Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [128]
Political activity is a step above propaganda, although they may be used together. Political activity enables an intelligence operation to intervene more directly in the political process of the targeted nation. As with propaganda, political activity can be used to help friends or to impede foes. For example, in the late 1940s the United States supplied scarce newsprint to centrist, anticommunist political parties in Italy and France during closely contested elections. The United States has also funneled money to political parties overseas to help during elections. Or a state can use political activity more directly against its foes, such as disrupting rallies or interfering with their publications.
Figure 8-1 The Covert Action Ladder
The United States has tended to use economic activity against governments deemed to be hostile. Every political leadership—democratic or totalitarian—worries about the state of its economy because this has the greatest daily effect on the population: the availability of food and commodities, the stability of prices, the relative ease or difficulty with which basic needs can be met. Economic unrest often leads to political unrest. Again, other techniques may be used in conjunction with economic activity, such as propaganda to create false fears about shortages. Or the economic techniques may be more direct, such as attempts to destroy vital crops or to flood a state with counterfeit currency to destroy faith in the monetary system. For years, the United States attacked Cuba’s economy directly as well as indirectly via a trade embargo. Economic unrest was also a key factor in U.S. efforts to undermine the government of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s. Economic destabilization may be more effective against a more democratic rule, as in Chile, than against a dictatorship, as in Cuba, which has fewer qualms about inflicting want or privation on its people and is much less responsive to—(or tolerant of) popular protests.
Coups, the overthrow of a government, either directly or through surrogates, are a further step up the covert action ladder (see Figure 8-1). Again, a coup may be the culmination of many other techniques—propaganda, political activity, economic unrest. The United States used coups successfully in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954 and was involved in undermining the Allende government in Chile, although the coup that brought down his government was indigenous.
Paramilitary operations are the largest, most violent, and most dangerous covert actions, involving the equipping and training of large armed groups for a direct assault on one’s enemies. They do not involve the use of a state’s own military personnel in combatant units, which technically would be an act of war. The United States was successful in this type of operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s but failed abysmally at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua was neither won nor lost, but the Sandinistas were defeated at the polls when they held a free election in the midst of a deteriorating economy.
Some nations have also practiced a higher level of covert military activity—secret participation in combat. For example, Soviet pilots flew combat missions during the Korean War against United Nations (primarily U.S.) aircraft. This type of activity raises several issues: military action without an act of war, possible retaliation, and the rights of combatants if captured. The United States has largely eschewed this practice because of such complications, preferring to allow intelligence officers to take part in paramilitary activities.
Paramilitary operations need to be distinguished from special operations forces. The most fundamental and important distinction is that special forces are uniformed military personnel conducting a variety of combat tasks not performed by traditional military arms. The United States has a Special Operations