is the only option, albeit the least unpleasant of a trio of very
unpleasant options. What is likely to be in shortest supply under
the circumstances is the political courage and savvy necessary to
decide in favor of withdrawal before the United States becomes
inextricably committed to defeating the insurgents, and while
their is still time to build bridges to the insurgent leadership.
A number of presidents have chosen, in one form or another, a
policy of withdrawal over intervention, to include the cases of
China, Indochina, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Nicaragua. Not all
these decisions ended in disasters for the United States; nor is
it by-.,any means clear that intervention in these insurgency wars
would have resulted in the preservation of American interests any
better than the withdrawal or noncommitment of U.S. troops and_
supplies did. In the end, it again comes back to the regime under
insurgent attack. What are its prospects? How stable is it? What
leadership is the current or potential governing elite capable of
exercising? What sacrifices are those in power willing to make in
order to preserve their political system as opposed to that of the
insurgents? The answers to these questions will determine whether
intervention has a chance of success. This reality is perhaps best
reflected in the words of Dean Acheson who, in responding to a
question over the issue of "Who Lost China" during the McCarthy
era, is said to have replied: "I didn't know it was ours to lose."
Planning for Counterinsurgency
Although the discussion here will focus on what steps the
U.S. should take if it is serious about maintaining a capablitity
for intervention in Third World insurgencies, the author would be
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remiss in not pointing out the enormous potential of preventive
medicine to help these nations resolve, or at least learn to live
with, current problems that may well serve as the breeding grounds
for future insurgencies.
For instance, in the case of Mexico the United States is
literally face-to-face with a nation where widespread corruption
is an accepted part of government. There government has engaged in
the progressive restriction of free-market forces in the economy
while accumulating a massive international debt in the midst of
one of the great oil finds in history. Mexico is also faced with a
population explosion that threatens to undercut any economic
progress that escapes the clutches of the chosen few. To the
extent the United States is willing and able to provide material
assistance and technical expertise (say, in the fields of birth
control and energy), it may well be getting off cheaply in the
long run. The aphorism, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure," certainly applies in the case of budding Third World
insurgencies. Nevertheless, there are limits to how much the
United States can accomplish in its role of "good doctor" to
developing nations. As in the case of intervention, little will
come of U.S. assistance if the regime in question is riddled with
so much corruption than the aid merely becomes another way for
unscrupulous officials to line their pockets, or if the economic
system is so restrictive that it frustrates the very purpose of an
aid package. Again, the battle will be won only by the close
cooperation of both the U.S. and its Third World counterparts.
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In planning for U.S. assistance or intervention, the
assumption here is that the Minimalist approach will be followed
in the event a policy of withdrawal is not adopted. That is to
say, the presumption that any president would choose to commit the
United States to wage a colonial war, or another Vietnam, has been
ruled out. This represents an unqualified blessing in the short
run, given the current inability of the U.S. national security
structure to execute even the less demanding Minimalist strategy.
What is required in the way of creating a U.S. capability for
counterinsurgency? First and foremost, enduring emphasis on the
counterinsurgency contingency must come from the president
himself. The many parts of the bureaucracy involved in gearing up
for this new set of requirements must believe that what they are
being asked to do is important, and that the penalties for those
who fail to comply will be high. Only the president can bring this
kind of pressure to bear on the bureaucracy. In some cases, as
with President John Kennedy and the counterinsurgency "fad" in the
early 1960's, even this may not be enough.
Any president, no matter how committed he is to expanding
U.S. options to deal with insurgency, has only a small slice of
time available to focus on it. Thus the need to institutionalize
planning and coordination for CI contingencies within the national
security structure is obvious. A permanent interdepartmental.group
within the.NSC apparatus with a State Department representative
serving as chairman, and with members from the NSC Staff, DOD, the
JCS, CIA, USIA, Treasury, and USAID should be formed to coordinate
CI'plans and programs in Washington and with the ambassador in the
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field. The group should be responsible for executing and following
up on the directives of the national security council pertaining
to U.S. security assistance programs or intervention, should the
latter become necessary. The members of the group should be
experts on the subject of insurgency warfare. The president should
avoid populating the group with high level dilletantes in the
field of insurgency, as occurred with Kennedy's Special Group,
Counterinsurgency.6
At the Country Team level, the ambassador must remain in
control of all U.S. assistance/intervention activities, to include
those of the armed forces. This is mandated by the unique
political and social dimensions of insurgency warfare. One need
only recall the primacy accorded DOD in Vietnam to observe the
drawbacks of fragmenting unity of effort and allowing military
considerations to prevail. Indeed, it is essential that all CI
activities of the regime under attack be similarly centralized,
ideally under a civilian with insurgency experience.
The meat on this skeletal organizational structure for
counterinsurgency will come primarily from a commitment of
manpower and resources on the part of the departments and agencies
involved. To this end, the State Department would do well to
upgrade the status of its political-military bureau to take full
advantage of its role as director of the interdepartmental group
and the Country Team. Failure to do so may open the way for DOD's
International Security Affairs (ISA) branch, sometimes referred to
as "the Pentagon's State Department," to fill the vacuum as
occurred during the Vietnam War. Ambassadors to Third World hot
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spots must be chosen for their expertise of the country, the
region, the problems of developing nations, and the nature of
insurgency, and not on the basis of political connections or
campaign contributions.
For the CIA, adoption of a Minimalist approach contingency
will require greater emphasis on human intelligence (HUMINT)
operations, the most important dimension of CI operations. Of
equal importance will be the Agency's ability to oversee forces of
native irregulars. An example of this is the early Civil Irregular
Defense Groups in the Buon Enao population security program,-
practiced with Special Forces' assistance in South Vietnam during
the early 1960's. These paramilitary forces, if organized
properly, can take an enormous strain off the government's
security forces while making things rough for the guerillas.7
Active paramilitary forces also reduce the need for American
ground forces. Whether the CIA can rebuild its counterinsurgency
and HUMINT capabilities, given that organization's shift away from
them in recent years, remains to be seen. Furthermore, it is by no
means certain that the close working relationship that existed
between the Special Forces and the CIA can be duplicated to the
degree it was in Vietnam, where it incurred the disapproval of the
Army leadership.
The biggest challenge in reviving a U.S. CI intervention
capability., however, rests within the Department of Defense. The
armed services, where strong feelings of political betrayal and
military failure over the Vietnam War still run deep, are not
anxious to become involved in another war run by systems analysts
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and deterrence theorists, nor are they willing to divert scare
resources (manpower in particular) to prepare for CI
contingencies.
This is particularly true in the case of the Army, which
bears the primary responsibility for CI operations. The Army has
rebounded nicely from the Vietnam Syndrome which pervaded the
country in the 1970's, leading to the decimation of its Special
Forces units. Under the Reagan Administration, the Army has
rejuvinated its force structure for low-intensity warfare. The
creation of the 1st Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was to have
been the signal that the Army was once again back in the business
of dealing with insurgencies, along with terrorism and
unconventional warfare. By the late 1980's, the 1st SOCOM is.__,
slated to comprise five Special Forces Groups and a Ranger
regiment made up of three Ranger battalions. Additionally, the
Army is redesignating the 7th Infantry Division as a light
infantry division, with a second light division on the drawing
boards.
While imposing on paper, these forces do not yet possess the
doctrine, training, or command structure necessary to execute
efficiently a counterinsurgency contingency. The Rangers are
trained for commando-style operations (raids, rescue operations,
rapid insertion/extraction missions, etc); the Special Forces are
still primarily oriented, as they have been since their creation,
on unconventional warfare (i.e.; acting as guerrillas, not as part
of a population security program).8 The light infantry divisions
have already been assigned possible roles on NATO's central front,
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the Persian Gulf, and Korea, as well as Third World insurgency
contingencies.9 Thus none of these special operations forces are
primarily focused on a counterinsurgency environment.
On top of this, the Army leadership has adopted a "No More
Vietnams" posture of its own, similar in some respects to the "No
More Koreas" Club formed in the wake of the military's unpleasant
experience with limited war in the 1950's. Specifically, the Army
wants guarantees from the president that prior to any future U.S.
intervention in a Third World insurgency, American popular support
for the war will be maintained. Furthermore, the Army leadership
wants assurances that the Victory option will be exercised, and
that the JCS will be allowed to engage, if necessary, the source
of the problem (e.g., Nicaragua or Cuba, in the case of El
Salvador). 10
Whether these appeals for guarantees represent yet another
Pentagon "wish list" or a subtle means of forcing the
administration to opt for the withdrawal option rather than boxing
the Army into another "no win" war, there is little doubt the
armed services have a long way to go before an effective U.S.
counterinsurgency capability can be realized. It remains to be
seen whether the military, and the Army in particular, have the
capacity to learn from the failure of the Victory strategy in
Vietnam. It also remains to be seen whether the nation's civilian
leadership is able, first, to prod the services to develop this
unwanted capability; and second, to provide the additional
resources (particularly manpower) required to support the
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reintroduction of counterinsurgency into the military's full menu
of contingencies.
