Air University Review, September-October 1982
Colonel Wendell E. Little, USAR (Ret)
Each year Americans designate Memorial Day as a time to honor those who died for our country in past wars. These wars record that our nation, when faced with dangers from abroad, rejected the options of submission and humiliation. Rather, we elected to fight to preserve our free institutions and way of life. Do we have any other options to spare us the agonizing choice between the two other unwanted alternatives?
Centuries ago Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote: "The most consummate art of war is to subdue your enemies without having to fight them." Nuclear weapons have today added almost an imperative against "having to fight" our main adversary, even with conventional weapons, because such a contest might soon escalate into a nuclear war that was unintended by either side. Yet conflicts continue between nations. What, then, are the means and techniques for conflicts in this last quarter of the twentieth century?
Let us first look at our main adversary. To subdue the United States "without having to fight," the U.S.S.R. has adopted twin policies of peaceful coexistence: to avoid nuclear war and support of wars of national liberation.
Peaceful coexistence is basically defensive. It plays on the fervent hope of the free world for peace, and it is designed to disarm the Western allies.1 Note the very successful misleading propaganda campaign against the neutron bomb that exacerbated relations with our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and still leaves the issue in doubt. The preponderance of Soviet tanks facing NATO continues without an adequate defense.
Support of wars of national liberation means subversion and insurrection in those countries not now under Soviet influence, a systematic orchestration of anti-Western changes in the developing Third World. The primary objective is to win the resource war, to deny strategic materials to the West. The main thrust includes political warfare and guerrilla operations using Cuban proxy troops and East German technicians. Success in the resource war will enable the Soviets to squeeze the United States into second-class status without firing a shot. We can manage on less oil from the Persian Gulf region, but we must import more than 90 percent of certain essential minerals— cobalt, manganese, chromium—mainly from Africa south of the Sahara, where the Soviets are making a major effort.2
The Soviet daily expenditure of $8 million to support the Cuban economy is a bargain. For this the Soviets get a controlled military strike force effectively used in Africa, where they dared not send their own troops initially, and they also get air and naval bases close to the U.S. mainland. The Soviets thus direct the considerable manpower of the Cuban DGI (Direccion General de Inteligencia), Castro’s intelligence service, in areas where Soviet presence would be suspect and counterproductive.
Covert support of Communist parties and other front groups has been effective, especially in Europe.3 These are low-cost, low-risk, low-casualty operations to accomplish their foreign policy objectives—they hope below the threshold of U.S. response—without any direct military confrontation. Under an umbrella of strategic strength, the Soviets probe for weak points and targets of opportunity, using foreign victories to help nullify considerable domestic unrest. They seek strategic superiority but plan and expect to win without using their own military forces directly against the United States.
The National Defense Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and directed it to perform, in addition to its normal intelligence functions, "such other functions as the National Security Council may direct." Obviously, public laws cannot specify details of secret operations, so Congress used nonspecific language to authorize the President a wide range of options for covert operations.
By midcentury we recognized the need to affect events abroad without use or threat of use of direct military force. Each successive President from Truman to Ford directed the CIA to undertake specific covert operations in support of our foreign policies. We achieved some success and suffered some failures as we struggled to explore ways to avoid the awful alternatives of either surrender or nuclear war.
Then came Vietnam and Watergate. It was the media treatment of these two events that had such a profound impact on America. The drumfire of congressional investigations and media criticism took its toll. Disillusioned, we unilaterally declared an end of the cold war and began to dismantle our intelligence and covert operations in the name of civil rights. Amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, and the Surveillance Act of 1978 were added to the restrictive laws. Our foreign friends were dismayed, and our enemies rejoiced. Such actions certainly increased the danger of a massive intelligence failure, but, more important, they tended to leave this nation only the alternative of direct military action to respond to acts of Soviet aggression.
The United States has not fared well recently in the grey area between normal diplomatic actions and direct military force. The methods and requirements of clandestine intelligence and covert operations that function in this grey area place some strain on our concepts of open democratic institutions. But the former is essential to protect the latter. The hard facts of the real world require that we urgently resolve the conflicting claims of civil rights advocates and the needs of national intelligence and covert operations required in support of our foreign policies.
The third option requires a strong national intelligence system and a substantial capacity for covert operations, including covert economic and political warfare and paramilitary activity.4
What are covert operations? A rather bland official definition states that they are: actions in support of our foreign policies where the hand of the U.S. government is not disclosed or, if disclosed, can plausibly be denied.5 A precise and full description would impinge on the obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods. A rather broad generalization is that of unconventional support and guidance of groups and individuals abroad whose self-interests and actions fit or support the interests of the United States, and who, for a variety of reasons, wish to avoid any overt contact with the U.S. government. One example is the moderate groups in Iran who hope to avoid the impending chaos and escape Soviet domination. For them, any overt contact with an American amounts to a kiss of death. In fact, a number have been executed on such charges.
