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Take the Money and Run Stubborn Elites, Limited Reforms, Violence, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare in El Salvador

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Take the Money and Run Stubborn Elites, Limited Reforms, Violence, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare in El Salvador INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM Take the Money and Run Stubborn Elites, Limited Reforms, Violence, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare in El Salvador Jacqueline L. Hazelton DISCUSSION PAPER 2017-03 SEPTEMBER 2017 International Security Program Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 www.belfercenter.org/ISP Statements and views expressed in this report are solely those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Harvard University, the Harvard Kennedy School, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Design and layout by Andrew Facini Cover and opposite page 1: Salvadoran soldiers patrol the streets of the capital city of San Salvador, El Salvador, March 14, 1989. (AP Photo/Luis Romero) Copyright 2017, President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the United States of America INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM Take the Money and Run Stubborn Elites, Limited Reforms, Violence, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare in El Salvador Jacqueline L. Hazelton DISCUSSION PAPER 2017-03 SEPTEMBER 2017 About the Author Jacqueline L. Hazelton is an assistant professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College. Her research interests include grand strategy, U.S. foreign and military policy, military intervention, coercion, counterinsurgency, terrorism and counterterrorism, and asymmetric conflict. She received her Ph.D. in Politics from Brandeis University and holds two M.A.s and a B.A. from the University of Chicago. Acknowledgements The author thanks all the interview subjects, Dale Andrade, Robert Art, Andrew Bacevich, John Clearwater, Conrad Crane, Alexander Downes, Todd Greentree, Susan Lynch, Sean Lynn-Jones, Rodrigo Javier Massi, Emily Meierding, Steven Miller, Karthika Sasikumar, Benjamin Schwarz, Kalev Sepp, Simeon Trombitas, Robert Wilson; Peter Kornbluh and the National Security Archive at George Washington University; Richard Sommers and the staff at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, including Randall Rakers and Pam Cheney, with appreciation for a General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Research Grant; and the Mellon Foundation. The views expressed here are those of the author alone. Abstract How can the United States best assure its interests abroad when a partner state faces an insurgency? The question has vexed policymakers, military officers, and scholars throughout the Cold War and into the post-9/11 era. When the United States finds its military might turned against itself by insurgents, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, thoughts often turn to the small U.S.-supported counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador from 1979 to 1992. The Salvadoran government defended itself against Marxist- nationalist-liberal-socialist rebels in a civil war that ended in a peace deal. The small-footprint U.S. intervention is appealing as an alternative to the tens of thousands of troops deployed in bigger quagmires. Conventional wisdom says that the brutal, repressive Salvadoran government instituted liberalizing, democratizing reforms to defeat the insurgency. Analysis of contemporaneous documents and interviews with participants, however, reveals that the campaign is a poor model for future U.S. interventions, for three reasons. First, the government retained power by waging a war of terrorism and attrition against insurgents and civilians alike. Second, Salvadoran elites resisted U.S. pressure for reforms. Third, chance rather than U.S. choices played a significant role in the war’s outcome, meaning that replication of the pattern of events is unlikely. Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................... v Introduction ...................................................................................1 Gaps and Elisions in Work on Counterinsurgency in El Salvador ................................................................................4 Research Design ........................................................................... 5 El Salvador: Background .............................................................8 Military Rule ....................................................................................................................8 Civilian Elites ..................................................................................................................11 Change and Crises ....................................................................................................... 12 The Insurgency ............................................................................................................. 14 U.S. Interests and Goals ............................................................................................... 17 Struggling to Build the Salvadoran Armed Forces ................. 18 Fighting Ability .............................................................................................................. 21 Force Structure .............................................................................................................23 Targeting Insurgents ....................................................................................................25 Terrorism and a War of Attrition ............................................... 27 The Years of Terrorism .................................................................................................27 The War of Attrition ..................................................................................................... 30 Limited U.S. Influence over Military Choices ............................................................ 36 Growth and Resilience of the FMLN .......................................................................... 38 Thwarted Political and Economic Reforms .............................42 Resistance to Developing the Civilian State ............................................................. 43 Limited Elite Interest in Meeting Popular Needs ..................................................... 44 Unintended Consequences of U.S. Aid ......................................................................47 Civilian Rule and Elections: Return to the Status Quo ............................................ 48 Land Reform Limited by Salvadoran Elite Interests .................................................52 Fortuitous Changes Lead to Peace Talks .................................54 Economic and Political Changes ................................................................................ 54 Systemic Change ......................................................................................................... 56 Democratic Reforms Only after War’s End ............................................................... 58 Conclusions and Policy Implications .......................................59 Salvadoran soldiers patrol the streets of the capital city of San Salvador, El Salvador, March 14, 1989. (AP Photo/Luis Romero) Introduction Ever since passenger jets slammed into two U.S. landmarks and a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001, the United States has identified terrorists and insurgents as the greatest threat to its security. It has struggled, directly and through client states, to defeat nonstate challengers to its interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, the Philippines, and Nigeria, among other countries. Reacting to the lack of progress in the costly, indecisive, large-footprint U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, some commentators have argued that the successful U.S.-backed counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador (1979–1992) provides a useful alternative model for future U.S. efforts.1 These authors argue that the United States helped the Salvadoran state make liberalizing, democratizing reforms that satis- fied popular interests, resolved the grievances fueling the insurgency, and thus defeated the Marxist-nationalist-liberal-socialist Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) without a U.S. combat presence.2 The El Salvador conflict provides insights into this type of military intervention because it is typical in three important ways of great power efforts to support clients facing internal threats. It pitted the insurgency’s revolutionary popular claims against a relatively militarily strong authoritarian state; there was outside support for both sides; and the level of great power backing for the state was limited, that is, the United States did not send combat troops, despite it viewing insur- gent defeat as a critical national security interest. 1 For example, the lead author of the U.S. Army’s 2006 counterinsurgency manual, Conrad C. Crane, states that the authors found positive models in Malaya, El Salvador, the Philippines- Huks conflict, Colombia, and the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program in Vietnam. Crane, email to author, September 29, 2010. Other studies that reach similar conclusions include Steven Metz, Learning from Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy (Carlisle, Penn.: Strategic Studies Institute, January 2007); Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, and Beth Grill, “Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency” (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2010); Angel Rabasa et al., “Money in the Bank: Lessons Learned from Past Counterinsurgency (COIN) Operations,” RAND Counterinsurgency Study—paper 4 (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2007); and James S. Corum, “Development of Modern Counterinsurgency Theory and Doctrine,” in George Kassimeris
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