Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, Counter-Terrorism, 1940-1990

I thought this book was excellent, some people have complained that it's somewhat of a "hit-piece" or politically biased, but I didn't pick up any of that. Thoroughly researched and at times almost laboriously in depth, but a well written book that's seemingly not very well known...

Revealing

The title intrigued me. Three five-star reviews sold me. However, McClintock’s book is nearly worthless. He is bound and determined, beyond reason, to link intrinsically US National Defense Policy with the use of terrorism to achieve its goals. Since the pub date is at the end of a 12 year old counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador, and Mr. McClintock previously published a book on covert actions in Latin America, I am guessing he was caught up in the post-Vietnam anti-military spin and the contrived image of US supported death squads in El Salvador.Nearly worthless, the book does cover a tremendous scope of Special Warfare (SW) activities from the OSS through Delta Force. Covering many facts over this range is impressive, but he mortally fails to understand his two principal terms: Special Warfare and terrorism. And I don’t blame him much. Most people do confuse Special Forces with elite units like Delta or the SAS, who are not Special Forces. And terrorism has always been difficult to define, but the most accepted version of terrorism is the use of violence against civilians. Mr. McClintock includes terror as a tactic against an enemy in time of war. While terrifying, experts in terrorism do not include artillery barrages on troops or bombs dropped on legitimate wartime targets. The author blends them to suite his purpose. Overseas, America has no ethical boundaries.He leads with this: “Since World War II, assassination, sabotage, kidnapping, torture, the overthrown of foreign governments and other terroristic activities have been intrinsic to our national defense policy.” The rest of the book persists in conflating all warfare with terrorism. He will present a few historical facts, a statement devoid of fact and then draw an uncalled for conclusion.“The merging of two strains of special warfare, offensive “guerrilla” warfare and counter insurgency… had after 1961, become an integral part of army doctrine and practices. Special Forces training schedules, in particular, stressed the interchangeability of the skills required…. “He then quotes BG William Yarborough stating UW and COIN being two sides of the same coin. Yarborough explains clearly the differences and states they are two different courses at Fort Bragg.Also, Special Warfare, either UW or COIN, never became an integral part of army doctrine and practices. SW has always been on the periphery. Under Kennedy, more attention was paid to countering communist inspired insurgencies, but Army doctrine and training outside of Special Forces still focused on conventional threats. Even tactics in Vietnam were predominantly offensive, essentially to find and destroy North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces, permitting the South Vietnamese with US Advisors to handle the defensive job of counterinsurgency. Westmorland never bought into counterinsurgency.McClintock also attacks Psychological warfare as terroristic because it seeks to instill fear. Psyops in guerrilla warfare uses propaganda to demoralize the enemy, who may be fearful of ambush or snipers, but this negative propaganda is against lawful combatants. On the other hand, Psyops also targets the civilian populace to believe in US sponsored guerrillas and resist the enemy. U.S. doctrine for Psychological Operations has never been aimed at terrorizing civilians, only at the legitimate use of propaganda to isolate and demoralize the enemy. US counterinsurgency doctrine is more derived from the British experience in Malay and the US experience with the Huk rebellion in the Philippines where soldiers learned you must protect the populace from the insurgents and attend to popular grievances.Mr. McClintock takes what could have been a valuable history and ruins some extensive research by inserting half truths, hearsay, and guilt by associations to denigrate particularly Army Special Forces, the one US military unit designed to fight in ambiguous conflict zones, whether sponsoring an insurgency or countering an insurgency. He attacks the one unit trained to live and work alongside the indigenous population. He sees the juxtaposition and blames them for failing to prevent terror. But the population does not attribute fault to them because the SF soldiers demonstrated the willingness to risk their own lives to help them.Why ruin his book? At the end, he goes back to Latin America, to Nicaragua and El Salvador. Instead of including the truth that the Soviets through their surrogates, the Cubans and Nicaraguans, were funneling weapons and cadre to destabilize the region and make it more susceptible to communist inspired revolution, he blames it all on America’s self interest. What he fails to admit is what Special Forces accomplished in El Salvador. They outlasted the FMLN guerrillas and did it by reforming the Salvadorian army so that in 1992, the guerrillas struck a deal for peace. The FMLN attributed their decision to lay down arms to the positive change the Americans made on the Salvadorian government and military. Two years later, the FMLN participated in elections and have done so ever since. He fails to tell you that Special Forces were undermanned, could not use offensive weapons, and had to deal with a corrupt, poorly motivated and untrained Salvadorian army. Yet they achieved a remarkable success. It took 12 years. Retired Special Forces soldiers to this day still visit their friends and former enemies in El Sal.Read the book, but understand the author’s purpose. He wants to demonstrate that Americans overseas ran on calculated self-interest, without any need for ethical considerations. I certainly am one of those Americans he defames., My 24 years of experience know Special Forces as men who run on deep ethical beliefs and a willingness to endure hardship to achieve something better. DOL

Michael McClintock lays out the history of postwar US special warfare, both in practice and in official doctrine, and takes a critical approach to the subject. He begins with the origins of unconventional warfare, where US military historians drew lessons from the Nazi occupation -- often with a favorable view towards the conquerors.Readers may feel lost in some of the history presented -- having more background knowledge of the Greek civil war in the late 1940s, for example, would have helped my reading.McClintock further illustrates the evolution of US special warfare, from a counterguerilla focus in the early years to a focus on counterinsurgency in the 1960s, and more recently a shift to counterterror in the 1980s. The picture that emerges is an ugly one: that the US habitually ignored and willfully circumvented the Geneva conventions in special warfare, a domain viewed by military commanders to be outside of international law. That being said, such a picture is crucial to understanding both how the world see the US and how the US military projects power throughout the globe, often in "low-intensity conflict" to avoid the political costs of conventional wars.Clearly a substantial amount of work has gone into this book; historical military documents are dusted off and used to illustrate the doctrine of special operations -- one that, at times, explicitly endorses the use of terror. However, the book would have benefited from some more interesting prose, as the above professional reviewers have noted.The sheer density of information packed into this volume makes it well worth the read. Readers should take note of the lessons to be drawn from the facts presented; deployment of US unconventional forces often comes at the cost of our values.

"Instruments of Statecraft" is a powerful and significant book that unveils how US counterinsurgency doctrine was consciously modelled on the practices and achievements of World War II fascism. In his review of US Army manuals of the 1950s, author Michael McClintock notes that there is a frightening similarity between the Nazi's perception of world politics and America's behavior in the Cold War.McClintock reveals how the US has undertaken the worldwide task of removing anti-fascist resistance and other criminals (labelled "Communists" or "terrorists") from the theatre of national and international politics.McClintock points out that in the struggle against "Partisan Communism" the killing of anyone furnishing aid or comfort, directly or indirectly, to such partisans, or any person withholding information on partisans, was well within the provisions of acceptable superpower behavior.McClintock shows how the policies advocated by Kennedy's dovish advisors, and standard US practice in Central America were founded on the fundamental state terrorist policy of the utility of "evacuation of all natives from partisan-infested areas and the destruction of all farms, villages, and buildings in the areas following the evacuations" - standard US procedure in South Vietnam, for example.Engaging, illuminating and riveting,"Instruments of Statecraft" is a must-read for blind-faith patriots everywhere.