Although victorious in terms of seats, ARENA has few solutions to offer. Again, as in 1972 or 19821°, there is a polarization between the ruling oligarchy grouped around ARENA and the opposition. This is undoubtedly the most important development in the recent period. By wanting and needing to save the oligarchy (both in terms of the agrarian reform and in the inquiries into the repression), the American intervention has paralyzed any political solution in Salvador and shown, once more, that national and social liberation cannot be achieved without destroying this system. But since the beginning of this war, the social crisis has taken on such a scale that only a big programme of reforms and economic aid could redress it — exactly what the oligarchy cannot contemplate. At the same time, the regained political and military strength of the FMLN limits the chances for rapid successes.
From here to victory is
La big step
From now until the presidential elections in 1989, this political and institutional crisis is going to sharpen. The failure of the North American project leaves the USA facing some difficult choices. The mass
BELOW we publish extracts from a report on the military movement, in spite of its limits, has won situation in El Salvador prepared by four American enough political space to destabilize any political solution that does not respond to lieutenant-colonels for the John F. Kennedy School of the need for national independence and so-
Government. This internal report has been widely leaked in cial justice. After eight years of war, the
San Salvador over the last couple of months, presumably as idea of a negotiated solution with the
FMLN/FDR, without foreign interference, a way of putting pressure on the Salvadoran officer corps and has won a large following. But the presits more recalcitrant backers in the oligarchy.
ence of the USA is preventing this from happening, at the cost of a veritable social
It includes not only a frank admission of US aims and and human disaster, and the oligarchy is remethods, but a damning indictment of the failure to realize lying on the USA to help them get out of the mire.
For the Salvadoran revolutionaries, this crisis involves difficult responsibilities.
They have shown a remarkable capacity for resistance, which has won them credibility in wide popular layers. But from there to victory, to imposing a negotiated solution unwanted by either the Americans or the oligarchy, is quite a step.
The editorialist of ECA magazine already cited - a partisan of a "third way", whose outlines are fuzzy after the long of rule of the oligarchy and the USA — himself con-
"In 1988, the FMLN has the more cludes:
difficult hand to play". *
10. In 1972, the Duarte (PDC)/Ungo (MR socialdemocrat) duo won the elections. This reformist solution was brushed aside by the dictatorship. Since then,
Ungo has gone over to the FDR (with a minority of the
Christian Democrats), and Duarte has wor threadbare the solution of "American-style reforms". Already in
1982 Duarte was beaten for the first time by ARENA, who profited from this majority to block the reforms and all democratic processes.
them.
H AVING reached its eighth anni-
versary, the war in El Salvador retains a remarkable ability to surprise. The war's course has refused to conform to the expectations of self-appointed experts. The conflict has not become "another Vietnam," as tremulous observers in the US had feared. Nor has the prolonged struggle led to the collapse of the armed forces of El Salvador, as the latter's many critics once confidently predicted. Alas, for the Reagan administration, neither has the Salvadoran army's resilience combined with substantial American backing led to decisive defeat of those attempting to overthrow the government. Indeed, the perseverance of the adversaries is such that, in early 1988, an end to the war appears nowhere in sight.
The Salvadoran conflict provides an example of a war that is both old and new. On the one hand, the war falls clearly into the now-familiar tradition of insurgency, articulated by Mao Tse-tung and applied with varying degrees of success on many battlefields since the end of the second world war. For the United States, on the other hand, El Salvador represents an experiment, an attempt to reverse the record of American failure in waging small wars, an effort to defeat an insurgency by providing training and material support without committing American troops to combat....
As the US girds itself for intervention, it faces major strategic questions. What are US objectives? Given the war's particular character, what is winning? What measure of success will enable policy-makers to evaluate progress over time? Does domestic political support exist? Once mustered, can it be sustained? In a broad sense, what 11 American resources are required and how July 25, 1988 • #146 International Viewpoint
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EL SALVADOR are they to be employed to achieve American objectives?
In El Salvador, American efforts to provide timely and definitive answers to these questions left much to be desired. The officers we interviewed agree that the US has yet to define clear policy objectives in El Salvador.....Asked to describe US national objectives in El Salvador, for example, one general officer replied that the White House was hoping for "a bright, shiny democracy to spring into being overnight," that the State Department was preoccupied with surviving the next vote on Capitol Hill, the Defence Department worried lest controversy over El' Salvador jeopardize other defence programs, the Congress strove to prevent El Salvador from becoming another Vietnam, the CIA was absorbed in attempting to manipulate Salvadoran political factions, while SouthCom [the US army Southern Command] searched for ways to "let the goverment of El Salvador operate without too much fear of interference from the insurgents."
An off-the-cuff judgement, such a rendering surely suffers from oversimplification. Nor are the various objectives listed necessarily inconsistent with one another. But they do reflect the frustration of a principal actor, shared by most of those whom we interviewed, at the absence of any common sense of purpose or theme uniting the efforts of the Americans concerned with the Salvadoran war....
In the absence of any agreed upon measures of success, evaluations of American policy rely excessively on "gut-feel" or on statistics (misleading in isolation) of how many guerrillas are being killed and how many continue to fight. Deprived of clearly stated objectives and quantifiable measures of success, officers in El Salvador today have difficulty knowing whether or not American policy is any closer to achieving its purposes than it was a half dozen years ago....
American intervention in El Salvador occurred without the benefit of a unifying visionary document. Interestingly, however, American involvement there provides examples of three documents composed over a three year period, none of which alone offered the necessary unifying vision, but when considered together constitute something like a comprehensive strategic overview. Those three documents are the Woerner Report (1981), the National Campaign Plan (1983) and the Report of the Kissinger Commission (1984).
The Woerner Report had a seminal influence on subsequent American efforts. Yet this report didn't go far enough. As a senior member of the team drafting the report recalled: "Our original purpose was to design a national strategy; [but] that mission proved too broad. Our purpose got re12 duced to assisting the Salvadoran armed forces to draft and design a national miliInternational Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988 tary strategy." The distinction is a crucial one. Pressed for time and with its perspective shaped by its purely military composition, the Woerner team concentrated on sketching out ideas to retool the armed forces: quadrupling the force structure; upgrading command, control, communications and intelligence; establishing a logistics system. The Woerner Report also examined the war's naval and air dimensions, paying particular attention to the modernization and expansion of the Salvadoran air force.
Apart from an emphasis that was arguably too conventional given the character of the Salvadoran war, the Woerner Report's recommendations for improving the army sons were generally sound. Unfortunately, the team's members had neither the time, the expertise, nor even the charter to examine with equal thoroughness the other facets of counter-insurgent strategy: population control, social and economic reform, the reinforcement of democratic institutions, improvement of government services, civic action, civil defence or psychological operations (psyops). As a result, the report dealt with these issues in passing or not at all.
Drafted some sixteen months later, the National Campaign Plan (NCP) represented a commendable if belated attempt to formulate a comprehensive counter-insurgent strategy. If the Woerner Report focused on converting the Salvadoran army from a constabulary into a fighting force, the NCP prescribed a method for incorporating the army's efforts into an expanding panoply of capabilities all intended to earn popular support for the Salvadoran goverment. The Woerner Report had aimed to create an army that could kill guerrillas; the aim of the NCP was to win.
Conceptually, the NCP represented a breakthrough in thinking about the war. Yet the plan advocated a strategy without moorings. The MilGroup [military group based in Salvador] devised the NCP when "baloney-slice funding" was at its most severe. Even after Americans in-country had cajoled Salvadoran officers and their govemment into adopting the plan, it possessed little standing in the United States as something Americans or their representatives in Congress needed to support. In large measure, this lack of enthusiasm for the NCP reflected the fact that Americans in the early years of the Reagan presidency did not share the administration's enthusiasm for El Salvador.
Recognizing the need to broaden domestic support for his policies in El Salvador and elsewhere in the region, President Reagan, in mid-1983, created a bipartisan commission on Central America. Commonly known as the Kissinger Commission after its chair, this too was a positive, if belated, initiative. Did anyone ever doubt that the commission's final report would endorse the major thrust of the president's policies? Probably not. Yet despite its predictable conclusions, the commission's report educated Americans about the stakes in Central America and helped regularize subsequent congressional funding of the Salvadoran war effort.
The commission's bipartisan composition, the stature of its individual members, and the thoroughness with which they went about their task bestowed on
American policies a mantle of legitimacy that they had lacked previously.
What is the significance of all this for future American involvement in small wars? In the early years especially, the failure to define an overarching strategic vision hampered American military efforts in El Salvador. Yet over time, via these three documents, the US did cobble together a vision of sorts. The prolonged gestation of that vision limits its utility in El Salvador. Yet as a model for the visionary document that should accompany any future American interventions, the Woerner Report, National Campaign Plan and Kissinger Report considered collectively have much to offer.
The Salvadoran experience suggests that the ideal visionary document will avoid partisan identification. It will derive its authority from the fact that its authors - a mix of political leaders, businessmen, academics and soldiers - are "above politics."..Its purpose must be to generate domestic support for the intervention and its purposes from the outset of American involvement. In outlining planned US actions, the ideal visionary document will
certainly address the full spectrum of military activities. But it will look beyond that to consider factors that are nominally non-military but integral to any war-winning counter-insurgent strategy.... Can the Salvadoran army defeat the guerrillas?
Beyond its attempts to reform the officer corps and introduce non-commissioned officers into the Salvadoran armed forces, the US sought to change the way Salvadorans fight. Efforts on this front - focusing on organization, hardware, tactics and training - have transformed the army. In outward appearance, the somnolent Salvadoran military that existed prior to the US intervention has all but disappeared, eclipsed by a force that is bigger, better equipped, and hardened by years of combat. Whether this transformation has bestowed on the Salvadoran armed forces the qualities needed to defeat the guerrillas is the question to
In several respects, the Salvadoran army's American-sponsored metamorphosis has achieved indisputable success. The rate at which the army has fielded new battalions is itself an accomplishment, stemming directly from the generosity of American support. In 1980, the ratio in numbers of combatants between the army and the FMLN stood at hardly more than 1.5:1. By early 1988, the army's advantage approached 8:1, not far short of the 10:1 commonly cited as necessary for a counterinsurgency...
A second success, the Salvadoran infantryman today has the wherewithal to subsist in the field and to fight effectively. Instead of the worn G3 rifle that his predecessor of ten years ago carried, he has a new M16. Small arms ammunition for training and for battle is in plentiful supply. As a result of US security assistance, the army in El Salvador today has the boots, battle dress and field gear to outfit its soldiers — although the distribution system breaks down with aggravating regularity.... Perhaps the most spectacular manifestation of the army's transformation lies in facilities. Nowhere does American assistance translate more directly into tangible and genuinely usable results than in building things....
Elsewhere, the results of American efforts to sponsor change in the Salvadoran army have been disappointing. Despite the oft-expressed American intent to convert the army into a counter-insurgent force, US policy has failed to wean the Salvadoran from their conventional mindset. If anything, American actions have reinforced that bias.
American security assistance has permitted the Salvadoran army to purchase heavy weapons - 105mm howitzers, 90mm recoilless rifles, and 72mm light anti-tank weapons — of little utility in counterinsurgency. Rather than risk disaffecting the army by opposing requests for inappropriate hardware, American officers at times succumb to the temptation to go along. Take the example of artillery. The Salvadoran army fields fifty-four 105mm howitzers, employing them in one or two gun sections used primarily for harassing and interdiction missions. American experience in Vietnam demonstrated that in an insurgency such fires are at best wasteful and at worst counter-productive. ...
How does "heavying up" the army affect its tactical performance? Time and again, American officers told us that loading down the Salvadoran infantryman with heavy weapons has reduced his tactical mobility, made him dependent on mechanical transport, and encouraged an overreliance on firepower. defence attache's judgment, "by giving people indirect fire and recoilless weapons... you teach them bad habits." This officer blamed inappropriate equipment for having made the army "much, much, much less mobile than the insurgent." A cumbersome, heavily burdened force is 1ll-suited for conducting the small unit operations that American trainers have eagerly advocated....
Over-reliance on high technology
An analogous emphasis on conventional methods retarded initiatives to provide tactical intelligence to the Salvadoran army. When the war began, Salvadoran deficiencies in military intelligence were exceedingly grave. For all practical purposes, a meaningful capacity to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence did not exist. In response to this need, the US initiated the routine collection of information on the FMLN. The enormous volume of data generated was funnelled to the Pentagon.... The Pentagon collated and analyzed the data and then routed it back to SouthCom as finished intelligence — theoretically in a timely fashion enabling the army to react
In practice, things didn't quite work out that way. The Pentagon's effort did prove invaluable in composing an overall picture of the insurgency. It helped the Salvadorans understand how many guerrillas there were, what areas they inhabited, how they sustained themselves, and when and how they preferred to attack. As important as this was, however, the technically generated intelligence seldom arrived with either the detail or timeliness permitting a Salvadoran commander to preempt an FMLN operation. Unhappiness with this poor responsiveness has led American officers over time to de-emphasize technological methods in favor of human intelligence....Experience has taught American officers that in counter-insurgency operations human intelligence provides the pay-off. High technology has a role, but that role is distinctly secondary....
EL SALVADOR
"One US trainer referred derisively to the Salvadoran army's 'search and avoid' patrols"
A counter-insurgent campaign tends to divide into two phases. Recent history suggests an American penchant for intervening in an insurgency at the eleventh hour, with the situation desperate and defeat apparently in the offing. (Somewhat perversely, such discouraging prospects may constitute a pre-requisite for inducing domestic American support.) Given this situation, the first phase of a counter-insurgent campaign necessarily aims at halting what one American officer called the chaos" and restoring a semblance of mili-
In short, the objective of the first phase is the negative one of precluding defeat. This task involves heavy fighting, especially as the guerrillas - sensing that victory lies within their grasp — grow bolder and more aggressive. At its most intense, fighting during this phase is hardly distinguishable from conventional war.
The requirements of this first phase have the advantage of being straightforward and discernible. By killing guerrillas, you deprive them, at least momentarily, of the ability to seize power. Yet success in phase one - an achievement not to be taken lightly — does not make victory inevitable. Far from it. The campaign's second phase will be prolonged and difficult, demanding much in terms of patience and creativity. "Persuading the people to reject revolution"
During phase two, success is likely to prove elusive. For the object of phase two is to win the allegiance of the people, thereby sealing the insurgents' defeat. Persuading the people to reject revolution requires a campaign based not on coercion but on positive and preemptive change. The existing government wrests legitimacy from the guerrillas by demonstrating its capacity to establish a just and equitable order. Survival may well require, in the words of one senior American functionary, that the government "in some cases be more revolutionary than the Marxists."
Almost inevitably, this involves reforming the courts and bureaucracy, modifying the military's role in society, improving services such as education and healthcare, expanding popular political participation and increasing individual opportunity. For the typical target of an insurgency, an underdeveloped and financially strapped third world nation burdened by stagnant and probably oppressive institutions, this is a 13 July 25, 1988 • #146 International Viewpoint
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EL SALVADOR
The Salvadoran experience confirms the perception that the US performs well during phase one of a counter-insurgency, only to be stymied by the second. Notwithstanding the reservations expressed earlier about the Salvadoran army's organization and equipment, we would not want to underestimate the magnitude of the American achievement during phase one of US involvement in El Salvador, running from 1980 through 1984. The transformation of the Salvadoran army during that period from a "militia of 11,000 that had no mission" into a much larger and incomparably more capable force that turned back the FMLN stands as a significant feat of arms.
Credit for the achievement goes above all to the Salvadoran soldiers who did the fighting. Clearly, however, the Salvadorans could never have succeeded without American arms, advice and training. The transformation of the army that has occurred under American tutelage is little short of remarkable. Embellishing his assertion that this army has become the most powerful in Central America, one US officer with long experience in El Salvador predicted to us that if Nicaragua ever did start a war, the Salvadoran armed forces would demolish the Sandinista army. That judgment may be correct, but if so it suggests one reason for the army's inability to demolish the enemy it currently faces. Reasons for the American failure
Despite professed American intentions, the Salvadorans today are using a conventional army and conventional tactics to fight an unconventional war.....Since 1984, FLMN tactics have changed radically. The guerrillas now operate in smaller units and emphasize hit-and-run attacks, mostly against economic targets, while avoiding confrontations with the army except on
"Sometimes the worst thing you can do to defeat an insurgency is to nurture democratic institutions" operations....
We should note, however, that even if the Salvadoran army does adopt more relevant tactics, the benefits at this stage of the war are likely to be marginal. As American officers told us repeatedly, the real key to success in phase insurgency was not to be found in more efficient methods of killing guerrillas. As one American observed: "The short-range fix is to go up the hill to kill the guerrilla; but that's addressing the effect, not the cause." Getting at the cause implies that realm of activity often known as the "other war": psychological operations, civil defence, civic action and the coordination of civil and military activities to effect that reform....
A government under siege by insurgents must persuade the mass of the people freely to choose the existing order in preference to those who would destroy it. Such willing support presumes an honest and responsive government, capable of meeting basic human needs. The government of El Salvador did not manifest those qualities when US
Notebooks for Study and Research
New:
involvement in the war began. Unfortunately, neither does it manifest those qualities today.... Morally and politically, the value of the Duarte regime's democratic credentials has been huge. Unfortunately, making a government democratic does not make it effective. If anything, democratization has exacerbated the ineptness of the Salvadoran political system. At a time when war puts a premium on single-minded, decisive governance, the opening up of Salvadoran politics has fueled partisanship and created conditions where nothing works. "Sometimes the worst thing you can do to defeat an insurgency," one State Department offi-
"is to nurture democratic institutions at the same time."...
Despite their appreciation that winning popular support remains as the ultimate strategic aim in a counter-insurgency, American officials have yet to devise adequate mechanisms to achieve that aim. More comfortable giving advice on the minor tactics of counter-insurgency, they allowed themselves in El Salvador to drift into what one official termed "a band-aid approach" to fighting the "other war."
The United States has yet to grasp fully what it will take to win such a contest and how to go about doing it. Failure to solve that riddle will condemn Americans to recurring frustration in future small wars. *
• "American military policy in small wars: the case of El Salvador," John F. Kennedy School of Government, March 1988.
By comparison, the army has hardly
THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF THE changed the way it fights. To be sure, a handful of elite units...have adopted coun-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL (1933-1938)
ter-insurgent methods and routinely by Daniel Bensaid achieve successes far out of proportion to their size. Apart from such exceptions, however, Salvadoran attempts to adopt
Why the movement for socialist democracy founded an independent international orsmall unit tactics have been ineffective.
ganization in the 1930s. Unravels the historical reasons, conjunctural prognoses and
One American trainer we interviewed reorganizational choices, showing in particular that the founding congress of 1938 conferred derisively to the army's "search and cluded a broad regroupment approach towards anti-Stalinist and anti-imperialist curavoid patrols." Another likened the securirents begun in 1933. Includes articles by opponents and supporters of this approach ty of Salvadoran night positions to "a boy
(Walter Held, Jean van Heijenoort, Henk Sneevliet, George Breitman, Hersch Menscout jamboree - camp fires and transistor del, Michel Pablo, Pierre Frank.) 48 pages, £2.50, $4, 25FF.
As a result, most Salvadoran operations today produce little even in the narrow
Many NSR readers have a sub running from issue 1 to issue 9. It is now time to resense of attrition against the FMLN. Amernew. We hope the new subscription rate below will make it easier for you to get the ican trainers have recognized the trend.
"We stabilized the situation," observed a
5 issues: 100FF, £10, $16 (airmail add 20%)
former defence attache, but soon "reached
Indicate first issue of subscription. All payments to P. Rousset. Preferred: French the point of diminishing returns." American trainers continue to prod the army into
14 adopting a counter-insurgent style - small unit patrols, ambushes and night
International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988
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The sour fruits of
"market socialism"
HUNGARY gress that made Karoly Grosz general secretary brought Nyers back into the Politburo.
The relative prosperity of the 1970s was less the result of growth in the country's productive forces than simply of borrowing. "The country achieved a considerable rate of growth by international standards in the 1950s at the expense of agriculture, in
A NEW TEAM took over the leadership of the Hungarian
Communist Party at its special congress at the end of May.
The change was hailed by the Western capitalist press as a new major shift toward the "market economy" and "private initiative," supposedly part of the general trend represented by Gorbachev's perestroika
Hungary has been a focus of attention in particular because
It represents the major model in the Soviet bloc for market economy reforms. Although the Gorbachev course is supposedly to include political liberalization as well as market-style reforms, the new course in Hungary has been marked by tightening the screws on dissenters. At the same time, open dissent has been growing significantly.
The following article looks at the results of the celebrated
Hungarian economic reforms. It is from the June 17 issue of
Die Linke, the magazine of the Austrian section of the Fourth
International.
ROBERT MISIK
HE DYNAMIC young Groscz
T took over the post of general secretary from the old man Janos
Kadar, not apparently without some jostling behind the scenes. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain the two-hour delay before the special party congress began its decisive session. But that is not the only thing that attracted the interest of Western sensationalist journalists to the new Hungarian party chief.
After his visit to Margaret Thatcher, during which he openly expressed his admiration for the British prime minister's free- market orientation, there can hardly be doubt any longer about Grosz's line. And if there had been, it would have been swept away by the first actions of the new party chief — a strengthening of austerity policy and the introduction of a severe antiinflationary program.
Many Western observers try to portray
Grosz as the trustee of a bankrupt Hungarian economy. In fact, the head of Hungarian
"actually existing socialism" is himself a part of the bankruptcy of this system - a confession of the bureaucracy's disorientation in face of the crisis.
The historical sources of this crisis lie, on the one hand, in the structures created in the
Stalin era; and, on the other, from the failed attempts at reform over the last twenty years. It finds its expression today in inefficiency, in a tight integration into the capitalist world market — going hand in hand with fading hopes of achieving competitiveness — and in massive foreign debts. the Kadar regime rested, fundamentally, on the conditions that were created in the 1960s, in particular the "New Economic Mechanism" that went into force on January 1, 1968. These measures, moreover, foreshadowed many aspects of Gorbachev's "revolution" in the USSR:
• Every enterprise was supposed to function independently in market conditions, and no longer given directives about who to sell goods to and at what price.
• The guiding instruments and institutions were cut back, and compulsory targets eliminated.
• Allotting resources and producers' goods was shifted from the central authorities to the trade organizations.
• Incentives and the search for profit were guided by a unified price system.
Along with this went the possibility of forming private and cooperative enterprises. The reform policy rapidly ran up against its political limits, namely the Brezhnev principle of "no experiments, and in 1972 it ran out of steam. The "father of the reform," Reszö Nyers, left the Politburo in 1973. This is worth noting because now, 14 years later, the special party conthe 1960s at the expense of the infrastructure and in the 1970s through borrowing." (Magyar Nemzet, May 9, 1987.)
Downward slide of the
Hungarian economy
This was a consequence of deterioration in the terms of trade, produced especially by the soaring prices for raw materials (the oil crisis), which was aggravated by the fact that USSR, the only major supplier in Comecon, created a growing shortage of raw materials. In order to increase its precious hard currency income from the West, the Soviet bureaucracy began increasingly to cut back on supplying oil at favorable prices. On the other hand, it increased its sales of oil at the high world-market prices, and so forced the members of Comecon to buy oil at high prices from the Middle East.
Thus, the terms of trade with the capitalist countries deteriorated by 23.6% in the period from 1973 to 1979, and even by 17.2% with the Comecon countries as a whole. In trade with the Soviet Union alone, Hungary had piled up a deficit of $1.1 billion by 1980. As happened in the third world countries, the leadership of the state and party counted on the loans to strengthen the productive forces so that future export income could assure repayment.
This calculation was wrecked not only by the sharpening structural crisis of capitalism, which narrowed export markets, but also by squandering the credits that were obtained. In a barely changed economic structure, the bulk of the investment went into the big plants, raw materials production and heavy industry. The dollar credits financed outmoded production structures and consumption, but not modern technology. The same applied to the infrastructure, which continued to slip through the loose net of bureaucratic planning and to lag 40 to 50 years behind the developed capitalist countries.