Counterinsurgency
expert David Ucko von der Siftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin) and der
RAND Corporation posted this as a comment on Friday, but I think it is too good
to just sit there. So I am promoting it to a guest blog. Take it away, David:
I would gladly provide a longer blog post, though I am afraid time is too
limited to produce a structured piece. Let me however jot down a few thoughts
on the matter.
First, I would recommend Benjamin Schwarz's study on El Salvador for RAND, written in 1991. What Schwarz does is
illustrate the critical weaknesses of the U.S. approach in El Salvador, most of
which centre around its limited leverage: its inability to get the armed forces
of El Salvador (ESAF) and the government (GoES) to do what the U.S. reforms
asked of them.
That is to say, despite a daily expenditure of ca. $1.5m in military and
economic aid to El Salvador, and the deployment of 55 advisers in country
(more, at times), exogenous efforts at reform were only at best partially
succesful.
What this meant in terms of the conflict is that while U.S. aid and
assistance reversed the initial gains of FMLN, the end result, by the mid-1980s
was stalemate. The U.S. and GoES could not defeat FMLN, and nor could FMLN
threaten the overthrow of the government. That is why I suggest the indirect
approach in El Salvador produced stalemate rather than success. Perhaps the
biggest manifestation of this stalemate was the FMLN's final offensive of
November 1989, in which, through the launch of major offensive operations, they
were able to penetrate the capital, temporarily seize some of its territory and
produce a Tet-like psychological effect both on GoES and on its U.S. backers.
Of course the conflict has since been lauded as a successful transition
from war to peace. Yet it should be recalled that FMLN was not defeated, which
had been the aim under Reagan. Instead, given the change of strategic context
with the end of the Cold War, and the election of George H. W. Bush (who was
eager to extricate the U.S. from El Salvador's stalemated conflict), the effort
shifted from one of 'victory' to one of 'compromise'. That compromise was
successfully achieved at Chapultepec, though it should be said that there are
important qualification to be made on this point too (see the great research by
Charles T. Call on this topic).
So whether it was a success or not depends a little on your standards. In
one sense, FMLN were no longer an armed threat, but the initial aims of the
campaign, which had by this point lasted ten years, cost a hell of a lot of
money, as well as 75,000 lives, were not met - and perhaps they could not be
met, given the intransigence of GoES to conduct reforms and the continued
inefficiency and inflammatory human-rights abuses of ESAF. In that sense, the
U.S. effort in El Salvador was 'saved by the bell', if by bell we mean the
significant changes in global politics around the end of the 1980s. Without
this change in circumstances, the stalemate would likely have continued or,
absent greater responsiveness to U.S. pressure, its aid would have declined
(particularly given the mood within the U.S. Congress at this time), allowing
for an outright eventual FMLN victory.
Again, no time for more carefully structured thoughts on this topic. I
refer you to a forthcoming RAND publication on COIN, led by John Gordon and
William Rosenau, to which I contribute a chapter on this very conflict and
difficult question.
I find this comment interesting.
But I gots to tell you, in the U.S. military establishment, $1.5 million a day
is cheap cheap cheap. It would not buy you 15 minutes of the war in Iraq, or
even half that, by my hurried calculation.
Here is more
on the Salvador option.
Jose CABEZAS/AFP/Getty Images
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