Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [15]
The Manual
From the US Marine Corps’ banana wars in the Caribbean and Latin America came a book, the Small Wars Manual, published in 1940. By that point, the Marines had some experience to draw on. As the manual’s first edition noted, “The Marine Corps has landed troops 180 times in 37 countries from 1800 to 1934. Every year during the past 36 years since the Spanish-American War, the Marine Corps has been engaged in active operations in the field.”19 Small wars were constant and ongoing.
The Marines’ small-war methods tended to combine carrot and stick, terror and reconciliation. Violence was applied to dislodge the authority of the rebels or the offending government. The Marines burned crops and homes, took prisoners, and terrorized the common people. Smedley Butler said that his troops burned down most of northern Haiti. Official reports used subtler language to describe the same: “Troops in the field have declared and carried on what is commonly known as ‘open season,’ where care is not taken to determine whether or not the natives encountered are bandits or ‘good citizens’ and warehouses have been ruthlessly burned merely because they were unoccupied and native property otherwise destroyed.” 20 Once populations had submitted, however, they were permitted to return to their normal lives and economic activities.21
The Nation described it more bluntly: “U.S. Marines landed in Haiti, seized the gold in the National Bank, took over the customs-houses, closed the legislative assembly, and refused payment of salaries to Haitian officials who refused to do the white man’s will.”22 Butler, a veteran of many small wars, put it even more directly: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a racketeer for capitalism.” Butler said he had “helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.”23
Cold War Proxies
In 1952 the US military created the Special Forces. With this development, counterinsurgency became further institutionalized and more clearly associated with a political doctrine of defending capitalism. A few years later, Ernesto Che Guevara published Guerrilla Warfare‚ which is similar to the Small Wars Manual in that it is full of practical, even commonsense advice: “Movement by night is another important characteristic of the guerrilla band, enabling it to advance its position for an attack and, where the danger of betrayal exists, to mobilize in new territory.”24 But Guerrilla Warfare also emphasizes the role of ideas and politics. For Guevara ideology is both means and end. According to him, only a self-consciously political insurgency can win: “The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition. This is clearly shown by considering the case of bandit gangs that operate in the region. They have all the characteristics of a guerrilla army, hegemony, respect for the leader, valor, knowledge of the ground and often very good understanding of the tactics to be employed. The only thing missing is the support of the people; and inevitably these gangs are captured and exterminated by public forces.”25 For Guevara, the military superiority of the guerrilla band is born of its relationship to political ideals: “We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protests of the people against their oppression and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”26
Thus enters the struggle for hearts and minds. Indeed, it was President John F. Kennedy who first had Che’s book translated into English. Kennedy was intimately interested in counterinsurgency: at his behest the Special Forces first donned their eponymous green berets. It was