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The Idea of "Containment"

The American strategic posture since it was set in the postwar period by Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles has been dominated by the idea of "containment." It is hardly necessary here to document its application through overt military and covert CIA actions in the substantially successful repression of national liberation movements, and indeed of the most elemental progressive political developments all around the Third World. Dulles used to say that there are "no neutrals" and "those that are not with us are against us" and have to be combated tooth and nail. After the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States and thereby produced a nuclear "stalemate," the United States found it expedient to "widen its options" through "flexible response" in "limited local wars." According to the American political strategist Eugene Rostow, Khrushchev confirmed in an interview with James Reston that the Soviet Union had undergone a similar policy shift. Khrushchev declared that after Korea, conventional war was too dangerous, because "nuclear weapons don't respect class differences." Therefore, he said, it was necessary to rely on wars of liberation, especially in the Third World. The first major such war was fought in Korea in 1950-1952 with large "conventional" troop formations on both sides. It resulted in a standoff, which is still maintained across the 38th parallel. The Korean experience discouraged subsequent similar troop commitments, particularly because of the increasing threat of escalation into nuclear warfare. The next major such war was waged in Vietnam for two decades and spilled over into neighboring countries in Indochina. The increasing American troop commitment (up to 800,000, of which 500,000 were in the field) in a "nonconventional guerilla war," and particularly the subsequent liberation of Indochina from imperialist occupation, forced the United States into an "agonizing reappraisal" of its military posture. One result was the Nixon Doctrine of disengaging American troops from direct participation as much as possible and maintaining a military presence through arms supplies and other means of using "Asians to fight Asians." A major manifestation of this military posture has been the development of a rapid and flexible U.S. Navy that has modernized "showing the flag" and "gunboat diplomacy," which once seemed to have gone out of fashion, and the design and construction of naval and air forces that permit rapid "deployment" of troops and supporting weapons to "trouble spots" anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. The development and deployment of similar Soviet naval and air capacities and the war between Vietnam and Kampuchea, as well as the presence of Cuban troops in Africa, indicate that the Soviet Union and China may have developed their own versions of the Nixon Doctrine. (Moreover, it is clear that the Chinese welcome, if not demand, an American military presence in Asia.) The other major result of the American reappraisal has been the United States' temporary reluctance to intervene too directly in the Third World, particularly in Africa, where France and Britain seem to be in a better position to do so.

Military Government in Africa

No military government in Africa has ever surrendered power voluntarily. In fact, no government has ever changed hands peacefully through the electoral process in the 20 years since colonial Africa started breaking up into independent nations.

The data suggest that the frequency of military coups increased throughout the 1960s, and then diminished somewhat during the 1970s. The calculations of Kende show that the number of wars and the length of these wars in the Third World have been increasing: from twenty-five years' duration of all wars put together in the period 1945-1949, to thirty-three years' duration in 1950-1954, forty-eight years in 1955-1959, fifty-seven years in 1960-1964, and eighty-nine years in 1965-1969. Kende's graph shows a tendency to longer durations since 1964. The number of wars in any given year was, on the average, six in 1945-1954, ten in 19551964, and eighteen in 1965-1969. The number and length of military conflicts in the Third World therefore seems to have been increasing, particularly since the mid-1960s. This tendency toward more military conflict in the Third World seems to be, at least in part, generated by the world economic and political crisis. The persistence -- and probable aggravation -- of this crisis is likely to generate still more military conflict in the foreseeable future.

According to popular conceptions, the wider distribution of armaments causes wars and other military conflicts. Indeed, Kende does find positive correlations between military expenditures and arms imports on the one hand, and war on the other. But this correlation does not mean that armaments cause war or conflict -- though, of course, the prossession of arms constitutes a credible threat. In his discussion of the "causes of the increasing tendency" of war and other military conflicts in the Third World, Kende notes the shift by the United States from a strategy of "massive retaliation" during the cold war era to one of "flexible response" through "limited war" after the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity; the development of national liberation movements and their repression; the simple statistical increase in the number of states in or among which military conflicts could take place; and the increase of tension within many of these states. We will examine these and related causes of increased military conflict in greater detail.

Military Interventions

Kende finds the United States most active in the kind of foreign intervention, which is not surprising since it replaced Britain and France in their interventionist roles after 1960. Leitenberg also emphasizes foreign "military interventions, in relation to wars and conflicts; this is probably the least systematically studied area relating to war and conflict. In fact, it is barely studied at all, systematically or otherwise." The recent revelations of interventions by the CIA may provide the basis for such studies that go beyond the notorious American interventions in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Lebanon in 1958, the Congo and Cuba in 1961, Panama (and Brazil?) in 1964, and the Dominican Republic in 1965.

Leitenberg also reviewed twenty other studies of military coups d'état and used them to compile a list of both successful coups and unsuccessful attempts. Between 1945 and 1975 Leitenberg counts 276 successful coups (and 269 unsuccessful attempts), of which 100 (and 103) took place between 1945 and 1960 and 176 (and 166) took place between 1961 and 1975. ( Leitenberg says his figures of 18 successful coups and 18 unsuccessful attempts for 1976 to 1978 are very incomplete, so they are not used here.) Until 1960 most of these coups and attempts were in Latin America. But with the creation of many independent states in Africa after 1961, this continent experienced 71 successful coups and 83 unsuccessful attempts, while Latin America had 44 successes and 36 failures. (These figures suggest, incidentally, that on balance there is a nearly even chance of succeeding in a coup attempt; but in Latin America the chances of winning are better and in Africa less than fifty-fifty.) In the decade after 1966, of the 105 successful coups and 96 unsuccessful attempts, 51 and 58, respectively, were in Africa and 23 and 16, respectively, took place in Latin America.

War and Other Military Conflicts in the Third World

It is almost impossible to define and measure the use of military, organization, equipment, and manpower in military conflict. Their very existence is a threat, and the threat itself constitutes a use. Indeed, most of the time the mere possession of weapons and the threat to use them -- nuclear bombs, an action-ready army or police force, or a simple gun in the hands of a bank robber -- produce the effect for which the weapons and the armed organization behind them were designed. The perpetual threat of military "intervention" in the political process in Third World countries, no matter how apparently "free" and "democratic" their elections may seem, constitutes military-political intervention. The difficulty of defining military action and conflict applies equally to "international" conflicts across the borders of two or more states. But in this case the difficulty is augmented by that of defining and identifying "international," since the participation or intervention of a second or third state in any particular conflict is often deliberately vague.

Therefore the many attempts to define, identify, count, and analyze military conflicts in the Third World since 1945 are more confusing than clarifying. Depending on the criteria used by the analyst, the number of such conflicts counted has ranged from 30 to 350. The often cited responsible studies by Istvan Kende and by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) count 119 military conflicts in the Third World between 1945 and 1975, and the latter adds a further 14 conflicts for 1976. According to these studies, then, on the average twelve military conflicts were going on in the Third World on any given day since the Second World War. While he was still U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara claimed in 1966 that:

In the last 8 years alone, there have been no less than 164 internationally significant outbreaks of violence. . . . What is striking is that only 15 of these 165 significant resorts to violence have been military conflicts between two states. And not a single one of the 164 conflicts has been a formally declared war. Indeed, there has not been a formal declaration of war -- anywhere in the world -- since World War II.

Of course, the war Mr. McNamara waged against Vietnam was not declared either. And many of the other "internationally significant outbreaks of violence" were so significant for the United States that it felt impelled to intervene in them in one way or another, usually without declaring it was doing so.