Covert actions include discreet contacts with and guidance for various forces that influence host governments: pressure groups such as labor, students, professional groups, elements of the media, and even political parties. These groups see their own self-interest and the interests of their homeland advanced by such covert relationships. The objectives of such groups may or may not fit the goals of the host governments. The controlling criteria are that such groups work for and support the goals of the U.S. government, if they are to have our help.
Motivation is usually a mutuality of interests, and operational guidance and financial support are often required. Dirty tricks are rare, despite stories in the media. Actions involving the media are almost always to get the facts, the truth, in print or on the air under circumstances where, without our help, it would not appear. The early days of Radio Free Europe are such an example.
Covert actions include contacts with and efforts to influence the likely successors of any prospective upheaval or change in government. We need covert contacts with the "outs" as well as official contacts with the current rulers. In 1979, moderate groups in Nicaragua were in a fair position to force and win a free election. With proper covert assistance and guidance, their prospects would have been good. But nothing was done, and Castro’s substantial covert help for the Sandinistas put them in power.6
The United States needs some capability to apply military force covertly or otherwise without involving its own uniformed military personnel. As warfare between the United States and the U.S.S.R. becomes potentially more dangerous, we must not leave the use of surrogate forces exclusively to the Soviets.7 We still have allies and friendly nations that recognize the Soviet threat and will work with us for the common defense.
The United States needs to use covert operations to influence events abroad by methods less dangerous than direct military action—some alternative between a diplomatic protest and "sending in the Marines."
History shows that political and social struggles within countries may affect world events as decisively as military conflicts between nations. In some countries, groups and individuals are fighting for ideals and policies that support U.S. objectives but cannot have any overt contact with us. They need our help and we need them. Examples of effective assistance have been: the Philippines, 1951-53; Iran, 1953; Western Europe, 1948-53; and the performance of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty from 1951 to 1967.
By abandoning covert actions to the Soviets, the United States is losing the war of resources. Soviet control of resources essential to the West may be our greatest danger.
International terrorism, if not clearly a tool of Soviet foreign policy, certainly promotes Soviet objectives of disruption and conflict.8 Between 1968 and 1979 only 15 international terrorist attacks occurred in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe compared with 1267 such attacks in Western Europe alone.9 Terrorism has become a new form of surrogate warfare—an alternative to modern conventional war with marked advantages for the totalitarian societies. Our best defense is good intelligence and covert assets for penetration and neutralization of terrorist groups.
Good intelligence and covert action are needed to expose and counter the massive Soviet disinformation program and their efforts to recruit and subvert Western journalists.
Covert actions may be the most effective, least expensive, and least dangerous way to achieve our foreign policy objectives. Direct military action stakes our total national prestige—this helped to drag us into Vietnam, but if covert operations fail or go sour, we simply deny them and walk away.10
The United States deserves a better choice than the simplistic solution of military superiority—probably impossible—or continued losses in the resource war to the point where we have left only the alternatives of surrender or military confrontation that could escalate. No international covenant forbids covert actions in support of foreign policies, and in today’s world, no great nation can risk neglecting them. Clausewitz stated that covert actions are the continuation of state policy by other less dangerous means.
The visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland may have set in motion a significant feature of this decade. We now have the spectacle of the Polish workers—in a "worker’s paradise"— attempting to improve their lot, being threatened by a military invasion from (of all places) the Soviet Union. This must cast some doubt on the validity of Communist doctrine and theory even in the Politburo.
In Poland the Soviets are on the horns of a dilemma. If they do nothing, the cries for more freedom will spread to other countries of Eastern Europe; if they move in with force, it will update the brutal Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Their image will suffer a serious blow.
Events in Poland must disturb the confidence of even the Politburo that communism is the "wave of the future." The Soviets have serious internal problems: the economic situation, the inability to deal with a pluralistic society or to tolerate dissent and now the apparent failure of their doctrine.11 In responding to these problems, the Soviets may be tempted to exploit their one area of success, brute military strength. This decade will be dangerous.
Since 1945, most conflicts of international significance have been within, not between, nations involving guerrilla warfare and terrorism with direct or indirect intervention from the outside.12 The '80s will be a decade of unconventional warfare. With realism and courage, it may be possible to end our post-Vietnam paralysis, halt Soviet expansion, and exploit some of its weaknesses.
First, there can be no substitute for adequate conventional and strategic forces. We, too, need the umbrella of military strength under which we can develop and use the third option to ensure survival. We, too, can probe for weak points and be prepared to exploit targets of opportunity. This is not the place to describe specific covert operations, but we can generalize and mention a possible example.
It is very important that America overcome the "decline in courage" that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sees in our society and has identified from history as "the beginning of the end of other great civilizations." 13
We must use both overt and covert outlets to explain to the new nations how Communist doctrine has failed. Marxism is dead in Eastern Europe. What remains is Russian nationalism and the Leninist structure of power in a totalitarian order—the Brezhnev doctrine.