.The prospects are not good. Resources (manpower in
particular) are in short supply. Europe and the Gulf are, if we
are to believe the reports emanating from the Pentagon, barely
defendable, with Korea already written off in the event of a major
war. Add this to the services' Vietnam trauma and the comfortable
framework they have developed for viewing war in conventional
terms, and the challenge becomes even more imposing.
Furthermore, even if a president and his senior defense
officials made counterinsurgency a top priority, the chief
executive's time is sorely limited and the time his defense aides
spend on the job is measured better in months than years. Under
these conditions it becomes relatively easy for the services to
resist any mandate, even one from the president himself, simply by
sinking it into the bog of bureaucratic inertia."
A generation ago, President Kennedy recognized the Army's
opposition to taking on the counterinsurgency mission and went to
great lengths to overcome it. For instance, in the late autumn of
1961 Kennedy held an extraordinary session with the Army's major
commanders in the Oval Office. There Kennedy personally requested
the generals' voluntary and enthusiastic support, not merely their
pro forma acceptance of his directives, for the development of an
Army counterinsurgency capability.12 The brass gave only lip
service to this bit of personal lobbying on the president's part
and, several months later, Kennedy had to get tough. He began
issuing specific instructions to the Army though Secretary of
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Defense McNamara. Action was taken -- reluctantly. However, those
changes that did occur were, for the most part, quietly scrapped
after the president's death.13
To give the generals their due it must be recognized that
they were being asked to prepare for a two-and-a-half war strategy
with a one-and-a-half war Army. While the Army could play the game
of slotting its forces to multiple contingencies, hoping that no
more than one or, perhaps, two would ever occur simultaneously,
the practice proved wholly inadequate for Third World insurgency
contingencies, where light -- not heavy -- forces trained in
low-intensity, warfare, not conventional operations, were required.
The Army's organizational inertia, coupled with the Kennedy
Administration's failure to examine closely the trade-offs in:--.
manpower and materiel required for the development of this kind of
capability, led to MACV's attempts to fight a quasi-conventional
war as part of a Victory strategy in Vietnam.
Thus the generation of a CI capability within DOD rests on
two imposing criteria: first, the imposition of a high-level
-political override on the Army of sufficient intensity and
duration to bring about change; second, provision of the necessary
resources and incentives to make the service's development of
these forces less onerous. Given the low priority accorded CI
forces in the current administration, its lack of expertise in
insurgency warfare, and the voracious demands for resources
present in the current defense program, it is unlikely that the
United States will possess in this decade the kinds of military
forces necessary for intervention called for in the Minimalist
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approach. In the event intervention is required, it will almost
certainly be executed without an adequate doctrine for either
Joint or Army operations, with ad hoc command realtionships --
both in the field and in Washington -- and within an ineffective
strategic framework. Therefore, should the U.S. fail to stem the
insurgent tide through a program of military and economic
assistance, a policy of withdrawal may be the only realistic
option open to American security planners.
Aside from the changes required in U.S. military forces,
emphasis must be placed on the close coordination of the agencies
represented on the interdepartmental group with their counterparts
in the country threatened by insurgency and other regional actors
and/or potential allies. Coordination should be effected through
the respective American embassy in each country. De facto unity of
command of local and allied forces under the U.S. ambassador and
the American field commander, mandatory in the colonial war
envisioned in. the Victory strategy, is also highly desirable under
the Minimalist approach.
If U.S. forces are relatively few in number compared to those
of the government under attack, however, such an arrangement may
not be realistic; at least not under American auspices. The
decision will then have to be made of whether or not to place
American troops under the command of local military leaders.
Nothing should be done, however, to prejudice the establishment of
a native counterinsurgency headquarters for the integration and
direction of the political, economic, military, and social
dimensions of the conflict. The objective here is always to insure
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that resources are being allocated in the most effective manner
possible and that proper priorities are maintained.
Providing for unity of command is no easy matter; indeed, the
U.S. services by themselves often appear incapable of effecting
such a relationship. Nevertheless, the penalties of forgoing it in
an insurgency war are just as severe as in any other form of war,
and perhaps greater. One need only examine the tangled command
structure that existed in Vietnam to get a feel for the
deleterious effects fragmentation of command imposes upon CI
operations. The issue is so important that its absence alone
should provide strong grounds for eschewing the option of military
intervention.
Popular and congressional support should be cultivated t.o.the
maximum extent possible. This involves as much candor as
possible, within the limits of security, between the
administration, and the Congress and American people. Credibility
gaps, so harmful to the Johnson and Nixon administrations during
Vietnam, must be avoided. Guidlines for censorship of the media
should be established beforehand and explanations provided for
their need. Restrictions on travel to nations considered directly
hostile to the United States' war effort should be made known
immediately upon intervention, lest certain well-intentioned but
ill-informed citizens fall prey to the propaganda ploys of
America's adversaries.
The importance of congressional participation in the national
security decisionmaking process cannot be overemphasized.
Eisenhower in the Indochina crisis of 1954 and Kennedy in the
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Laotian crisis of 1962 both benefitted by including key
congressional leaders in the debate over intervention. Ironically,
Lyndon Johnson, who participated in the Indochina deliberations in
1954 as Senate Majority Leader, as president either ignored the
congressional leadership or made it feel "used," as occurred with
the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Left out of the discussions which led
to the key decisions on intervention in Vietnam, congressional
leaders were later less reluctant than they might otherwise have
been to criticize "Johnson's War." For a president to ignore the
wishes of the Congress, he must assume the full burden of
responsibility if the intervention cannot be brought to a quick
and successful conclusion, as in Grenada. Quick victories,
however, are unlikely prospects in wars of insurgency, and the
patience of Congress and the American people is likely to wear
thin.
Conclusions
Little attention has been given by U.S. political and
military leaders to the potential threat posed to American
national security interests from Third World insurgent movements.
Planning for counterinsurgency contingencies over the past four
decades is more reflective of a hope that insurgent movements will
somehow resolve themselves in America's favor, or just fade away.
No policy structure is in place to deal with insurgencies that
fail to fit this preferred mold, nor is action being taken to
remedy the problem. While U.S. military and economic programs may
be of some help to regimes threatened by guerrilla movements, they
are not likely to be decisive in and of themselves. The problem
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arises if the government in question fails to cope with insurgency
and a crisis forces the United States' hand in an area of vital
interest. Current policy arrangements offer the president only a
choice between a policy of withdrawal or a costly intervention
using the malstructured military forces and ad hoc institutional
arrangements that proved so inadequate in Vietnam. If there are to
be "no more Vietnams," then the United States national security
apparatus must learn from the mistakes of that unfortunate
experience and face up to the challenge that revolutionary wars,
or insurgencies, will not fade away. They require'every bit as
much attention as the other forms of military and political
conflict which dominate the policymaking process today. Failure to
give this most prevalent form of conflict its due will incur--a-..
cost which will be exacted in America's national treasure and in
the blood of her citizens.
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1. For a well-written analysis of insurgency warfare and the
doctrine of counterinsurgency, see David Galula, Counterinsurgency
Warfare (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1964); Franklin M.
Osanka, ed. Modern Guerrilla Warfare (Glencoe, N.Y.: The Free
Press, 1962); John McCuen, The Art of Counterrevolutionary Warfare
(Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1966); and Douglas S. Blaufarb,
The Counterinsurgency Era (New York: The Free Press, 1977).
Similar analyses with a focus on the Vietnam insurgency can be
found in Robert G-.K. Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966); and No Exit From Vietnam (New
York: David McKay Co., 1969); and General Vo-Nguyen Giap, People's
War, People's Army (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962). See
also Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, Inc., 1975) for an excellent historical overview of
insurgency warfare.
2. See Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., "Public Opinion and the
Vietnam War," (Unpublished paper, Harvard University, May 1979);
and John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973).
3. A comparative analysis of these strategies can be found in
Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., "The Army Concept and Vietnam: A Case
Study in Organizational Failure" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard
University, 1984), pp.708-22.
4. For a discussion of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in
Vietnam, see Ibid., pp.475-83, 535-79.
5. See Leslie H. Gelb with Richard K. Betts, The Irony of
Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings
Institution, 1981).
6. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era, p.86; for a more
detailed discussion, see Krepinevich, "The Army and Vietnam,"
pp.133-41.
7. Colonel Francis J. Kelly, U.S. Army Special Forces,
1961-1971 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army (DA), 1973),
pp.20-43; and Krepinevich, "The Army and Vietnam," pp.230-44.
8. Department of the Army (DA), Low Intensity Conflict, FM
100-20 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, January 1981); DA, Command and
Support of Special Forces Operations, FM31-22 (Washington, D.C.:
GPO, 23 December 1981). For an overview of current Special Forces
operations, see Colonel Robert J. Baratto, "Special Forces in the
1980s: A Strategic Reorientation," Military Review 63 (March
1983); and Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., "The Army and
Counterinsurgency Operations: Plus Ca Change . . ." (Paper
delivered at the annual International Studies Association
conference, Atlanta, Georgia, March 1984).
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