(c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 42)  | |||
| Winter 2001/2 |
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Issue 42 | |
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Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict
Ivan Molloy
London: Pluto Press, 2001, £18.99/£55
In the 1980s the resurgent US military and neo-conservatives were in a bind: faced with a variety of challenges to the American economic empire, the enormous military power they possessed was constrained by PR considerations; American parents who didn't want their children dying abroad (the so-called 'Vietnam syndrome'); and opposition around the world - not to mention the Democrats in Congress trying to tie their hands. The solutions they came up with ranged from getting 'private' organisations to do some of the fundraising and propagandising; bullying the media into compliance; running massive psy-ops campaigns against the American population to overcome 'the Vietnam syndrome'; getting proxies to do the killing for them; getting permission for dope dealers who contributed to the Contras to deal cocaine in America; and covertly selling arms to raise the money denied by Congress. As an after-thought attempts were made to elaborate a 'doctrine' for this activity which encompassed all the constraints. This 'doctrine' was called Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) and the author argues that in the mid-1980s LIC became 'a coherent and ideologically legitimate strategy' for dealing with insurgency in the Third World:
'.....a foreign policy orientation that attached priority to the political objective of winning political support [in the US] for the "democratic alternative" in the Third World' (pp. 70/1).Any sniggering at the idea of the US supporting the 'democratic alternative' is entirely justified: this is just more psy-ops bullshit aimed at the US domestic audience.
The author's determination to explore and support his thesis about LIC clutters up with a lot of repetitive discussion of LIC and its predecessors an interesting and detailed account of the Reagan administrations' attempts to 'roll back revolution'. Molloy would justify by this by claiming that LIC really was something substantially new, not just 'counter-insurgency under a new name':
'The extent to which it was predominantly political [and] psychological (and not military) in nature and its activities privatised and civilianised make it different to traditional counter-insurgency tactics pursued by other administrations, at least in emphasis.' (p. 172 emphasis added.)Of this I was not persuaded. On the detailed evidence presented by Molloy in the examples of Nicaragua and the Phillipines, it is clear that while there were some private and civilian activities round the fringes, and yes, there were some 'hearts and minds' programmes aimed at the Nicaraguan and Phillipino citizens, the most significant aspects of both campaigns were traditional: constant interference in the domestic politics of both countries and death squads - comply or die, the old equation. In the case of Nicaragua, there was also a whole raft of measures by the US administration ranging from economic blockade to constant military threats on Nicaragua's borders. Compared to these the other 'private' and 'civilian' activities were of little consequence - something the author seems to me to be acknowledging with his qualifying phrase italicised above, 'at least in emphasis'.
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