THE THEORY AND FALLACIES OF COUNTERINSURGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300360075-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 17, 2000
• Sequence Number: 75
• Publication Date: August 2, 1971
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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WINNING )IEARTS AND MINDS
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From the beginning, the core of the tragedy in Southeast Asia
has been the inability of Western political leaders, and par-
ticularly American political leaders, to grasp the nature Of
insurgency in areas formerly under colonial rule, or the limita-
tions of couiitcrinsrr,?gency to quell it. Accordingly, The
Nation is devoting almost this entire issue 'to Egbal Ahmad's
essay on the subject. In somewhat different form it will be a
chapter in his forthcoming Reaction and Revolution in the
Third World (Pantheon). Mr. Ahnrad is a Fellow of the Adlai
Stevenson Institute in Chicago.
To write on. counterinsurgency one must first explain
what the so-called "insurgencies" really are. In the United
States that may be difficult because for the most part the
social scientists who write on revolutionary warfare have
been proponents of counterinsurgency. As a result, the
biases of incumbents are. built into the structure, images
and language of contemporary Western, especially Amer-
ican, literature on the subject. We have come to accept
ideologically contrived concepts and words as objective
descriptions.
One could, take innumerable examples----terrorism, sub-
version, pacification, urbanization, protective reaction,
defensive interdiction, etc.--and expose the realities be-
hind these words and phrases. The terns counterinsurgency We mil ht view the. conventional esta'olishment approach
is itself an excellent?cxample. L i'r?_e all coinages in this as constituting the common denominator of the assump-
area, it is value-laden and misleading. In fact, counteria trolls and objectives shared b} all incumbents; viz., an
surgency is not at all directed against insurgency, which a priori hostility toward revolution, the view that its ori-
Webster defines as "a revolt against a government, not gins are conspiratorial, a managerial attitude toward it as.
reaching the proportions of an organized revolution; and a problem, and atechnocratic-military. approach to its
not recognized as belligerency." The truth is, the Congress solution, In strategy and tactics, this approach prefers con-
and the country. would be in uproar-if the government were ventional ground and air operations, requiring large de-
to claim that U.S. counterinsurgency capabilities could ployments of troops, search-and-destroy missions (also
conceivably be available to its clients for putting down called "rr~op-up operations"), the tactics of "encirclement"
"revolts not reaching the proportions of an organized and "attrition"---v,'lrich involve, on the one hand, large
revolution." The truth is the opposite: counterinsurgency military fortifications (bases, enclaves) connected by "nro-
is a multifaceted assault against organized revolutions. bile" battalions (in Vietnam, helicopter-borne troops and
The euphemism is not used by accident, nor from igno- air cavalry); and, on the other hand, massive displacement
ranee. It serves to conceal the reality of a foreign. policy of civilian population and the creation of freq.-fire zones.
:.dedicated to combating revolutions abroad; it helps to The conventionalists also evince deep longings for set
relegate - revolutionaries to the status of outlaws. The battles, and would multiply the occasions by forcing, sur-
reduction of a revolution to more insurgency is also an im- prising or luring the guerrillas into conventional show.-
elicit denial of its let itimacy. In this article, countcrin- clowns. The results of these pressures are bombings (e.g.,
surgency and counterrevolution are used interchangeably. North Vietnam) or invasion of enemy "sanctuaries" across
Analytically, counterinsurgency may be discussed in the frontiers of 'conflict (e.g., Cambodia) and the tactic
terms of two primary models----the conventional-estab- of offering an occasional bait in the hope of luring the
lishnient and the liberal-reformist; and two ancillary enemy to a concentrated attack (e.g., Dienbicnphu, Iklie
models-the punitive-militarist and the technological-at.- Sandi).
tritive. I terns these latter ancillary because they develop If the conventional-establishment attitudes constitute
after the fact--from actual involvement in countcrrevolu- the lowest common denominator of counterrevolution., the
tion, and from interplay between the conventional and liberal-reformists are the chief exponents of its doctrine,
liberal institutions and individuals so involved. The tincl the most sophisticated programmers of its practice.
models, though identifiable in terms of the intensit , and The )rovide h or f t c o s s r a y associated
Approved For Release 2001/03/04 :-CIA-1P80-06~01
scope of their application at given times, and in terms
of the agencies and individuals favoring them, are opel'-
ationally integrated in the field. I outline them here:
Although monolithic in its goal of SUpp3'eSSiD51 re:volu-
tions,' the theory and practice of counterinsurgency reflects
the pluralism of the Western societies to which most of its
practitioners and all of its theoreticians belong. A pluralis-
tic, bargaining political culture induces an institutionalized
compulsion to compromise. Within a defined boundary,
More can be something for everyone..lie-nee, the actual
strategy and tactics of counterinsurgency reflect compro-
mise, no one blueprint being applied in its original, un.
adulterated form. This give-and-take contributes to a most
fateful phenomenon of counterrevolutionary involvement:
groups and individuals continue to feel that their pirti.cu-
lar prescriptions were never administered in full dosage;
and at the right intervals, They show a tendency toward
self-justification, a craving to continue with and improve
their formulas for success. Severe critics of specific "blun-
ders" and "miscalculations," they still persist in Seeing
"lid ht at the Grid of. the tunnel." I shall return to this in
discussing the Doctrine of Permanent Counterinsurgency.
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