A strong human rights policy should be proclaimed to give moral support to the dissidents inside the U.S.S.R., using clandestine methods to supplement Radio Free Europe. America has a stake in the survival of such dissident groups, which are the only force inside the U.S.S.R. working to liberalize its policies and push it toward a more open society that can live in peace with the rest of the world.14
International organizations, some under United Nations aegis, cover a wide variety of interests and can often influence world opinions. Our self-imposed restrictions against any clandestine involvement with such groups should be removed. The Soviets are not entitled to a free hand in this important arena.
Our national media must be more responsible, with less exposure of our own secrets and more attention to the very dangerous KGB infiltration of many American institutions. The media should try to ensure that their own journalists have not been recruited by the massive Soviet effort to subvert the Western media.15 We know that this is one of the KGB’s top priorities. When great newspapers fail to check the academic qualifications of applicants and the validity of feature stories, such laxity would make it easy to plant a Soviet agent in our media who could later develop into an important "agent of influence" as well as an excellent espionage agent.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan greatly distressed the entire Islamic world, providing for the first time a basis for unity against Moscow. Working with Islamic religious groups provides an opportunity to exploit the basic conflict between communism and the Moslem religion, but such involvement must be a clandestine operation. The targets may even include the 50 million Moslems now inside the Soviet Union.
The tribes now resisting Soviet domination of Afghanistan—the Baluchi, the Pathan, and Afridi—are the world’s toughest fighting men. They make do with very little. Some aid to these tribes would be worth much more than aid now flowing to other allies, but assistance to these tribes can only be by covert means. The logistical channel is through Pakistan, and Moscow has already warned President Zia against providing aid to the Afghan rebels.
Recent events have reinforced the need to resolve the conflicting claims of civil rights advocates and the requirements of secret intelligence and covert operations. The pendulum appears to be swinging back from the days of Senator Frank Church and the distortions of the sensation-hungry media. Legislative and Executive actions are now being taken to repair some of the danger done since 1974.
This will help, but much time will be needed to rebuild the basic infrastructure for good intelligence to restore the confidence of our agents and informants that their identity can be protected, to justify risking their lives to help us. We will need to convince the intelligence services of our major allies that the hemorrhages of secrets in America are ended and that we can protect their secrets. This is essential before they can share vital intelligence with us and cooperate in joint covert operations against the Soviets.
As we seek to rebuild our clandestine capabilities, we must not ignore the lessons of the past—mistakes were made. We must not adopt the same standards and criteria as the Communists. We can have an effective intelligence service with covert capability and still operate within the framework of our basic values and ideals. Our constitution is not a suicide document.
San Antonio, Texas
Notes
1. See Lawrence E. Grinter, "Checkmate in the Third World? Soviet Intervention and American Response," International Security Review, Spring 1981, pp. 35-56.
2. See William C. Mott, "Resource War," Wall Street Journal, January 22, 1981, p. 13.
3. Cord Meyer, Facing Reality (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
4. Theodore Shackley, The Third Option—An American View of Counterinsurgency (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981).
5. For a good description, see "Covert Action" by Hugh Tovar, Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s (Washington: National Strategy Information Center, 1979).
6. Meyer, op. cit.
7. See Paul Seabury, "Containment Redivivus: Playing a More Aggressive Game, International Security Review, Spring 1981, pp. 57-78.
8. Claire Sterling, The Terror Network (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1981).
9. See James B. Motley, "International Terrorism: A New Mode of Warfare," International Security Review, Spring 1981, pp. 93-123.
10. Here is where a responsible U.S. press could help. Consider in this nuclear age that our survival, and certainly the survival of the free press, may well depend on media protection of American intelligence and covert operations secrets.
11. See Brian Crozier, "The Many Weaknesses of the USSR," American Legion Magazine, April 1979, p. 12.
12. Motley, op. cit.
13. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "The West’s Decline in Courage," remarks to the graduating class of Harvard University, 1978, reported in the Wall Street Journal, June 13, 1978.
14. See Meyer, op. cit.; and Igor S. Glagolev, and George Woloshyn, "How Long Will the Soviet ‘Center’ Hold?" Human Events, April 18, 1981, p. 13.
15. John Rees, "Infiltration of the Media by the KGB and its Friends," (Washington, D.C.: Accuracy in Media).
Contributor
Colonel Wendell E. Little
, USAR (Ret) (B.A., University of Texas; M.A., American University), served for 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, where his assignments included Korea, Japan, Pakistan, and Germany. During World War II, he served in Africa, Italy, France, and Germany. During his retirement in San Antonio, Colonel Little was a lecturer, author of several articles, and winner of a George Washington Medal from the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge. He was an Air War College graduate. Colonel Little died 28 April 1982.Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor