Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy

by D. Michael Shafer

Book Overview

Michael Shafer argues that American policymakers have fundamentally misperceived the political context of revolutionary wars directed against American clients and that because American attempts at counterinsurgency were based on faulty premises, these efforts have failed in virtually every instance. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691077746
• ISBN13: 9780691077741
• Release Date: April 1988
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Table of Contents -- The Princeton University Press hardback edition

Hardback with a sewn binding; 331 pp, cloth over boards with dustcover. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface and Reader's Guide Abbreviations Notation for Footnotes and Bibliography Introduction: Dogs That Didn't Bark Possible Explanations: Sources of Policy Content and Continuity Flight, Fall, and Persistance: Political Development Theory Security and Development Mao Minus Marx: American Counterinsurgency Doctrine Not So Exceptionally American Greece: The Trojan Horse The Phillippines: Magsaysay's Miracle Vietnam: Reaping the Whirlwind Conclusion: Facing the Future Bibliography (17 pp) Index

A Critical Study of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy

Shafer informs us that not only were our supposed successes in counterinsurgency actually failures, he argues that America's counterinsurgency policy has been and remains inherently flawed since its inception. He addresses five explanations given by various parties to explain America's counterinsurgency policies: 1) realism, 2) presidential politics, 3) bureaucratic politics, 4) American exceptionalism, and 5) cognitive content. After describing what these various positions consist of, he presents a case study of four different counterinsurgency campaigns in an effort to show which position best explains the form of counterinsurgency policy the government took in each case. First, he looks at France's counterinsurgency record in Indochina for the purpose of comparing France's policy then to America's policy later. He concludes that the French effort closely parallels the American effort, which disproves the theory that American exceptionalism can explain our counterinsurgency efforts and failures. Next he looks at post-World War II Greece. Basically, the Truman Doctrine of 1948 marks the birth of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, so the Greek case study is of great importance. His next case study is the Philippines of the early 1950s, and his final study, naturally enough, is Vietnam. The Greek and Philippine counterinsurgency efforts were hailed as successes, but Shafer argues that forces outside America's efforts determined those successful conclusions. American aid and policy was ill-conceived and often did more harm than good; the governments in question did not act as we wanted them to and would not have succeeded even if they had. He makes a fairly convincing argument; certainly, frustration was high among policymakers throughout these times because the governments we were supporting used our aid to prop themselves up and even to purge their own political enemies. Victory in Greece and the Philippines came despite America's counterinsurgency plans, he argues. Everything broke down in Vietnam, of course, and failure there is obvious.Shafer basically argues that American policymakers have always relied on very pervasive, unquestioned beliefs, and that is the true problem. Policymakers never understood the local dynamics of the states in question, tending to view their governments as legitimate, ignore the real source of discontent among the poor population, and focus with tunnel vision on an external Communist threat as the basic threat. Thus, despite significant differences in Greece, the Philippines, and Vietnam, America basically pursued the same policy. The U.S. acted according to what it thought the foreign governments should do--strengthen the government, try to extend governmental influence to the peripheries, and allay discontent among the poor by enacting economic and democratic reform. In reality, regimes did the opposite of these things; governments became more centralized and totalitarian, often terrorizing the clas