Edward E. Rice - Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped Countries

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Page iii Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped Countries Edward E. Rice UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London

Page iv University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England 1988 by The Regents of the University of California First Paperback Printing 1990 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rice, Edward E. (Edward Earl), 1909 Wars of the third kind : conflict in under developed countries / Edward E. Rice. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-520-07195-6 1. Developing countriesHistory, Military. 2. Guerrilla warfareHistory. 3. World politics. I. Title. D883.R53 1988 909'.09724dc19 87-30894 CIP Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984.

Page v Contents Introduction 1 1 Recurrence and Radicalization in Wars of the Third Kind 18 2 The Rural and Popular Nature of Wars of the Third Kind 52 3 Organization and Motivation 60 4 The Conversion of Guerrilla Forces into Regular Armies 79 5 Conceptual Approaches to Counterinsurgency 90 6 The Perils for the Powers of Small Wars 118 7 Reflections 150 Notes 157 Index 175

Page vi If you would have peace, deal justly.

Page 1 Introduction For countries as for people, there can be few surer prescriptions for disaster than commitment to an undertaking that is inadequately understood and from which there seems to be no turning back. Because it takes two to make peace, but only one to make war, and because pride inhibits the admission of gross error, wars are undertakings from which extrication is peculiarly difficult. There is widespread understanding of conventional wars as they have been fought among the modern powers, and there is enough knowledge of nuclear warif something so apocalyptic can be called warto tell us that it must be prevented. There are, however, wars of another, or third, kind, neither nuclear nor conventional, to which a major power may become almost inadvertently committed. Because of the reliance of one side on hit-and-run operations, these conflicts are usually called guerrilla wars. The term, however, is incompletely descriptive: the reliance of the one side on guerrilla operations may be only partial; it may over time gain the capacity to wage battles of position and maneuver; and its opponent may attempt throughout the conflict to fight a conventional war. Accordingly, a more appropriate designation for such conflicts might be wars of the third kind. The disparities in strength between great powers and less developed lands, and between regular armies and guerrilla bands,

Page 2 have commonly led civilian and military leaders to predict that wars of the third kind upon which they embark will be short and easily won. But the reverse has almost invariably been the case. In 1774 George III, having decided that the American colonies should be reduced to obedience, predicted that "once these rebels have felt a smart blow, they will submit." Seven years of exchanging blows provided the measure of his miscalculation. In 1808 Napoleon invaded economically backward Spain in what was intended to be a war of quick decision. It too lasted seven years; it cost Napoleon half a million men he could ill afford to lose; and it introduced into English the Spanish word guerrilla. In the latter part of 1899 General Elwell S. Otis was telling American correspondents in Manila that the conflict we call the Philippine Insurrection was over; actually, its guerrilla phase had just begun and would last for upward of five years. In December 1946 Chiang Kai-shek expressed to General George C. Marshall his confidence that he could exterminate the forces of the Chinese Communists in a matter of months; less than three years later, all mainland China was in their hands. The list of such cases might be extended indefinitely, and it would be hard to find the exception that is supposed to confirm the rule. In 1962, with his eyes on the growing American involvement in Vietnam, President Kennedy declared that guerrilla wars required "a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training."1 (In this view he was contradicted by the Army chief of staff, who asserted that "any good soldier can handle guerrillas.")2 Six years later, after the United States had decided to hold peace talks with North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger in effect declared that no such strategy had been found. The strategies we had brought to the Vietnam conflict had been failures, he said, and if we were to avoid similar disasters, which might look quite different but would embody the same essentials, we would have to reassess the ideas that got us involved there.3 It cannot be expected that a conceptual study relevant to such warswars that in essence are the same, however much they may differ in their particularswill be made by a high govern-

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