Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [11]
Conventional warfare seeks to control territory and destroy the opposing military, but counterinsurgency seeks to control society. It is thus “population centric.” In an insurgency, the military force—the state or the occupying power—already has (at least nominal) control of the battle space, but it lacks control of the population. Guerrillas, irregular forces, and even small, unpopular terrorist groups all rely on the populace, or parts of it, for recruits, food, shelter, medical care, intelligence, and, if nothing else, simple cover. Mao Tse-tung summed it up: “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” Thus‚ the anti-insurgent’s task is to isolate and destroy the guerrillas by gaining control of the population through violence as well as psychological and ideological means.
Under these conditions, strategy and tactics now pivot on individual psychology, religion, age structures, rituals, traditions, family bonds, economic activities, and sense of place—in short, all the formal and informal institutions of everyday life. Society is the target, and as such it is damaged. Counterinsurgency is especially destructive because it attacks the social fabric. Like the revolutions it seeks to suppress, counterinsurgency intentionally attacks and attempts to remake the social relations of a place. In the process, it helps set off self-fueling processes of social disintegration.
The Receipt
In Vietnam it was called “winning hearts and minds,” or in the cheeky military argot of the time, “WHAMing the peasantry.” Today, as in the past, such militarized “social work” can involve real economic development and progressive political reforms designed to ameliorate the legitimate grievances of the people—that is, to win their actual support and make the revolutionary promises of the insurgents less appealing. Or it can mean genocidal, society-destroying total war at the grass roots, as in “draining the sea to catch the fish.” In Guatemala during the 1980s, that approach allowed government forces to put to the torch more than four hundred Indian villages. They were simply wiped out, their inhabitants killed, raped, detained, scattered.
Whether hard or soft, counterinsurgency always attempts to remake social relations. In the process, it often rends without rebuilding, causing a breakdown of social norms and values; it tatters the bonds of solidarity and voluntary social regulation. Typically, anomie, normlessness, trauma, and lawlessness are its legacy.5
Contrast the effects of counterinsurgency with those of aerial bombardment during conventional war. Though more murderous and economically destructive, aerial bombardment tends not to damage society and social relations. If anything, it has been found to increase solidarity among its victims. Britain during World War II is the quintessential example: Nazi bombardment was met with evacuation, rationing, conscription, and an unprecedented leveling of class differences. Britain united under the bombs and fought even harder. As Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin would explain, when “a nation is involved in a great crisis . . . [it] is bound to become collectivist.”6 Similar effects arose in wartime Germany and Japan, as well as in North Vietnam under US carpet bombing; one would expect a similar culture of united opposition in the tribal